Best Mom Tip #192: Put down the celebrity mom article

For some unknown reason I keep clicking on any article where a celebrity talks about motherhood.  O.k., I know the reason.  It's because she is pretty and has on pretty clothes and I, too, long to sit around in pretty clothes and have someone photograph me.  That is not likely to happen unless you count my daughter who went through a phase where she would sneak into our bedroom and take pictures of us sleeping with our own phones.  So, that's a topic for another day.

Anyway, I keep reading these stupid articles and then I get mad and then I am yet again annoyed that I fell into the trap one more time.  Surely this must be the goal of publishers when they write these articles anyway.

The one that got me this week had a gorgeous actress showing off her sweet little baby boy...there was breastfeeding in a designer gown and great cleavage shots due to breastfeeding mom endowments.  I didn't get mad until the question about being a working mom came up.

The actress said that she was definitely going back to work and that she wasn't going to "sacrifice any part" of herself.  Now, I'm sure she's a lovely person and I get what she most likely meant and in the context of an entire conversation it probably didn't sound like she thinks everyone who's ever sacrificed something for their kid is an idiot.  But the blurb the article printed certainly came off as though mothers who sacrifice parts of themselves are just not willing to work hard enough.  It was SO frustrating.

I'm not mad at the actress herself.  Really, what is she going to say when asked about working motherhood?  She wants to keep getting jobs and she wants to raise her kid.  She has to say something.  It's the fact that every one of these types of articles is written as though the famous person being interviewed has some sort of advice for the millions of working mothers in the world that gets me.

I know that even famous people have to figure out nannies and how much they see their kids in the daylight, but the rich and powerful have a far more flexible set of circumstances with which to work. When Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) had a baby just as she was transitioning into her executive role, much was made of her decision to return to work 4 weeks after the baby's birth.  Yes, it is hard to do anything with a 4-week-old. It is a lot easier, however, if you build a nursery onto your C-level office and have your nanny come to work with you.  If I were Marissa Mayer, I would do the exact same thing.  I don't begrudge her decision at all--I am, however, completely annoyed that this was somehow supposed to mean something to other women faced with making work/life balance decisions. Take Your Kid to Work Month is not really an actual thing.

We don't seem to like to talk about this as a culture, but most American companies are so uncomfortable with how to create a balance between home and work that they just pretend you don't have a home life.  It's totally fine to share the cute thing your kid did at lunch with your coworkers, but a sick kid should never be the reason you're late or staying home from work.

When I worked outside my home, I was a school teacher.  You would think that teaching public school would be a job that supports new and working mothers, but it has it's own problems.  In my district (a very large one in metro Atlanta) there is no actual maternity leave.  You are allowed to take days off as required by the Family and Medical Leave Act, but you use your accumulated sick leave if you want to get paid.  Men and women are given the same (rather generous) number of sick days each year and you can accumulate them from year to year.  It is absolutely the same rule for everyone, but it certainly feels unfair when you need to take maternity leave.

When my daughter was born I used up all of my sick leave to stay home with her in her first weeks of life. When I returned to work, I had no sick leave which meant that, until the next school year started and I earned more sick days, I was just docked part of my salary if I had to take the baby to the doctor.

I actually got into an argument with a male co-worker over the fact that we did, in fact, have an hourly pay rate. Of course we were salaried employees, but to determine how much pay to dock me for going to the doctor with my newborn, the county took my yearly salary, divided it by the number of days teachers were required to work that year (it varies depending on the whims of the state legislature) and then divided that number by 8 hours.  That was my hourly pay rate.  In order to get a substitute you had to take at least 4 hours off.  So, after returning from giving birth I was charged about $120 in salaried pay for taking my newborn for a well visit. And this was my job working for our government.

These are the kinds of stresses that moms face all over the nation every day.  My required time at work was at least over by about 4 p.m.  I still graded papers and other stuff, but I could leave if I needed to.  And, of course, teachers get far more time off than most professions.  For every working mom in the country there is some sort of grinding, challenging, no-win kind of situation she will face while trying to create a semblance of both motherhood and her working life.

Lots of women don't have the choice to work or not. My own mother was our primary wage earner for most of my life and it was just plain hard.  She sacrificed far more parts of herself both working and mothering than she would have doing only one or the other.

I think what really makes me angry about these celebrity articles is that, for all the talk the notion of work/family balance gets, there aren't very many actual solutions for the problems of everyday working moms.  Where can you find affordable child care?  In my community my child care literally outpaced my salary--my entire salary--by $100/month.  I could drive really far out of my way for childcare, I suppose, but anyone who's ever visited Atlanta knows we'd do almost anything to avoid traffic.  And I have the luxury of owning a car and being able to afford gas.  What would my option be otherwise?

Where can moms go to be assured of the quality of childcare?  There's no real certification process of nannies and the ones for daycare facilities vary wildly.  I don't have great answers...I'd just like to read an article that addresses the very real concerns women are faced with just because they have children.  It's not like having kids is the outlier here...lots of people have children.

Once, quite a few years ago, I was watching the Rosie O'Donnell show.  Remember that?  She used to shoot koosh balls into the audience.  Anyway, someone she was interviewing said, "I don't know how you do it with all your kids."  According to my somewhat fallible memory she responded, "Me?!?! I have a nanny, I have help.  Ask a woman with four kids working at McDonald's how she does it. That's the question."

That's still the question--a woman was recently arrested and subsequently fired from McDonald's (she was later rehired) because she let her 9-year-old play at a park while the mom was a work.  I don't know if what the woman was doing endangered her child in her community or not, but I'm pretty sure the mom was trying to do the best that she could with limited resources and her kid out of school for the summer.

We still don't have many answers and the people who need them the most, moms in the midst of building careers,  putting food on the table, and raising children, are too incredibly tired and busy to lobby for some other option.  We are losing well-educated women from the workforce, creating family tensions that are not helping our children any, and for some reason, still only asking women how they do it and ignoring dads.

Here's what I know we moms can do.

Working moms:  Stop using language like "I'm not going to sacrifice any part of myself."  It is insulting to assume that people who quit or went part-time or turned down promotions are idiots.  I can't tell you how many people have said to me, "I don't know how you stay home.  I would go crazy."  Umm, thanks?  I guess the lobotomy helped?  Don't judge them. Very few women really only want to change diapers for the rest of their lives--this is a phase and they're doing the best they can.

Stay at Home Moms:  Stop shutting the working moms out of your stay-at-home mom PTA play group.  It's mean and it makes your kids weird.  Invite a working mom's family over for dinner during the work week so she doesn't have to do it that one night.  Call your working friends and listen about their work drama--it helps them get it out before they get home. And don't judge them...they're doing the best they can.

All moms:  We are ALL doing the best we can.  Be encouraging to women you see out in the world. I saw an acquaintance at the movies the other day who is expecting her first child.  I told her motherhood was fun and she gushed, "OH, THANK YOU! I can't tell you how many horror stories I've been told lately between the birth and the newborn phase." How twisted is that?  Of course it's hard, but our constant negative dialogue about all motherhood topics is not helping anyone get through this any better.

Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go put on a silk gown and change a diaper while someone takes pictures.

Best Mom Tip #183: Embrace this moment

Hey, look, I have a blog! I clearly have not written in a while, largely due to lots of children, a messy house, and nothing terribly funny to say. And, honestly, today is no different. What I have to say today isn't particularly entertaining, but it is personal and relevant to me and I thought it might be to someone else as well.

I had a revelation the other day about myself and my own insecurities as a woman, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend and a mother.

I realized that my feelings of inadequacy and personal failure are an insult to the blessings and gifts of this moment in my life. My comparisons to other (and in my mind, more successful) women belittle the joy and peace that I experience daily. My dissatisfaction and need to justify my life choices to an unnamed, unidentified outside audience are an insult to the principles that guided my decisions in the first place.

It was quite the thought process for a Friday morning.

See, I was a teacher and I loved my job. Through a series of furloughs, changes to family childcare leave policy, and frozen salaries my school district made it difficult for me to retain my job and have another baby (which was unfortunate because 4 years ago I was pregnant with two preschoolers and had to make some tough decisions.)

It is hard to explain to people who have never felt as I did, but I really wanted another child-I didn't feel like our family was complete and I love the chaos of children. I don't actually like babies, which tends to surprise people, but I do love kids. I felt like there was a hole in our family and so Jay and I decided to have our third child.

But then I had to decide what to do with my career. As I said, I loved my job. I was good at it. It gave me great stories at parties. It was fulfilling and entertaining. I felt useful and productive and of value. It certainly wasn't all fun, but it was interesting. But that year the kids and I got the swine flu and it was scary and stressful getting coverage for my classes and making lesson plans for substitutes while taking a toddler to get chest x-rays and standing outside the room while he screamed because I was pregnant and couldn't be near the radiation. I worried about those kinds of moments if I added yet another kid.

For months I struggled with what I should do about my career. Our district had eliminated part time positions so my choices were pretty straightforward-full time work or no work. They both scared me. I was worried about parenting three kids effectively. I was worried about my students suffering if I returned to work after the summer with 3 kids, one of whom was 6 weeks old. I was worried about being a good wife and friend and daughter and sister if I had all of these other responsibilities pulling at me.

So I prayed. To those of you who don't share my faith, that may sound silly or even pointless. For those of you who do, you probably wonder why I didn't start praying months earlier. I don't know why it took me a while to remember to ask God for direction, but it probably had to do with all the conflicting thoughts swirling around in my head as I tried to keep my plates spinning in my daily life. What I began to hear, after many nights asking for direction, was God calling me to stay home with my children for a while.

I hesitate to share that last sentiment because it is such a loaded topic. In no way do I think that God wants all moms of small children to quit their jobs. Nor do I think every family needs a person in the home at all times. What I do think is that God had things to teach me that I was unable to hear when my head was full of Comparative Essays, valuable multiple choice responses, and AP Exam dates.

I had put too much of my worth into what I did for a living. I valued too much the praise and encouragement I received as a teacher. I, for the first time in my life, was left alone with my thoughts with no way to escape hard questions about my purpose, my impact on the world around me, and my meaning in this life.

Over the last three and a half years I have learned to be far more patient with my children than I ever thought I could be. I have had to constantly reevaluate my priorities and, honestly, I have spent a lot of time failing at being a stay-at-home mom. That failure has taught me a lot about myself.

I have struggled with a sense of inadequacy. What are my college degrees for if all I do is change diapers?

I have struggled with how I am viewed by the world. Just because I have 4 kids and stay home does not mean I am uncertain about how birth control works, but thank you for asking.

I have struggled with my sense of self and appearance. It is hard to feel beautiful when you wear primarily work out clothes day in and day out. Unless you're a really hot fitness instructor, I guess, but I'm not so that doesn't really apply.

I have struggled with a sense of insignificance. Where is my big mark on the world if I only see 5 other people a day?

And now on to the revelation part.

If God Almighty called me to this moment in my life, it is disobedient and disrespectful to believe it is "less than" simply because my culture tells me I should be great at all things to all people at all times. 

I will not be winning any awards any time soon, but I have grown as a person and shepherded 4 little lives into being with more peace than I could have used while I taught. And I have spent hours on the phone with my sister-in-law while her husband was deployed overseas talking about kids and parents and clothing-options-after-babies that I would never have experienced if I had been in the classroom all day. I have had conversations with my mom that I would not have had without the time to wander toward meaningful discussion during a phone call. I have distracted my friend Cheryl from working in the middle of the day and kept up with the details of a friend I might not have if we were both working and raising babies at the same time. OK, I spend a lot of time on the phone, apparently, probably because I am starved for adult conversation.

The point is, I am at peace with my choices. I don't know what happens next. Do I return to the classroom as my children are getting a little older? Do I return to school and create a different career path for myself? Do I stay in this pattern for a few more years? I truly don't know the answer right now. But I pray that I will remember that if I follow what God would have me do, I need not worry about my purpose.

I will be living it.

Best Mom Tip #169: Major in something useful

This tip is about 15 years too late for me.  I have a Bachelor's of Business Administration in Economics and a Master's of Education in Social Studies.  It seemed at the time as though these degrees would provide me with a stable income as a teacher and the ability to manage what money I actually earned.  And although those things were true at one point, they aren't worth jack at this moment in my life.

What should I have studied, you ask?  Any of the following fields would have been a better choice:

1. Any thing in the medical field.  I spend $20 every time I can't figure out if a kid has a cold or if death is imminent.  I spent $150 at the ER last Friday because I made the wrong call about Harry's breathing and the pediatrician sent me to the hospital.  A nursing degree may have helped me out there.  Even studying to be a witch doctor would give me some sort of confidence when I'm faced with decisions about what to feed a kid who's been projectile vomiting all over my robe for the last three hours.

2. Building contractor.  One of the things I really didn't consider about stay-at-home motherhood is the fact that I have to make decisions about the never-ending home improvement projects around our money pit of a house.  Our garage doors are bent?  The painters discovered that the chimney is 90% rotten and needs to be replaced?  Our water meter has stopped and we need to pay the difference for the last three months while we didn't notice?  Anyway, if I could use a circular saw with authority and assess water damages accurately, it would make my life a lot easier.

3.  Dietitian/exercise scientist.  I wouldn't make any money at these while staying at home, but I could at least be aware of how many calories are in prepackaged cookie dough rounds BEFORE I eat 12 of them.  And maybe I would have had some sort of defined muscles on the lower half of my body before I had kids.

I suppose that sometime in the future it may again matter that I can name all of the dynasties of China in chronological order.  Or that I can explain the positive and negative qualities of the Julio-Claudian rulers of Rome.  My knowledge of World War One has recently enabled me to predict events on Downton Abbey before they occur, but that's about as useful as it's gotten lately.

Charlotte did ask me if I knew who Harriet Tubman was this week and seemed awfully disappointed when I said yes, so I suppose that annoying my children will have to be my major benefit until I return to work.  Or until I just become a street lecturer sharing my knowledge on downtown corners in the hopes of making a buck.