In replying to some comments on my last post, There are no solutions in the status quo, I was thinking that while heady and intellectual is good sometimes, so too are concrete examples. So here is what I would want changed to be supported by society, and what things did go/are going well:
- When the Boychick was born, I wanted more time with The Man at home. It was my most fervent wish, often bawled into the sweet-smelling head of my sleeping child. He had three paid weeks — scrimped and scraped together by working whenever possible, skipping sick days, never taking vacation, since even before conception — which in the USA is so much more than most non-birthing (and too many birthing) parents get, but was nevertheless so, so inadequate. He went back to work when I was still bleeding. I wanted him to have the first six months off, paid. Three, minimum. (I honestly think we’d have gotten bored if he’d had the first two years off, but I’d've happily had him take one, and work part time for another, if we could have afforded it.)
- We had a meal train for the first three weeks also, with a new hot or oven-ready meal brought every couple days, with plenty of leftovers in between. (I am blessed to be part of a loose group of women who Feed Each Other, especially after a birth. It’s a beautiful thing.) About 18 hours after his birth, a friend brought us the groceries we hadn’t had a chance to buy, drinks from Starbucks, lunch from our favorite burrito place, and flowers. I will never forget that. I would wish that for every new family.
- After The Man went back to work, I was isolated. We lived where there was pretty limited public transit, and no public transport between where we lived and where The Man worked (and the Boychick hated the car anyway, so it didn’t matter that we never had access to one). I had no neighbourhood friends. What could have helped: living closer to where The Man worked (there was nowhere we could afford to rent closer in that would take our pets), having friends come over, having community centers (and friends) within walking distance, having better public transit — and knowing that that public transit was safe for me, that I wouldn’t be hassled for wearing him, or for him fussing, or if I needed to potty him (in our sealable bowl) or change him, or for nursing him, or simply for daring to exist as a fat woman with a baby in public.
- I struggled with what was probably postpartum depression — unrecognized, because it was not as bad as the instability I had gotten out of shortly before conceiving. What helps my mood is mostly not covered by medical insurance, which I didn’t have anyway. We weren’t able to pay for thyroid checks for me nearly as often as recommended in pregnancy and postpartum, when thyroid needs fluctuate so much (insufficient thyroid can contribute to depression as well). I needed health insurance (we weren’t married so I couldn’t get it through The Man’s job, but he had a job, so the state wouldn’t cover me), I needed the midwife to be paid for so we weren’t scrapping together funds to pay her already-reduced fee, I needed my fish oil to be subsidized or covered by insurance (or to have more money to pay for it), so I didn’t feel compelled to cut my dose, and teeter even closer to the line. That almost did me in.
- I was blessed to have a community, and a volunteer job, online during pregnancy and the Boychick’s first couple years (from which I have since retired, to focus on the blog and massage school — I still miss it, but it was time). That gave me intellectual outlet, social contact, and the knowledge that even when I was stuck at home, spit up everywhere (in my hair! I’ll never forget that either, try though I do), I was making a difference, and people relied on me. That saved me.
- When the Boychick was a year and a half old, I was also lucky to be able to start school in the evenings. I was privileged to be able to procure a loan to pay for it (though at a rate that will mean my $10,000 education will eventually cost us $20,000), one which we didn’t have to start paying back right away. (A loan which is no longer offered, by the way. Under the current financing options, I wouldn’t have been able to start school at all, or at least not right then, and I had gotten to where I needed something more to do, more even than the online gig.)
- Now, I want childcare swaps, and daycare options that I can trust to not indoctrinate my child in sexism and racism and classism and other aspects of kyriarchy. I want outdoor, mixed age open ed that is affordable enough it isn’t entirely populated by privileged white crunchy Portlanders. I want my friends to live closer, and I want to be friends with my neighbours. I want there to be enough people who believe in attached, gentle parenting (even if we’re not always so hot at it, even if they make superficially different choices) that I can find friends closer.
- And I still want to know that if I venture out in public with my perfectly normal (aka rambunctious, sometimes loud, sometimes tantrumy, usually gregarious) almost-three year old, I will be welcome, not shunned, supported, not glared at.
These are the things I mean when I say we need to change society. Maternity leave (I didn’t and likely won’t ever have a full time employed-type job) and funding for institutional daycare aren’t even on my list. “SAHM” or “WOHM” don’t even figure — I am neither. Some of these things would cost money — like paternity leave, like affordable alternative schooling options, like more community centers — and some of them would cost nothing, or a little time, or just a smile from a stranger. Some of them negate the need for some of the others. Some of them I could make happen in my own life, if I were lucky enough, and able to put in the effort. Some of them I have been able to access, due to the various aspects of privilege I exist with. Some of them would require radical shifts in social memes, some radical shifts in federal or local government policy. But they’re all possible. They should all be available to everyone. And they’re just a small fraction of the changes needed, from someone who already stands toward the top of the privilege pyramid.
I know not everyone finds these sorts of mental exercises helpful, or even bearable, and if you’re one, I don’t ask you to do anything you don’t want.
But for those of us who care to, I want you to take moment to think big (and little, and radical, and mundane): what would have helped you in the first months and first years of parenting? What would you have liked to have had? What was right about your situation, and what would have to change for everyone to have what you did? If parenting, or the addition of another child, is potentially in your future, what would your ideal situation be? How would you like society to support you? And, perhaps, what can you do to help the family next door, or down the street?
Think big. Think little. Think sideways. Think outside of the box; stand on it and rant, or kick the box apart and make peace signs out of the scraps, or burn it for firewood. Do you want one of the traditional options? Great! Share that. Do you love exactly what you have? Fabulous! Share that, and spend a moment thinking about whether others who want it could have it too, and if not what barriers are in their way. Are you too busy trying to take care of food and shelter to think of cushy perks like time at home and babies in work? Please, share what would make your life easier and safer (but feel welcome to idealize, too).
What could help you? Name one thing: name as many as you can think of.
Before we can make the revolution, we need to know what we’re working for. So share your dreams. Learn from others’. Change the conversation. Change the world.
Arwyn
In my bathroom hangs a plaque with a picture of a yin yang and the word BALANCE. I can never get it to hang straight. This probably says something deep and meaningful about my life.
here is Epic Comment Part II:
[before i mentioned that there are various personal options some of us might have at our disposal to reduce the alienation/isolation of children, caregivers and workers in general, but that those options usually involve a certain level of personal privilege that most of us simply do not have].
so how do we create change above the personal level?
perhaps by supporting small, local businesses and encouraging them to implement family-friendly employment policies (or take responsibility for such policies if we happen to be employers ourselves). from what little i’ve seen, it may be easier for small-time employers to make their own rules in terms of issues like children in the workplace.
speaking in more concrete terms from my own experience and that of people connected to me: i currently work part-time for a small local business, a touring folk music duo who lives around the corner from me. they operate out of their home office, and i doubt they’d take issue with my bringing my stepdaughter to work with me, or if i were to have other children in the future, with my bringing them, as long as my productivity didn’t suffer unreasonably. a lot of what i do isn’t highly skilled, and a child who is old enough could actually help out with some of it. alternatively, one of my stepdaughter’s friends lives two houses down from them, so if they’re around, she could spend time with them while i’m at work, and i’d be available in case of an emergency (i realize this is a little different from the baby discussion because my stepdaughter is 8 and her friend is 10, but i think a “free-range” approach to parenting older kids bears some mention here as well.) anyway, this wasn’t meant to expand upon the options available to me, so much as to say i think employers like mine deserve some recognition and encouragement from the community at large.
my mother-in-law is a lawyer in a very small rural town (she literally has a shingle). she has two full-time employees. when her children were infants, she took them to work so they could nurse. when they got to be preschool age, she put them in the care of a woman who ran an informal home-based daycare within walking distance of the office. she often brought her children to work with her when they were older (especially in the summer time, and for the few years that each of them was home-schooled), and she let her employee who has children do the same. the kids could hang out in the office and do schoolwork or read books or whatever, or help with whatever age-appropriate tasks were available, or they could walk to the library or the dollar store.
(i think a lot of our current assumptions around “childcare” stem from the notion that caring for a child means structuring one’s activities around or “entertaining” him or her, rather than going about one’s own work, letting the child do his/her own thing, being there in case the child has a problem or can’t do something for him/herself, and when children are old enough, including them in the work we do. arwyn, you were one of the people who reminded me of the concept of “benign neglect”, even when it comes to toddlers, who are often otherwise seen as the childhood age group that is the most demanding of adults).
anyway, i think that seeing community on a smaller scale–in terms of the social support networks you mention above, but also in terms of local economy and employment–would probably benefit everyone all around. in other words, your local family-owned taco joint may have more flexible employment policies than, say, taco bell. it may not, but sort of those things can be easier to change when you have fewer than 10 employees.
on the larger scale, i have fewer concrete suggestions to offer. but we can support the work of labor unions and employment policy reformers, and try to support companies whose employment policies make sense to us.
my partner works for the second-largest civilian employer in the country. but he’s the only person in his section to regularly take advantage of their telecommuting option. he’s impressed the other folks in his office with the fact that (surprise) his productivity is great when he’s at home, even when his daughter is asking him questions about comic books every 15 minutes. if we work for big employers, it may be worthwhile for us to seek these options out even if they aren’t widely used, and to advocate for their continued availability.
or if there is no personal action we can take, we can at least speak the truth about what all we find lacking in our society, as you have done here and elsewhere, so that others might read and think (and get fired up and write the longest comments ever).
I think there needs to be MASSIVELY better options for FAMILY leave, available to both the new mom AND new dad, and possibly even to extended family as well. We lived in Switzerland when D was born, which gave 16 weeks paid leave to all new moms (I wasn’t working so didn’t matter)… but new dads got ONE DAY. That’s ridiculous.
My husband got 1 week of paid leave from his job. California also has short-term disability leave that will give partial pay for parents, but we were living abroad as expats so he didn’t qualify for that. Luckily we were in a good enough financial situation so he was able to take off about 4 weeks of unpaid leave, stretched out over time so he was home with me for the first week and then worked 4-day weeks for 6 months or so.
What REALLY helped us immensely was that my mother came to stay with us for 5 weeks after D was born, and by the completely magical wonderfulness of the universe she happened to arrive literally as I started going into labor. So she was there to help me through that first month. I have no idea how I would have coped without her constant help. She did it all– she cooked, she cleaned, she took D on long walks while I slept, she gave me confidence and advice, and it was through her help that I finally felt competent enough to do it on my own once she left. So yeah, perhaps family leave should be extended to apply to the new grandparents as well, to help out in those crucial first weeks/months (I realize not everyone gets along with their parents/inlaws as we both do with my mom so it’s not viable for everyone, but it was a LIFESAVER for us).
I also had a midwife who did home visits for the first 10 days after the birth. She made sure I was healing ok, showed us how to give D his first bath, etc. It was wonderful.
Other things I benefited from in Switzerland that I don’t know if I would have had here: a very friendly lactation consultant who helped me figure out how to get D to drink at all; strangers who rather than scold me, actually smiled and complimented me when they saw me breastfeeding in public (even without a cover!) which gave me the confidence to keep on doing it here when we came back; others who helped me lift my stroller into the public transit busses every single time I had to get on or off. Even in stuffy, unfriendly Switzerland, people generally seemed accepting of families and young children and would lend a hand when needed.
I have a friend who just went back to work after spending 4 months off with her son. Her work has on-site daycare with webcams so she can watch him whenever she wants (I say that not in a paranoid are-they-treating-my-baby-ok??? kind of way but in a aw-I-miss-my-baby-let’s-see-what-he’s-doing way), and is close enough so she can breastfeed him during the day rather than having to pump. THAT is AWESOME. THAT is what we need more of.
One of the ideas that keeps coming up is not only all-parental leave (for both parents, if two there be), but time off for other kith and kin as well. It’s so important to have all parents have time off, not only to support the parent who birthed (if one did — I would want all these options to be available to adoptive situations as well), but because those early weeks and months are so important for the PARENTS to attach to the baby. With an infant, it really is quantity time that matters, and all parents deserve to have that foundation with their child. BUT, at the same time, two (if a family even has two) parents are simply not enough — having grandparents, aunts/uncles, friends, etc come to help out relieves so much of the burden. Even just having someone to fetch food when the baby falls asleep at the breast, or play with an older child, to talk with, can make such a difference.
PS- while we’re dreaming big here ; ) I’ll go ahead and say that I think SAHParents should be paid. There. I said it. I know a lot of people’s heads would explode by hearing that statement, but honestly I think it’s true. It’s sad how little value we place on childrearing. Our kids are not just snot-nosed brats throwing a tantrum next to you at the grocery store, they are going to grow up to be the next generation of People in Charge and you’d think raising them right would be an important job.
(Let me also take a moment here that I AM NOT saying one needs to stay home to raise their children right. Raising children is a big job for whoever takes it on, be it a parent or an outside caretaker)
So yeah, I think SAHParents should be paid. That would make it easier for more families to decide to have one person stay at home if that is what they want for their family. I’m not asking for a huge salary, but just a little something would be nice. Just sayin’.
Paid would be nice. Perhaps even just equivalent of what would be covered with paid time off, for those of us who don’t have jobs?
There’s this idea that if we don’t HAVE to work, we wouldn’t — but that doesn’t bear out, when the options aren’t between soul-sucking drudgery or living on the dole. When we have work options that support us, that are family- and person-friendly, that are meaningful and hopeful and helpful, then most people CHOOSE to work, at least most of the time. And that doesn’t mean that no one would be a janitor, either: we just have to offer the janitor dignity and autonomy and flexibility and a livable wage as well, not force her to scrape by at 1/100,000th of the wage and respect of the CEO whose trash she picks up.
More achievable, perhaps, I think we in the USA need to be earning Social Security credit. Not doing so harms so many marginalized populations: infants when parents have to work in jobs that don’t allow for adequate carer substitutes just so they can have some sort of retirement fund (or have parents stressed out by money concerns), parents who stay home and get no recognition for the work we do, and the senior citizens we become.
This is something I think about a fair amount. I’ll probably take this over to my place and chew on it extensively for a bit.
I am … I hate to say “disabled” because it feels appropriative. I am not readily able to hold down a job sufficient to pay my bills without threatening my mental and to a lesser extent physical health; I certainly could not hold down a job sufficient to cover childcare.
Little Foot is four months old.
I tell you, knowing the above before I went into being her primary daytime caregiver how hostile the culture I live in is to genuine family stuff (despite its lip service about The Importance Of The Family) scared the hell out of me.
I’ll come back and drop a link when I’ve got my thoughts sorted.
There we go.
Way too long to be a comment. Posted.
Thank you. That rocked.
RMB readers: I highly recommend checking it out.
It’s all so long ago, but this site is reminding me. When my first was born (35 years ago, OMG!) I was a poor student. My mom came out for about a month, and that did help a lot. I was also able to take my baby to class, and happily breastfed there. Mom came too, and when he got fussy-but-not-hungry, she took him out while I still listened. I had a best friend who lived right above me who did child care, lovingly, for three years, and gave me a lot of support, too. By the time my second was born (hi, Arwyn!), I had privilege up the wazoo, had full-time in-my-home care and worked six blocks away. If I couldn’t get home for noon-time nursing, the nanny could bring her to me. (And I did pay employer taxes; the nanny got a living wage and Social Security credit.)
What would I dream of? If not pay, then at least Social Security credit for the work of being a parent. Home visits early on and throughout the first many years. Community: I keep thinking of the way elephants raise their babies, with the aunties taking a major role. Recognition that the non-birth parent needs time and support to be involved in raising kids, too. Complete acceptance and encouragement of breast feeding. Kids close to mom’s work (or other parent’s when weaned), and I do mean close enough to breastfeed or to kiss a boo-boo. Flexible work schedules, not tied to clocks but more to normal rhythms, thus measured on productivity and not time spent. I’m sure there’s a lot more, but that’s what’s on the top of my head now.
Explode the nuclear family. Ex-plode-it. The best setup for me would have been, basically, a commune, but not off in the wilderness somewhere, and not regulated by any sort or religious/political requirements, but by friendship. Lots of couples living in their spaces and sharing communal ones, sharing resources, raising and watching their kids together, working in or near the home, working flexibly, having childcare help nearby when they do need to work.
Sort of a “longhouse” perhaps, though not necessarily restricted to kin-ties. More tribal, probably more of a pain in the ass sometimes, but much less isolating and wasteful.
As for work, my first vote is a 20 hour workweek at the same pay, allowing higher employment but no loss of productivity; coupled with universal healthcare, encouragement to telecommute/use flextime, and the abolishment of drug tests except where necessary (truck drivers, doctors, where lives are on the line) this would make working much less like slavery.
And honestly, I have yet to hold a job that couldn’t be done in 20 hours a week 99% of the time.
Midwives, doulas, lactation consultants all part of the universal healthcare, btw.
Ideally, I’d have liked to be part of an extended family/friend network where everyone simply cares about each other enough to take care of each other when it’s needed. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a commune type of setting, but even just having people living near each other would help. Being paid to parent would be great, too.
I’m totally with emjaybee. End of nuclear family. Am plotting my own small version at the moment – my partner and I are planning to buy a house together with his mother and partner and live semi-collectively.
But on the smaller scale what would have (and still would, on the days I am at home) helped me are mother-and-baby/play groups that last longer than an hour or two. One of my favourite groups is the breastfeeding support group I go to, because that it three whole hours. Why can’t someone (me?) set up a semi-childcare-semi-stay-and-play scenario where you get to go somewhere for a whole day, where your child can play and you can stay, where food can be prepared, and naps taken. Why this complete disconnect between at-home and at-nursery?
For about half a year, I had a weekly standing plan to go to a friend’s house once a week, for pretty much the whole day (from whenever we got there in the morning — dependent on when the Boychick woke up — to when I had to leave to go pick up The Man from work). Her kid was not quite a year older than the Boychick, close enough that they could get along pretty well. Some days I wondered why on earth I bothered — when we were running late, when he screamed for most of the 30-minute car ride, when neither of them would nap (or one would, but then get woken up by the other), when the two kids were at each other’s throats — but most days I thought we were absolute friggin’ geniuses, and even just looking forward to that day made the rest of the week bearable.
So yes, I am 100% in favor of that idea. Personally, having some social anxiety, I wouldn’t want to go to a big group, but one or two other families, the “right” families (other parents I could get along with, of similar-enough parenting styles)? That would be BLISS. Bliss and blessing.
Also, there was an article in I think the most recent Mothering magazine about multi-generational semi-communal living. When the logistics and inter-personal relationships work, that can be a great way to enact change on the personal even within this messed-up society. Hope it goes well for you! (And if you ever want to write about it, I’d be honored to have you guest post.)
In my own circle of nonreligious friends, I would love to see an awareness that some of us have children! I can’t count how many times I’ve had to stay home because the activity of the evening is at a bar, and I don’t know anyone who will take my child and $20 off my hands for a couple hours. And not only is there no place for me in a church, even non-religious church-like communities only have daytime events. A community that had weekly Saturday evening potlucks would be okay by me.
Hi Arwyn. I can’t work out how to reply to your repl (Firefox issue?), so I’ll say here – it would be fantastic to do a guest post – may I email you after the holidays?
Also, I’m glad you found even a temporary such “standing-plan”. I’m still working on getting together an even semi-regular afternoon group and bloody hell it’s hard work to get a few people to even semi-commit to a regular afternoon!
Three months paternity leave was a godsend for me. Having my husband home to cook, clean and keep me (relatively) sane during the first few months was a real blessing.