Suburban (in)Sanity

Parenting past the third trimester, all the way through school

Reality keeps reminding me how important my role as parent is, even now here midway through the elementary/middle school years (our kids go to a school that goes from Pre-Kindergarten through 8^th grade, so for us it’s all one school. Middle school starts in 5^th grade. One is in 4^th, one is in 6^th this year.)

 

It seems to me that some parents start to semi-check out once they check their kids into the Great Yellow School Bus of Sanity™. Don’t get me wrong. I do a little dance every late August, too. Not because I’m sick of my kids, but because the routine and structure of school does good things for my kids’ mental development.

However, even as spectacular as our school is for the kids, our jobs don’t end when we drop the kids at the door (private school, no Great Yellow Bus of Sanity™ for us, sadly.) There’s still quite a lot of parenting here in the space between 3:30 PM and the fast crash into slumber. I have a friend who actually quit her job once her kids started school so that she was home for homework and Mama Taxi and all the other parts of the parenting job that seem so vague when you’re holding a newborn.

So the situation that arose that has me writing about this is easy enough to describe. The boy child has been struggling a bit with organization and staying on top of schoolwork. What 6^th grade boy doesn’t? But it’s been a … journey, to say the least.

We’ve been talking about what habits, practices, things will help him remember assignments, help him get what he needs to school, and help him complete assignments within the expectations (and more than just the MINIMUM expectations) of his teachers. I spend time pointing out how I do things at home. How I have one place I keep my keys because if not, I’m certain I would lose them, regularly. How when I open a new page in one of my many notebooks, I always date the page at the top. And in the front of every one of my many notebooks (I’m a writer, I keep tons of them!) I always have my name and cell phone number so if any goes missing, hopefully the notebook can find its way back to me.

As setup, here’s the scenario: I’m turned from my computer. My boy tells me he’s DONE with his homework, yay! It’s that afternoon slump. I’m tired, he’s tired. I could so easily say “Oh, okay.” But I press. What is due tomorrow in Math? Language Arts? What score did you get on that quiz? And then my dear boy looks at me and tells me he has just this one bit of Science homework. He’s supposed to have some answers prepared to a question about his Mars Project from last week. Well this is no trouble, he worked his tail off on that project (with much Mom-sitting-in-chair-close-by prodding with additional questions, asking leading questions about whether Mars is a proper noun, thanking her lucky stars for Mrs. Carroll’s 6^th grade Language Arts lessons, which took.)

The best part of this, though, is when my adorable, smart, sweet little shit grinned at me and said, “It’s no problem, mom. I’ve got it memorized.”

Sigh.

And here’s where the hard part of parenting kicks in.

I could have let it go. I’m tired. I don’t wanna do anything else. I certainly don’t want to have another conversation with him about why this is important to handle now. And why putting in five more minutes of effort today will be better than trying to stammer out a half-remembered bit of Mars minutiae tomorrow. Why anything is better than that clutch in the pit of your stomach when you realize you’re really not prepared. That feeling of dread when you realize you forgot something important at home.

And that equipping him with these life skills, these “spend the time now so you don’t have to feel foolish/regret it later” lessons are worth it.

I’m so very lucky in that my eldest is an easygoing one. This wasn’t an argument, a fuss, a fight. Honestly, he gave me that grin, the one he gives me when he’s checking my parenting temperature, which lately I’ve taken as a signal flare for a need for strong parental involvement and much double checking. This grin was recently used at bedtime and a rogue electronic device was discovered in bed, for instance.

So when I said “Dude, this is too important to rely on your memory only. You got a great score on that Mars project and this is going to add to your score. Go quickly type up your thoughts on it. You say you have three points? Make sure you put down at least three sentences.” (Because hand writing is one of many weaknesses for this particular child, typing is his workaround, so don’t go thinking I’m supremely evil for making him type. This is actually a positive workaround for him when he’s feeling completely unable to tackle an assignment that has a worksheet and pen/pencil component. Thankfully with a small school and agreeable faculty, he can do this anytime he needs.) He actually did it.

Before you go dust off the Parent of the Year award for me, I want you to know that paper is currently sitting on the desk in the office.

Two steps forward. One step back. But it’s still my job to be his parent. Here, today, and every day.

On girls and women and careers and balance and having it all

Many different factors keep pointing me to the need to write this. 72 (75, 77, whichever study you look at, it does't matter) cents on the dollar. Having it all. Girls in tech. Women's issues in this election season.

There are several matters I don't wish to touch with a ten foot pole, but the girls and women and careers and balance stuff - that I do. For whatever reason, I've spent a lot of time considering this lately, in large part due to a newsweek article I've been reading in snippets here and there.

But also through conversations with different mom friends, and different friend friends, some of whom aren't moms, some of whose life paths have taken them on different roads entirely. And yet for each of us there is this overarching question, this overarching narrative - How can you have it all? How can you be a woman and, you know, have it all? Family, career, marriage, all.

There is a very very simple answer to this very very complicated question. You can't.

Depressing? Well, I don't think so. I'll let my other friends pipe in with their answers, while I give my longer version.

So here's the thing. The one constant in life is CHANGE.

By the way, I swear there is relevance to a picture of food in a post about women and careers. I shall make it ALL clear.

I sit here in middle age at a certain place in my life, career, and time on this earth. There are certain realities to this era of my life. Choices I've made. I've fought for some of them. I've accepted others. At the moment, I am the primary at-home parent.

Earlier in our life together, before children while my husband was still finishing his graduate degrees, I was the primary wage-earner.

I could feel boxed in, limited by my role right now at home, but I don't. There's something actually quite freeing about it. We used to argue about things like getting the car's oil changed (who am I kidding? We still argue about stuff like that!) and it boils down to this: For me, the at-home parent, time horizons are long. For my husband, who lives the immediacy of the business world, the fast pace of a traveling lifestyle means things that need to get done must get done NOW. For me, things that need to get done will get done, eventually. It's a kind of life I think I was meant to live, at least some of my life, because it's led me to discover that I really notice the way things smell outside. That growing food makes me feel proud. The different kinds of birds that frequent our area. That I absolutely love to watch hawks soar. That there's a kind of meditation to be had in the everyday tasks of life.

This is a very strange post about career, isn't it?

My main advice to you, my younger friends who are in the process of seeking careers, defining yourselves, entering new life stages, or even just considering what to major in or which college to go to, is this - find something to be passionate about. For now. And then prepare for that to shift over time. Some of my passions have not shifted. See: Science Fiction. Some have evolved. Most don't make me any money, but I've never once regretted knowing how to cook. Never once regretted loving to read (or investing in the time to get a library card.) Or regretted knowing enough about music to be moved by a song, wanting to play it over and over and over on the iPod (somehow that sounds weirder than saying "the radio" but saying the radio doesn't make sense anymore because how would I make a song of my choosing play over and over on the radio unless I hooked my iPod into it? Tech these days…)

I think what I'm really saying here is to spend the time getting to know yourself so that you can make the compromises that are right for YOU based on what will make you feel the best, feel the most whole, the most complete.

You will know whether leaving your kids at daycare each day will rip your heart in two and leave you a weeping useless mess or whether being home with them will make your eyes bleed and cause you to become a weeping useless mess or whether both things will likely happen (this is entirely possible) and thus you need to choose the most economically feasible solution for your family for now, realizing you might change positions after 6 months, a year, two. (For us it was after 2 years. Surprised the shit out of both of us, lol.)

I wasn't at all passionate about parenting until I had kids, and not then until enough time had passed so that I could see things clearly. But my passion about family and home and creating space for *us* led me to parenting and opened me up to new interests.

Because when it all comes down to it, it's completely fine not to have it all right now, because I can be very satisfied with myself as a person because I feel confident in my passions. Mine are currently an eclectic mix of personal (parenting, gardening, birds, dogs, food) and business (tech, STEM, writing, books <- those last two cross over into personal again.) So while the career thread of my life, that era has the pause button pushed, I can make space for the passions, and find ways to try to express the other parts of me while still doing the drudgery, going through the motions, doing the everyday.

And living with the long view. That I don't have to have it all right now. Because later, I can get to it.

What about you? Have you compromised? Are you satisfied with your compromises? I don't think I was until very very recently. I guess that's why I want those yet to face these choices to know they're coming. Though would I have done things differently knowing that I would have to put aside dreams and goals? Perhaps not.

Your parenting tip for the day: Bookmarks for the kids

Parenting Tip: Create a folder of Bookmarks for each child

My kids love playing on the computer. I'm on the computer a lot during the day while they're in school and I often come across a site or activity that I think they would enjoy.

After a few too many "browsers of doom" where I had 12, 15 open tabs just waiting to show the kids, I started a bookmark folder for each kid. This way I can put bookmarks in for pages I think they might be interested in and then *close the webpage.* This has done wonders for my digital sanity, though I still have a digital hygeine problem as explained below.

My own bookmarks are ridiculous, I don't keep anything in there, at least not anymore in the tangle of sites I originally bookmarked in 2003. It's the curse of a visual-spatial person, I can't ever find the things I want no matter how carefully I try to create folder structures and organizational schemes. I swear my digital organization is worse than my physical organization, and that's saying something!

However, for my kids I can manage a reasonable number of bookmarks. Right? (Right??!)

Some of the tidbits in there right now:

Liam's folder:

• Crowdsourcing space exploration tool called Zooniverse that I want to be a part of, too!
• Legends of Druidawn interactive creative writing game (click the link at the very bottom of the page to see the genesis of this site - creative writing solutions it says.)
• A site to convert text to multimedia, like the bunny/mouse characters speaking in tinny computerized voices reading scripts that people wrote....whatever that one is called. Note to self, this would be great to use in Media and Design classes...
• The requisite Lego recreation of something totally AWESOME, this one is Middle Earth.

Anastasia's folder:

• Tree of Life web project - collection of information about biodiversity compiled by amatuers and experts alike.
• How to make friendship bracelets (I'm totally in the clear on the website name since she thinks WTF stands for Why the Face?)
• A music video of an 8 year old girl singing a hardcore (punk rock) song. She's always making videos herself and I think needs a little inspiration, since the script is often the limiting factor.
• A make your own snowflake picture (online) site. Love this.

So I challenge you to go forth and make a folder for each of your children and drop in fun tidbits and cool sites that they might like. Also a good place to put book recommendations, particularly if you're parenting a tween who might not want to actually ASK you for ideas. (P.S., if you don't know this about me already, know that I can talk your ear off with recommendations for books for kids ages 8-18. Please ask! Give me an excuse to talk your ear off!)

Come back and report on the great sites you found! Perhaps one day we'll do this all in pinterest... ;)

If you should come to our house this holiday season...

If you should come to our house this holiday season, I hope you will see the chaos and think kindly of us.

When you see food on the counter or a fridge bursting with veggies, yogurt, eggs, and leftovers, I hope you'll know we are grateful to have plenty to eat.

When you see the dog gates and dog toys everywhere, I hope you'll think we are smart to introduce our kids to the joys and responsibilities of pet ownership.

When you see messy floors, I hope you'll think that we're too busy making memories to be very good housekeepers.

When you see a thousand and one projects in-process with masking tape and posterboard and sewing machines and string and bits of foil and partly-decorated cookies and tally sheets and dice and building blocks and legos and bottles partly filled with powders of uncertain origin, I hope you'll appreciate that letting the kids explore and learn and live their lives with us in this space is what we signed on for when we became parents.

If you come to our house this holiday season I hope you'll know that the greatest gift each of us have to give and receive is the gift of our time, and we look forward to spending some with you.

Just what do you *DO* all day?

I read this great q/a post by Carolyn Hax in the Washington Post today and almost got whiplash from nodding so vehemently. Even the most sensitive husband (again I remind you that I write from the point of view of the sometimes stay-at-home wife/mom, who also works sometimes, writes, volunteers, and does a thousand other things. This list is likely true/similar for at-home parents of both genders) has come home once in a while and asked - audibly or not - what did you do all day?

A small list of the kinds of things we at-home parents do (yes, yes, some working parents do these tasks too. Trust me, when I'm working I do all this PLUS work. But again, in the interests of the argument I'm making, just go with me on this):

• All food prep, including all food planning (this includes not just what to serve for dinner, but shopping in advance to be sure the materials are on hand)
• Junk mail handling/sorting
• Any sort of coupon clipping in the house (including finding the random useful coupons amidst the junkmail storm)
• Anticipating kids' needs/desires for food for packed lunches and meals
• Tidying up. Ad nauseum.
• Family photo management - including thoughtful christmas card selection, photos into frames, selecting and arranging payment for photos from school and sporting events)
• Family taxi - to and from sporting events, clubs, classes, school/bus stop)
• Family video management
• Some of pet care, generally along the planning and anticipating lines - planning for boarding for vacations, purchasing food, litter, beds, leashes, etc.
• Anticipating children's growth patterns and purchasing (on sale!) the right clothing in the right sizes for the right seasons.
• Buying new shoes every three months.
• Paying enough attention to notice the kids are outgrowing their shoes/socks/underwear/knowing that shoes/socks/underwear are on sale at XYZ store and pre-buying to not have to buy full-price at some point in the not-too-distant future. Damn kids keep growing.
• Family healthcare - dentist, orthodontist, annual physicals, sick visits, ob/gyn and personal health care including mamograms, colonoscopies, other "it sucks getting old" care
• Extended family healthcare - staying informed about aging parents or single siblings' health challenges, attending some doctors visits or coordinating care for some situations
• Pet healthcare - vet visits, maintaining vaccination schedules, administering medicines, exercise
• Reading material monitoring - staying in tune with what kids are reading, purchasing books needed, shuttling to library, approving selections
• Homework assistance, including the creation of whatever structure necessary to ensure homework actually can be completed - quiet zones, clean desks, writing implements available
• Monitoring of digital media consumption by the short folks, knowing what they're watching/playing, approving, limiting, dealing with the whining that comes from setting those limits
• School management - school library book remindings, school field trip forms, class parties, birthday celebrations (your own and others)
• Volunteering for one of the thousand things school/sports teams request - bringing juice boxes to practice or helping lead a small reading group, and many variations in between.
• Household maintenance and management - furnace and a/c care, lawn and garden scheduling, cable and phone, plumbing, exterminators, water services, waste haulers, handling any of the emergency services needed and keeping track of paperwork
• Household chores - dishes, laundry (including handwash items, knowing which things must air dry, separating colors), putting away laundry
• Child clothing management - migrating between cold weather wardrobe and warm weather wardrobe, and all accompanying accessories - boots, snowpants, coats (see aforementioned point on making sure to purchase, on sale!, these items for the next size for the next season) swim goggles.
• Seasonal management - making sure the household has non-toxic and non-expired sunscreen, bug spray, beach toys, towels, bags, snow shovels, gas for the snowblower.
• Holiday management - decorations, gift selection and purchase, wrapping, creating family plans that leave the fewest family members miffed
• Answering eleventy billion questions about life, the universe, and everything. Today I had to whip out BOTH f=m*a and the explanation for how many bits are in a byte, bytes in a kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terrabyte, etc. Thank god I paid attention in high school physics and college CS classes. Previous sessions include the branches of government and spirituality. I had a great role model, for the record. When I was about 12 my mom sat with me and taught me both binary and hexadecimal. Go geek moms!

So, what would you add to my list? And has your head exploded yet at the fact that not an item on there is focused on delivering to the at-home parent some level of intellectual stimulation? We have to source that into our activities - making a game out of knowing which store has which items on sale each week, meeting like-minded folks through the various volunteer and child activities, and finding flexible hobbies that can be set aside for months or years at a time (scrapbooking, writing, reading, photography, knitting for ex.)

Redefining who we are depending on what we're doing at the moment

One of the more unusual things about being an into/out of the workforce parent (sometimes called the "primary at home parent" and also the "Stay at Home Mom" but of course there's nothing particularly stay-at-homish about being the one who has the more flexible schedule, and of course it's not unique to moms, but let's just call it an into/out of the workforce parent for now) is the way we're constantly having to redefine ourselves. Refine our own personal message, our own "branding." And in the course of it, sometimes I think we lose track of important details.

Like, for instance, our extensive experience or advanced degree(s.)

I had something happen tonight that brought this to light. I have done some work at a client recently, which is also coincidentally where my husband works (not much coincidental about it, he passed my contact info along to someone in the org who needed the kind of tech consulting work I do - eLearning strategy, design and development.) They're doing a writeup, and in the course of it they're writing up my contribution to a recent project.

So, I know what my experience is. I know what I'm good at. I'm happy with my station in life. And yet I looked at this writeup and wondered who the heck that smart, awesome girl they were talking about was.

Oh. Me?

And it occurred to me that I'm so deep into the summer by now, the time with the kids, this godforsaken puppy (note to self: no more puppies!) the household priorities, that I've kind of put the "other" me on a backburner for the summer. I'm letting the writer me have second billing, right after the mommy me, but the eLearning strategist/designer? She's on summer hiatus. She's elsewhere in my brain.

And therein lies the rub, because in redefining myself for the summer, I almost lost a bit of me. And I think back to all the times in the kids' lives when I've had to refocus, change my way of thinking about myself or my approach with them when something isn't working for us (classic example: when at 3 months pregnant with our second I/we realized I. Just. Couldn't. Do. This. Anymore. And we started the thought process and transition toward me staying home with the kids for a while.) And I wonder what other parts of me have gone missing in there?

Do you ever feel like you've lost part of you while you're redefining yourself to meet your current needs and situation?

To all my mother friends: Let it go

Look, we've been friends a while. I love you all dearly. And I'm here to tell you tonight, late on the eve of Mother's Day, to just let it go. Whatever your personal "it" is - just let it...go. Yoga teachers talk a lot about the "acknowledge the thought and release it" business. If you want to get metaphysical, go with that. But otherwise, just let it go.

Because, here's the thing. There's this cultural norm, cultural expectation, that Mother's Day is - what? A bed of white linens (snort. Be serious. Who has the time for white linens after children?) Uninterrupted sleep (double snort - what did you HONESTLY think was going to happen after the stick turned pink? Come on. You can sleep when you're dead. In the interim, these small people SAY and DO the most INTERESTING things! Put them off with a bit of Scooby Doo for an hour or two, but then wake up. By the way, 99% of the last four sentences was directed at me.)

If not the white linens and uninterrupted sleep, at the very least we expect a day without the drudgery, right? I see you all nodding your heads.

But be honest, ladies! First, if you really do leave everyone else to do the laundry, you must accept a certain pink or beige hue to your white linens. Are you able to accept that? If not, maybe you should just save the laundry for Monday, no? Dishes? Well, that can be delegated, I agree, but if you're doing the majority of the cooking in the house, you should damn well train the sprites to do the dishes *every* day, not just on Mother's Day. Kids love responsibility. And as I tell my kids all the time, "I don't *like* folding clothes. It's just one of the things we have to do because we are a FAMILY."

I am using a LOT OF CAPITALS in this post. A LOT! And exclamations! And *asterisks* - loads and loads of *asterisks.*

But here's the thing - if you could design a day to celebrate your becoming a mother, what would it really entail? Maybe a little extra sleep? A little less drudgery? A cake and/or pie? (I vote for "and")

This is *TOTALLY* within the realm of possibility for you. But the tv-commercial vision with the white sheets, sweet song playing in the background, and the sunshine just so? It's time to give up on that one.

Kids are messy. Families are needy. Everyone else had the same idea and is waiting in line at YOUR favorite restaurant. Send the husband and the whiniest child(ren) to the grocery for a few favorite ingredients, make a mess making dinner and ask him/them to clean up. And don't stress about being a martyr. Becoming a mother *is* a form of self-sacrifice. An extreme form, true. But I honestly think we make ourselves sick and upset over not getting the perfect day, when we forget that there just AREN'T perfect days in motherhood. There are perfect moments, and many of them. Perfect pictures drawn by chubby three-year-old hands. Perfectly burned toast, lovingly delivered in bed. Perfect smiles and perfect hugs, perfect dog kisses. Perfect dirt waiting for seeds and plants. Perfectly dirty pants as a result of gardening expeditions. Perfect baby teeth, lost and waiting for tooth fairies. Perfect notes written in imperfect handwriting. Perfect love.

So join me in letting go of the imperfect expectations for a perfect day. Because, in the final analysis, there is no tally over who got the fresh-squeezed orange juice and a rose at her bedside in the morning (truth be told there's probably a mountain of orange pulp and an inch of sticky residue on her countertop!) or who got to sleep the latest (though I am trying out for that honor this year. I hope to make it til at least 10 AM...) and did the least work on Mother's Day. And on your deathbed, you won't be cursing your youngest for tracking in dirt and seeds and making a fuss over her newly potted herbs. You'll remember the moments, the big smiles when you wake up (at long last), the memories of gardening with the kids, the family dinners you made such a regular part of the fabric of your family that they all blend together into one big mush at the dinner table.

And you can rest easy. Because you've let it go. Just not the cake/pie. I think that's a requirement.

Broken

I'm working too much, and my daughter, the emotional antenna, knows. And it's not like at age seven she can say, "Mom, you're working so much and your head is elsewhere and that scares me and I wish you would focus on me more and I don't like having to go to school early some days or having you pick me up late other days and I just want our normal life back."

As if that were even possible.

But it's little things. She doesn't want to do the after school class anymore. Easily frustrated at home. Feels like everyone's "always" against her or making her do things or pulling her this way or that. She's emotionally peaking and valleying at varying times during the day, often one immediately after the next. Need I even say that it's never at a convenient time for me?

And on the inside, I'm so conflicted. For the first time since *before my oldest was born* (clock it - that was more than 9 years ago) I'm immersed in a work project that occupies my brain before, during, and after "work" (having a flexible schedule is both a blessing and an extremely bad curse.) My brain wants to solve my work issues 24/7 - yes even in the middle of the night. And my body is ready to give up on me. Woke up with a migraine this morning, which is my body's last salvo, last fire across the bow. "Yo, bitch. More rest. Less crazy."

And my little girl, how do I fix this? How do I help her know that changes are okay? That everything is temporary anyway (while simultaneously not freaking out about the fact that summer is 5 short weeks away and my project is due June 1. If it slips even a few days, I'm toast with no childcare.)? That mom working isn't stealing me away from her. Because in a way, that's a lie. It's true, my brain is tied up elsewhere much of the time. But is that really wrong? She's seven! She can cope. Can't she? Should she?

Why are all issues of working and balancing mothering such Solomon's choices? Why can't I figure out how to compartmentalize? Or the right things to say to my baby, who isn't actually saying, "I don't like it when you work"? (most of the time. She has actually said that. Rip my beating heart out and serve it on a platter, shall we?)

And am I upset because she's shining her white-hot light on the exact heart of the issue? The place where a big part of me *wants* this. Wants the full immersion. Misses the way solving work-related problems feeds a very malnourished part of my soul.

I never realized that having babies would cause this kind of existential discomfort. I don't want to have to face up to the reality that is cut back - do less - pull back. I want the damn cake, I want to eat it, too. But it turns out, I have to share.

 

Things that make my head burst into flames

I've been working in my chosen career since I was nineteen years old. I started as a part-time college intern. Three, four, five days a week I would drop my books and notebooks off in my dorm room, change into something that vaguely resembled business attire (back in the days when women did *not* wear pantsuits. And I'm not even making that up. I remember when the first woman in the area started wearing pantsuits to work - not pants/tops as separates, but like a men's business suit but cut for a woman. No, it wasn't the 1980s. It was the 1990s for chrissake! Oh, right, I'm old. Erp.) and hop the train into the city to go to work. There were days when I had to make sure to work at least two hours, because if I only worked one, I didn't quite make the train fare to/from work (at my starting rate of about $6.37/hr.)

I've worked more years than I haven't. And I took time off to raise my kids. Because it's something that was important to me, but it was also something that was the right timing for us - my career had reached a lull, I had lost one job and a new job wasn't quite the right fit for me, so we reconsidered priorities, wrote a budget, and...I've blogged about this before.

But the thing that has always made my head burst into flames is the fact that I work hard, damn hard, and just as hard as anybody else (harder than some, too.) And I'm quick. And productive. And my time is worth it. This is even more important in the post-baby-working-years because I have these heart-stoppingly painful conversations with my 7 year old, who tonight at bedtime when I was reviewing the week's schedule and mentioning when I would be in the office, told me "we're not going to have to have a babysitter again?" Because last week once I had to have a sitter take care of the kids after school for a few hours so I could do a video shoot at work. And she noticed. And while the sitter does a nice job, and the daughter benefits from other people in the world caring about her and interacting with her, she just doesn't like it. So rip my heart out and serve it on a platter, shall we? Ugh. This part about working is not the best part, but I console myself with the idea that I'm working and contributing and setting a good example, and I've got a pretty great part-time gig that flexes around my family's commitments and lets me be the mom most of the time and...then I read this sort of shit and it makes my head burst into flames. (that article references this one which is where the actual combustion occurs)

Because HOW CAN IT BE 2011 and this is still happening?!?!?

And how can a writer write this passage and not have her own head explode into flames?

Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.

Because I just don't get it.

Meanwhile, the original poster (the one who I agree with) says the following:

I would also love to know why, if pay is so equal, women with kids are paid less than men with kids. I'm sure that some will explain it by saying that women decided to take time off to raise up the young'ins, and therefore lose market share. I can see how that would affect lifetime earnings. However, I am confused as to why, then, a woman who is employed at a job with the same experience as a man still earns less than he does.

Exactly!

I heard this from a company I worked with when first returning to the my field after a 5 year gap to raise my babies. "Oh, the industry has changed, technology is different, therefore we'll pay you this lower rate because honestly you're 5 years behind but aren't you lucky to get to work with us?"

I went on to do development on a project when I was only assigned to do design (tech friends will know these pay at VERY different pay scales - and my background is tracked more toward design, though I'm learning now how to spin things so that this isn't as much of a factor) and discovered that while I was off for 5 years, what the industry did was build authoring tools to automate much of what we used to have to code by hand. The industry just basically caught up with me, and gave me additional tools to work with. I wasn't behind in the slightest. I still get mad thinking about this experience. Bah!

As my friend Veronica (a nuclear engineer from Argentina, and someone else who has chosen to do the kind of sequencing I've done, taking time off to raise children, planning to come back again to the workforce in the future) says, "Infuriating. It is a double discrimination: one that considers that the work of raising a child (a human being!!!) is useless and another one that sentences a woman to a lower wage because she was "wasting her time" while everybody else was doing more productive things. It makes me furious. I think that before this pay discrimination disappears, society must recognize - and include in the economy - child rearing work. Until these activities are not seen for what they are (an indispensable contribution to the development of the human race) we will be punished for raising our kids."

Is that what it is? A punishment? Why aren't we all marching on our various government offices *now*? Oh, that's right, because there are school lunches to make, diapers to change, babies to nurse, field trips to chaperone, teenagers to equip with the skills to survive their adolescence. And work to be done.

Quantities of Quality Time

Hmm, I wrote this on Wednesday but then didn't post it. My sloth extended to my online time, too, apparently.

I find myself reminded again about this maxim (Quantities of Quality Time), which I first heard at a La Leche League meeting ages and ages ago. It's often one of the underpinnings of one's decision to stay home with the kids for some period of time, or at least I found that it helped me feel comfortable with my own decision to do so. Even on the days when I swore my brain was melting from lack of use. (I'm sure you're as relieved as me to find out that it didn't, even though there were some touchy moments back then.)

But beyond just that decision, which - by the way - I've noticed more of my mom friends making over and over again - viewing the workforce as something they can dip into and out of over their children's younger years. I am thrilled about this development. I have done this, too, doing project work at times that suits my family's schedule, and either turning down or not pursuing work during times when it's difficult (e.g.., summer holidays or busy times of year.)

I can count many friends right now who are either working again or have recently stopped working, again (having been home with the kids at some point since having them.) Isn't that interesting? One just decided to refrain from taking any more project work until the fall when the youngest is in school full-time, another just picked up some freelance work after pre-school started, a third was back in the workforce for a bit but quit when job pressures began to outweigh family ones and she (and her husband) felt the balance wasn't right for them. 

I recognize I'm lucky to live in an era and socio-economic environment where any of us have these choices, but at the same time I also embrace the fact that this is the feminist legacy - that has given my generation of mothers and the one directly behind me some freedom to choose. While I know some of my peers really don't have a choice and must work, I think we are in an era where there are more options for us, more choices, and for that I am grateful.  

But back to my original point - the quantities of quality time...today is nothing special. I was in the office today, which makes for a long day for me, but I was able to get the kids by the time school let out rather than using after-school care. And we came home and have done some hanging out. The eldest is currently in the comfiest chair in the house (in another room), reading. The youngest is up in my bedroom watching TV. I am snuggled into the couch with the dog, who misses me on my office days. ;) And my kids are here, and we're home, and the world is in balance.

Even though the house is a bit...untidy (I'm being over-generous with that statement, but let it slide, folks, let it slide...) I have some of that awesome 5 mins a day bread resting on the counter and the oven on. We're going to eat soon, and then snuggle in further with the dog to watch American Idol. And maybe some video-game time. And I realize that there are a thousand educational things I could do with my kids, and a thousand ways I could make this time more memorable - we could do a project together, play a game, or have them help me cook. But I am satisfied in my sloth, because they have a LOT of me. And we're together. And that's what's important to me, and to them, right now at this stage in our lives.

The fact that I have quantities of quality time with them means that I don t have to put pressure on myself or them to always bring my "A" game - and it means they're pretty darn accepting of me and my limitations. When I do have a hissy fit about something minor and later apologize, they are so gracious to me. We show each other that we're human in those small ways. And today, we can just snuggle on the couch and be together, and that is enough. That is plenty. And we are lucky.