Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Breathtakingly apt and highly-fed-up non-mommy-blogger rant from Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist directed at individuals who imagine that stay-at-home parenting must be the most fulfillingest thing ever.

[A]ll you people who say you’d love to stay home all day with your kids if you could, you are completely full of shit.

I know because I was living at the poverty line in NYC while I stayed home with my kids. That’s how important it was to me to stay home. I wanted to be with them for every moment, be a great mom, all that. So I did it no matter what – no financial situation could have stopped me.

...

For all you guys who Twittered back to me that I’m a bad mom and that I should love being home with my kids, here’s a link for you: CEOs who are on Twitter. Because let me tell you something: None of these people needs to earn the money they are earning. They have enough money. They can stay home with their kids. But instead, they are at work.

She said it here.

Lemme tell ya something. Being a stay at home parent actually really is rewarding, cool, and fun. And also really, really stultifyingly, oppressively, mind-numbingly fucking boring.

Not one.

Not the other.

Both.

And yeah, if you wanted to do it?

You would.

But you’d have to want to do it enough.

But like most people with a choice if you haven’t you probably wouldn’t.

Trunk puts the issue very bluntly

How about approaching all those guys with Blackberries at soccer games? Let me ask you something. Do those guys check their email when they’re getting a blow job? Of course not. Do you know why? Because it’s INTERESTING. They are checking their blackberries during soccer because soccer is boring. The kids can’t figure out where the goal is. The kids (and their parents) lose interest. They want snacks more than they want to learn soccer. They are cute, yes. But even cute gets boring.

Now multiply preschool soccer by 23 hours a day, 6.5 days a week, 312 days a year, for four to sixteen years. That’s your window for boredom. The rest of the time is adorable, heartwarming, and totally fulfilling, sure. And on balance a lot of people find that worth it…

But in the grand scheme of things, people, it’s not a lot of time. Which, again, is why most people who say how much they’d love to do it but have a choice? Don’t.

I probably wouldn’t have become a blogger if I hadn’t been a stay-at-home dad. Because blogging you can do in 15 minute increments. Between loads of laundry. Between cranks of the “neglect-o-matic.” While the oven pre-heats or the Annie’s mac-n-cheese noodles simmer. While they’re playing with the most fascinating thing in the house you can safely let them play with — the tupperware containers in the kitchen drawer. While they trash their room playing dress-up with their playdate. (If you ever want to know why there seem to be so many “mommy” bloggers that should be your first clue. If you ever wonder why they seem so starved for contact that should be your second clue. That they so often have such narrow focuses should be your third. And in retrospect, that the majority sex is a primarily domestic activity, even though that doesn’t fit our romantic and/or socioeconomic notions of it, might be one clue about the narrow focus of my blog.)

But here’s where Trunk nails that one too — however boring, or bored, or distracted you think you can get the consequences for actually letting something slip can be anything from embarrassing to dire

as soon as your mind wanders too far, something bad happens. For example, I took the kids on a hike yesterday, taking a coat for myself but not for them. Because I checked out. Because I wanted to think about things that are more interesting than coats. This is normal behavior.

If you have a battery-operated Swingomatic instead of the kind you have to rewind every 15 minutes you really will neglect them for too long. If you “close your eyes for just a moment” you’ll find yourself wakened (in a panic) by the sound of little fingers working with awesome determination to figure out the babyproof/earthquake latch on the cleaning-supply cupboard door under the sink.

(Oh yeah, and while we’re on the subject of stay-at-homing it if every now and then you say what the heck and toss a couple of broccoli or carrot ends into the disposal your otherwise perfectly lovely partner or spouse, fresh home from an invigorating day at work and a commute full of NPR updates will happen to be passing through will brightly admonish you “please, hon, that goes in the compost bucket.” As if you weren’t the one who not only daily filled the compost bucket but regularly emptied into the yard-waste container, and took that out to the curb every Tuesday night for collection. But I digress…)

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved being a stay-at-home dad, and still do. But I guarantee I haven’t loved every minute. And anyone who, like the twittering twit who prompted Trunk’s tirade, thinks you should, or thinks they would, or (worse!!!) should you complain says “sorry your kids are a burden, send them to OH, we’ll enjoy them for who they are” — where by “we” Trunk deduces they evidently mean “my wife” — is indeed an asshole.

Which is all a long, involved way of explaining my basis for so appreciating Trunk’s awe-inspiring flame.

—-

One quibble: I happen to think Trunk slightly misses the mark when she hauls out the studies showing that having children don’t make people happy — Jefferson seems to have been right that happiness is best found in pursuit rather than an objective in its own right.

A burden voluntarily shouldered is not as heavy as one imposed. Having chosen to shoulder it imposes constraints as real as a poison-hotline call or “together night” interrupted by night terrors (“night terribles” as my daughter called it.) And once chosen those burdens become background against which small moments shine. Sometimes brilliantly and unforgettably.

It is another thing entirely, though, when the burden is chosen for you rather than chosen by you — to have them allocated as your lot, or fate, or “natural instinct,” or “natural place,” or even “God says.” And when those who have themselves neither faced the imposition nor made the choice, and thus have no clue, say what they think you should enjoy? Well you can probably see how that would tend to make one seem… humorless. Angry, even. And inclined to lob flaming posts.

(Via Amber Rhea’s Tumblr feed.)

Photo “Figleaf and Son – 1997”
by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that’s me!)
Chrisj of At My Soiree, taking to task yet another rendition of the you can run but you can’t hide from the genetics of gendered behavior points anecdotal evidence produced by Kay Hymowitz to support her contention that women are just “naturally” driven to choose children over career. After addressing an anecdote about journalist Hanna Rosin Chrisj turns to a second anecdote.

The other story is by Katie Roiphe who describes an “‘addiction to her newborn baby that left her indifferent to work.”

Read the quote in context here.

Not to put too fine a point on it but by the end of my first (sleepless) night with my infant son (and, later, daughter) I was indifferent to work as well. I wanted to inhale him, to hold him when he slept, to carry him against my heart or on my back or shoulders. Work can be worlds of fun, and you can’t really do without the paychecks or invoices, and because I worked from home I found ways to fit it in. But for all the challenges and rewards of work there’s nothing like having a new human being in your hands, one who trusts you and needs you and squeaks and drools and blows out his or her diaper and wakes you up and wears you out and… eventually… lights up like sudden dawn when they catch your eye with theirs.

Maybe it runs in the family because when I mentioned it to my father he said he’d felt the same way with each of his children.

The difference, he said, is that whatever he felt he did what he was told and believed he was supposed to do: go back to work, be a breadwinner, and leave the child rearing to my mom.

He also told me, one day, when he was visiting and we were at a playground, that looking around at some of the other dads with their children he felt terribly sad that he hadn’t had more time… and that we couldn’t know how lucky we were in our generation to get to be a part of the family and not just the supply boat.

So here’s the deal on gender and evolutionary psychology: I don’t know, maybe they can prove that the incredible bonding I felt, and the bonding my father says he deeply missed, is a different bonding pathway than women have. Maybe so, though I’m more inclined to think any actual, innate difference might just be one of degree.

And who am I to imagine how Hannah Rosin or Katie Roiphie or Kay Hymowitz… or anyone else, woman or man, feels about their infants? All I can say, though, is that the connection and desire to be there that I felt for my children went right through me, to the point where early on I’d hear the sound of her breath in the wind in the trees and the rhythm of his sighs when I was sharpening a knife and then all I’d want to do was make a cradle for them in the crook of my arm and hold them.

If evolutionary psychology says no, that can’t be innate because of my Y chromosome then, well, fine, so much the harder for them. Because the other explanation for such a powerful, overwhelming bond would be… social or experiential conditioning. Which they’d then have to factor out in their further estimations of selected gender differences. When they can persuasively say their methods have grown subtle enough to account for that I’ll be ready to listen.

Till then? My children will be home from school soon, and I don’t have much patience to wait.

While I only talked about one sentence the rest of ChrisJ’s post is pretty cool too. Go check it out.

Financial journalism wizard Felix Salmon brings up a nice counterpoint to the prevailing wisdom that working women are coming out ahead of men in the current recession.

Chris Swann reports that, yes, men have suffered 75% of the job losses in this recession. But look at the last recession: they suffered 86% of the job losses in that one. And the recession before that? More than 98% of the job losses.

He said it here.

Looking at it that way women are being proportionally hurt more in this recession than previous ones. They account for 25% of layoffs today, 14% in George W. Bush’s recession, and only 2% of layoffs in George H.W. Bush’s recession in the early 1990s.

And, as Swann notes in his article, it’s not because there were fewer women in the workplace in the 1990s: women were 47% of the workforce back then.

Swann adds

Progress on the desegregation of the workforce and attitudes to gender roles have not advanced since the mid-1990s. This is despite the fact that women are now outpacing men academically — earning 58 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 60 percent of master’s.

Since superior academic performance doesn’t seem to be narrowing the gap, we need a renewed drive by government and companies to root out discrimination and create a more family-friendly work place. Although the United States has excellent anti-discrimination laws, enforcement is woefully underfunded.

Another necessary but more expensive step would be greater provision of childcare. Increasing the length of the school day, lowering the starting age and reducing school vacations would all help — as could more generous paternity leave. Larger employers should be encouraged to expand the provision of workplace nurseries — a reliable way of attracting highly skilled mothers.

As the slide in manufacturing and production tails off, male workers can expect some relief. The problems of many women in the workforce are far more ingrained and harder to deal with. Man-cession aside, it’s still a man’s world.

He said it here.

That sounds about right.

And just for the record, now that my own children are independent and my role as a stay-at-home dad becomes less necessary and more economically unfeasible I’m getting a real birds-eye view of the big thumping hit time out for kids has on one’s employment prospects, in or out of a recession, yes, but especially in one. If I can find a job it still has to be part-time, my resume has this giant gaping hole in it, I’ve got tons of (sometimes strikingly sophisticated) volunteer experience and a ton of skills associated with running a popular and successful but, um, anonymous (oops!) blog, but it doesn’t look that good on paper.

So I’d just like to a) echo Swann’s points about what’s needed for the economy to benefit from the (overwhelmingly if not exclusively) female two-track workforce and b) tip my hat to journalists like Swann and Salmon for shining some light on the issue. (Yes, women, and some men, have been saying it for years. It’s been an exceedingly rare item in business publications though so this is a good thing. Due, I might add, in part thanks to the rise of the new generation of business and labor journalists. But I digress…)

I’d also like to say that to the extent I’m likely to get back on my feet career-wise it’ll be thanks to pioneering, sometimes harrowing and humiliating efforts begun by 2nd-wave feminists 30 years ago to clear a path for “mommy-track” and re-entry women back into the workforce. Even if you’re not affected by the recession chances are you’re benefitting from it too — part-time work, flex time, employer-offered childcare (if you can get it), family leave, job sharing, resume footnoting, even white-collar contracting and telecommuting… and even the possibility of men taking time off to raise their children… are available thanks almost entirely to feminism and the rise of women in the workforce.

Echidne being right again, this time about the unanswered question about Sarah Palin’s inadequacy as a mother of five and governor of a state…

Now for the invisible elephant. I think it’s called Todd, a stay-at-home dad whose parenting skills are not much discussed. You remember? The guy married to Sarah Palin. I’m not sure what his role in that family is supposed to be if Sarah Palin is the one expected to mind the children and do politics, too.

Just do a reversal on that. Pick any male politician with a stay-at-home wife. Then ask how he manages to both work and care for the children. Make him the responsible party in anything the children do wrong. Try that and see the humongous waves of discussion you develop, even among feminists. It’s probably because we prefer the elephant invisible.

She said it here.

Another interesting question is why so many people wish the elephant should stay invisible. Double standards cut both ways. Yeah, it’s fine to say the Governor should or should not have kept up. But where’s the expectation that Todd Palin should have stepped up? Oh right, we only set low expectations for men.

As I’ve said often enough to make some of you sick of hearing it, human beings are very good at meeting expectations but usually more miss than hit at exceeding them. If you set low expectations the results are going to be… just about what you expected.