summer of sick

Whereas my husband and I took turns writing and being with our daughter, Lilly, last year, it's been me all summer while he's submitting job applications and working on his thesis that's due November 15. Starting out, I was so excited to have full days with her again and not just a couple of mornings (with one of those at the library for a lap-sit class, the other alternately at yoga or watching my friend's daughter while my friend went to yoga) and three afternoons (mostly filled wit me attempting to help her nap, then recovering from that, were she to nap, before making dinner). I pictured more time in the garden, playing around in the yard, and hanging out on our porch, going to the beach at the various city lakes, swimming at the pool, attending a music and movement class for my daughter, BBQs with friends, etc.

We've had quite a bit of time in the garden, more so before it got so buggy. And after she stopped running out into the street or our neighbor's yard all the time, that got to be pretty good. Except for that stretch of time when she would gleefully pick stuff that wasn't meant to be picked (we're still working on that one, but it's getting better).

And we've definitely spent more time on the porch, except when it's too hot and muggy (still need to pick up a good vent to circulate the air). But when it's nice out, it's my favorite place to hang.

personality types affect women's approach to childbirth

Susan Maushart, author of The Mask of Motherhood, discusses how women who delay motherhood may have a harder time adjusting than their younger peers. As a first-time mom at the age of 35, I can relate to this. I landed a tenure track position when I was 26, completed my Ph.D. when I was 27, obtained tenure and promotion before I turned 32, and had my first sabbatical the following year. I was able to accomplish many things, yet I always complained that there wasn't enough time in the day to do all the stuff I wanted.

As a new mom to an infant, I discovered the brutal reality of no time in the day to do anything for me by myself.

But now a new study reported here by the guardian.co.uk, suggests it wasn't just my age and the time I had had to pursue a career and get comfortable with my own space and routines that made motherhood hard for me; my personality type also seems to have something to do with it.

Apparently, high levels of "extroversion," "agreeableness" and "neuroticism" seem to accelerate the desire of a woman to have a child. Conversely, high "conscientiousness" and "openness" are associated with delaying childbirth.

(Photo: Alamy)

As someone who valued being well-organized and self-disciplined to get where I got, and who vowed never to let traditional gender roles confine me, I can see how I fit this study's findings:

"Those who scored highly on conscientiousness tended to follow the rules, to be reliable, well-organised and self-disciplined. Openness reflected an individual's tendency to unconventionality and intellect. Open-minded women tend to enjoy being unattached, free, not tied to people, places, or obligations – and may be rebellious."

why parents hate parenting

This article in the New York Magazine, All Joy and No fun, about why parents hate parenting, reports some pretty interesting statistics on how parents in the US feel overwhelmed by the task of parenting. We're exhausted, moms in particular miss their former lives of intellectual stimulation, we feel we fall short, and marriages suffer.

(Photo: Jennifer Todd Harper. Pictured is Harper when one of her twin babies.)

In countries where the social support system is in place to relieve parents, on the other hand, the numbers are different:

"One hates to invoke Scandinavia in stories about child-rearing, but it can’t be an accident that the one superbly designed study that said, unambiguously, that having kids makes you happier was done with Danish subjects." In short, "countries with stronger welfare systems produce more children—and happier parents.

mother-blaming

Ever felt like there isn't a whole lot of appreciation in today's society for all the work we moms do? Aside from all the lip service, I mean. 

Well, in Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, historian Rebecca Jo Plant traces the dwindling of Mother Love and the growth of mother-blaming from the 1920s, with the growth of secularized values and followers of psychoanalysis that questioned the moral status of Mother, through world war II where pin-up girls replaced Mom for serving soldiers abroad, and up until its accumulation (in Plant's account) with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and second wave modernism. "Mother-blaming" allowed women of Friedan's generation to "signal a rejection of Victorian moral strictures and a commitment to a more secular, psychologically oriented approach to sexuality and the self. It could also be a way of mocking a middlebrow popular culture that seemed hopelessly sentimental, or a means of repudiating nativist patriotism in favor of a more democratic notion of American identity," explains Plant, adding that "for an ambitious young woman like Friedan, it could be a way of conveying a fervent desire for a different kind of life than that which her mother led" (150).

While I can relate with that last bit there in particular, there are some other interesting parts about Plant's book too, like how the quest for painless childbirth changed the way we view (and appreciate) the labor (!) women go through to give birth to children.

To me, the book is marked by being originally written as the dissertation of a Ph.D. candidate in history. It's limited in scope and it nails down its main point repeatedly. I found The Mask of Motherhood by Susan Maushart to be much more enraging and inspiring (blogged about here). But Mom is still worth checking out. Especially if you're interested in the historical nuts and bolts of how "antimaternalist" mother bashing came to replace mother praise.

waiting for birdy

If you enjoyed Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions with its funny, raw, honest portrayal of one woman becoming a mother, you should check out Catherine Newman's Waiting for Birdy about another woman becoming a mother of two. My new friend Shan, a fellow writer and mama over at Mama in Wonderland, recommended it to me, and it's a gem. I found myself laughing out so hard and so frequently when reading it outside in the sun this past week, truly; I think my neighbor must have thought I was drinking vodka straight up, and not just plain water. The book brought tears to my eyes too at times, and it ends on a quite poetic note

mama notes on "the joys" of mothering

The public schools in town offer Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) classes as a community service. Many of the mamas I talk with refer to these classes, mostly not in a good way. Rather than an opportunity for mamas to come together to share, vent, and support one another, these gatherings thrive on pretense, competition, and judgment.

Personally, I blame the classroom setup with facilitators writing notes about parenting on a blackboard; having the moms discuss questions in small group; and then go around the room to have each mom answer the various questions.

One of the mamas I talked with this morning told me about how the facilitator of her class will have all the mamas begin by sharing this week's joys. This mama looked at me with a dumbfounded look of exasperation in her face; "I had no joys to report last week, none!" What about all the hard days, the challenges, the tedium, the times you snap. What about when what you really feel like, is throwing your baby out of the window? (but you don't, you never would, of course not, but still)

mask of motherhood

Before you enter the sorority of mothers, you may be told that it completely changes your life (but of course you wouldn't want it any other way); that it comes with the greatest love of all (and who doesn't want to experience that); that children make you see the world with new eyes again (this point in particular appealed to me). Some may tell you it's really hard (shrouding the statement with an uninterpretable open endedness that leaves you dangling in the air).

I remember at times seeing exasperated looks in the eyes of friends with children (especially those with kids who'd reached toddlerhood), but I can't remember anyone looking me in the eyes the way Susan Maushart's older sister did when Susan asked her, in a playful sort of way, "Well, tell me about motherhood. What's it really like, anyway?" a few weeks after the birth of her sister's first child, thinking her sister spent an inordinate amount of time trying to concentrate on nursing her baby. "I was taken aback by the intensity of her response," writes Maushart in The Mask of Motherhood; "She looked away from the baby (and that in itself was a rare occurrence), and stared straight into my eyes. 'I'm going to tell you this now, and I want you to remember it,' she began. 'Everyone lies. Do you hear me? Everyone lies about what it's like to have a baby. Don't listen to them. Just watch me, and remember.'" (11)

seeking home

Another thing I fret about is settling and where we as a family should do that. When I quit my job last year to focus on my own writing and family, the Dean responded to my letter of resignation with a stunned "Wow!" One simply does not leave a tenured and promoted position at a college just like that.

Well, guess what, I did. It's not like it's solved all of our problems or even many, aside from eliminating that one component in my life that was really stressing me out. Which was a rather substantial one at that, regularly amounting to about seventy hours a week, of teaching, grading, prepping, developing new courses, committee work, advising, endless meetings, and so on and so on, leaving barely any time for my own scholarship. Though this was supposed to be one of the three main components of my position. If I couldn't find time to write, how on earth would I find time to take care of a child?

Of course, it's not like being home with a child has opened up a vast space for my writing. Like my juggling academic friends with kids, I too find myself much like a clown at times, desperately trying to keep the different balls flowing, including words down on the paper or onto my laptop whenever I find the chance.