Drunk on Not Working
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Here’s one other take on Katie Roiphe’s addiction to her newborn: In addition to the mistake of assuming that all or most “feminists” think X, I think Roiphe has fallen prey to the error of conflating what happens when a woman stops working with the magical experience of having a baby. Which is just to say that the professional experience she’s describing here—of fearing the return to work, of the soggy cognitive skills, of cutting short professional commitments, and of her complete lack of enthusiasm for the impending return to “the great world where people talk and think and write” is precisely what I experienced on my own maternity leaves. But it’s also what I’ve just experienced in the days after my recent vacation to Israel.
Whether you take time off to have a baby, to undergo surgery, or to remodel your house, the act of dropping out of the work world for a while has very real consequences; chief among them being that you just stop caring about work so much. I can look at my own muzzy-headed disinclination to rejoin the world of Big Ideas this week as a consequence of “falling in love”—with the sunsets over Jerusalem; with my family there; with the experience of again caring, full-time, for my sons for a few weeks. And all those things really did happen. But what also happened is what happens to every woman to takes a time-out from a consuming career: perspective. Suddenly the deadlines and the bylines don’t feel all that important. And as mothers we have to learn somehow to toggle back and forth between thinking that work is the only thing that matters, and believing our babies are the only things that matter. On a good day, that only happens about 13 times per hour.
At the risk of suggesting that “feminism” means X, I always thought it meant balancing and juggling a life that may seem to have shrunk down to the size of a onesie, but which is actually much bigger than the life we knew before.
Photograph by Getty Images.
Dahlia Lithwick Slate contributor, mom, wife, currently drinking coffee
Comments
Drunk on not working
By: beachgirl61 | Mon, 11/30/2009 - 09:17
Well, personally, I think the answer is simple and it's found in the Bible in Ecclesiates and sung by the Byrds: "To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens." Seasons don't have to be justified or have apologia written for them. They just happen and we should all just live in those moments...feminist or otherwise. If someone else has a problem with it, oh well...
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By: Diana Landen | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 18:57
@sligon - I find I both agree and disagree with you profoundly. Your description of how you felt staying home with your baby mirrors many other women's - it's not as awful a job as they were led to believe and work suddenly seems less important. Together with the natural desire to be the one caring for your child, this is why many women end up changing careers to full-time child-rearing.
I disagree profoundly when you turn around and suggest that women with high-powered careers who become at-home moms are just doing it because they discovered that work wasn't so satisfying. That is only part of the reason, as you seem to have experienced yourself.
I wonder if you are wishing you could stay home and your conflicted desires lead you to put down women who do stay home. The truth is that if you want to be home with your kids, it is good for them. Women working when they don't want to, is not good for kids.
Further, for many families, it is not as simple as they are rich, they can afford to stay home. Many families make significant financial sacrifices so that they can be their children's primary caregivers. Other families find that the financial for the family as a whole are not as large as they had thought when both parents work.
So, if you truly want to stay home with your child, consider it seriously. You may be able to do it. Figure out what is your own inner leading and follow it either way.
This is why Roiphe says feminists downplay baby love
By: Diana Landen | Thu, 09/03/2009 - 17:12
Why deny Roiphe's feelings about her baby? Roiphe has written a beautiful, real account of what it's like to be with your newborn. She doesn't want to be apart from her baby. She adores her baby. She is sleep-deprived and slightly brain dead. She knows there is more to the world, but right now, just for the moment, she doesn't care.
Why minimize it by comparing it to the feelings after a vacation? Why can't she just want to be with her baby? Why point out that she should care about work, too? This is the kind of knee-jerk reaction that makes Roiphe say feminists downplay baby love.
Women wanting to spend time with their babies should not be seen as a threat to feminism. Instead feminism should work to support women's desire to be with their babies, whether the mothers want to take a short maternity leave or leave the workforce to raise children.
Hardly an Intoxication Limited to Women
By: santoast | Fri, 08/28/2009 - 06:01
I've just completed a software development cycle that saw me put in several 70 hour weeks. Much of this was spent in fierce concentration, trying to crank out code, but it was also punctuated by outbursts of crappy office politics and petty frustrations. Not fun.
Today, I'm letting that all fall away as I putter about doing chores in preparation for ten days in Italy with my wife. If past vacations are any indication, I will be drunk on not working (as well as other things) in pretty short order.
Point being, there's nothing about the singular joy of dropping out of work life that is especially related to being a woman.
Unemployment, too
By: once | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 21:37
This sounds like what a lot of people experience after being laid off (in the absence of serious financial problems/the presence of a generous severance package): first you enjoy the break, the change of pace, the opportunity to do things that you were too busy for, and you enjoy yourself.
Then someone calls for an interview, and you wonder whether you can remember how to do all the stuff that you did for years, every work day.
You've hit the nail on the head
By: sligon | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 15:47
Having recently returned to work after my own maternity leave, I agree with you completely. Although spending three months at home with my new son was an unparalleled joy, almost as much fun was the fact that I wasn't working for the first time in my adult life. This surprised me because I've worked very hard to get to my present professional level and I love my job -- or I thought I did. But the perspective I gained by being out of the workforce for three months was that I could enjoy staying home with my son just as much -- even more. Although I'm back at work now, I'm sorely tempted to become a stay-at-home mother, not just because I find caring for my son so rewarding, but because I suddenly find my job a lot less rewarding -- and find having to balance the two utterly impossible.
The discussion of Riophe's article reminds me a lot of the curfuffle over the "Opt-Out Generation" article than ran in the Times a few years back. Everyone was amazed that all these well-educated women wanted to give up promising careers to stay home and take care of the kids, and people assumed -- the mothers themselves assumed -- that it was because they just loved being a mommy. But I remember one commentator saying that perhaps it was just that they women hadn't found the work world as rewarding as they expected to be, so they opted out because they could afford to and society would tolerate -- even applaud -- their decision if it was to "take care of the kids" (and not just because they just didn't like work anymore). As my husband reminds me again and again every time I suggest I stay home with our son because I think it would be more fulfilling: "Do you think anyone finds their day job fulfilling?"