|
|
|
|
A CONVERSATION WITH JOAN K. PETERS
Q: You argue that women should work outside the home and that, if they do not, they cannot preserve their identities or raise children to have both independent and family lives. Why? What about women who want to stay at home with their children? A: This generation has been raised to be financially self-reliant and part of the working world. That’s why women put themselves emotionally at risk when they trade in their work identity for full-time motherhood. A mother who stays home for five to ten years to raise her children may gradually feel off-balance or depressed by the loss of her former "working" self. Later, she may regret that unfulfilled potential and project her need to achieve onto her child. Many woman do decide to stay home to raise children, but often that’s because our overdrive culture asks them to choose between "cold careerist" or "devoted mother." They simply can’t think of how to have both work and family, especially if their husbands haven’t adjusted their work so they can parent too. Many other women, even successful ones, are unconsciously so ambivalent about competing in the "masculine" world of work, they use motherhood as an excuse to drop out. But whatever the reason, if a woman does stay home, she should be aware ahead of time that her marriage will not remain equal if she has no income, nor will her future be secure should she divorce. So full-time mothers should plan to remain financially self-reliant and maintain some access to work rather than just drop out totally. If they carve out space for their own pursuits, they will also be less resentful and enjoy motherhood more. Q: In your book you state that women don't insist that men do their fair share, even as they complain about having to do it all. Why is that? A: American women hold themselves to an unrealistic mothering standard. They feel so anxious about whether they're "good enough" mothers that it's hard for them to trust men to do the job right. Since motherhood is the area of greatest validation for women, they find it difficult to share maternal control with men. They also protect men from the demands of domestic life because they still believe that men's work is more important than their own. Often, too, they fear men will leave them if they demand equal responsibility for children. Q: Why is guilt so endemic to American motherhood? Why do hard-driving, successful working women give up their jobs for motherhood? A: As equal as women see themselves today, nothing is in place to help them parent in a way that is different from their own mothers. Work has gotten more demanding, not less – even when it’s clear that family-friendly policies like flextime, generous parental leave, etc., increase productivity. Meanwhile, the job of mothering has grown more demanding too – with mothers as creative playmates, child-development experts, and assistants in our understaffed schools. Instead of adapting our antiquated concept of motherhood to our new work lives, women are so guilty for giving up traditional womanhood, they have remade what I call Donna Reed housewifery in their own image bringing to it all the science, management, and goal orientation usually applied to work. While all parents need to demand reasonable work hours, women also need to relax and understand that they can participate in their child's life in a rich enough way without professionalizing motherhood or giving up their work. Q.: What are some hidden psychological issues of parenting that couples need to know about before they have children? A: There is no preparation for the all-consuming, utterly exhausting experience of caring for a new baby. And usually mothers are home alone on their three-month maternity leave. Their lives are transformed while their husbands go back to work after a day or two. At that point, husband and wife have such profoundly different experiences, they can become strangers to one another. He may withdraw from her emotional volatility and the seemingly exclusive mother-child bond while she may resent his unbroken sleep and normal life, even if she signed on for this. Also, this new life transforming and frightening responsibility can make even couples who expected to partner fifty/fifty regress to the safest, best-known pattern, and, in our culture, that’s women nurture and men provide. But if a couple recognizes the tidal pull toward tradition, they can talk about it and work towards overcoming it – beginning with taking parental leave together. The less alone each feels in parenting, the more tenderness and pleasure they can access. The less anxious they feel, the more they can nourish the non-parent parts of themselves. Q: Why is our culture so resistant to hands-on fathering? What are some of its benefits? A: Our culture rears men to believe that nurturing is feminine, so they suppress their desire to nurture. Afraid their wives will be angry with them if they encroach on their mothering territory, they keep their distance. The irony is that if men don't nurture, they don't bond with children as deeply as their wives and they don't develop parenting skills. Many fathers are so inept that mothers are afraid to leave small children with them, believing that they will forget to change and feed them and hold their hands while crossing the street. When men do nurture, studies show they do so just as adequately as women; furthermore, they raise more independent and flexible children. Daughters really benefit because dads treat girls more equally than moms do.
Q: Do most men want to make the sacrifices necessary for shared parenting? A: Most men don’t expect to. Having been raised to assume they would provide for children, not take care of them, they’re frightened of reducing their work so they can give the kids dinner, bathe them, and put them to bed – as if they’re shirking their real responsibility. Even the many who want to are afraid they’ll be penalized at work. Many men, too, view their parenting as voluntary, not compulsory, so they can’t understand why they would be asked to make the sacrifices. The irony here is that since men have never been forced to make the same financial, professional, and personal sacrifices women have always made, they often make career choices which are too demanding for real parenting. If they had planned to parent, they wouldn't have to sacrifice so much in order to have real family time.
Q: What are some keys to initiating successful shared parenting and family life? A: The single most important thing couples can do is break the pattern of mother as manager of the children. If she is the expert, if she is the one closest to them, then, of course, she’ll be doing the soothing, dealing with the babysitter, running when they call for her (not him) at night. If he doesn’t know when they need new shoes or a pediatrician appointment or a play date, then he’s out of the loop. Right from the beginning, divvy the management, not just the tasks. If the mother is breast-feeding, then maybe the husband takes over bathing and cleaning the umbilical cord. That doesn't mean that he can never feed the infant or that she can never bathe him. It just means they're each in charge of different areas in which they begin to develop expertise, and intimacy with the child. Men may be awkward because they're not raised to do infant care, but they’ll soon develop their own ways of nurturing, particularly if they’re left alone with the baby. The second vital strategy is to financially plan for a man and woman to take parental leave together, even if a man's company doesn’t provide any for him. That is the most important emotional hurdle to get over, the new father making that commitment from the beginning, telling the world: "I am here for this. This is important to me."
Q: You talk about creating a parenting network and the importance of extending the family. Tell us more about that. A: We must recognize how much better it is for children to be raised by several people in a community, rather than by one isolated human being. As one pediatrician put it, "It's better for a child not to be at the emotional mercy of one person." By dispersing the mothering among several people, parents provide an emotional safety net for the child. That way, if one parent gets ill or there's a divorce or some other upheaval, the child isn't dependent on only one person or on their parents alone for her sense of nurturing and security. This results in a child with a much more resilient character.
Q: A new issue that working mothers are starting to face is the rivalry that can form between mother, care giver, and child. How can parents avoid that emotional triangle? A: We've so personalized motherhood that we don't see that the qualities of mothering are a set of skills that can be shared among several people, instead of inherent in a specific relationship. The more love there is, the more love grows, it's not a finite quantity. If a child loves the care giver, it does not mean she loves the mother less. Parents have to recognize that the care giver is an assistant who is allowing them to do their job better. If the care giver minds the child wonderfully during the day, they can come home with their own fresh mothering energy. But parents must stay central in the child's life, making the distinction to the child that although the care giver is with them during the day, she has her own separate family. In order to reinforce that, parents have to make a big commitment to be there for the child's evening rituals -- story time and bedtime -- and in the mornings. A psychologist I quote talks about "framing the night with your presence," so that the child knows that her parents are home and this is family time -- without the care giver.
Q: What are some assumptions about younger versus older parents? A: Many people think it's easier to have children when you're younger because you have more energy, time, and patience. Very often, the younger the parent the more emotional time is spent on forming self. There are tremendous questions of who am I; where am I going; what am I doing? In actuality, the younger parent may have less time for a child than the older parent who has resolved those issues and now has the emotional energy to focus on a child. While they may not be as playful as the younger parent, they have the maturity to accept that the child is not there to fulfill them. For women, especially, such maturity is also insurance against losing oneself.
Q: Why is honesty about our mixed emotions regarding motherhood so taboo in our society? A: In part, it goes back to the power of the mothering ideal. Women really believe that they should be like the Madonna, always gazing with love upon their child, never disgusted, claustrophobic, freaked out, or bored. What's so unfortunate is that everybody winds up living an emotional lie. A mother who is honest with her feelings gives her child the most important message in the world: You can be honest with your emotions, too. You get to have bad days and good days and I'll love you anyway. The more real we are with our children, the more they will understand that life is not all about them.
Q: You have a young daughter. How do you and your husband manage to parent together? A: Ah, reality time. Don't expect shared parenting to work one hundred percent. We are formed by our culture and you can't ask more of yourself than the real work world and your own upbringing permits. The best you can do is have shared parenting as a goal. In my marriage, there's no question that I do more of the child care. I would say we're at sixty-five/thirty-five. However, we're always working to better it. He'll say to me -- You're micro-managing again -- and I'll let him know when he's tuning us out. This year for the first time my husband took our daughter on a vacation by himself. It was just wonderful to see how much closer they became and how it boosted his confidence as a parent.
Solving The Work/Family Conflict: Work is not the problem. Overwork is. There’s often a choice. You can often make a change. Change. The very thought creates an anxiety attack. It’s never easy, but so often it pays off – it gets us where we want to go, living consistently with our values. All those overworked lawyers, for example, can go from a large firm with minimum billable hours to a small firm, where you’re judged on your work. From a big city to a small city, where the legal profession isn’t as ferocious. From private law to public law, where you may earn only $60,000 instead of double that. In every walk of life, there are overwork jobs and workable jobs: I interviewed a former producer who became an electrician in order to have control over his time, and plenty of it for his kids. A travelling salesman who went into the repair department of a refrigeration company so he could stop travelling. A CPA can be a public accountant working 70 hour weeks, or a corporate accountant working normal hours and earning less. A doctor can work for an HMO or a Hospital instead of a private practice, and have regular hours and coverage. Will they earn less? You bet. But they have their lives and the most valuable luxury you can buy: time. A software engineer can work round the clock in one of the Silicon valley start-ups or be a consultant and set his own hours or work for a company like SAS Institute, the world’s largest privately owned software company that has the lowest turnover in the industry and do you know why? Among other things, they’ve adopted a policy of shutting the switchboard and sending everyone home by 5:00 P.M., including the highest management. And they’ve saved tens of millions of dollars. They made the cover of Fast Company magazine, who called them SANITY, INC. Where you can’t change or leave a job, you can try to negotiate for family friendly hours and flextime. Family friendly is the new buzzword in business right now, the labor market is tight, and many managers would be glad to know how to keep you, so now is the time. |