This year the school year may wind up being seven days shorter, and I'm steamed about it. You can read more here: http://momsla.com/2011/08/the-school-year-may-be-seven-days-shorter-whats-a-working-mom-to-do/
Here's the deal: Thing 1 and Thing 2 are free all week. Camp is over. School doesn't start for two and a half weeks. And they wanna play.
I don't wanna work. I just wanna ... no, not bang on the drum all day. But play with my kids, for sure.
Mama don't have that much vacation time, though. So here's what I did. I paid the nanny to play with my kids all day.
Somehow this is not what I had in mind ... not when I planned on a career in the movie business. Not when I had kids. But I want both -- and, in fact, need both -- can't afford not to have the career, and sure do love having kiddies. So this is my lot, and I gotta make it work.
I have to work this week.
So the kids are attending mini-camp every day at their preschool, a sort of stop-gap measure the school offers between the end of school and the start of summer camp. But when I dropped them off the first day, I noticed there were maybe ten kids attending mini-camp, and it's been pretty much that size, give or take a few kids, since then.
I'm wondering where everyone else is. Did everyone else take vacation? Or is it that so many moms (or dads) aren't working, or aren't working full-time, and are just hanging with their kids at home? Because me, I'd be scrambling without mini-camp.
My kids go to a Jewish preschool and it was off on Friday in observance of a Jewish holiday I don't particularly observe (Shavout, for those interested). Since I work full-time, and so does Late Blooming Dad, we asked our part-time nanny, who we keep employed very much to cover on these occasions, to come for eight hours and watch the kids.
Part-time nanny got the 'flu.
Sometime babysitter has a daytime job and was therefore unavailable.
The nearest family members live close to 400 miles away, so they weren't an option either.
Late Blooming Dad is working freelance and in this economy, does not take days off. Late Blooming Mom floated the idea of taking a personal day, but one of the projects she's assigned to at work magically appeared at 5 p.m. on Thursday, and needed to be started if there'd be any hope of finishing it by Monday, when it's due.
So Late Blooming Dad and Mom did what any other full-time working, overtaxed parents did.
Don't get me wrong, I love having a family.
But between four-year-old twins and an elderly cat who's not feeling too well, I'm feeling a bit overtaxed ... and that's with a spouse who's a fully participating partner who takes on his share and then some.
Sometimes I talk with single or married-but-kidless friends and hear of their trips -- to Italy, to Hong Kong, to other way cool places, and I miss their freedom.
Yet many of them wish they had what I do.
Sometimes I wish we could all trade places for just a weekend or two, once or twice a year. Maybe we'd get a greater appreciation of what we have. Or just get a break from it!
It's not that the grass is greener. I do want what I have.
Like a lot of Late Blooming Moms, I was established in the working world before I had my kids.
I thought briefly about becoming a stay-at-home mom when I found out I would be having twins, but I know myself well enough to know I'd go crazy if I didn't have at least some kind of professional existence outside of mom-and-wife-hood. I also knew my husband and I would need the money; where we live ain't cheap. So there wasn't really a choice to be made, short of moving to some small hamlet where housing is inexpensive, we wouldn't know anyone, and as confirmed city mice, we'd have trouble adjusting.
Even though I briefly considered this option -- and sometimes I still do, when I get a look at our monthly mortgage payment -- there are other reasons I stuck with the plan to go back to work. I'd had friends who'd been working women grapple with being at home with just one baby, only to find they longed for the validation of other adults, the mental challenge of interesting work, and the independence that comes from earning a paycheck. One mom complained to me that she'd go to a dinner party and as soon as she told the person making conversation with her that she was a stay-at-home mom, that person's eyes glazed over ... and then the person inevitably focused on her software-executive spouse, and ignored her the rest of the night. It was just assumed she had nothing worthwhile to say. Of course that was ridiculous, but she felt stigmatized, as a former professional (with an MBA to her name) now deemed not worth dinner table conversation.
I took a six-month leave of absence when my babies arrived, and surprisingly, I didn't go crazy. I felt fortunate to have time to get to know them -- and get some experience and confidence at mothering -- before I resumed work. And when I did, I was able to work three days from home, two at the office, which afforded me the chance, once the kids hit the nine-month-mark, to use lunch hour a couple of times a week to take them to music and gym classes, accompanied by a nanny who proved an invaluable help (though of course an added expense).
I had some guilt then about not being around for every diaper change, every bottle, every nap, every minute of the day when some developmental milestone might occur. But babies are extremely high-maintenance, and I gotta admit, I was also relieved at times not to be on duty at home all the time. About a year later, I shifted to working at home nearly all the time, save for a meeting every week or two back at the office. I missed my colleagues and the social interaction, but it sure made it easier to see more of the kids: I bid them goodbye when the nanny took them to the park, greeted them with hugs and kisses on their return, helped put them down for nap, visited them briefly during afternoon snack, and kept up the lunch-hour toddler classes a couple of times a week. Best of all, I had no commute and was right there when the work day ended. I was far luckier than most working moms because I did, in fact, see my kids part of the day.
I still felt guilty, but if work was slow, I was as likely to take a much-needed nap as to spend it with the kids. Slowly, though, my guilt began to grow. And now that the kids are in a full-day preschool, my guilt is great.
Knowing I have to work to help pay the bills doesn't really help. It only contributes to the feeling that I'm in a bind, a bind of my own (and my husband's) making: we chose to live here and do the kind of work we do, and make our lives far from extended family, where we have to pay for all the help we get.
Thankfully, the kids love preschool, and though parting is still tough in the morning -- separation and transitions are difficult for most preschoolers, my kids included -- they have a great time most days. When I show up, they are thrilled to see me, but I often have to coax them from the school, which is filled with stimulating toys and craft projects, boasts an elaborate outdoor play yard with a huge sandbox, a play structure, water tables, and all manner of outdoor toys and activities. Teachers are warm and don't hesitate to administer hugs. The kids' vocabulary has expanded exponentially, and their social skills, while in constant need of refining, are getting a lot of practice.
Still, there is guilt. Lots of kids get picked up earlier in the day than mine, and go to play dates at the park or other classmates' homes. Sometimes they just go home and enjoy being in their own space. My kids don't get nearly as much time at home as some of their counterparts, who leave at noon or three. And on some days, it takes a toll on all of us. If they're slow leaving school due to potty breaks, changing out of wet clothes, or an inclination to dawdle, we get caught in traffic and limp home by six, when I've got maybe half an hour to get some dinner on the table if we're to have baths or showers and all our bedtime rituals. And the kids are hyper from the ride and the carb-laden snacks I've had to give them in the car to keep them occupied. Plus they've had to hold it together emotionally to be without mommy or daddy for many hours, and they've been out of the cozy comfort zone of their own space.
Some evenings, they act out a lot; or they're cranky, whiny and tired. Probably the same is true of their peers who get home earlier, but I can't say as I don't see those kids. All I know is, the rare day when work is slow or I've managed to work ahead, I can pick them up a bit early, and they seem calmer, more rested, better behaved. They give me a little time to breathe when we get home, and I can spend some time with them before I turn into short-order cook, and start barking at them to eat, wash, change into PJs, etc.
Though I value my work, I miss being with the kids. They're only going to be this small once, and as a late blooming mom in her fourth decade, I ain't likely to have more babies.
Naturally, I overcompensate: I know I give them too many treats, trinkets, trips to restaurants, etc. I make sure there are plenty of hugs and kisses when I'm with them, and I devote nearly every minute of every weekend to them save when I'm asleep. Every couple of weeks or so, I'm lucky enough to have a babysitter for the night. But the latter circumstance brings on more guilt. Okay, not so much that I don't leave the house. Mommy and daddy need date night or mommy and daddy will be as impossible as a couple of whining toddlers. But the guilt is there, nonetheless -- especially if we've left one of the kids crying because they don't want mommy and daddy to go.
I don't know what the solution is, aside from a wholesale revision of our lives. And I don't have quite enough guilt to try to puzzle out how, exactly, we could make that happen, and make do somewhere else, with far less. My job isn't part-time, and we couldn't make do on a part-time income.
So I soldier on, a working mom, hoping the example I'm setting, as a woman who earns her keep via her expertise, will be a good one for my daughter, and will make my son realize that when he gets married, some day, his wife is entitled to a working life too.
My own mom was stay-at-home for many years, then went back to work, but always had a series of jobs, not a career. This bothered her. She was capable of much more than she was able to accomplish in the working world. I don't think she regretted the years she spent at home. But at the same time, she felt she missed out. It's some consolation that I won't have that regret.
But the guilt is there every day. Oh, to be like daddy, who blithely goes off to work without giving it a second thought. Thanks, society, for making expectations so different for men and women, even in this day and age. Or should I ascribe it to nature? The daddy gene is, surely, a bit different than the mommy gene.
All I know is, I hope I'm not doing motherhood half-assed. I console myself, like many a working late blooming mom, with the thought that I'm doing the best I can, given the circumstances. I suspect, even if I was staying at home, I'd find some other aspect of my mothering to make me feel guilty.
Hey, we gotta give them SOMETHING to go to therapy about in twenty years, don't we?
A few years back, a book called THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE was all the sensation. Some very smart, articulate women, single, married, and married with kids, admitted they're angry a lot -- and some of the moms were angry at the neediness of their preschoolers.
Count me in.
I say that knowing full well that being needy is the normal state of being for preschoolers for chunks of every day.
I say that knowing I'm not supposed to be angry because I should just accept the reality of the situation.
But the thing is, when one of my three-and-half year-olds is angry, that kid does not accept the reality of the situation and deal. That kid throws a fit.
Sometimes that fit goes on for twenty-friggin' minutes. Twenty eternal minutes so loud they hurt your eardrums and fracture your very last nerve.
Maybe other moms who are more resilient, or more patient, or past caring, don't mind so much.
But when the precious little free time I have at the end of a work day and school day has been eroded to a sliver before my own bedtime because I've been dealing with a screaming, whining, kicking, thoroughly self-absorbed and stubborn little beast in the house, then I admit it: I am the bitch in the house.
I know getting angry about it makes ME the child, especially when I'm supposed to be modeling good behavior and showing the kids how to handle anger.
But aren't I entitled to throwing a fit of my own now and then?
Preschoolers can be the sweetest angels on earth. But let's face it, they're also beasts. Sometimes they switch from angelic to beastly in mere seconds -- it's as if they have personality A.D.D.
When it happens, I do well sometimes: I'm patient and wait it out. I ignore. Or I leave the room till I can calm down. Sometimes.
But every once in a while, the inner bitch comes out, and self-control, well, that goes out the window.
So Yo, Bitches -- I Be One Wit' You. This is a tough job, and sometimes the only remedy we have is to, well, bitch about it.
I know I should be all patriotic and such on July 4th weekend.
And it's not that I don't love my country.
But sometimes it sucks for working parents, as I've said in this space before (see Why America Is Bad for Working Parents, on this blog a few months back.) The reason I'm revisiting it now is because of an article from July 5's New York Times about how the otherwise employee-friendly company GOOGLE has royally screwed up its corporate daycare (On Daycare, Google Makes A Rare Fumble).
GOOGLE used to offer its employees terrific on-site daycare, contracted out to a company that specialized in such things, for a reasonable though not bargain cost. But the waiting list became too long, and the geniuses at Google who think they do everything better than other companies, including entering businesses they know nothing about, dropped their daycare provider, built their own crazy-expensive facility, then passed on the cost to employees -- and cut that pesky waiting list way down -- by making tuition so pricey, only the richest employees can pay it. It costs more than most colleges' tuition to send a kid to Google's supposedly state-of-the-art daycare.
Now I know company-provided daycare centers are a perk in the U.S., not a right. But I also know American workers work damn hard -- often harder, for longer hours, than their non-U.S. counterparts. We get less vacation. We have less flex time, less comp time, less call-it-what-you-will, time to spend with our families when they need us (which sometimes happens during working day hours). So in my view, Google gets ZERO props for providing a daycare benefit the majority of its working parent employees can't afford and can't get their kids into.
I've endured my own backup childcare center loss at my company due to budget cuts, and been left scrambling many a time when the kids' preschool is closed but I have no vacation time left. It seems like working and having kids is made virtually incompatible by corporate America, and the American government is doing squat about it. Many companies -- and the government -- are sending a message. That message is, if you wanna raise kids, you can't work.
The problem is, raising kids costs money. I'm not necessarily talking private school money -- though the dearth of public preschools has pretty much made some years of private school education a must for most families who live in urban areas with high costs of living. Parents and kids also need access to healthcare plans, which are often only available through their jobs (just try and get decent health insurance on your own, I dare ya).
So this July 4th weekend, I'm mad as hell.
I count my blessings about living here everyday, but I also demand more from my country than the crappy deal working parents like me are getting. Many parents would give up part of their hard-earned salaries for a safe place to leave kids when school is closed -- or for flex time when they get sick, or to have the chance to pick them up from school an hour early occasionally and get quality time. But often, parents don't get that choice. Meanwhile, the heads of the big companies, who can afford nannies and exclusive private schools and the like for their kids, don't ever have to sweat it.
We all deserve better. (Think so too? Check out MomsRising.Org. At least what they're doing -- pushing for mandatory paid sick days and paid family leave in every state -- is a start.)
So happy fourth. Now let's go about the real business of being patriotic: forming a more perfect union, with flex time, more paid sick days, and paid family leave for all.
As a working mom, it's not easy to get home-cooked meals on the table every night. But I try, at least most nights.
This week I was inspired by some late-night Food Network viewing, and browsing through some cookbooks. I was all set with my Mark Bittman-inspired tray-roasted salmon with herb butter & olive oil; my Barefoot Contessa take on broccoli with garlic; my classic steamed sweet corn with butter. I managed to get it all prepped and at least some of it cooked BEFORE picking up the kids from preschool (over my sacred, prized, usually restful lunch hour, since most days, I'm lucky enough to work at home). That way, once I got the kids home, save for popping the fish in the oven, and warming up the rest, there was nothing else to do.
Except make a Plan B.
Seems Thing 1, who normally eats salmon enthusiastically (though mysteriously insists it's chicken no matter how often he's told it's fish) would be pacificied with nothing but mac n' cheese from a box, in the shape of bunnies.
Seems Thing2 refused to nap at preschool, so she fell asleep on the sofa in front of the Disney Channel's HANDY MANNY in the fifteen minutes or so it took me to cook the mac n' cheese and set the table for Thing 1.
Thing 2 wound up eating a decent amount of pasta bunnies, but eating maybe two bites of fish; zero broccoli (though he chows down on garlic broccoli at that mall when it's purchased from Sbarro), and barely gnawed on the corn, despite it being his usual favorite.
Thing 1 had to be transferred to bed, where she promptly slept for something like twelve hours, skipping dinner entirely.
The husband and I did enjoy the meal, so my efforts weren't entirely for naught.
But still: I'd made the food -- rich in fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, and antioxidants -- to nourish my children. Mission NOT accomplished.
It's enough to make a working mom wanna order take-out every night. Or better yet, let 'em loose at Koo Koo Roo. At least then, I wouldn't have to clean up.
In OKLAHOMA, Rodgers and Hammerstein famously wrote a song about how "The Farmer And the Cowman Should Be Friends." I think the same's true of moms who work, and moms who stay at home (who, let's face, work too ... but aren't paid).
I'll often meet a stay-at-home, full-time mom at preschool pick-up or drop-off, or at the moms' club support meetings, etc. We talk a few minutes, maybe start to bond a little over our kids' refusal to let go of our legs when we leave school ... and it comes out: I work, she's a full-time mom. Suddenly it's as if somebody punched a hole in the tire of this potential friendship, and it just went flat.
We both know it'd be hard to plan a playdate or get together for coffee. I'm not free when she's free... and probably vice versa.
Last year I wanted to help out on a charity committee that aids needy moms. Turned out all the committee meetings were on Tuesday mornings at 1o ... right when I have my mandatory weekly staff meeting. All the other moms could make the meeting, so there was no point in asking them to hold it, say, in the evening, when I could ask daddy to put the kids to bed himself.
The thing is, I've seen a kind of obliviousness on both sides: each of us forgets the other has a very different schedule and sometimes different sets of needs. Working moms, for instance, struggle to find substitute caregivers when school is closed but it's not a legal holiday and we can't get the day off. We miss work when we have to take our sick kids to the doctor, then have to make it up at night or on the weekend. I can't speak for the stay-at-homes, but I do know a few. They often get overloaded running the whole household since dad assumes they have the time -- even when they don't because their kids are a handful. They're often watching more than one kid at once, and have the bags under their eyes to show it. Sometimes they feel like they don't have an adult identity: they walk into a party on a rare night out, someone asks what they do, they say they're a full-time mom, and the asker's eyes glaze over. Some of them miss their professional lives even if they're generally happy with their choice. Meanwhile, some of us working moms wish we had more time with our kids, even though we don't want to stop working. (Maybe that's why a popular book about modern motherhood's called THE BITCH IN THE HOUSE. We're all kinda grumpy because it's hard for either type of mom to be totally satisfied.)
Point is, we have more in common than not, even if sometimes our problems are a little different.
A mom's a mom.
I hope some working moms who read this will reach out to stay-at-homes, and vice versa, in a non-judgmental, supportive way. Sometimes we're the kind of moms we are because we don't have a choice; sometimes we have a choice, and we're doing what we think is best for our families. I think it's worth going the extra mile and talking to someone on the other side of the great mom divide.
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