Lies Your Parents Tell You

The other night, I accidentally stepped on a snail on the top step of our front path.  The crunch was loud and sickening. I hate stepping on snails. I like snails. They eat our vegetable patch and leave nasty, slimy trails, but I don't like killing them. It just feels like we have far too great an evolutionary advantage over these slow movers to wantonly squash them.

The look on your face, darling daughter, was horrible. You looked to my foot and then to my face, locking eyes with an expression equal parts horrified and accusatory.

"It's okay! The snail wasn't in there! It was just his shell! He's out for the evening. I swear."  "Yes, yes," chimed in Daddy.  "The snail moved away, he's on holiday, he needed a bigger shell."

Your knitted brow eased somewhat and you moved on to some other front yard mischief.

Later, I noticed two new snails eating the remains of their friends.  I could see the motion of their swallows, chunks of Cousin Snail moving through their snail heads and down their snail throats and into their snail gullets deep within their snail shells.

Maybe they don't need my deference after all.

Save this for when you're much older, Darling Daughter

I wonder if, years from now, when you're studying American history in high school or political science or gender studies in college, if this year will really seem as hostile toward women as it does currently, while we live in it.  I won't clutter this with links to what's gone on, but suffice to say, it seems like an insane number of voters are extraordinarily concerned with possible abortions and promiscuous women above all other concerns like the economy, national security, poverty, or the environment.  It's a bit of a scary time, frankly.

A lot of this came to a head a few weeks ago when a popular, loud-mouthed "shock jock" (oh I hope that term is unfamiliar to you in 15 years time), jokingly (he claims) called a young woman who testified to a congressional panel about access to birth control a "slut" and a "prostitute."  (Oh I hope those terms are unfamiliar to you in 15 years as well).

Let me pause here and tell your Nana to skip the next part. Nana, skip the next part. I think our views might diverge.

Words as Images, Images as Words: by gender

Toy advertisements, by gender. Can you guess which is which?

But

I was super excited to see our friend, local musician extraordinaire, Ross and his daughter, Lola, in the Sunday paper in a feature on Father's Day.  I had seen the photos already and went straight to the section in the print edition that landed on my doorstep.

The part on Ross was cute. The photo was great! There's little leg-warmered Lola and her rock-star hair in living color looking cute as ever.

Except then I read the pieces introductory paragraphs:

Whether your dad's a disciplinarian like Robert Duvall in "The Great Santini," or a mellow sort of man like Mister Rogers, we salute them all on this Father's Day.

The impact of involved fathers goes beyond making kids adept at throwing footballs and enforcing rules.

"Some commonly cited statistics find that 72 percent of murderers grew up without a father," said Jerry Cook, associate professor of family and consumer sciences at California State University, Sacramento. "Children who don't grow up with a father are twice as likely to drop out of high school and five times as likely to live in poverty."

Being Dad isn't easy in these times of layoffs, furloughs and a state unemployment rate near 12 percent. Moms deserve plenty of credit for keeping households running, but a strong father figure is also needed to help steer the family.

"A father keeps the whole family together and provides the instruction and discipline and direction for the house," said Rick Jennings II, chief executive officer of the Center for Fathers and Families in Del Paso Heights.

Now, let's hear from some dads around the Sacramento area for some fatherly wisdom. They range from musicians to politicians to Little League presidents.

(emphasis mine)

I'm sorry, what now?

Now, I know what Mr. Jennings role in the community is and it's admirable, noble work. Getting men to step up to fatherhood and the responsibility it entails is certainly necessary.  Yet, well, I don't know - but you see my problem, right?

Also - Being a dad is never easy, economic downturn or not. Also, economic downturns suck for families, regardless of the family member. If you want to narrow the stress, then, sure, perhaps the stress on the breadwinner is higher than it is on other family members - but the breadwinner isn't always the dad.

I don't care if this is a warm-fuzzy holiday piece - this is indicative of cultural norms and reinforces a certain role for men and women, mothers and fathers.

Amazingly for the Bee, there's only one comment with the story and it's complimentary.  Go figure.  Also amusing: it's posted in the "Sac Moms Club: sacbee's place for complete family coverage."  I suppose, like Amazon, the Bee found "Sac Parents Club" just too crazy a title for "complete family coverage."

Ceremony

Dear Daughter,

Sometimes I'm struck with a heavy sense of your innocence while watching you play.  You have nothing to worry about. Sure, you act like you have a lot to worry about when you don't want your diaper changed, or your tired, or mommy takes away the knife you pulled out of the dishwasher when she wasn't looking.  But really, your only job right now is to explore, play, exist, and someday, sleep in your own bed. Climate change doesn't weigh on your mind.  You don't care about the current budget crisis. You aren't disturbed by the cancellation of TV shows done wrong by their networks.

You don't know that every living thing dies.  Including you. Including mommy and daddy.  And the cats. And that snail in the garden.

I suppose if I could wish for anything beyond your continued good health, I'd wish that no one and nothing you love would ever die.  But no one can grant me that wish.

This weekend I attended a memorial service for one of my clients. He was a good man. A young man (only 52). A family man. And a fire fighter.  It won't be too long until you know what a fire fighter is - they drive big shiny trucks and are very cool.  They are brave.  They are exposed not just to the danger of flames and the uncertainty of emergency situations - but to all the invisible dangers of poisonous gases and air.  This particular fire fighter died of cancer most likely caused from years of exposure to these dangerous elements.  He fought hard to beat the cancer, but he couldn't.  He left behind a lovely family and a profound sense of loss within several communities.

But this isn't a post about sad things. It's a post about ceremony.  Ceremonies are the collective, formal activities we undertake to mark occasions in our culture.  They can be big or small, public or private.  They can be jovial or solemn.  A memorial service is a ceremony marking the end of someone's life.  It's a time to remember the person and his accomplishments. It's a time for the family and loved ones to share treasured memories - those keep the person a live a bit longer, because as long as someone is sung, he remains.

I didn't know this fire fighter extraordinarily well, though attending his memorial confirmed to me that I knew the true him because he was described similarly by everyone who knew him.  He was kind and big-hearted. Fun-loving. A deeply spiritual man. And he loved his family most of all.

In one of my last email exchanges with him, he shared a photo of his newly born grand-daughter.  The email prior to that I had shared with him a photo of you.  Enjoy it, he said. It goes so fast.  And for him, it did. Much, much too quickly.

Fire fighters are laid to rest with a deeply moving ceremony in which bells toll, alarms ring, bag-pipes commemorate, drums beat, and hands raise in salute.  Your mommy was already sad because she was going to miss this fire fighter, but once those bag-pipes started, there was no halting her tears.  Mommy wants bag-pipes at her funeral someday, too.

From that ceremony, I went to another, and you and daddy came along. We went to your friend Lola' first birthday party.  Birthday parties are ceremonies, too.  Fancy dresses, cakes, candles, hats, balloons, and singing mark those ceremonies.  So do lots of pictures, hugs, and kisses.  And after the party we went to a concert in the park.  In itself, it was a bit of a ceremony - celebrating summer and long evenings. We shared the lawn with friends who will be married in a week - beginning a long series of ceremonial aspects for that phase of life, too. If we could've worked a birth into the day, we really would've hit the span of human experience.

I was very mindful of the fire fighter all day.  I thought that he would like a family attending a park concert and he would love a child's birthday party. I thought that I should mark these things with more ceremony and importance on a regular basis.  I thought about what we should all be remembered for at our final ceremonies.  I thought about how, while watching the video about the fire fighter's life that started with photos of him as a baby, I was struck with a different kind of sadness now that I have you - small one.  Initially I thought of the fire fighter as someone's dad and grandfather.  But then I thought of him as his mother's son.  Some day you might understand how much differently that last bit is than the bit before, in the range of emotions.

Everything I did this weekend was with the fire fighter in mind.  His example.  His words. His ceremony.

Make sure you embrace ceremonies - big and small, dear daughter.  They are what we most remember and they can help us figure out what's important.

Baby Doll

All of my kid's toys are animals of some kind. Birds, giraffes, ducks, donkeys (no elephants, of course).

We visited some friends yesterday who just welcomed their third - a boy - who joined his two older sisters and two energetic but friendly boxers (ooooh, the Fidg was IN LOVE with those dogs. When she wasn't backing away or running to mom for cover).

We congregated in the living room/playroom where there were mountains of interesting new toys to check out. So what did she go for?

She zeroed in on a [human] baby doll. Walked right over and plucked that thing right up.  Carried it around.  Mostly she just chewed on its head.

I don't know what this all means. But I don't think it means baby girls have an instinctual need to mother toys, objects or people.

Before we left, she was on to a kid's digital camera. I liked seeing that.

Mixed Bag

Some stuff I've read lately . . .

Must you make so much noise, woman? One doc - and my mother - says no.  I say, O rly?

My fav bit? "The goal of childbirth isn't to scream at the top of your lungs. Rather, it's to focus that energy down on the pelvis to push the baby out, instead of wasting it contorting your body and castigating your partner." Again, O rly? Srsly? Y'all can do your Bradley breathing or whatever, if I want to unleash an unholy torrent of profanity while creating modern art out of the bed rails and/or my husbands radius and/or ulna - guess what I'm going to do?

And customs for new moms - trying to adapt these to American culture seems largely impossible because our public policy serves to isolate new moms and rush them back to work and away from their kids asap.  America - we're about family!

This: The Subtle Sexism Of Roles And Reversal

I can't get that story of the fleeing mom out of my head and I'm still struggling to define the problem. Here's another data point, however, from Leadership studies rockstar/Stag Professor Ron Riggio:

This summer, as in the past, I have taken my daughter to work with me several times. My wife pointed out the difference in co-workers' perceptions when I do it versus when she takes our 9-year-old to work. (We're both college professors, so it's not a terrible inconvenience to have a kid playing on a computer while we write and analyze data in our offices). But, when I take my daughter to work, many people think it's cute. When my wife does it, it's "inappropriate" (as in "Why can't that woman manage her childcare situation?"). It started me thinking about other forms of pervasive sexism that occur regularly in the workplace.

Maybe we should take a cure from the new movie title "Hall Pass."  Men get hall passes all the time. Men are cute when they do women stuff like tend to children, cook (except they can be master chefs and women can't - the upper echelons are always male, you see), clean house.  It's a monkey-on-a-bicycle thing.  Look at that thing doing what that thing shouldn't be doing! How darling.

These things really eat at me....

Quieter Kinds of Misogynistic Public Policy

What happens when you step outside the out-of-the-home labor market and then your marriage craps out? You're screwed!  This section stuck out:

Salary experts estimate the market value of a stay-at-home parent's labor (child care, housecleaning, cooking, laundry, driving, etc.) at about $118,000. This hollowly cheerful calculation has always struck me as patronizing, with the effect, if not the intention, of further diminishing our status. Moms -- aren't they the greatest? They should be pocketing as much as a registered pharmacist or the mayor of Chula Vista, Calif., yet they'll happily accept payment in the form of adorable gap-toothed smiles. An implied, faintly sinister coercion -- a good mom doesn't want money -- fuels a system that relies on our unpaid childcare, household chores and volunteer work but offers no safety net.

Could this be another reason the Raley's "It's A Mom's World" ads bother me so much? Maybe. It's all in there.

I like to think this situation could change if more women were in control of hiring.  Gaps on the resume are seen as such a negative. I think that's because, for men, why would you have a gap? What were you doing? For women, a gap is far more likely if she has children. But you're out 10 minutes and suddenly it's assumed you can never catch up on the game.  Unfair assumption.

One Year Of Nursing

I've said plenty here about nursing over the last year. I'm not going to rehash all of it - you're welcome - but it seems like I should say something to commemorate one year of nursing.  After the first 3 weeks, I was sure I wouldn't make it to 6. At 6 weeks, I didn't see how 3 months would be possible.  Finally, at 10 weeks, we found our groove - the Fidg and me - only to face new challenges around 14 weeks when I returned to work and quickly learned that pumping wasn't going to come easily for me. 

The pumping problems created unanticipated challenges.  Like a reverse-cycled baby.  And a co-sleeping family.  And a grandmother deeply concerned about the co-sleeping family.  I don't think I'd be reading "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" now if my breasts had made better friends with the pump and my child had adequate daytime food for months 3 through 8.

Prior to co-sleeping, of course, I thought I had a sleep problem on my hand. I chose to look at it as a condition, however, and my stress level decreased significantly and my sleep increased by equal measures. A win for all involved - except for the frequent attempts by some to solve the problem that was no longer a problem. Oh well, if that's the worst problem, we're okay.

Select some of the tags associated with this post to see previous posts about nursing challenges.  I still believe breast feeding classes set women up for failure by not being more open with the pain of initial nursing.  By not being more honest about the time commitment and toll.  And while I appreciate Sutter's lactation consultants and would recommend them without reservation to anyone, I think the LC field needs to spend more time on pump problems.  I have 1001 ways to increase milk supply, but supply was never my problem. Solutions for pump problems seemingly don't really exist and I have to figure there are droves of frustrated working moms like me who suffer the stress of low yields or just give up on EBF and supplement with formula.

Here's the question that I've been really mulling, however: would I do it again?

Doll Trouble

Eek. I don't know, too real? Not real enough?  And the sociological angle:

One weird thing about Toy Fair is all of the stringent gender norms that are pushed in marketing-speak. Trucks are for boys. Transformers are for boys. Nerf is for boys. So what do girls get? This exceedingly creepy robo-baby, designed to train them to be mothers. Seriously.

So this doll isn't totally horrible (though, c'mon, we've all see that Twilight Zone, right? You know the one).  But why does it only interact with Mommy? Maybe it has a daddy-switch in the back, not sure. I wonder what message my daughter would get from this doll? Would this doll make me look bad?

[INT - MY HOUSE, 3 YEARS FROM NOW]

THE FIDG:

Mommy, how come my doll always asks for mommy? I ask for Daddy when you're at work? You're the one who is supposed to be home with me, right? Isn't that right mommy, you're neglecting me? My dolly represents cultural norms. Why are you forcing me to grow up in a culturally inconsistent household?

Right? I mean, who wants to live with that sort of guilt?

I'm going to need my mom to remind me to what extent I played with dolls and mothered my toys as a child. I remember stuffed animals more than dolls. I loved my American Girl doll when I was older. But I don't think I mothered it. I probably friended it.  I recall my little sister having the wetsy type dolls.  And I know my older sister was crazy excited to get my niece her first baby doll.  I am already, however, projecting onto my daughter and her toys my anger over the expectation that girls grow up all nuture-y and the message sent by "My First Ironing Board" or whatever.

Pink Tractors

So that catalog I got with 1st birthday party supplies?  I endorse it. There's plenty of tired gender stereotypes/cute pink/cute blue themes. But there is also this: a John Deere, pink range of party supplies. I kind of wish they had pink firetrucks too, but a tractor is a good start.

Small rage, Bigger Rage

Small rage:

You'd think after the last post . . . .

Dad tells me about a cupcake decoration that Martha featured on a Today Show bit.  So I tell him about how impressed I am by marketers' database management and how we got an entire catalog filled with 1st birthday decorations.  And he says, no, see the Martha thing is you can do it all yourself.

Rage.

Bigger Rage:

Meeting with a group of clients yesterday (and here's where I'll break my cardinal rule and semi-discuss the day job).  Coworker with me is a new guy, similar age, wearing a suit (as am I), and also presenting information to said group of clients.  In terms of who's doing the talking, it's probably 70/30 me to him.  At one point, a client asks, "so you're both lawyers?"  Coworker says no. I say, he will be soon! He says, yes, I'm taking the bar in the summer. Client says, to the coworker, "are you going into politics later? Because you have sort of a Gavin Newsom thing going on."

Rage.

Why does this make me angry?  Oh let's sort of stream of consciousness our way through this, shall we?  Because client knew we were lawyers too. I was nicely turned out, like coworker, I was doing more of the talking than the coworker, giving them information, making them laugh, mending the fences.  But who looks like they could have a career in politics? The coworker. Because. he's. a. man. He can connect to these manly client men in manly ways. Or some shit, I don't know. He doesn't actually look like Gavin Newsom. In fact, I don't even think he likes Gavin Newsom.  But women don't look like they'll go into politics because we don't see enough women in politics.  And maybe this is an unfair jump-to-conclusions, but even if I looked physically like Hillary or Nancy or Barbara or even Michelle Obama, the questions wouldn't be "so you'll go into politics," they'd be unspoken, so will you bust my balls or get a lot of cosmetic work done?

I can't fully explain the complex bag of emotions that ran through my soul - and likely across my face - in that moment. But Rage was probably foremost among them.

Eff that, world. Clearly, I have a lot of work I should be doing. Because I have a daughter now and she deserves better - and more - potentially applicable assumptions than what she'd get right now.

Wait a minute, I'm not done.  Here's another thing. Because of that comment, my coworker, who had just said during a previous trip he didn't really think he'd go the political direction, he might decide to run for office. That kind of comment makes people take chances and run for office. But people don't say that to women! They don't say it to girls! They just don't make those connections.  No one suggests, no one requests, and women don't run. I'm giving some money to Emerge rightnow.

Profound Events

Yesterday, in Arizona, a young man took a gun, which I've no doubt he legally possessed, and shot some 18 people at an event held by a local congresswoman.

A 9-year-old girl was among those killed. She was shot in the chest. The neighbor who had taken this little girl, named Christina, to see the congresswoman, was shot 4 times but has so far survived.

The congresswoman's intern held a cloth to her head to control the bleeding.

Darling daughter - it scares me that you or I could have been any number of people in that supermarket parking lot.  The congresswoman. Her staffers.  The intern. A constituent.

That little girl.

That little girl.

Nearly all of your mom's mom circle is similarly somber today.  We will be for awhile.

But today I took you to the local Assembly District Committee elections.  Because I needed to go and I needed to take you.  You met your Assemblyman.

I wish I could tell you that when you get older, these events make more sense but they'll only make less.

How long is post still post?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the early postpartum days. The ones I hated.

I've been thinking a lot about the other moms, too, the ones who welcomed 2010 babies.  I've been looking at facebook pictures of fun holiday outings some of these other new moms have taken with non-mom friends (outings to which I wasn't invited - but that was another pity-party post).  I recently saw a mom of a 10 day old out and about and visiting and thought, again, what did I do wrong? Why did it take me so long to get out of the house? Why was I so weak, lazy, so behind, why am I still behind now?

Maybe I wasn't behind. Maybe everyone else was just unnecessarily ahead.  I wish I had the strength at the time to tell the few voices hurrying me along to STFU.  Frankly, even now, I'm clearly not as advanced as some would like me to be.  At the same time (brief pity party return), I wish people would issue invitations, even if I have to turn them down because of the continued demands of breast feeding and bedtimes.

Motherhood continues to be very lonely in some ways.  I can't imagine how much worse it would be without my other mom friends.

Betsy Wetsy Gots Nothing On These Dollies

Reader AV points to an NYT blog post about MamAmor dolls.  They give birth, breastfeed, and, of course, have available babywearing accessories.  Commence general public horror in 5, 4, 3 . . . .

Actually, the dolls are lovely - all hand made - and customizable.  The babies even have little cords and placentas.  I might've thought that a bit much, but it's all very creatively and endearingly done.

I'm not sure how soon I'll be wanting to have a talk about how the baby got IN there with my daughter, but knowing the process from a step or so after that doesn't seem so bad, especially for families with apprehensive big brothers or sisters in the making.

The baby dolls attach to the cord and to the breast via snap buttons, which, if  you look at it, is pretty smart.  And oddly moving.  I don't know why, but I find the little snap-on nursers really sweet.  On the other hand, it may mislead kids into thinking that first latch is a snap.

'The children are satellites, beloved but tangential'

In 2005, Ayelet Waldman made several million, I'm guessing, from a well-timed NYT piece about being a Bad Mother (TM) and loving her husband more than her kids. Like, a lot more, it seems.  Shock me shock me shock me with your deviant behavior, Ayelet!

She and another then-hot Bad Mom hit Oprah and the talk show circuit - the antidote for emerging parental helicopters. Her kids were alright, but her sex life was, like, so much better you guys and she felt super guilty about it. But she also celebrated all the bad-motherness all the way to the bank.

I recall reading the piece then and thinking, well, it didn't seem wholly outlandish.  And helicopter parenting sounds crappy. And living every moment for your kids sounds boring and indulgent and a good reason to avoid having kids period.

And then I had a kid.

Unemployed?

–adjective

1. not employed; without a job; out of work: an unemployed secretary.

2. not currently in use: unemployed productive capacity.

3. not productively used: unemployed capital.

–noun

4. ( used with a plural verb ) people who do not have jobs (usually prec. by the ): programs to help the unemployed.

—Synonyms

1.  unoccupied, idle, at liberty, jobless.  

We had occasion to confirm some records today and the woman said, so you're still employed at X employer and your husband is unemployed?

In that moment I flashed back to the times in my childhood when my mom dealt with people asking her, so, what do you do, no, for work.

I almost corrected the woman or tried to explain that, no my husband isn't unemployed, he's a full time dad. That's his job. He's certainly busy all day.  He's productive in the parental sense.

It was the connotation, not the denotation, y'know?

What's going on in this picture?

If you couldn't easily assume based on the basic themes of this blog, would you immediately notice she's nursing that baby? See anything scandalous? Not really, right?

Looks like she's holding her kid.

If she were wearing a hooter-hider or had a blanket over her, you'd know right away what's going on, wouldn't  you?

[Screen grab from this piece about a public nursing awareness campaign in Wisconsin.]

Erica Jong is late to the AP backlash party

Is attachment parenting - or any combination of modern, yuppy (upper/upper middle class, white) parenting trends - just a new form of prison for women? She breaks absolutely no ground asking this question. Everytime I see this argument, however, I think it misses the point of what we should be focused on because it's reactive to today's institutions rather than proactive in its views on what should be.

I think this paragraph comes closest to what I think should be the starting point:

Is it even possible to satisfy the needs of both parents and children? In agrarian societies, perhaps wearing your baby was the norm, but today's corporate culture scarcely makes room for breast-feeding on the job, let alone baby-wearing. So it seems we have devised a new torture for mothers—a set of expectations that makes them feel inadequate no matter how passionately they attend to their children.

The system is set up for upper/upper middle class, white) mothers to fail. Or at least feel that they are failing. Instead of saying, "look, see, not possible!" Why aren't we focusing instead on whether we can alter these institutions? Today's corporate culture still finds women mainly conforming to the male culture that set up the corporations.

There's just nothing new in this article - it rehashes the current state of the Mom wars just fine, sure, but I don't need another description of my daily life thankyouverymuch.

Here's what I think: there's an overlooked biological component to birthing a child.  I was shocked to shit about that.  Child cry! Pick up child! Make child not cry! Do now! I think the biological component hits women differently.  I don't know if that's pseduo-scientific thinking or not. I will never be able to understand how my husband sees our child, though, because he's him, a dude, and I'm me, not a dude.  I know he loves her crazy.  I don't know if that feels differently to him than it does to me.

I know I'd be far, far more comfortable if I had been/was able to stay home for the complete first year, at least, of my daughter's life.  I say this even as I am endlessly glad I'm NOT the one staying home with her, every day, struggling to find a way to fill the day and keep her occupied.  I wouldn't have to pump breastmilk for one thing - an endless and awful chore that ruins a lot of my day.

I don't know how to fully express my thoughts on gender, parenting, and American culture because I'm too new to the scene. But Jong barks up the wrong tree here.

I'll probably come back and work on this post more later. Or not. Who knows. It should get more attention . . . .

Update: There's a piece from her daughter on what kind of mom Jong herself was/is. She says, "We can devote ourselves to our work, or we can decide to be 1950s June Cleaver types. And that's because of the sacrifices that my mom and her feminist comrades made."  To which I say, is it? I'm not so sure. 

Also, there's a video if you care to see what Jong repeat the content live on tape.  She doesn't actually explain attachment parenting but from what I do know of it, I didn't get the feeling it was quite as, well, attached as she implies. But I have yet to read a parenting book - and god willing, I never will.

And - shaking a fist at baby"wearing" - just sticking the kid in a carr

Publish Post

ier instead of a stroller - is a stupid thing to be mad at. Those things are magical, give you your hands back, work well in crowds and places with stairs.  It's that it gets called babywearing and not hi, this product is helpful for you so buy it.  The downside to turning a consumer item into a philosophy.