Here’s a question I’m asked an awful lot: How do you write so much while raising four children?
A: I don’t sleep much.
Childcare.
Seriously, I don’t sleep much.
The rest of the answer includes that I love to write and that I’m trying to generate some (pitiful) income and that I believe—for me, for my slant on feminist parenting, for everyone’s overall mental health—my working is a really good thing.
Add an asterisk here to mention that I work from home, which offers me a great deal of flexibility and that our house came with a third floor flat we kept intact, and rather than rent it out as we did when we had one or two kids, starting with the arrival of child number three (nearly eight years ago, now) we barter apartment for childcare. (Let me add, too, that with the fourth child’s arrival, this situation means we have three kids’ bedrooms for four kids, and sometimes, there’s a wee bit of tension there, but I digress, a topic for another day).
I mess up a lot. Last night, when informed (although I could and should have known this earlier) all of Northampton must bring a main dish to the DASAC (the dreamy Deerfield Academy Summer Arts Camp) Festival (imagine, a crush of families, a giant potluck, a lot of artwork, a lot of hugging and a performance that goes on too long for some parents, much as they love the camp but not too long for the campers—and you’ve got Festival pretty much figured out), I felt my heart sink a tiny bit. Main dish? I do popcorn for potlucks. I have a lot of melon cut up. I mean, food, that’s fine—but I’m not making a main dish for a potluck when I’ve got four kids here and no hours without them all day long (if you’re a Northampton parent headed to Festival, sorry to let you down).
Oh, and the eldest says to me, at 11 last night, he needs a dozen bagels for the following morning, too. “Aren’t you going shopping tomorrow?” he asks. Uh, no, I wasn’t.
Here’s the thing, I don’t feel all that badly anymore being the parent bringing the popcorn. That seems a natural circumstance of working and raising four kids of very varied ages. Or, as a friend once reported of his 84 year-old aunt not rushing to her flight at Heathrow whilst he was concerned and hurrying her along: “She said, ‘Someone must be the last to board.’” The real point is I do plenty well and I don’t do everything perfectly and that’s a tradeoff I feel fortunate to be able to choose so that we’re all pretty happy and so that I’ve continued to further a fulfilling life beyond my (very central) one parenting.
I walked by three teenage girls on a bench in town the other night and one was saying, “We’re like the center of our parents’ lives. It’s really sad.”
After smiling, I realized that was a cautionary musing.
**
I have a lot of feelings about how much is enough or too much for me in terms of showering attentions on my kids and whether this current lure of stay-at-home parenting might be a sign of the country’s magnet pull right, but that’s not really here nor there (and besides, these choices are overwhelmingly personal and I don’t want to imply there’s a right or a wrong; there is not, even if there are many important considerations before making one’s choices).
Having had the Massachusetts’ courts decide an employer only has to hold a woman’s job for eight weeks after she has a baby is ludicrous and insulting and anti-woman and just plain unfair and stupid. (On this point, I am certainly opinionated).
Eight weeks after my first baby was born, I was pumping milk furiously to keep it from drying up completely (eight times per day). I wasn’t ready to return to work yet. That first year, for me, was all about feeding my baby.
For many women, eight weeks in, taking a shower (before noon, or before supper or before “bed”) is a triumph.
In civilized countries—I’m talking about you, Sweden and pretty much all of Europe and to some degree most places except here—accounting for the fact that raising families takes time is built into the fabric of work. Forget “family values.” Think, family leave. Think, supporting actual families. My blood pressure rises just typing these sentences.
And what’s more, what would you do if you if you lost your job and then found out you were pregnant? (Check out the amazing work the National Network of Abortion Funds is doing to remind us all that access for abortion is an issue that matters to parents, especially in a society that doesn’t provide the level of tangible support to raise children, especially when financially insecure, other countries might).
When thinking about this stuff, as I was last night, I lose still more sleep…
**
What I flashed upon when reading the Massachusetts’ news this week was a blog I find enchanting, Mila’s Daydreams. Mila’s mother scoops her napping baby up and inserts her into a photograph set up on the living room rug (and then, she reports, scoops Mila up again and returns her to her crib). The photographer/new mum insists the photographs—she’s in the biz—take but a few minutes. She writes on her FAQ that she lives in a country (Finland) where maternity leave is generous and so has some time to enjoy new motherhood.
Beyond all the obvious and more pressing issues—baby’s health, mother’s health, having a job to go back to, childcare—this blog reminds me that when there’s actual support for parents, more happens than the bare minimum. Creativity and enjoying one’s children cease to be concerns granted only to the very most privileged; they might just be better shared all around. And, at least in my fantasy of a country with adequate family leave Mila’s DayDreams exemplify real family values.
