New Musings

I took an unannounced and unplanned vacation from my blog. I got to a point where I realized that I had run the gamut on discussing feminism and I was not sure what my next steps should be. Instead of meandering about, I just stopped writing. While it was good of me to spare you the meandering, it is not good to stop writing. So, I am back and this is what I have planned for the Momma Musing blog.  

First, I hope to reach more people and elicit more comments. Second, I am not going to worry so much about a theme and just write about issues I think that moms should be musing about or at least thinking about once in a great while.

My big focus lately is a rebirth of my environmentalism. My career has been spent on promoting scientific research related to climate change, and I feel that I have an obligation to ensure that my household is environmentally responsible. I am at a point where I think that I need to do more than teach my almost four-year old that SUVs are bad, although it is funny to have her ask me which cars are the bad SUVs as we make are way to a museum or the grocery store.

Therefore, please be prepared to see some tidbits on improving the environment and statements intended to make you feel guilty about how much you are contributing to global warming. For my part, right now I am planning an Earth-focused birthday party for my daughter. She loves flowers, plants, etc. so we will do an art project on with the spring-time theme, and in the goodie bags the tikes will find color pages on Earth Day (April 22) and how to make their households more environmentally friendly. I am either going to be congratulated by the parents or they will make snide comments and never invite my dear daughter to a play date again. I hope they spare her the social banishment, and instead embrace the small steps once can take to improve our environment by using less energy and water, for starters. 

 Here’s to more blogging…….

Personal philosophy and mothering

What is your personal philosophy on life? According to Judith Warner, it has great bearing on your mothering style.

Warner notes, “Race, geographic location, self-identification as a working mother or stay-at-home mother–none of this made a real difference in the attitudes and mothering styles of the women I interviewed. What mattered was a personal philosophy.” Women who “stepped outside of the parenting pressure cooker” were happier and enjoyed a better quality of life.

My philosophy on life has changed significantly in the last six months. I don’t think I have ever found myself too wrapped up in the “parenting pressure cooker,” but when I worked full time with two young children, I found trying to give 100% to each enough to make me implode. Thankfully, I stopped this craziness after just 3 months and avoided a nasty mess. I doubt my kids even remember the insanity of September through December, although my husband and I have now just recovered from it. While I enjoyed the content of the work, the stress of getting children to child care and dealing with the office politics of being a working mother who might have to leave early to care for a sick chiild was just too much and extremely unfulfilling.

My philosophy is now less geared at career success, which I focused so much of my energy before kids. Now I want to spend a lot of quality time with my kids and success is focused primarily on raising well-adjusted, happy and healthy children who grow up to be fulfilled adults. While I fear that I would lose myself if I did not have an intellectual outlet while being a stay-at-home mom, and I do really need to find some part-time freelance or consulting work in the near future, I do not need to keep climbing the ladder at the rate one does without children. I just want to contribute and make a difference, although now at a smaller scale. Once I came to this realization, I found it so liberating. Now when I am in the car dropping my preschooler off, meeting a friend for coffee, or doing errands, etc., I think how great it is that I am not rushing into the office for another day of torture and abuse (This was my last job and hopefully not the norm for jobs out there for working moms.).

So, here is to figuring out our own philosophy on life and making it work!

“Perfect Madness”–from equality to a decent quality of life

I just finished reading Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, and it really helped me to rethink the mothering/working balance issue. I had an epiphany after finishing it, and I really urge mothers to read it. I now feel that I can re-frame how I look at my life now as a stay-at-home mom who wants to find some fulfilling part-time work that she can mainly do from home. I might not agree with everything that Warner says about today’s state of motherhood, but I think that she provides an extremely thoughtful account of challenges we face today and puts them into historical context and relates them to the trajectory of feminism in the United States.

Warner lived in France when she gave birth to her two daughters, and she could not relate to the issues her friends in the US were facing. She did not feel their anxiety and angst. The French government provided support for a nanny, her elder daughter’s preschool, and she had more time for herself to work, go to the gym and go out to dinner with her husband. When she visited her French pediatrician and voiced her concerns about returning to work outside of the home, he said to her, “Listen. You don’t have this child for a couple of months. You’ll have her for the rest of your life. You have to have a live of your own. Because if you are happy, she’ll be happy. If you’re fine, she’ll be fine.” Warner said that these words helped her immensely and she shared them with her American friends. I think it is a mantra that all mothers should follow. My daughter’s first pediatrician said something similar to me when I was having great difficulty breastfeeding and faced the decision of switching to formula. She was right. Once I made the switch, I was a happier and a better new mommy. 

Warner’s American friends were warning her when she was pregnant with her first child that she would not be able to continue her career. She heard that a friend spent all of her after-tax salary on child care, and another felt guilt about working after spending years in medical school training to be a psychiatrist. I am sure that we could all add a story here.

She then returned to the US because she wanted her daughters to grow up and attend school in the US. She was shocked how quickly she fell into the anxiety-ridden world of being an American mother. She found herself a stay-at-home mom for the first time because she did not yet have any child care, and she spend a lot of time at the playground. There she met very interesting women who were basically miserable–lost interest in sex with their husbands, husbands lost interest in sex with them, obsessed with the politics of play dates, drained from acting as chauffeur constantly, etc. I am sure she must have also met some basically content women because I have logged in countless hours at the playground and there are some happier stories out there, but I take the point that we all have our issues.

This experience reminded Warner of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (It is not just me!). Warner contrasted the 1960s reality of few choices for women other than being a wife and mother to our generation of women who do have choices. Our problem is that we suffer from the mommy mystique. Warner noted that working moms are “stressed near the breaking point” and stay-at-home moms are suffering from “soul-draining perfectionism.”

Warner also made the point that she tried to write the book from the perspective of the middle class. However, she noted that it is difficult to do this when the upper middle class influences our society disproportionately–the effect being that many of us are striving to have the luxuries and lifestyle that we often cannot afford–yet another pressure. We also fear that if our children do not have everything that everyone else has and absolutely every class and activity, then they will not be “winners.”

Prior to writing Perfect Madness, Warner came to the following conclusion while writing an article for the Washington Post, “It is time, I suggested, to shift the focuse of our political debates away from parachial notions of equality and concentrate more on working to guarantee us all–men, women, and children alike–a decent quality of life.”  

This is the context from which she wrote Perfect Madness. Check here for more musings on Warner’s findings and insights.

“Mean Girls” and feminism for our daughters

Last night I watched Mean Girls (2004 movie featuring Lindsay Lohan,Tina Fey and Rachel McAdams). I have wanted see it for awhile, and it did not disappoint. Although my almost four-year old daughter is far from high school/teen years, I am going to buy this movie and watch it with her the summer before she enters 9th grade (or sooner given how fast kids grow up these days). 

Mean Girls is horribly stereotypical, but it provides a great road map for high school and how to survive it, sort of. When Janis (social outcast, goth girl) gave Cady (new girl, home-schooled in Africa and unaware of American high school ways) a map of the lunch room, I laughed out loud. Wouldn’t it be great to have such inside information to maneuver through the black whole that is high school social hierarchy? However, I am sure that this alone is not enough to help young women sail through high school unscathed.

The lesson that I would like my daughter to take from the movie is that you should stay true to yourself. She can be part of a group, if that makes her happy, but I do not want her to be afraid of being who she is and doing things that interest her. In Mean Girls, Cady, a bright math student, runs from the math club (social suicide) and gets failing grades to get the cute guy. She eventually comes to her senses after a scandal and makes it up to everyone. I do not want to give any more information in case you have not seen it yet. 

I want my daughter to enjoy dating, but I do not want her to think that boys are the most important aspect of being a teenager. I think my strong-willed daughter will just do just fine, but I will have this movie, just in case.

So, today’s comment on feminism is be true to yourself and do not play dumb to get the guy!

Read The Feminine Mystique

Read The Feminine Mystique. Although I was quite happy to finally finish reading it, it is an important book to read. The start of the feminist revolution in the 1960s, like so many other historical events, helps us to better understand issues women face today. For that reason, I urge you to borrow it from your library, your mother, friend, or buy it–it is a good book to have on the shelf.

What I have learned in great detail…….There has been significant change for women since the 1950s and 1960. We have more choices, access to better education and to most career paths, and more equal salaries. We are more likely to share equally with our spouses childcare and housework and to have more fulfilling marriages and a better overall quality of life. This is not to say that we are not challenged by today’s cultural and social norms, but more on that later.

For those who read The Feminine Mystique, you are rewarded in chapter 14 because Betty Friedan ends her epic social commentary on a positive note by providing “A New Life Plan for Women.” She begins by noting,

“Once she begins to see through the delusions of the feminine mystique–and realizes that neither her husband nor her children, nor the things in her house, nor sex, nor being like all the other women, can give her a self–she often finds the solution much easier than she anticipated.”

Friedan interviewed many women who were finding their own way–doing creative work that gave their lives more meaning, and they found that they were enjoying their families more and being better mothers and wives. However, Friedan cautioned that women simply finding time to get a break from their daily duties were not on the path to fulfillment.

“Women who do not look for jobs equal to their actual capacity, who do not let themselves develop the lifetime interests and goals which require serious education and training, who take a job at twenty or forty to “help out at home” or just to kill extra time, are walking, amost surely as the ones who stay inside the housewife trap, to a nonexistent future.”

I really related to this. I think that as women today take time off from work to care for our children, we need to remember that when we want to dive back into our careers we are doing something that fulfills us–not just taking a position to pass the time. I think that for some women it is also an opportunity to try something new.

Friedan also pointed out that education is key to getting out of the trap of the feminine mystique. Women at the time embraced education and did so without encouragement from society. She also called for more flexibility in classes and degree programs for women, most of whom could not commit to full-time study. At least we have made gains here, but the cost is still quite prohibitive and while childcare is available, its cost is high as well. Friedan proposed something similar to the GI bill for women who wanted to continue their education. On the education front, advancement is a mixed bag. I think for most women it would still be quite difficult to return to school after having children and manage to pay for the degree program and meet childcare expenses.

I think women and especially mothers in their 30s and 40s should read The Feminine Mystique, if you have not already. As a mom struggling to figure out the mothering/working balance, I have found it helpful. As it is important to know our history to better understand today’s world, I think we are remiss if we do not educate ourselves in women’s history.

Finally finished reading The Feminine Mystique!

Last night I finally finished The Feminine Mystique, and I am working on a thoughtful post on the importance of reading this book. (look for it in the next day or two). There were few chapters that I really enjoyed, but Friedan’s final chapter, “A New Life Plan for Women” was exceptional and worth the wait. Although the new life plan was for women of the 1960s, many aspects of Friedan’s plan resonated with me. More on this in my next post.

I want to just quickly share two intesting insights from two different women from this patweek. First, a mommy friend said during a play date that she did not give up her career to clean the house and do laundry. She did it to spend time with her kids.  We are choosing to slow down our career track or jump of for awhile to spend some time with our young children. Bravo! This is progress, as long as we are happy doing so. The catch is how do women jump back into work in a meaningful and lucrative way when they want to need to do so.

The other comment was from a friend who reminded me that The Feminine Mystique was such a groundbreaking book because Betty Friedan was the first to really identify and label the inequality women still  faced in the 1950s and how miserable many of them were because of it. Friedan filled a vacuum and started a movement that I think women today benefit from. For this reason, I urge you to read it.  

Beyond the happy housewife in 2007

Imagine the 1950s image of the housewife–happily cleaning the house all day, making dinner for her family, greeting her husband with a smile and a drink at the end of the day. Betty Friedan went in search of the happy, fulfilled housewife and could not find her.

In her research, Friedan found that women who did not work outside of the home and whose children were school-aged, often could not complete their weekly housework. While women who worked outside of the home or filled their spare time with community work that required some intellectual exercise were able to complete their household chores. She found that there was an inverse relationship between the time a woman requires to do housework and the challenges of other work she must do. Friedan’s explanation for this is part of the feminine mystique–society was glorifying women as housewives at a time in history when they were finding new opportunities in education and work outside of the home. Unfortunately, those woman who filled most of their time with housework, were the unhappiest and most dissatisfied with their lives. Friedan recounts the challenges of depression, alcoholism, and suicide faced by such woman.

Thankfully, there has been progress on this front for women. While we still face many challenges, figuring out how to fill our days with housework is not a big one. I do not know of anyone, woman or man, who enjoys housework. While, I do know many people who enjoy cooking or gardening, it is hard to imagine most of us relishing the thought of washing dishes or cleaning the bathroom. We either just do it and get if over with, or we pay someone to do it for us. It saddens me that some women of that era were faced with such a dismal choice.

Also, interestingly, Friedan discusses what she calls the “Sexual Sell.” She claims that the increase of the feminine mystique and housewifery are due in part to the fact that woman were the main consumers of business, and business figured out that companies would sell more products if most women remained housewives. This makes sense. I think most of us realize that advertisers work very hard to convince us of all the things we must have to lead a happy life, and the same principle was applied to women to buy products to make caring for the home more enjoyable.

What struck me most with this is how the media and advertisers continue today to dictate the image of what a real woman is. In a sense, things are worse because women, who come in all shapes, sizes and colors, are made to think that the skinny, flawless women of the magazines and runways are the feminine ideal. As a mother of a daughter, I am thankful that for now I can more easily ensure that she builds a healthy image of a woman, but I worry that as she gets older she will reject what makes her so special.

These last couple of chapters of The Feminine Mystique did not provide answers on how to make the working/mothering balance work, but I think it is safe to say that many women today have far more choices than their counterparts in 1950s. I am glad I could reflect on the 1950s housewife and her ordeals and see that some progress has and still can be made.

The end of the 30+/50+ motherhood divide

Given comments on my blog and personal email I have received as well as the evolution of my own thinking, I have decided to put to rest the 30+/50+ motherhood divide discussion. I was quite upset by my last work experience because it was an unjust and unfortunate situation. In trying to make some sense out of it, I came up with a theory that 50 + mothers, like my former boss, were just horrible for looking down on 30+ mothers for wanting to spend more time with their children and not be so work/career crazed. I felt like I was not living up to what I perceived as the 50+ notion of being able to have it all and was appalled that another mother could be so unsympathetic to my struggle to balance work and family responsibilities.  

This generational divide is really a tangential aspect of the real issue, which I see as needing flexibility and support in order to both work and also care for one’s family. I now realize that is is as tangential as focusing on the stay-at-home mom vs. working mom issue–it just does not advance the needs of women today.

Case closed.

Although I am closing my discussion on the generational divide for now, I would like to reflect on some of the comments I have received.

Some comments emphasized that one should not generalize and especially about families–they are all so different. Having my former boss represent 50+ mothers was not a wise choice. I know and now understand better that so many women of that generation found fulfilling jobs, married, raised a family, and felt mostly in balance. How did you do it?

There are also particular issues faced my single mothers, lower-income mothers, mothers with disabilities, among others. Do these women even have the luxury of trying to achieve balance?

This all leads to Meg’s comment that a major cultural shift is needed in the United States. I agree.  She noted that in Ireland women receive six months months of maternity leave, automatic child benefits payments to all families, and payments to cover some childcare. In addition to these benefits, I also agree with Jung that we need more meaningful part-time positions. There are so many talented women out there who would love to work part-time but simply cannot handle taking on a full-time job with young children. Who is losing out here? It is not just these mothers.   

What I want to focus on is how we can change things now so that mothers (teens, 20+, 30+, 40+, 50+….) have the support they need to chose to work or not to work and to care for their families. Political action such as that being done by MomsRising and others and discussions in blogs such as this one should help to make some progress for today’s mothers.

I look forward to many more interesting discussions!

Feminism, education, and more on the 30+/50+ motherhood divide

Momma Muse 

I am now completely enthralled by The Feminine Mystique, although it did take getting to chapter seven, “The Sex-Directed Educators.” Friedan’s recounting of college education for women in the 1950s was like reading something from another planet, not something that happened just 57 years or so ago. I do remember hearing in college that some women wanted to get their Mrs. degree. While I thought it was silly, I did not take it seriously. However, Friedan writes of a time when leading women’s colleges were basically educating women to be housewives. After high school, the next step for most middle- to upper-class women was getting a college education, the type of education some received or thought they should received is what horrified me.

Friedan notes that more women American women were going to college, but fewer were leaving college to become “physicists, philosophers, poets, doctors, lawyers, stateswomen, social pioneers, even college professors.” She goes on to say that “In the 1950s, those who stayed [in college], even the most able, showed no signs of wanting to be anything more than suburban housewives and mothers.” From as early as freshman year, women were focused on obtaining an engagement ring and not a college degree.  Things got so bad that college presidents and professors (male, of course) began leaving women’s colleges and some even closed.

Friedan refers to a Mellon Foundation study of Vassar girls in 1956, so she is using hard data, and she also does many interviews. I won’t get into to much detail (too depressing) but the report said, “Vassar girls, by and large, do not expect to achieve fame, make an enduring contribution to society, pioneer any frontiers, or otherwise create ripples in the placid order of things….” If you saw the movie, Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts, Kristen Dunst and Julia Stiles about college women in 1953 at Wellesley College, you get a gist of what college life was like back then.

Friedan says of the new sex-directed education of the 1950s, ”educators were guilty of defeminizing American women, of dooming them to frustration as housewives and mothers, or to celibate careers, to life without orgasm.” If women were smart, studied, excelled and pursued careers, they were being told that they could not also succeed as wives and mothers and basically would never have sex. A bit of humor in this sick state of affairs is that back then women were being trained at the college level to embrace sex (of course, in the context of marriage), and today educators and parents seem to do everything possible to keep teens and young adults from marrying young and having children–oh, the irony.

I say irony, and Friedan remarks on how strange it is that there is such a focus on education of woman in sexual terms and not so for boys. Boys at the time were expected to “be acknowledged as persons with recognized achievements and potentials.” I cannot even imagine making such a distinction for my daughter and son–thankfully!

Reading about sex-directed education of women gives me a better understanding of the differences between 30+ and 50+ mothers. The 50+ mothers are the daughters of the women Friedan writes about. One can only assume that many 50+ mothers of today must have reacted to seeing their mothers waste their education, if they were lucky enough to get one, and to live a quite unfulfilling life beyond mothering and being someone’s wife. No wonder the 50+ set is not too sympathetic to 30+ mothers who are trying to find more balance in their lives. I guess the trick it to achieve balance and not revert back to the 1950s.

While I am confident that American society will not embrace sex-direced education of the 1950s, I am amazed that women are still faced with the balance issue. After all of these years, why hasn’t the corporate world caught up? I am hopeful that groups like MomsRising will have an impact on changing legislation and the culture we work in today.  

More on fashion and feminism

by Momma Muse

Last night I indulged myself and relaxed and read most of the NY Times Style Magazine (Feb. 25, 2007). I happily found a great article by Ingrid Sischy, Editor in Chief of Interview, on “Will Feminism’s Fourth Wave Begin on the Runway?” Given my last post, I thought it was worth mentioning it here.

Ms. Sischy is horrified by a Milan fashion show because the clothes could just be described as “bimbo.” She noted that a male colleague asked, “What happened to feminism?” She then decided to categorize the remaining fashion shows in Milan and Paris as clothes that objectified woman and those that “take us into the future with a view of women that reflected self-possession.” She found that it was a mixed bag. She also agreed with Miuccia Prada that no one is talking about feminism.

The good news is that Ms. Sischy says that the art world is talking about feminism and clarifies that new perspectives start in the art world. Who knew? At least this brings some good news to those of us spending a lot of time thinking about feminism. Sischy also mentions that few feminist writers from previous waves discussed fashion and those that did were against pandering to the fashion industry and seeing women killing themselves in high heels. As to be expected, Sischy relays the fact that she knows many “liberated” women who embrace their torturing high heels.

Ms. Sischy concludes by discussing the debate within the fashion industry regarding skinny models, especially given the recent deaths of two South American models, both suffering from anorexia. She is horrified that one of the responses to the problem was for models to have weigh-ins, like boxers. While Sischy recognizes the severity of the issue for the fashion world, she uses this example to highlight the fact that a women’s body cannot be dictated by laws–it is ours to control.

It is refreshing to see this discussions of feminism. Hopefully, it and others will also help us figure out the mothering/working balance as well.