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Welcome to "Threeway," a regular Double X discussion feature in which three contributors dissect politics and culture from distinct points of view. Our first discussion among Hanna Rosin, Stephen Metcalf, and Meghan O'Rourke is about three recent parenting memoirs. This is part 1. Read part 2 here, part 3 here, and part 4 here.
Steve,
Apparently, moms complain and cry a lot. Dads go to the Princess Park and have fun.
I'm not starting this way because you're a man and I'm a woman. I'm starting this way because the gender split in this latest crop of Bad Mommy (and now Daddy) books—Ayelet Waldman's Bad Mother, Dooce-blogger Heather Armstrong's It Sucked and Then I Cried, and Michael Lewis' Home Game—is hard to ignore, at least on the surface. The books are part of the usual wave of parenting books that appear around Mother's Day every year. Waldman's is about the "mother police" who judge her "maternal crimes." Armstrong dives into her post-partum depression. Keeping up with the moms, Lewis dutifully makes a few stabs at exploring his inadequacies as a father. But it's a half-hearted attempt, and he quickly moves on to the fun parts.
You and I both know that parenting has its joys and agonies, etc. So why is it that in the public forum, it's become routine for mothers, in particular, to self-flagellate? And where did the concept of the "mommy police" come from? Historically privileged women complained about many domestic duties, but parenting wasn't really among them; it was just something you did between the honeymoon and retirement. Even when women tuned into their reproductive cycles as a source of oppression, the real enemy was the sexist boss or the condescending male pediatrician. Now it's other women, judging your every move. Does Lewis' book—and Sam Apple's American Parent out later this month—signal that dads are the new moms? That there will be daddy wars soon?
Somehow I don't think so. On the face of it, Lewis and Waldman would seem to have similar lives; both live in the Bay Area and are well-known writers married to famous people. Their experiences as parents, however, feel utterly different. In Home Game, Lewis writes about parenting as one big fabulous adventure. Whisk my daughters to Paris! Bermuda! Now off to the racetrack! Even when things go wrong—Mickey Mouse scares the kids, no one can fall asleep in the tent—the incident is so hilarious in the retelling that it all seems worth it. The judging parents appear in his stories for comic relief, a scowling chorus to his dancing bear. Waldman's life as portrayed in Bad Mother, by contrast, is about as fun as the gulag. She drags herself through boredom, depression, a harrowing abortion. Other mothers harangue her at work, at the store, on the Internet.
Part of this tension clearly has to do with women's confusion about roles. It's uncomfortable to be just a mother and maybe better to be a "bad-mother," which has a connotation of "bad-ass" mother, as Waldman has said in interviews. Waldman describes how her own mother cottoned to Betty Friedan in the '70s and told her not to stay home and raise children. Waldman was a lawyer when her first child was born; her husband took care of their child. This would seem to be an ideal set-up, but she became antsy, jealous of her husband and daughter's blissful domestic routine. She quit her job to join the party, but then soon became bored and miserable. With gender roles shifting so quickly, women have no place to settle—and they can always second-guess their choices.
This all doesn't explain, however, why women have shifted the blame onto other mothers. Friedan asked women to look inside themselves. Waldman points a finger at the mythical "Good Mother," who
Hanna Rosin Double X co- editor, reporter, prefer my friends live.
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Jon Hamm spent most of the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted last night shirtless.
Confessions of a Woman Comedy Writer
Allison Silverman accepts one from New York Women in Film & Television (and tells us why it's rare).
Comments
Flanagan vs Waldman vs Omnibaby
By: Fitzpatrick | Wed, 09/23/2009 - 13:48
On whether having sex makes your husband nice, or being nice gets your husband sex:
If she doesn't want sex, but dutifully goes through with it in order to manipulate her husband into liking her, it won't change the outcome of her marriage much. Either he would have liked her and treated her well anyway, or he wouldn't.
If she uses sex as a reward for emptying the dishwasher, she'll eventually forget, or escalate the amount of chores needed in order to earn that coveted blowjob.
If she claims to want sex, but to be prevented because she has to empty the dishwasher herself, which taxes her to the point of non-interest, well, then she's lying. She doesn't really want sex.
Ultimately, people do what they want to do. Women who don't have sex don't want to have sex. Omnibaby does, so she does.
This is more about adults than kids
By: Katy Read | Mon, 05/18/2009 - 09:01
Kids can drive you nuts, of course -- don't get me started. But they're often delightful. I've had a lot of fun with mine.
The "bummer" part of motherhood, in my view, has little to do with one's actual kids and a lot to do with the rest of society.
Right On.
By: JWWrites | Mon, 05/18/2009 - 00:20
"I still have sex with my husband because I LIKE TO FUCK, not because he does the dishes! Fuck the dishes! I do ALL of the dishes! He's just still sexy and cool!" -Omnibaby
Omnibaby, you rule.
Enjoy motherhood!
By: melinmelin | Sun, 05/17/2009 - 12:17
I agree with Omnibaby. I wrote a longer reply but it disappeared...
Basically, Moms need to chill out and enjoy motherhood for the natural part of Life that it is! And if you have a good husband, cut him some slack and love him lots.
total bummers indeed
By: omnibaby | Sun, 05/17/2009 - 11:26
I was "at home" with my first son for 21 months before returning to school for a year, completing a summer internship, and getting hired on to a stressful full-time management position. I was lucky enough to be able to afford to have my husband stay at home with him the whole time. Then I got pregnant again sometime during training (oops!) and am now newly at home with my 1 month and now 3 1/2 year old sons, planning to take at least a year off again with their Dad back to work. So I've known stay at home moms/dads and working moms/dads, and been on both sides of the fence myself.
And boy, are you right. Moms aren't just guilty, they're miserable. Most of the friends I made on the mom circuit had their second children when I went back to school, and we more or less fell out of each other's lives since our schedules were now completely different. I didn't have the time or energy to do much other than add them as friends on Facebook and hope for the best. Having now "reconnected" with some of them, I've discovered to my dismay that they're not just miserable, they're more miserable than ever, and with pained exasperation ask me "how I'm dealing with two" now. Even their Facebook statuses are often nothing but thinly veiled or "humorous" complaints about how annoying their kids are.
It drives me insane. They spend all day bitching about how overwhelmed they are, how their spouses don't help enough, their mother-in-laws are assholes, and how the richer, better groomed parents at the preschool are like aliens from another planet who will surely judge their every act and word, and isn't that just awful. And those that DON'T complain have become people who will speak of potty training for nearly an hour and not realize how completely ridiculous this is. They pick fights with their kids, over analyze every action and response, and only occasionally seem to genuinely enjoy anything about their kids that's in the moment and not some abstract concept of how ultimately rewarding it is being a parent.
Parenting, whether you're working or at home, has big demands on your time, energy, and sanity. But if you can be even the least bit optimistic, laid back, and focused on enjoying something you supposedly wanted to do, there's really no more of an excuse to be so bored and depressed as a parent as you ever were before.
I've had days where I feel like I want to dump them off on the side of the road. Where it's constant demands from the preschooler on one hand and a gassy, fussy baby on the other and all I want to do is have a nap, or read a book, EAT, or finish my episode of The Sopranos in peace, already. But just like when I was in school and felt like the world was going to end if I didn't finish this paper to absolute perfection, I really feel like that kind of stress is out of control, whacked perspective bullshit. Maybe you don't get to finish this episode, or this email, or even this meal. Maybe you have no friends, and you're lonely as hell. Well, take a fucking walk, let the kids watch TV (there's no WAY I would attempt to parent without TV, just like I would never stop watching movies and TV myself. Just get your kids some cool stuff and yes let them watch Star Wars or Gremlins or something else "horrendously" violent if that's WHAT THEY LIKE!!), crank up some music and fling yourself around (this will go over well with the kids as well), and my personal favourite - live in "filth" if the thought of trying to do housework today makes you want to puke. Just get the fuck over yourselves already. Find ways to ENJOY your children instead of cart them off to every activity you can find and pay for.
What I take from hearing about these books is definitely reflected in my experiences - that Mommy Misery has become if not a badge of honour at least acceptable as "The way it really is". Sorry, I don't want to hate raising my kids. I won't space them too closely together so I can "get it over with already". I think it's time someone wrote a book saying I'm A Parent, I Enjoy It, and It Wasn't A Feat of Spiritual Mastery to Do So. And it should include this footnote: I still have sex with my husband because I LIKE TO FUCK, not because he does the dishes! Fuck the dishes! I do ALL of the dishes! He's just still sexy and cool!
Thank God for the few laid back, cool Moms and Dads I know. They all have lots to talk about other than their kids, but love their children more than anything else...and actually enjoy them because of it. Makes sense, doesn't it?
No wonder moms are a bummer ...
By: Katy Read | Sat, 05/16/2009 - 19:34
... Or that they exaggerate trivial transgressions (TV on weekends! Margaritas!) to brand themselves rebels.
Women can skate along for years being treated more or less the same as our male counterparts, until we become parents. Suddenly, the modern (yes, educated and middle-class or higher) woman is bombarded with social messages about what she “should” be doing – that is, things that men are not expected to do and that are often at odds with the professional skills she has spent years cultivating.
Seldom do these messages come directly from other women, but they’re ubiquitous in popular culture. The perfect mom, rare in real life, lives on in TV commercials, where she obsesses over soft drinks, cough syrup, minivans, paper towels, convenience foods, clothing stains. (Dads in commercials are amiable bumblers, pitching in occasionally but mostly “looking out for Numero Uno.”) Not gritty realism, but commercials do reflect viewers’ assumptions in a funhouse-mirror way. Idealized images of motherhood also fill “parenting” manuals and magazines (gender neutral, sure, but who are they kidding?), platitudinous mass emails, newspaper op-eds, vaguely threatening posters on the walls at the daycare center.
Careers are important and all, but as we know from female celebrity profiles, the responsibilities of motherhood occupy a vastly higher plane. The child’s needs are presumed so paramount that mothers feel obliged to justify even their gym workouts by claiming their own fitness ultimately benefits their children.
Meanwhile our self-help books and classic novels would have us believe that children are the direct products of their parents’ efforts – or mistakes. Research on separated twins and adoptive families has churned out evidence to the contrary, but those findings go ignored or disbelieved. A century ago, parents could high five each other if their children made it to adulthood; now, with survival usually assured, parents are expected to tweak and fiddle.
So there stands the mother, assuming her every move will affect her kids’ long-term fates, knowing that the experts keep hammering the toxic effects of TV on young children -- and sure enough, the little cupcakes do get suspiciously rowdy at times -- and yet she would like to get dinner started or maybe even – evil, evil – flip through a magazine, and she holds in her hands her passport to an hour and a half of peace and freedom: a Disney DVD … What’s she gonna do?
Ooh, bad mommy.
My experience so far sans children
By: JWWrites | Fri, 05/15/2009 - 15:34
As has been said with more direct experience than I am capable of, many women of color have had to juggle "work/home" issues for a long time, yet I encounter far too few of their perspectives. Mostly, it seems like the kinds of books discussed above are written by white women from New York, with enough time and money to be able to worry. Meghan's comment about parents being both older now and more educated about "what can go wrong" really hits the nail on the head in my opinion.
I am sure when I look down into the face of my someday(?) born child, even though I will be lacking the massive, only released in such quantities through vaginal delivery, oxytocin hit, I will feel love and I will feel that child's mortality. Protecting that child will become my number one goal(how's that for gendered), even as the testosterone that most likely helped attract the mother of my child and would be of use in said defense, declines. Even so, I have few worries that I will do my best by that future spawn o' mine, while also doing dishes and other bits as necessary to keep the orgasms flowing.
If I have learned anything from watching the marriages/relationships that imploded and the ones that continue to go the distance, it is: 1) Orgasms matter *more* the older the relationship is. 2) Professional women take on a *huge* amount of work when they decide to become mothers at the same time. If I want a wife as well as a mother for my kids, doing my fair share of housework will be as necessary as actually delivering on my promises of massage. For better or worse, just bringing home the bacon does not cut it anymore.
I have been thinking about
By: zelda | Fri, 05/15/2009 - 13:37
I have been thinking about all of this a lot this week, becase I posted the article about mothers not putting their pictures on facebook on my facebook page, and was fascinated by the widely varying responses I received.
Here's what I've come up with -- the great "they" in society just refuses to let mothers off the hook. Moms who work feel inadequate because "they" make them feel as though they are not devoting enough time and energy to their children. Conversely, working Dad feel no such pressure.
Mothers who totally devote themselves to their children are ridiculed for having no life of their own. And, may, in fact, feel some level of boredom at times. Again, Dads who are very attached are great Dads.
And while Moms feel pressure from all sides closing in, they also still, I believe, shoulder the majority of the child-rearing duties, regardless of whether they work outside the home.
So Mom has to keep up with uniforms, calendars, registrations, homework, field trips, playdates, costumes, sports gear, clothes, shoes, haircuts, doctor's appointments, and the myriad of enrichment activities, while Dad is more than happy to show up and help out as needed, but he's not necessarily bearing the full responsibility of keeping up with all of the details. (I know I'm overgeneralizing here, and I'm sure there are many households where Dads do all or some of these things, but I do believe that in a majority of houses the Mom still handles the dominant parenting role -- and it might be because she wants to).
So Dad swoops in for the big ballgame, or vacation or campout, but Mom has spent countless hours organizing the details to make the event possible, and, therefore, for her, the "payoff" (am I channeling Dr. Phil - say it isn't so!) isn't as big.
And, ultimately, feeling as though you are not doing that "they" think you should be doing...no matter which choices you make, is obviously very draining, and could be the reason that many mothers have started depicting motherhood as more work and less play. It's a shame.