Moms Just Want to Have Fun, Too

"Grownups don't know what to do with rocks."

I honestly can’t remember if I read that somewhere or one of my kids said it, but it’s stuck in my head for a couple reasons.

First, rocks are fun for kids. Sometimes we forget that all they need is rocks. And maybe a few sticks. Fun is something they make. Simple stuff. How much time and how many tears are lost over cleaning up toys they don’t even really need?

And second, it’s true that we don’t know. Whatever it is that makes rocks fun is totally lost on almost all grown-ups almost all the time. 

My niece recently shared this with my mom: Kids are fun. Grandparents are fun. “Middle people” are not fun.

It made me feel snippy—Middle people have to get you ready for bed! And tell you no! And take you to school! And fix what’s broken! Fun, on top of all of that, is a lot to ask.

And if grown-ups are no fun, let me tell you, moms are the worst. Moms are not any fun at all. Just think of all of the un-fun things we do. All day, every day.

“What do you like to play with your friends?” my daughter asked me once as I was driving us to a play date.

She listed everything she liked to play with her friends. But what about grownups? Do they like to play? She weighed the evidence—her dad liked to build things with her, and liked to go on adventures, and liked her artwork, so dads must like to play. And then, her final conclusion: “Moms don’t really like to play.”

Gut-punch translation: You’re no fun. Daddy is fun. You’re mean. And boring. All you do is feed me and yell.

Never mind that I was driving her to a PLAY date. That, in those days, I structured my whole stay-at-home week around making fun for her. That I researched upcoming festivals, found the cool play spaces, went to the kids’ museums, spent countless hours on the playground.

When balanced against the fifteen minutes of daddy-bliss when he came home at the end of the day (and frankly, I needed kid-free time, so preferred doing the whatever-else needed to be done while he entertained the kids), it didn’t matter. When compared with the two-hour trip to the playground on the weekend, where he didn’t also have to stop for groceries on the way home, I was no fun. Evil Queen of No-Fun-Land. I made fun end—told her we had to go or that we couldn’t play now or that it was time for dinner. When she looked at how I spent my time, wasn’t that a fair conclusion?

 One thing people love to say to stay-at-home parent is, “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.” Setting aside the whole “all the invisible stuff we do” issue, there’s something to that. When you spend your time in a frantic work-kids-sleep mode, it can be easy to lose sight of what you’d do if you did have any time. Most people wouldn’t know what to do all day—good thing we have all that laundry and whatnot.

 What's really seems out of balance with the way we live our middle-class, suburban parenting lives today is that we don’t leave any room for fun. We lose the belief that we deserve to stop the clock (or stop looking at it) and do something we really want to do—something that brings pleasure or something that brings meaning to all the rest.   

The absence of doing what gives life meaning is a greater problem than how many hours we spend at a desk or on carpool duty.

After managing our paid work and our hard caregiving work, we are too exhausted to even know something else is missing. We rush our kids off to activities we'd secretly love to do ourselves. If my daughter takes ballet classes, don’t I get to add "ballerina" as a tiny part of my own identity? If my son runs around at soccer on Saturdays, it's almost like I have an active life, “We are an active family,” I can think as I stand on the sidelines.

 Not only is this bad for us, it’s bad for our kids. It tells them that their fun matters to us. That we don’t like to play. No wonder they tell me they don’t like to clean up, as if I do. This imbalance means that we are raising self-centered children, because we don't know how to live our own lives after they come along. Because we think that “extracurriculars” are good for our kids, but we forget that they are good for us, too.

I think we’re afraid of being bad at fun. If someone has an outside-of-work-and-family “passion,” as we say, they'd better be serious about it. And good at it. Like to run? Better sign up for a 5K! Taking a frivolous photography or cooking class is a luxury more mock-able than Jimmy Choos. An indulgence. A waste of time we don’t have. A hobby—gasp!. Those few who manage to give themselves this permission are making very conscious choices that are not out there as cultural norms.

 I’ve just finished reading Brigid Schulte’s Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Pay When No One Has the Time, and the section on “play” was the most eye-opening for me.

In the book, Schulte describes an exercise where busy parents are given a blank weekly schedule and asked to write down everything they did last week. No one has any trouble filling up the page to bursting. But when they’re given a blank schedule and asked write down what their ideal week would look like, they are totally stumped. They don’t know where to start.

We’re not talking about taking a dream vacation here, but what would your week look like if you lived it according to your truest priorities? Imagine making time for those and then fitting in work and other responsibilities around what you really want to be doing. What would that look like? What if we fit work around the rest, instead of leaving what matters to the margins.

When I had a brand new infant, I realized that when they’re asleep, you have to do the most important thing first. The thing that’s on fire. The baby could wake at any time. Shower? Pee? What is the thing you'll wish you'd done if the baby woke up now?

What if the thing on fire is you? You might not get to do your second thing. What would you wish you had done today if you died tomorrow? Our days are truly are numbered and we don’t know how high we’ll get to count. To steal a quote from Schulte that she stole from someone else: "How you spend your days is how you spend your life."

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Imposter Mom Syndrome

Both times we left the hospital with new babies, I felt like an imposter. Like an overgrown teenager who didn’t take the grown-up test and wouldn’t have passed. “They’re really gonna let us just walk out the door like this, with a baby human? Who’s in charge of checking in to make sure we’re doing it right?”

I’ve talked to lots of friends about this imposter syndrome, and they have had this moment, too. One day, you wake up and the police officers are way younger than you, and it’s weird.

But I realized something this week: I’m a grown-up.

No, really, I totally am. Leaving a job that wasn’t working for me or my family was a decisive move. One of the most self-directed intentional thing I’ve ever done. There have been a lot of “Sure, why not?" moments along the way. There was an open door somewhere and I went through it.

This time, when my life wasn’t the way I wanted it to be, I changed it.

For now, I’ve renewed my stay-at-home status. There are people who believe I am doing just the right thing, focusing on my family, not working outside the home. Some of them, I would not like very much. And there are people who think I’m a relic, not living up to modern day commandments. I probably wouldn’t like most of them either.

This week it hit me—I’m in charge of me.  The only question I need to answer in my current self-doubting, insecure incarnation is this: Am I ok with me?

I know that sounds horribly trite, like a big fat cliché. I’ve had these thoughts many times, but this time was different. Because this time I’m a grown up.

The people who would judge who I am based on my current state of affairs—one way or the other—will step off, as we used to say back in the day, if I feel good about what I’m doing and emanate that feeling. Or at least I’ll stop seeing their judge-y faces because I’m too busy living my life according to my own, grown-up desires.

Don’t get me wrong here. There are days when I’m no Rosie the Riveter. The self-confidence required to not only figure out what you want to do, but to do it and not ask anyone else for advice, that’s pretty grown-up. There are bound to be slip-ups.

In grad school, I had a professor who told me that my poetry is “not for everyone,” but that people who “get” me will “really get” me. It’s kind of like being okay with that. I’m not for everyone.

Over the last six years, since I have become a mother, I have found it incredibly hard to be okay with me, to feel confidence in my choice, but I never really figured out whether those questioning voices were coming from someone else or from me.

When I was first home with my first baby, I went through a whole messy process of trying to figure out who this new person was. She doesn’t work, she runs playgroups, she does mommy and me yoga. Was that ok? Was I happy? Did I need more? And then the anxious questions tumble out… What if my husband left me? What if he suddenly died? It was a vulnerable place to be and it made me very insecure—financially and emotionally.

Home again now, after working a real, pays-me kind-of-job, I’m cycling through all of that again. All of the doubts, the insecurities and the questions came back at me full force in a way I had not expected.

Working at a job gave me the confidence that I still have value in that part of the world, that I have something to offer and am welcome if/when I choose it. I spent money without checking in first, because it was my money. And I hadn’t even really noticed that, when I wasn’t working, I had felt like it wasn’t mine. With the first paycheck, that feeling of security came back and reminded me what life is like when you earn your own money.

That may be the hardest part of being “at home” for me—completely relying on another person in a whole body-whole life kind of way. Just like falling in love and realizing what you’ve just handed to someone is the ability to hurt you.

Having kids adds to this, because it’s about more than whether I get hurt, it’s about my instinct to protect these vulnerable offspring who have been entrusted to me. What if I’m suddenly, by accident or choice, the only one to love and feed and clothe and support them? Yikes.

Having a job comforted that part of my mind. I thought it would last, but now I think it’s just a part of it. Being a “stay-at-home” mom is a choice to be vulnerable, and it needs to be paired with the peace of mind that I would be able to do all of those grown-up things if it was left to me alone. And then letting it go.

Because you can’t think about all of the weight of that every day and stay sane.

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Someone Has to Be the Wife

It’s 11:30 in the morning on a Tuesday and I can’t find a parking spot at the local mall.

Who are all of these people who are running to Target in the middle of a workday?  In my imagination, it breaks down something like this: retirees, moms with babies, people running errands at an early lunch, a parent taking her kid out to lunch after a doctor appointment, people who work at night, unemployed people, freelancers.

If everyone works the 9 to 5 life we all assume most people live, this thing would collapse. Someone has to take the kid to the doctor. Someone has to pick up the dry cleaning. Someone has to buy a gift for the birthday party this weekend. Someone has to write a blog post… Okay, maybe not that one… But seriously, what are all of these people doing here? Shouldn’t they be at work?

In the last month, being newly home again, with kids in school for most of the day, I have crossed so many things off my to-do list, things that have been piling up since the first kid was born. I mean, I’m still not unpacked from moving two years ago, but I did manage to clean out the fridge, organize the hall closet, get some shoes repaired, re-organize the kitchen so things aren’t spilling out from every cabinet.

It’s a really boring list, actually, but it feels great to cross things off of it. I’ve even done the dishes on a semi-regular basis. Still need to work on getting to the grocery store for more than the things we needed yesterday. But I have been working out and writing and doing volunteer work. I might even find time to read a book one of these days.

“The list” got especially long while my husband and I were both working—at least when I was home with kids I could get one or two things done on any given day. But with both of us employed? So. Much. Stress. We contracted out what we could—sent the laundry to be washed, got groceries delivered, had someone clean our house occasionally. We’re lucky to be able to do that. But there’s only so much you can pay other people to do for you if you’re not Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love stay-at-home dads? Love. Them.

If there were no stay at home dads, I would have a much, much harder time with “not working.” If all of the everything-that-needs-to-be-done-to-keep-a-family-running-along-somewhat-smoothly was only done by women, I would totally quit. But these days, there are these magical creatures called “dads” and some of them even do the things that “moms” are supposed to do.

There is no good reason why it should be the female partner who “stays home” and does all of these things, but it’s not like it can just be ignored. If today’s work culture feels dated in the way it assumes that everyone has a spouse at home to manage the family’s business, today’s marriages, with our Gen X opinion that men should pitch in, are working to upend the assumption that it should always be a female spouse who does that work. Dads can do it too and these days, some of them are.

To me, they feel like feminist heroes, fighting for equal access to do what has long been women’s work and supporting their working wives. (I don’t know how to navigate this discussion with equal emphasis on all of every possible pronoun, which is another way in which traditional marriage is being modernized—newly-married gay and lesbian couples need to manage the same crap as the rest of us. When they ask the “who should do what?” question, it opens up the possible answers for all of us just a little bit more.)

A stay-at-home dad friend told me he called this job the “cruise director.” Who knows what you do, but there’s a lot of it and it never ends.

I’m not saying that it’s not possible for both spouses to work, especially once the kids are in school for large parts of the week. There’s before care and after care and summer camps and day-off activities and a million other ways that American parents have pasted together a “We can make this work!” collage. But someone has to find the aftercare, sign up for the camps before they fill up, stay home with sick kids.

Most jobs just aren’t flexible enough to account for the fact that the person doing them is a human being with, if not children, parents, friends, hobbies, need for air and food and exercise. Maybe you can squeeze in a run at the gym during lunch and grocery shopping every Sunday, followed by making the meals for the week that you won’t have enough time to make after a long workday. I’m tired just writing about it.

With my first post-motherhood stint at “working” now behind me, I can now announce first-hand what everyone already knows—this way of life is no way to live. Not happily. Not for long. Because eventually, you will have a kid who gets the flu for two weeks or a spouse who’s in the hospital or a parent who dies, and you won’t be able to help it. Your human side will show.

When I say “Someone Needs to Be the Wife,” I don’t mean that these are womanly things for women to do and that not doing them is shirking some biological responsibility. I have plenty of male friends who are better at cruise directing—and happier to do it—than their other half. I sincerely hope that, as more and more men want to be involved in their children’s lives and want to share the to do list with their spouse, this will feel less gendered.

Maybe as we notice more male cruise directors, the value of the work that cruise directors do will be heightened. If it’s not just the work of wives, maybe we will be able to admit that it does still need to be done by someone—whether it’s one spouse or the other, shared evenly or divided in an individualized “works-for-us” kind of way or even delegated out to paid professionals. It won’t, however, go the way of the dodo just because the forever-at-home wife and mother is fast becoming a thing of the past.

So, a hearty salute to all the men who are running errands and buying birthday presents and cooking dinner side-by-side with me today. Thank you for being “the wife” so I don’t have to be only and forever “the wife.” Thank you for making the phrase “women’s work” sound pre-historic. Your feminism is so necessary.

This is Not My Grandmother's Revolution

The imaginary feminist in my head is extremely judgmental. Of me. Not other moms—they should be able to do whatever works for them, right? 

Self-imposed feminist shame can be very intense and very hard to shake. I would never judge someone else as harshly as I do myself. In fact, sometimes it helps to pretend to be my own friend. The imaginary feminist friend in my head is very understanding. She knows how hard it is. She thinks I should do whatever works for my family and makes me happy. 

I recently went back to work after being an at-home mom (can we please just keep the puppy command word out of it?) for about five years. Eight months later, after deciding the job was not working for me or for my family, I resigned. So does that make me a SAHM or am I now unemployed? There can be a very fine line for those of us who are keeping one an eye on job openings and another on our families.

I don’t know what’s next for me. I don’t want to “not work,” but I need enough time outside of work to be the person I want to be, whether that means writing or hugging my kids—maybe even going to the gym on a regular basis.

Do you know what’s missing from the debate about whether or not women should work outside the home when they have small children? (I mean, besides a basic sense of reality.) Most of us are not Angelina Jolie or Barak Obama. When we work, we go to jobs that don’t fulfill our whole person every minute of every day. Our work is boring or it’s stressful or just average.

“Working” is not some kind of Shangri-La for every woman or every man. It can be meaningful, but more than that, it’s just something most of us have to do. And being with babies or small children all day is no Peaceable Kingdom either. In my perfect world, everyone would work 15-20 hours max and spend the rest of the time as we please. Like doing laundry and grocery shopping. Sexy stuff.

After almost a year of sleeping on his own, my son crawled into our bed every night while I was working. Two weeks after leaving that job, he’s back to sleeping through the night in his own bed. Most nights. What am I supposed to make of that? I know kids are adaptable. I do. But they do need us, different kids at different times. How is that supposed to work…with work?

In the last five or six years, as I’ve been at-home and then at-work, both of my grandmothers passed away. My mom’s mother was first. When she was close to the end, her family gathered when they could, but there were also deathbed visits from many local big-name types, politicians and such. She was very active in her community, even spent one term as mayor, trying to root out local corruption and having her phone bugged by the local police chief. I remember going door-stepping with her during her campaign when I was little.

She was a very intense woman. Very well respected, but the sort of person that has enemies. At her viewing, about 500 people came to show their respect, as they say. But what I remember from that day is my mom crying, not about losing her mother, but because all three of her sisters had decided not to speak to her that day for lord-knows-what reason. That’s my lasting memory of my grandmother, as someone whose children would be cruel to each other at her funeral.

 My dad’s mom only had about 150 people at her service—and about a hundred of them were family. Her children told the most wonderful stories about her. I found out how many shirts she ironed every week, but I also heard about how much she loved my grandfather. My aunt told a story of how her mother would run upstairs 5 minutes before her father was due home from work to change and put on a little lipstick.

 I’m sure my inner feminist is appalled that I find this very sweet. But all the tears I could see at her funeral were in recognition of the loss of well-loved matriarch.

 She had six kids still living when she died, all married only once, all with kids, and several with grandchildren. Her family was big and, mostly, very close. Outside of family, she was not very social. Her husband was my first grandparent to die, and there were times when her final years seemed lonely.

But at the end, she spent hospice in her son’s home in the constant presence of family. With her daughters and her son’s wives standing in a circle around her bed, holding hands and leaning on each other for support. That’s what I remember from her death: Surround yourself with strong women. They’re the one’s who will be there at the end. My sister and my cousin who’s like a sister and I made a pact—we’ll be there.

Women are the caretakers in our society for the most part. Whether it’s our babies or our parents, our grandparents or our husbands (who live longer because of us, while we lose a few years for being married). And, I’m sure you’ll be shocked (shocked!) to know that when we step away from work to be there for family and for friends in times of need, it’s not exactly a career booster.

When the “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” piece was all the talk, the thing I found most surprising was that she felt the need to step away from her fast-paced, important job when her sons were teenagers. That’s when she felt they needed her the most. Reading that it wasn’t when her children were small that she decided to step back (lean away, if you will) was a shock to me.  Damn, I thought, I had been planning on putting in my time by focusing on my children, at the expense of career ambition, during these first formative years and then get back to working. Now I’m finding out that they might need me the most later in life?

These are the things we can’t control—who needs us and when—and how we respond says a lot about who we are. Or it should. At least as much as what we’re paid to do. My inner feminist is appalled at this writing. My inner feminist friend is channeling Emma Goldman saying, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.” If I can’t choose family over work, I don’t want to be a part of your feminism. 

“No one will lay in their death bed saying, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” If we can accept that as true for men, can’t it also be true for women? Working at a paid job can’t be the only way to be a good feminist, but it’s a real struggle to feel like a good feminist as a stay-at-home mom.

Not in theory, just in the actual world, where we are asked what we do all day. 

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100 Different Thoughts on Being a Stay-at-home Mom But I Only Have Time to Write 46

As I head back to the world of gainful employment and go through some sort of mid-mom-life identity crisis, I need to get a few things off my no-longer-nursing chest. Some of these thoughts are about all of the times I’ve felt like I had a chip on my shoulder about something but didn’t say anything because I’m not a mommy warrior. Plus, five and a half years and two kids later, I may have actually learned a few things. Maybe one or two. The other 44 are just filler.

1. Fact: “What do you do all day?” is the dumbest question you can ask a stay-at-home parent. 

2. “What "else" do you do?” Also a rude question. Do you ask your working friends what they do other than their job? And if they’re not in a band or writing a novel do you assume they’re wasting their life away?

3. A little advice: Before you ask any question of a stay at home parent, ask yourself if you would ask the same of someone who works? Any question you would not ask your friends with 40-hour jobs is probably rude or intrusive or both.

4. You know how lawyers have to account for all their time in 15 minute increments to prove that they were doing something worthwhile with their time? It’s kinda like that, except people who expect a full report are not your boss.

5. Your “boss” can be a real jerk and it’s ok to think that, but when you think it too often, find a way to get away.

6. Find a moms group. Or other moms. More than one. If you don’t, you’ll never last at home.

7. You need time alone, away from the baby. You may not understand why at first, but you just do. Trust. Plan.

8. Truth: There are other ways of finding out what stay at home moms do all day. Try: Do you take any classes with your kid? Have you found a moms group? How was your week? 

9. There are good days and bad days and that is not different than any other job.

10. Hours pass by when I couldn’t say what I did. It’s called mothering.

11. Sometimes I can do more in one hour than you did all week. Sometimes I don’t get that hour.

12. Don't tell me you could never do what I do. It's condescending. Cleary what you mean to but wouldn’t say is: I would never do what you do.

13. Truth: If you have any reason to believe the SAHM considers herself a feminist, she will be defensive about everything all the time. Deal with it.

14. I hate the acronym “SAHM” but I also think all acronyms are simultaneously stupid and elitest.

15. It’s such total crap that in the Era of Choice Feminism there is any judgment at all about whether working or taking care of your kids during the day is feminist or not feminist. 

16. If you know one stay-at-home mom or dad, you can pretty much extrapolate what they’re all like. Right? And then definitely, please, we would love for you to share your wild generalizations with the world. Preferably in the comments section of a website meant to be supportive of new mothers.

17. What gives my life meaning, what “else” I do, what is still mine alone… None of these things are any of your business if we are not friends.

18. If you are not offering to watch my kids, don’t tell me I look tired.

19. Truth: The annoying part of pregnancy where everyone suddenly thinks your body is public property and acquaintances expect answers to intimate questions? Yeah, that keeps happening. 

20. Don't make assumptions about how much or how little money my family must have because I’m staying at home.

21. Don’t assume I’m happy all the time. Or expect that I should be.

22. Don’t assume that I think I love my kids more than a mom who chooses to or needs to work. I don’t think your choice is bad, just because I made a different one. Some days I’d swap.

23. Some days I wouldn’t, not for anything. Picnics and sunny days and other clichés are usually involved. 

24. If you didn’t know me before I was a mom, I must not have done anything with my life except wait to become a mom. Obviously.

25. Don't assume I will never work again. Lots of moms stay at home for 2 months, 1 year, 3 years, until kindergarten… Most of us don’t know our path back until it’s there.

26. Once you admit that you’re looking for paid work again, you become an unemployed person who cares for the kids during the day. Lots of people think of all stay-at-home dads this way from day 1. That seems fair, right?

27. If you stay a home after all of your kids are school age, are you a stay-at-home mom or do you suddenly turn into a housewife? Maybe. But it’s no one’s business beyond your family walls. 

28. Some kids need more of their mothers than others. Some mothers are built differently than other mothers. If being at home works for you and your kids and your family, rage on. 

29. Stay-at-home parents shouldn’t feel like they have to do anything more than be with their kids. But that’s really hard.

30. If you’re not paying attention, you’d be surprised how many things would grind to a halt without the unpaid labor of women, including stay-at-home moms.

31. If most women today take some amount of time away from a job when they have a baby and most women head back to work at some point later, it shouldn’t be so scary to have a “gap” on a resume. But it totally is.

32. Even if you think you’ won’t end up doing more chores because your job is supposed to be daytime parenting and your spouse’s job is what it is and everything else should remain the same, you will and it doesn’t.

33. The primary caregiver is stressed. The primary breadwinner is stressed. Try to hold hands and walk across the bridge to each other’s island now and again.

34. I never felt like it was his money. It was always our money. Just not my money.

35. Laundry used to be this kind of romantic thing we did together. There was nothing about laundry in our wedding vows. Yet hours have been lost sorting socks. Hours, people.

36. We are not all Mary Poppins.

37. The ones who look like Mary Poppins—which by the way, is the best movie I’ve ever watched with my kids—also sometimes cry to themselves while their husbands sleep by their side. 

38. It’s hard. It’s lonely. It’s freaking amazing.

39. If you never tell another stay-at-home parent that you’re struggling, they won’t tell you either and you’ll both think everyone else has it all together all the time and you’re a big mess.

40. Staying at home can be made to seem just as romantic as working. And just as unromantic.

41. You do not need to work harder on tummy time because your kid had better be ahead of the curve if you’re home with them every day. 

42. To stay-at-home, you don’t have to be the sort of parent that gets down on the floor and plays with your kids all day. If they lay on a blanket and watch you fold the aforementioned laundry or help unload the dishwasher, they’re good. Kids who help with errands and chores are happy kids. You don’t even have to do Gymboree.

43. It’s ok to drink in the afternoon if you invite another mom and call it a playdate.

44. I am a whole person. I am not my kid. I don’t take my identity from being a mom and it doesn’t take my identity from me. At least not forever.

45. Everything is half done all the time and you have to let it go. If you have a daughter and she’s old enough ask her to sing you the song. She’ll be happy to oblige.

46. I’m really glad I did it and I’m really glad I’m done.

What do you think? Any stay-at-home mom thoughts to share?

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