All in all, I’d rather be pondering New York Fashion Week. Pink tulle, the latest variation of the comma heel, the contrast of flowing fabrics and block colors, an eye-catching combination from one of the Argentine designers.
Oh, none of this fits my lifestyle, much less my figure, but that’s got nothing to do with the pleasure of the view, appreciation of creativity, or a desire to be fashionable – at least in some small measure.
Then again, we all want to fit in and stand out, an interesting and very human (American?) juxtaposition, whether we’re talking about style in terms of appearance, or lifestyle – down to the way we manage our daily existence.
Though I may have been enjoying the runway videos courtesy of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, Modern Love seduced me with an unexpected take on marriage and parenthood. In “Chained to the Hearth or Warmed by It,” writer Lynn Messina describes her parenting arrangement with her husband, a sort of “oppression” she ultimately finds freeing and for now, fitting.
Her reality includes a 20-month old and a helpful spouse who appears to make life flow far more easily, and about which she says “I can’t complain.”
Ms. Messina takes us through some of the inherent differences between herself and her husband, and their well-intentioned agreement to split child-rearing 15-85… He wanted children and she was reluctant, so she would bear 15% of the related duties until adolescence and he agreed to 85.
(At this point, I’m pursing my lips and raising an eyebrow…)
Ms. Messina writes of a reality that turned out differently, her husband apparently the main provider while she is a novelist and editor.
… this was it: my oppression. I was the housewife, the keeper of the hearth, the primary caregiver.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this…
Ms. Messina does a marvelous job of capturing the tedium of those early years – repetitive tasks that provide basic services, as she finds herself in the role of:
… the child’s administrative assistant responsible for appointments, filing, scheduling, body maintenance, pea warming and diaper changing…
Yet her husband can counter with an extensive list of his own:
bathtub, bathroom sink, kitchen sink, grout, tile, microwave, cabinets, carpets, floors, windows, windowsills, stovetop, countertop, vacuum, vacuum filter… Wiping, washing, scrubbing, scraping, rubbing, rinsing, dusting, disinfecting…
As Ms. Messina ultimately concludes that her current portion of duties for their young child is a result of her job flexibility – she has in-office days as an editor, and at-home days as a writer – she suggests that the division of labor isn’t gender-specific but rather, job-specific. In fact, she finds the time with her son to be “liberating” (from her work life), which leaves me nodding in agreement and also shaking my head.
I’m of several minds: Ms. Messina is fortunate to have a husband who does and has contributed with such diligence to the household work, who is a caring and involved father, and who fully believes in the necessity of participating in their family life. This seems only natural to many of us, though the structure of our working lives mitigates against it.
Ms. Messina views them both as “contributors” to the shared responsibilities of family life – a term that we might all do with considering, and making fashionable. Yet aren’t their careers reflective of jobs more likely to be available to women (typically lower paying) versus breadwinning men?
Ms. Messina also recognizes her own periodic irritation, as women remain expected to be the primary caregiver, and running a child here and there is “business as usual.” She writes:
I have a prescribed, preordained existence as a mother, and every day I’m either living up to it or down to it, depending on your point of view.
Ain’t that the truth…
I find myself thinking that she has a long way to go, and a toddler is a far cry from the demands that lie ahead. I also consider the value of the second breadwinner.
And if another baby comes along? How does that change their family dynamics?
I return to the notion of “contributors” to the family, which suggests a more fluid approach to who does what and when. The “hands-on dad” may be both fashionable and desirable. But how do we take that role into the realm of realizable?
I pop over to the video clips of Carmen Marc Valvo and BCBG Max Azria and recognize how life took a different course as soon as children came into the picture.
I linger on the willowy and expressionless models, recalling the years before motherhood altered everything, and even more so, divorce and solo parenthood.
Would I go back? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t choose to see real changes in our child-rearing approach and compromise – both accepted not only as fashionable, but as options leading to a better fitting lifestyle.
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lunaboogie says
My first reaction to this is that it seems a pragmatic approach to something (rearing a child) that requires flexibility and an open mind and is the sort of choice made with the heart, not with the head. We don’t know what kind of child we will have, what the special needs will be, the interests, or the amount of time (100 per cent) we will put into it. How can you divvy up the responsibilities when you have no idea what they will be?
The only pragmatic decision we made was to have just one. Since my job situation has always been the more flexible, (I am the cook in the family, the hands on comforter and nurturer, the breast feeder), the majority of hands on care fell to me. That said, my husband made sure he made and maintained an extremely close bond with our daughter. From month one, he took a vacation day a month to spend the whole day with her, giving me a break. He found out right away that caring for a baby is no easy task. I never, ever heard him ask where dinner was or why was the house messy when he came home from work. He had lived it, and understood.
As she grew, he included her in house projects of every kind. She thinks nothing of crawling in the attic or under the house, has rewired outlets and soldered copper pipes and used heavy tools like roto-hammers to break up concrete. Then there was home work. I took on the creative oversight – reading and discussing books, proofing essays and helping with french homework. He and she spent many evenings hunkered down with science projects, chemistry and math problems – their shared loves that are somewhat foreign to me. At some point, her music ability far outshone ours, and she became our mentor in learning to play the violin. How were we to know her orchestra would travel to NY and LA? Or which one of would be able to take time off work to chaperone? Or want to? (I did. He tried once and said never again whereas the day I chaperoned 4 teenagers in Disneyland was one of the best days of my life).
The idea of how it will be, and the reality are so glaringly different. Gotta just roll with the punches, go with the flow.
(By the way, I caught an art exhibit of Japanese designers over the weekend (Miyaki, Takada, Kawakubo and Yamamoto etc.) from the 70’s, mostly 80’s on – with originals of the etherial to the bizarre and lots of footage of fashion shows of theirs as well as Americans – Lagerfield, St. Laurent. – oh those skinny hips and wide, wide shoulders. I learned that Issay Miyaki employed dancers as his runway models. And I saw dresses whose pleats allowed them to be folded flat, top to bottom, origami like, on the floor beside the mannequin wearing the garment. Pretty cool.)
lisa thomson says
I think we expect a lot of fathers. We want them to help out but we want them to be bread winners as well. We expect even more of ourselves as mothers and career women. Ahhh, the conundrum continues. Thanks D.A., for another thought provoking post.
lisa says
I’ve been MIA from your wonderful posts far too long. Please forgive my absence!! This one caught my eye (perhaps b/c I saw an episode of Project Runway), and I had to stop. A 15-85 child-rearing agreement? Really? Call me crazy, but I would think with the decision to have a child, the decision to be interested and engaged with said child would be obvious. Life has a way of laughing at our best-laid plans and I’m glad Ms. Messina may be adjusting her perspective…because with the teenage years, all routine goes right out the window! Blessed are the flexible for they shall never get bent out of shape.
D. A. Wolf says
Ms. Messina was kind enough to engage me in conversation on Twitter, and Retweet my post. She does indeed seem to relish motherhood, but her piece in the Times is nuanced and filled with the conflicting realities of parenting, even under the best of circumstances. (I recommend her essay if you haven’t clicked over to read it yet.)
Aren’t we all a little clueless before we actually have children? And doesn’t each stage bring a whole new awareness of what’s involved? I never thought I’d say this, but… while parenting was a whole lot more straightforward when we were children, I can certainly empathize with the many conflicting feelings my own mother must have felt along the long parenting road.
Leslie in Oregon says
To understand my husband’s and my parenting arrangement, one would have to look at decisions we made years before we had our first child. Soon after we married, each of us had a law degree, and after getting some broad-based experience in legal work, each of us decided to start his or her own practice, he as an attorney and I as a labor and employment arbitrator. We knew that someday we would try to become parents, and just as we each were absolutely committed to equal-opportunity marriage, we each were absolutely committed to equal-opportunity parenting. Each being able to charge a decent rate for her or his work, and each being his or her own boss, gave us the flexibility we knew we would need to each take an equal share of parenting responsibilities some day. We were fortunate enough to have each of our two children within a month of when we had decided we wanted to have them. When our first child was born (about five years after we married), we each took one month off, then each worked half-time for six months. After that, each of us was in charge of determining what our daughter did for four hours each work day. At seven months of age, she started going to what we had determined, after a lot of research, was the best day care option for her. She started out being there 3-4 hours each weekday, and had worked her way up to 6-7 hours each weekday when she finished kindergarten there. Throughout that time, money was scarce (and we had to borrow at times), as neither of us was putting in full-time work hours every day, but we each were happy with the amount and nature of of time we had with our daughter. We did not have another child until 4 1/3 years later, when we believed that we could afford it, financially and otherwise. The same basic responsibility schedule worked with him. We had our share of illnesses, job emergencies and other challenges, including our daughter’s development of a very serious and debilitating condition at age 12, but we worked hard together to get through those times. One thing that helped was to plan our work obligations so that on every single work day, at least one of us would be in a position to respond to the unexpected. (And we more or less alternated which one of us took that responsibility.)
Our children are now 33 and 28 and thriving. I know that my husband and I have been very fortunate in our parenting. In addition to that, however, thinking through and planning our major life decisions, together, really helped give us the flexibility, economic at and otherwise, that we needed to be able to fulfill our commitment to each taking equal responsibility for, and participating equally in, raising our children. What each of us offered the children differed, but our parenting roles were determined by our respective interests and capabilities and were (sometimes by design) not the traditional gender-determined roles (even, to the extent we could make that possible, in birth and breast feeding). And I know that was critical to our being able to work, and work well even during the worst times, as a parenting team.
Given my experience, I cannot imagine parenting without such a partner, and those people who do it or have done it, including you, have my deep admiration.
Now, on to grandparenting, we hope!