Not a Rhetorical Question

A friend of mine (hi Melissa!) posted this wonderful article today: What Ruth Bader Ginsberg Taught Me About Being a Stay At Home Dad at The Atlantic.

going off on a tangent here: either The Atlantic has become really wonderful in the past 2-3 years or I have grown into reading their work. Either way, they're doing great and they should carry on. 

In addition to a lot of wonderful anecdotes about the Notorious R.B.G., author Ryan Park talks about the difficulties in being a stay-at-home dad for a year while his wife was finishing her rotation in pediatrics at Georgetown. This year was after he had spent a year clerking for Justice Ginsberg, which seems like a step down... until you read his article.

Of course, if you read anything at all about staying at home with kids, you'll wind up reading about Swedish family leave policies. To the point where I honestly rolled my eyes when I first came across it in this article and thought, "Oh sweet Moses, it's Sweden again." Anyway, Park talks about his friend who is married to a Swede and she went home to have her baby. He took a 5 week paternity leave from his residency in the US and was roundly mocked for it by his peers.

Yadda, yadda Sweden is sooooo amazing... but I got to this paragraph (talking about his American friend married to the Swede and moving to Sweden after the baby was born):

Despite his joy at becoming a father, the drudgery of life with a newborn didn’t sit well with him. His wife, a doctor at the same institution, agreed to stay home for the rest of the couple’s allotted time. But on his return to work, the hospital’s leaders pulled him aside and delivered a stern lecture on the poor example he was setting. He was soon back to changing diapers and warming bottles, and the couple redistributed their leave more evenly.

This resonated with me. I've now been a mom for 12+ years. I took a 12 week maternity leave with both of my kids. With our firstborn, my husband took 2 weeks off, but because our son was born during football season, he had to work a little during that time. The university where I worked gave a paid 8 week leave. I had to tell my boss about FMLA (9 years after it was put into law) in order to take an additional 4 weeks as unpaid leave because she was really sticking by that 8 week number. 

With our second, my husband also took 2 weeks off and I took 12, but I recall him working a lot more during that time mainly because he had to take so much time off when I was pregnant with #2 and had a lot of drama. And I remember both times people PRAISING him for staying home with me. I know a lot of women with husbands who were back at work a day or two later because they had to be there or they would lose their jobs. In addition to that, I went back to teaching in mid-May. My husband took #2 with him in his little playpen to work until mid-June when I would be home with the baby again. He's kind of a rock star. 

Aside: shortly after the birth of the first, we were living in the south and I cannot even tell you how many times I would hear friends says "my husband is babysitting the kids tonight." I wanted to scream

 HE IS NOT BABYSITTING 

HE IS THEIR FATHER 

IT IS PART OF HIS JOB. 

But I didn't. Sometimes I said it nicely. Sometimes I didn't say it at all. And if someone asked me, "who's watching the kids?" I would say, "Their dad, because he's their dad." 

Back to the topic: I never wanted to stay home with the kids. With our first, I was home 5 months because we moved to South Carolina when he was 3 months old and I couldn't find a job. I was only home with him for 5 months because I went back to school. I really hated being a stay-at-home mom. 

My husband, despite having a new job, supported my going back to school. He cared for our son in amazing ways. He let me lock myself in our room and work on lesson plans and my graduate thesis and all kinds of ridiculousness. He was the primary earner and the primary caretaker of our son for a year and a half and it is an investment for which I will always be grateful. 

With the 2nd, I was home with him for a year. Again, because of a move- this time we moved from South Carolina to Virginia. Again, I couldn't find a job. But this time, I made a concerted effort to enjoy my time at home. Or at least, not wallow in my misery. I made a ridiculous effort to meet moms with similar aged kids and hang out with them as much as my little introverted heart could handle.

In the summer after we moved, the boys and I were fixtures at the local pool. We swam every day for 16 days before a rainy day closed the pool. When school started for #1, I ended up getting a membership to the indoor pool which was heated but still pretty cold. #2 and I could tolerate it for about a half hour before we would go warm up in the shower, but let me just say that #2 swims like a pro and has never taken a lesson. We went to the park. We went to the library. We went to the children's museum. I was seriously aggressive in my wanting to be in public with my kid(s).  

Then, after 14 months of staying at home, I got a job, a wonderful job, a job I still have and love. 

I happily sent my child off to daycare/pre-school for a year until he started kindergarten and I have never looked back. 

BUT.

What if it was different for us here in the US? (we've finally reached the not a rhetorical question part of this essay). Would I have felt differently about staying at home with the kids? Would they be different people? Because they're pretty awesome kids, I don't know if I would want to change them. 

But if it was widely accepted that BOTH parents stay home at some point, would we all feel differently about staying at home? 

How do we change this? There's so much talk about how the US is at the bottom of the list, internationally, for parental leave of any sort. 

I have a self-selected sample among my friends, but seriously, almost everyone is in favor of this. Even the non-parents, because parents come to work sick because of their little germ vectors kids and the parents get the non-parents sick, and who needs that? Stay home if you're sick!!! 

This is totally from pulledoutofmyass.com, but If ALL parents, regardless of socio-economic status, had a chance to be with their kids more, would we see less mindless consumption? Would parents be less likely to spoil their kids with crap they don't need because they wouldn't feel quite so guilty about spending so much time away from them? 

Would we see better educational outcomes with our kids because parents wouldn't catch shit from their employers for having to go to a conference with the teacher? 

What can we do to change this? Why does it seem to be such an uphill battle in the US to make reforms that will support the entire population? Even if you're not a parent, you were a kid once! 

Additional reading, if you're so inclined... a quick trip down the Google rabbit hole brought me these:

• Parental Leave: the Swedes Are the Most Generous from NPR
• The actual official website of the country of Sweden: 10 Things That Make Sweden Family Friendly

A Good Enough Mommy

I gave up today.

I am not a typical Pinterest mommy. I didn't cloth diaper. I didn't take pictures of my kids on the first day of the month. I didn't make my own baby food.

Pinterest didn't even exist until my youngest was 3, so I guess I have an excuse.

I typically use Pinterest

 to pin things that I will never wear.

To pin things that make me laugh- this one is the most repinned of anything 501 times as of this writing.

To pin tattoos that I want

and of course to pin things I want to do for the kids

If one spends too much time on Pinterest, one can feel inadequate in about 100 different ways. I don't make dessert every day. I don't have enough money/time/energy to label everything in my house with wee tiny chalkboards. I don't work out enough. When I do, I don't wear cute enough clothes that I made myself by upcycling t-shirts.

This definitely goes for moms. I don't pack my kids lunches. I don't make them into adorable shapes. My kids won't touch kale. My kids don't  have bedroom signs with adorable saying on them.

We did do bubble art http://www.pinterest.com/pin/210261876323028128/

Once, we made bubble art. I totally micromanaged it. It still hangs in the boys bathroom and looks super cute, but I was a huge pain in the ass when we did it. I didn't want it to have too many bubbles, I didn't want the boys to be covered in food coloring.

Since before my boys were even born, I have liked scrapbooking. I totally get that it's mommy homemaker, but I like office supplies, pictures, and stickers, and scrapbooking combines all those things into awesome fun times for me.

As the boys got older, I discovered digital scrapbooking, which I actually enjoy even more.

HOWEVER, it's so much work. Editing the pics. Laying out the book. Organizing them by event. Putting cute titles on the pages.  And so on... that now I'm behind about 3 years. By the time I get to even editing the pictures, I won't remember why I took the picture of Agent X with the sassy look on his face or Agent N up to his elbows in mud.

And so I've decided not to continue. I'm going to put pictures in books. I'm sure I'll edit some. But I'm done with the titles and the stickers and the ribbons and the papers. Pictures in books because they tell a story of the things we've done and they remind of of the fun we've had. The boys like to hear stories of what we did together when they were too young to remember. And that's what's important.

Old, and getting older.

There have been a lot of things written about the age of people who are involved with church.

What we can do to keep the next generation (if you only read one, read this one- it really spoke to me)
Congregations getting older
How churches can bring young people back from (ugh) Fox News

As I sat around a table with fellow parents of kids from 6th-12th grade last Sunday, I realized something that I know my Assistant Rector who is in charge of youth programs and the Rector who is just in charge in general realized ages ago- we have a problem.

The problem isn't with the kids. It's with the parents. The kids can't get there by themselves.

My kid had never, not once, been to Sunday school. I wouldn't take him. The only reason I went last week is because I have such fond memories of youth group when I was in middle and high school. I also have some not-fond memories, but whatever, everyone has stuff like that in middle & high school. Anyway, I didn't take him before, because for adults, Sunday school is sitting and listening to someone. And then go to church, and listen to someone else. I do not have the patience for that. I need some interaction. I need discussion. I need problem solving. I want to be with my peers, too. And my peers aren't at church. Well, not many of them.

The alternative to listening to someone was teaching, but I didn't want to teach to little kids. I don't like little kids. I teach high school for a reason. But women always get asked to teach little kids. And I teach 5 days a week already. I didn't really want to go teach on yet another day. As it is, I teach 2-3 children church sessions a year, and I dread each one.

I love my church leaders, they are amazing humans, and I know they have very full plates, and I don't want to tell them no. So I just avoid them. Sorry. I know you're reading this. You probably already figured that out, though. I know it's passive aggressive of me.

As I was looking around, I realized 2 things:

• There was no one there who looked like me. I have purple streaks in my hair and a nose ring. I was wearing blue glitter nail polish. I was also wearing clothes from Banana Republic, before you get this image of me wearing a Slayer shirt with a mohawk and a tattoo on my neck (it's on my ankle). I'm not that rebellious, but sometimes I stand out in a white bread crowd. And yet...
• Everyone looked like me. We were all white, middle/upper middle class people between 39 (I'm fairly confident I'm the youngest) and 55ish? 60? I don't know. I'm not great with ages of people who are older than I am.  

I've been mulling this over for the past couple of days. I go to a small church in a midsized but rural town. I go to an Episcopal church which has kept ties with the Diocese and the area is fairly conservative. But the town I live in also has a university, which means by it's very nature has some random social liberals wandering the streets. 

These social liberals have kids. I know, because my kids play with them at summer camp, at school, in the neighborhood. A couple of them go to my church. And the ones who do are pretty cool people. But not enough of them are there. 

I grew up in the precursor to a mega church. It was perfectly normal to have 600-700 people on a regular Sunday. Wednesday night youth group would commonly pack the youth room with kids sitting on the floor after the chairs were gone- 50+ kids on a regular basis. None of the leaders were parents of kids who were in the room. They were college students and young married couples. 

Part of the delight of the youth group was the idea that we were always doing things that our parents would have probably not enjoyed. Singing as loudly as possible? Check. Randomly breaking out into tears over various teenage angst coupled with emotional spirituality? Check. Having that guy reach over and take my hand during prayer and not letting go when it was finished? Check. Wash dishes for an entire camp of people and stick my hands into disgusting drains to clean out the food? Check. 

I doubt any of those things would have happened if my parents were there. I would have gone- I would have been forced to go- but I would have been guarded. I would have been intentionally difficult to deal with. 

After this meeting on Sunday, I realized the draw of the "mega church."  I've been to a mega church. I didn't like it. It felt too fake. But it's easy to get your kids involved. You can plug them into a community that will reinforce some kind of values which you hopefully approve of through peer pressure and adults who aren't their parents. And if you choose to, you can not be involved at all. 

I always thought I would be involved with a youth group. I never thought it would be while my own child (or children) was in it. But when I tried to get involved as a college student, I was discouraged from doing so. I was too young, the kids in the youth group were too old and too close to my age, I wanted to change things too much- this was at a different church than the one I grew up in- and there was a strong undercurrent of "and you are too female, which is not ok with us." So it's been about 20 years since I've gotten active with church, and I'm kind of dragging my feet right now. 

Agent N, the 6th grader, needs to do some stuff without me around. He needs to have positive influences in people who aren't his parents. He needs to sing and yell and dance and cry without us watching. But we go to a small church in a midsized town, and so one of us will be watching sometimes. I'm going to try to get involved with other kids but it's hard when you hear your child's voice yelling (Agent N's normal volume) to focus on something or someone else. And it's hard to talk to kids you don't know when you're... like me. I'm a good teacher because it gives me an in- I have something to talk about. And then the kids tell me stuff, so we have something to talk about together. But put me in a room with random people, especially random teenagers, and I'm awkward as hell. I was about 1000 times more confident when I was a teenager. Now I'm a teenager in an adult body. 

And this brings us back around to the beginning. The church has an age problem. Where are the parents? Where are the college students? I have avoided getting involved because of the demands on my time. But if more people got involved, there would be fewer demands on everyone's time because there would be more people to share the workload. But in order to get someone to want to take part of the work, they have to buy in to the concept. 

I don't even know where we go from here. 

I'm Judging You. (not you, personally, but that other person)

If You Let Your Teenage Daughter Sleep In On A School Day - at the New Yorker

I cannot handle this. I. CANNOT.

I get that it's supposed to be a joke about the children's book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.
I get it.

I'm judging this twofold.

1. As a parent. Don't let your punk-ass daughter sleep in on a school day. If she does, she's sick, and she stays home, in bed, all day. That's it. Full stop. You take her to lunch? You get her a haircut? Fuck no. That's what the weekend is for. Mom, you are a fucking pushover. You are a pathetic excuse for a parent.

I get it- she had lacrosse til all hours and then stayed up doing her homework. Her boyfriend broke up with her and she cried all night. Her best friend bought the same prom dress in a different color and a size smaller and now they're not speaking. Not only am I a mom now, but I was a teenage girl once. A horrible, awful, unbearably dramatic teenage girl.

And you know what I learned? Shit happens. But unless you are sick, you get your ass out of bed and go to school. That's how it works. You get your sorry ass to school.


2. As a teacher. I would bet this mom calls her daughter on her phone while she knows the daughter is in class and then when the daughter gets in trouble, the mom makes excuses. Then she talks shit about the teacher so the kid has no respect for the teacher- if there was any to begin with.

Please, mom, teach your daughter that education is important. That responsibilities and obligations are important. That if she's tired, she should go to bed earlier. If stuff happens, you're tired for a day, and then you take a nap when you get home. That if you prioritize, you can work on your essay over the course of 3 days instead of working on it 7 hours in one night.

Mom, teach your daughter how to be a reliable, responsible, valuable member of society. That's your job. I'm going to help you do that, but I can't do it alone. You have to show her how important it is.

Here I Am...

About this me and this blog:

I have strong opinions and I have the internet. I'm going to tell you what I like and don't like and why.

I live in a rural town in a state on the Eastern seaboard. My family: Sports Guy (husband), Agent N (oldest son, in 3rd grade as of 2012), Agent X (youngest son, entering Kindergarten in the fall) and myself, Brick, moved from the south, which we are not from originally.  I work at home, teaching high school online. It's a sweet gig. I also skate roller derby. I'm also somewhat crafty. Or I like to think so.

I have a good mom friend, Antsy (mom of 2 little girls). I have lots of derby friends, some that are just acquaintances. I have lots of friends I used to teach with Down South. My family lives Up North.