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From my book, THE 7 STAGES OF MOTHERHOOD
No, I’m not being a Pollyanna. For several moms I interviewed, the gift of the first six months was their awareness of their own creativity, passion, patience, strength, and resourcefulness. Applied to their jobs, these qualities enabled them to switch careers entirely or to bring their work into laserlike focus.
For Jackie, who put herself through school, set up and ran a physical fitness center with her husband, and cared for her chronically ill mother, working a sixty-hour week had always been part of the fabric of her life. So when she became pregnant with twins, she assumed she would take a few months off and then jump back in with both feet. When we met, her boys were five months old and already wearing twelve-month sizes. Jackie, on the other hand, was back to a buff size 6, and her no-nonsense New York delivery belied a softness I had not seen before. “I know it sounds corny to say this, but I really feel that my life didn’t begin until I had them,” she said. “Not that I didn’t do things before, not that I hadn’t accomplished a lot, but having these babies has given me a reason to look at myself in a whole new way.” She went on to explain that she was not going back to the gym to work with her husband. “Having them made me realize that I want to be a better person. I just sit and think, ‘Am I doing everything I want to do? Am I worthy of these looks that they give me—these looks that say, “You are just the best thing ever!”’ I wonder whether I’m good enough to live up to that. It’s made me rethink who I want to be.”
Living in the moment—as we do when our babies are new—and then very much moment to moment as the months tick by, we are forced to sit back and ask ourselves how this phase in our own development will affect the stages to come. But it’s not easy to weigh the short-term gains against the possible long-term outcomes when the number of variables seem infinite and intricate. You can’t know when you’re staring into your four-month-old’s eyes whether he’ll be the independent sort, happy to toddle off with his pals in child care, or whether his need for your presence will intensify and make it harder and harder to separate. You can’t be certain that the loving nanny you’re handing your baby off to will be as vigilant as you, just as you can’t expect your child to be a perfect angel as a reward for your deciding to quit your job and stay home full-time.
Help Wanted
Despite the fact that the vast majority of research tells us that child care does not hurt kids—assuming that that care is consistent and nurturing—there isn’t a mother alive who doesn’t feel guilty and conflicted as she heads out the door. The truth is, you’ll never know for sure whether the decisions you make today are the ones that matter the most down the road. All you can do is accept what research and common sense confirm: Being true to yourself is paramount. A child at home with a depressed or frustrated mom is going to suffer more than a child whose mother nurtures herself—through work or other activities—and is, therefore, replenished and ready to give when she’s home. Babies need and love their moms, but they certainly don’t need to be with them every minute of every day. They also thrive when they have a chance to interact with other loving adults.
Ahhh, but there’s the rub. How does one find “other loving adults”—even one other loving adult? Quality, affordable child care ranks with the Holy Grail in terms of accessibility. Understandably, we often make the mistake of looking for child care that is all about our baby’s needs. We want a surrogate mom, or a group of surrogate moms in a wonderful child-care center. But one of the keys to making this transition from home to work is having someone or a group of someones who are there for you. This means a woman who supports working mothers, really believes that you’ve made the right choice. If your baby is in center-based care, then you want a place that regularly provides information about what your baby has been doing, not because it will necessarily help the baby but because they know you want to be in on her day. They should also welcome your occasional surprise visits. A child-care provider who seems judgmental, arrogant, or so obsequious that she would obviously never tell you the truth is not the person to hire. A center that holds a dim view of parents who question, call regularly, or stop by is not the one for your baby.
In order to forge the kind of partnership that makes everyone happy, it’s also critical that you do your part. Don’t micromanage. If you’re constantly second-guessing what your child-care provider is providing, you’re going to drive her nuts—and perhaps out the door. On the other hand, a good child-care provider, one who has had experience not only with newborns but with new moms, knows we’re all a little nuts in the beginning and doesn’t get defensive.
One of the mistakes I made with Ana, who worked for us for five years, was that I rarely scheduled times during the week to sit with her and talk about Maddie’s and Nick’s development, any problems that had bubbled up, or to simply see how Ana was doing. Too often, we had these conversations on the fly, as I was rushing in at the end of the day and she was rushing out.
Your goal is not to become your child-care provider’s new best friend; after all, you are her boss. But every employer-employee relationship depends on good communication. If you’re not clear about her job responsibilities or if she’s reluctant to voice a complaint, then you’re going to have a hard time working as a team.
In a perfect world, affordable, high-quality child care would be accessible to all mothers, not just those who choose or need to work. But even if such a subsidized system did exist, it would never eliminate the ambivalence we feel about handing our babies over to another person. No matter how wonderful or well trained that surrogate might be, millions of moms would still choose to stay home full-time. Knowing that you want to be home full-time and embracing that choice without apology can be empowering and joyful. Mothers who believe in what they’re doing fare much better psychologically and emotionally than those whose ambivalence and resentment spill over into their interactions with their children. “I have never felt more like myself than when I was home with my babies,” Nicole told me, adding with visible anger how hard it was to convince everyone from her husband to her friends that she actually wanted to give up an excellent job with fabulous benefits to be home full-time. “No one could believe that what actually made me happy was just hanging out with my children, playing with them or just watching them together.”
If you do decide to rule your at-home world, you may be shocked to discover that your husband still believes he’s king. In fact, his share of the child care and the housework is guaranteed to be a fraction of yours. I realize this sounds somewhat sexist and that there are many fathers who do as much of the diaper changing and cooking as their wives, but if Mom is home all day, Dad often assumes she can and should shoulder more of the day-to-day chores. Frankly, even if Mom is working full-time outside the home, she’s likely to find more on her to-do list than on his.
Ask any couples counselor to name the top threats to marital bliss, and she is sure to include the division of labor at home. We can joke about it, make fun of our husbands’ pathetic efforts, complain, nag, or threaten, but at the root of the debate is an understandable desire to feel connected to the person you love most in the world. When our husbands don’t do their share or when fatherhood leads to more time on the job or when we feel we’re speaking different languages, anger, exasperation, and loneliness pile up in dark corners. The challenge is to bring these feelings out in the open and to explore together, if possible, why they run so deep.
For many of us, the chore wars are, in fact, a battle with ourselves, an internal struggle over how much control we want, how much authority we need in order to feel like good-enough mothers. We’re usually much more willing to relinquish the housework than the child care, eager to have a partner in the kitchen washing up after dinner but more competitive when it comes to bonding with the baby. What’s really “fair” has to be evaluated not only in the context of your marriage but in terms of what you really want for yourself. If your dream is to be home full-time with your baby but your family depends on your income, you may find yourself putting in a second shift in order to feel as connected as possible with your role as a mom. If mothering 24/7 leaves you drained and unfulfilled, then your resentment of your husband’s freedom to “go about his life just like before” (as one mother told me bitterly) is guaranteed to rankle.
Of course, it’s incredibly hard to sort out the complex and conflicting feelings of this stage. We’re apt to give mixed messages to our husbands because we rarely have the opportunity to sit back and evaluate exactly what we want and what has to change. When Maddie was a baby and Steve and I were both working full-time, it was hard enough to finish a sentence, let alone find the time to contemplate whether or not I liked my life. It was far easier just to plow ahead, joking about or quietly grumbling over who did the laundry more often.
Several moms shared the sense I had during the first year of Maddie’s life, that fatherhood, though profound and thrilling, didn’t shake their husbands’ basic priorities or expectations. For Steve and me, the challenge to embrace a new definition of we mirrored our individual struggles to accept a radically altered sense of ourselves. Maddie’s first birthday was a celebration of the longest year ever to whiz by; so much had happened in so little time, yet I could readily recall nights early in her life that I thought would never end and long, exhausting days. As a mother I had come so far, discovered vast reservoirs of energy and hidden strengths. There were even occasions when I experienced what Tibetan Buddhists refer to as my lungtha—a feeling of being on the top of my game, a Wind Horse Mama, no longer straining to maintain my seat.
Of course, the year had also forced me to face my share of demons, to accept that I had a long way to go before I would feel totally in balance—at home, at work, in my marriage, and in relation to extended family, friends, colleagues. I had learned that, as Daphne de Marneffe writes in Maternal Desire, “motherhood puts women in a different relationship to themselves...not as some sort of pale ‘shifting of priorities,’ but as a new relationship to experience.” To survive this first, dramatic year, I had had to let go of the expectation that my days would ever be completely my own; to accept that life with a baby rarely goes as planned, that the tension between the love and the anger we feel toward our babies could bend steel, and that unless we nurture ourselves, we cannot possibly summon the reserves we need to care for them.
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