I'm about 1/3 through reading The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts. It's about the dangers of giving up a career to raise children. Although I've always wanted to be a stay-at-home parent while my children are young, now that the prospect is on the horizon, I'm rethinking that long and hard. It seems worth considering what Bennetts has to say while I still can. Below are a few ideas that have particularly struck me.

"My husband makes plenty of money, but he also has a very demanding job. [His] job is extremely stressful, and there are times when I'm complaining about a problem with the kids and he says, 'Don't bother me with this. You don't know what I had to deal with today!' And there are times when I feel angry about that, but the reality is that I have a lot more time than he does." - Susan Yardley*, pgs. 29-30.

 

I can already see this taking hold with Ivan and me, mainly because I have a more flexible work schedule than he does. Because I have more flexible time, I end up doing most of the repetitive housekeeping tasks -- dishes, laundry, meals. There's so much I want to do that I hardly ever feel like I have "a lot" of time, but I feel somewhat guilty when I know I have more freedom with it than he does. I keep that in mind if resentment creeps in. But resentment remains that the housework I do remains totally unaccounted for -- no pay, and little if any acknowledgment. I don't want to see this gap get much wider, especially if it means my husband is too stressed by work to listen to what I have to say.

"To the extent that there are women who are opting out, they are married to men earning over two-hundred thousand dollars a year and working ninety hours a week. High-income men are married to their jobs, not their families." - Barbara Risman, pg. 36

This also seems worth bearing in mind; I can imagine the pressure of being the sole earner in a household must be immense, and I don't want to live a life where I never see my husband and my children never see their father just so that I can be home full-time. It seems better for both of us to work, but to strive for flexible jobs that would also let us both pick up responsibilities at home. This probably means a simple lifestyle, but that's something we're both already comfortable with -- and it's far preferable than a division of labor that makes one spouse absent except for his financial contribution.

"[T]here are frustrations and obstacles in any career, and when men hit roadblocks, they figure out ways to get around them. For women, however, having children provides the perfect excuse to give up. When full-time mothers discuss their own work histories in greater depth, frustration and disillusionment emerge again and again. Instead of finding more meaningful work, or more flexible work, or figuring out new strategies to overcome barriers, they decided to exit the arena entirely." - pg. 45

This reminds me a lot of the experiences I read about in The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars by Miriam Peskowitz. It also calls to mind Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Friedan talks about how many women resorted to marrying and becoming housewives right after graduation so they wouldn't have to face the stress and uncertainty of deciding what to do with their lives next. It sounds like women are still using stay-at-home motherhood as a "fallback plan" to avoid making those tough choices. At times, I've felt stressed over finding a work-life balance that I love as I'm on the edge of considering children and the havoc that will wreak with all that. I even imagine that it would be "easier" to make the decision to have children if I was doing work that I didn't like. But reading this, I realize that I am very fortunate to know I like my work, and that I should find a way to hold onto it no matter what. I don't want having a family to become an "excuse" to leave the workforce; there are many "wrong" reasons to have children, and that certainly seems one of them. So while it may be more difficult initially to continue to work with small children, it seems a better long-term investment, not just for our finances, but for my mental health.

"[The view that she was in a support role] was encouraged by her husband, even as [Donna] Chatsworth wrote and published five books. 'He referred to them as "your little books,"' she recalls. 'He also wrote books, so there was some competition around those issues; he always pointed out that my books never made the bestseller list, but his books didn't either.'" - pg. 73

This makes me so incredibly mad. Men who treat their wives this way really don't deserve to have wives. I don't think the "luxury" of staying home with children and/or doing work that you enjoy is worth the daily humiliation of living with a man who doesn't respect what you do, paid or not. It also makes me incredibly grateful for a husband who doesn't say sh*t like this.

"Being a mom is a tempt job, and if you take that temp job and become completely dependent on your spouse, that makes you so vulnerable." - Sylvia Law, pg. 100

I was glad to see this put into words someplace outside my own psyche. Although the decision to have children will impact your life forever, and although you will be a parent forever no matter what happens, childhood itself is actually very short -- the time when children are wholly dependent on adult care even shorter. Some people stay in the same job for 50 years, while parenting dependent children lasts 18 years per child at most, and most people would argue that active parenting at least scales back to "part-time" once children are in school. This is one of the things that makes me want to give as much as I can while my kids are small, since it won't last long -- but it also strengthens my resolution to do at least some work during that time. Parenting young children and working for pay doubtless requires a lot of effort, time, and energy, but that phase doesn't last forever. That's also one of the things that makes having children seem doable to me -- the fact that, someday, they'll grow up, and my own interests and work will remain. That's encouraging rather than depressing to me, and I think more women need to remember this big picture context. Kids might be an easy and acceptable "out" of the work world for a time, but they're not kids forever, or even very long. Deciding what comes next seems a lot more doable if you learned what you want and who you are before the little ones come along.

This week's A Year in the Life prompt asked me to reflect upon an admonition I remember hearing in my life.

From my mom:

"Don't open the door for or go with anyone except Grandma, Amy, or Susan--even if they say I'm hurt or dead."

This is the admonition I remember most vividly from my life, perhaps because I heard it so many times. I particularly remember Mom saying it before she left us home alone, or before she left us in the car while she ran into the store to grab something. I have an image of being in the old Buick, that red upholstery, in the Hy-Vee parking lot.

It's not at all unusual that my mom warned us about "stranger danger"--what strikes me is the specificity of it. Her list of who we were "allowed" to trust was very, very short, and says something about who she most trusted in the world outside our immediate family. It also implies that she had some sort of plan--if there ever was an emergency and she couldn't come to us, she would send her mother or one of her sisters. They were the only person in the world she would trust with her children--and by association, these were the people I was instructed to trust. When I remember my early childhood, I remember the blessing of knowing these trusted adults existed, that there were people besides our parents who loved us and would look after us. Grandma's and Amy's phone numbers were taped next to the phone, and Grandma's was the first phone number I ever memorized. I still remember it. We used them, too--in particular, I remember calling Amy once when Jessica and I had a fight and sprayed perfume in each other's eyes--she came over to take a look even though I think the damage was pretty mitigated by tears by the time she arrived. But what mattered was that she did arrive.

I can't even count all the times Grandma came to the rescue, especially after Mom started working outside the home. She drove us to school the many times we missed the bus and never told on us to our mom. And she picked me up from school on an almost monthly basis when my cramps were too bad for me to stay.

In the time before cell phones, these networks were our fall-back plans. We couldn't get a hold of Mom when she was away, so we tried our luck with others who might be at their homes--and thus, their phones, instead. I'm very grateful for all the time these "stand-by" parents came through for me, and I can see why Mom put her trust in them and them alone.

The other thing about the admonition that strikes me is the "even if ..." part. It wasn't "even if they offer you great candy," or "even if they have a new My Little Pony." It was like she knew we were better than to fall for something like that; she thought we were smart enough or good enough to resist the temptation of things. But she warned us against the panic of devastating news--that's what she feared we'd fall for. In the midst of tragic news about our parents, that's when she thought we'd be most vulnerable. And I guess she assumed that predators would think the same thing. But we were not to believe, because she had  plan if an emergency did occur--Grandma, Amy, or Susan.

I don't remember being able to process all of this at the time. I only had the mental capacity to understand her instruction and obey it, not to fully comprehend its implications about her priorities and state of ind as a parent. I did get a hint, just a peek into the fact that some adults were deceptive, deceptive because they wanted to get little kids to go away with them. But to what end? That I didn't really know, although I took the threat seriously enough. And when you're five years old being left alone in the car for five minutes, that's probably as much as you need to know. My mom didn't make me overly frightened or distrustful of the world with these warnings, but I remember feeling slightly empowered simply by knowing such dangers existed, and that I had been prepared exactly for how to respond to them. Just as, apparently, had Grandma, Susan, and Amy.

A few weeks ago, as I fretted over my Dark Crystal submission (which I still haven’t started), one commenter authoritatively told me I must write an outline for it. I did, and I am, because it’s such unfamiliar territory for me that I just feel a lot safer going in with a map. But that’s not always the decision I make.

Currently, I’m reading APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, which recommends outlines and disses authors who don’t use them handily in one tidbit of advice:

“Many authors find an outline too constricting, but an outline sets me free. If you can’t write an outline, perhaps your thoughts are insufficiently organized.”

 

I had to bristle at this. It’s one thing to offer advice to would-be writers, quite another to imply that they are lacking if they do not follow your advice. The March/April issue of Writer’s Digest featured a wonderful article on “organic writing”; that is, writing without an outline, seeing where the story might take you. I used to be an outliner, but then I met NaNoWriMo, and I discovered the joy of flying by the seat of my pants. That’s when I learned I could be an organic writer, too, and now I often write without an outline. The advantage is a heightened sense of discovery; the disadvantage is the potential to panic if you don’t know what’s next, which can perhaps lead to an increased risk of writer’s block (at least, it does for me.)

A friend in my writer’s group has recently begun writing his short stories without an outline. There is no difference in quality between those that were written with or without outlines; if anything, the ones written without outlines are better, because he continues to develop his skill as a writer.

I once read something about Stephen King in which he said he no longer used outlines, that he could “feel” when the story was getting off-track and self-correct it. I find that writing without an outline has developed this sixth sense in me as well. If you think of an outline as a map, it makes a lot of sense to use it in unfamiliar territory to keep you from getting totally tangled in your jumble of prose. But after you’ve been writing for years, especially in a particular genre, you probably will get through the thicket just fine without a map to guide you. Your intuition will tell you when you’re going down the right path, and when you aren’t. And if it doesn’t? Revision is your friend.

I’m currently working on a novel-writing webinar for girls that I will offer in partnership with New Moon Girl Media. I plan to start with the idea that there are two types of writers: “planners” and “pantsers” — those who plan in advance of writing, and those who get by “by the seat of their pants.” Both types can and do win publication, popularity, and acclaim. I recommend trying both methods to see which you prefer, and more importantly, to get a sense for which approach is appropriate for each particular work. And if you ditch the outline? It doesn’t mean your thoughts are too “disorganized” to make a good book — only that you’re brave enough to tackle your adventure without a map.