Attachment Observation February 28, 2008

Mavis has been doing a lot better with her clinginess lately–a few intensive days of cuddling and closeness really have helped.  But yesterday when we were at Starb*cks for a bit with Jasper, she got very upset when I left to go to the bathroom for about one minute, even though Jasper was right there with her the whole time.  Then, just a few minutes later, Jasper took her to the playground in a separate car while I went back to work for a while.  As he walked off with her, clearly separating her from me (we told her I was going to work, so she knew I wasn’t coming), she was all “bye, Mama!” and waving happily like things were just hunky dory. 

It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this distinction between my leaving and her leaving, but I tend to forget it that Mavis is much, much more secure when she leaves me than when I leave her.  Her leaving me is totally different from my leaving her.  I guess it makes perfect sense, really.  I post it here because I need to remember to employ this more often to my advantage and also because I never heard this bit of insight before I adopted–or if I did, I didn’t remember it. 

Have you guys noticed this?  Or am I just a bit slow on the uptake?

Thoughts on One Year of Motherhood (Lulu here) February 27, 2008

Coco’s post was really great for me to read, coming on the heels of our own one-year anniversary of becoming a family.  I can 100% relate to much of her list, with a few additions.  I apologize in advance that this might be long!

1.  I have mixed emotions about our first meeting.  So many people gush about their “Gotcha Day,” which is a term that doesn’t seem to work for me. They talk about the rush of love they felt and getting their first smiles just hours later. Remembering that day mostly makes me sad. On my personal blog, I wrote about it this way — “More than any of the other children in our travel group (at least from surface appearances), our daughter struggled mightily with her transition. She withdrew completely, and to some extent she still does in stressful situations. When I look at photos from our first week together, my heart breaks a little. She is clearly hurting so very badly, and we just keep smiling, hoping that our child isn’t normally this quiet, this withdrawn, this sad.”  For several days, I remember thinking, “Please, don’t let her really be like this.”  So, not a proud entry into motherhood.

2.  Attachment is a two-way street.  I had no foolish expectation that Elsie would bond instantly or attach quickly, and that was realistic as I mentioned above.  I felt a motherly, protective love for her right away, but I hadn’t thought about how my attachment to her would be an ongoing process.  I had no idea that my attachment and love for her would grow so much during this first year. This sounds so cliche’, but I just didn’t know how intense the love for a child could be.

3. Parenting is easier and harder than I thought. Again, a cliche’, but we have been blessed by what other parents would call an “easy” child.  Good-natured. A relatively good eater and sleeper. She’s never been to the doctor for anything other than a well-baby visit. Smart and on-target or ahead developmentally.  And oh so love-able. So that’s all been pretty darn easy.

Things that have been harder are our adjustment to parenting and my own knack for parenting (or lack thereof). Like many couples who adopt, we are a little older than your average first time parents. I was 41 and Max was 48, and we were pretty used to independence, free time and all that good stuff. And it’s been harder to give up than I thought. I get resentful, bored and antsy sometimes. But it’s improving, and we’re doing a better job of getting out when we can. The hardest thing for me to face is that, after all our struggles to become parents, I’m not necessarily a natural mother. I’m not saying I’m not a good mother — I am.  But it does not come naturally to me. Many nights, I look at the time between dinner and bedtime and sigh, “what are we going to dofor the next two hours?”  Sad, I know.  I’m not patient by nature, and I’ve always had a low tolerance for neediness.  I know, she’s a small child, don’t judge me, ok?  Again, these are all areas where I really am improving, but it was hard for me to admit that it didn’t come naturally. My husband on the other hand — he who would probably have been fine remaining childless — he is the natural parent. Patient, silly and endlessly understanding. Now if he could just cook.

4. Getting endless attention can by annoying. We know that our family stands out, and that’s something we thought we were prepared for, but not always. I find myself becoming irritated with the endless comments about how beautiful Elsie is, or how cute she is dressed, etc. I always perceive a patronizing or reassuring tone. And I am still amazed at comments like “oh, our neighbor (niece, cousin, friend’s sister) has one just like her!”  Huh?  Really?  Twin alert!  Gah, makes me crazy that people think you’ll be excited to hear this fabulous coincidence.

5. Finding cultural connections is tough. The IA community really tries, but so many of the events we’ve been to that are sponsored by our agency or our local FCC chapter are pretty lame. They feel contrived somehow, and I want Elsie to make cultural connections beyond the adoption community. Yes, it’s great to have friends who share your experience as a trans-racial adoptee, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to find friends with families for whom cultural celebrations are a natural part of their lives, involving multiple generations and traditions that have been passed along for many years?  Maybe I’m dreaming, but hey, I’ll keep looking. The bigger question is why those families would be excited to be friends with us!

6. Is it an adoption thing, or a toddler thing? Coco talked about this well, and it is a hard distinction. I try to focus more on the particular issue/concern and not so much the source, but it’s hard. I don’t want to ignore issues, or gloss over them, even if friends or family tell me that something is “perfectly normal behavior for a two-year-old.” I’d rather assume it is adoption/transition/attachment related and be wrong than chalk everything up to toddlerhood.

I am an adult adoptee myself, but I’m not remotely fooled into thinking that my experience parallels Elsie’s. I was a domestic adoption into a family of my same race (and height and coloring). I do understand some of the emotions involved in adoption, and I have definite opinions on what my parents did well and didn’t do so well in raising adopted children. But that’s another post for another time (boy, can I ever ramble).

I’m afraid my list sounds negative, and that’s not even remotely how I feel about my first year as a mother. It has been the most incredible year of my life. My daughter is an amazing person, and I cannot believe I have the privilege of parenting her. She is more fun than I anticipated (I don’t think I had a sense of humor at two, but man, does Elsie ever!), and my husband (who has not been a model for sharing household tasks 50/50) has completely stepped up and become an incredible father. Our families give us great support, and our friends have adjusted well to having a two-year-old come hang out with us at coffee or breakfast. My job is generally flexible enough to allow me to spend quality time with Elsie before and after work.

So, my thoughts on one year of motherhood are complex, as expected. And long, as expected. But every day when she points to me and says “Elsie Mama,” I smile and am immensely thankful that, yes, I am Elsie’s mother.

Thoughts on One Year of Motherhood (Coco here) February 27, 2008

I’ve been a mother for one year today.  In some ways, I’m surprised to report that being a mother is, well, kind of how I expected it.  I knew I would love my kid like crazy; I knew that work would be really hard; I knew we would be tired pretty much all the time.  I knew sometimes it would be boring.  I knew I would not be perfect, but I thought that I would do a pretty decent job at it.  That’s all been right.

I expected it, actually, to be a little harder.  I hate to say that because I think we were exceptionally lucky on some issues.  Mavis was never a Velcro baby; she attached equally to me and Jasper from the outset.  She wasn’t in foster care and so didn’t grieve that particular loss with such intensity as is common.  Our families are supportive (in varying degrees).  We chose to become parents and had plenty (too much, by far) time to imagine what that would mean. In that time we read up on a lot of issues and concerns that in the end haven’t (yet) related to us.  I’m glad we did that stuff.

But I have learned a few things about adoptive parenting in the last year.  Here are my handful of observations (and, yes, I might be constantly posting lists on this blog for lack of time and energy to form more coherent essays).  I feel like I had thought of some better ones before I actually sat down to type these, but here’s what I can recall right now.

1)    Attachment starts happening much more quickly than I expected.  I don’t mean it just gets accomplished and that’s that—it’s a process, definitely—but I was surprised how soon Mavis recognized Jasper and me as hers.  It really was a matter of days.  That really surprised me.  She was looking for an attachment.

2)    One of the strangest things about being an adoptive parent is that I have a nearly two-year-old but have been a parent for only one year.  There’s a way that Mavis’ peers’ parents are more settled into their roles, somehow, than I am.  I especially felt that way at the beginning.  You have to hit that learning curve pretty hard and fast.

3)    Sometimes it is hard to assert the needs of my adopted child as something different than other kids, especially because Mavis appears to be extremely well-adjusted.  It’s hard not to come off as overprotective or overconcerned.  I felt this especially when I was dealing with leaving Mavis at daycare and her crying.  All the kids cry at the beginning; parents say this again and again to comfort one another.  It felt isolating and frustrating not to be able to say “no, my kid’s crying is different.”  But we’ve been lucky in having a good program that understands.

4)    It’s hard to make friends with other white mothers of transracially adopted children when I run into them in public.  I had an experience like this at a coffee shop recently: a white mother with an African American infant daughter noticed me and I her.  Neither of us wanted to say “hey, I notice your kid’s not white!” but we both wanted to chat.

5)    Related to #4: we haven’t had a lot of people make rude or terrible comments about Mavis’ race or adoption.  But I’m aware all the time of people noticing us, interpreting what we mean.  For some, we are a cheer to the heart.  For some, we are probably something less sweet.  But it’s tiresome to feel like we are an example of anything instead of just being ourselves.  Sometimes I feel proud of what they notice—I want to say “that’s right—we are this happy and this is what family means”–but most of the time, I just want to be us.

6)    I am self-conscious about the fact that people consider Mavis is well-dressed, perhaps because I’m self-conscious about the idea that white people adopt Asian children to doll them up.  For the record, I don’t doll Mavis up, but I guess her clothes match?  I don’t know.  This is a bit silly, I know.

7)    The best thing I have done for myself as a mother was not to expect of myself—not even to valorize—perfection.  I was proud as punch today when Mavis said for the first time, “I angry.”  I was proud that she knew how to express real feelings in words.  I don’t want her to think of me as some perfect, flawless, fake mother-person but as a real person.

8)    It’s hard to talk casually about Mavis’ early story.  I don’t get gushy with angst over the fact, say, that Mavis had a horrible haircut in the orphanage.  So sometimes, for instance, if someone starts talking about haircuts, it feels natural to mention the history of her funny ‘do.  But instead, I get moans of sympathy and tsks of sadness.  It’s not sad for me, but people seem to need to interpret anything about her life before us as tragic.  It leaves me reeling every time this happens.  I feel like I’ve fumbled.

9)    Even well after they’ve given birth, other mothers seem to “bond” over pregnancy.  During such conversations I have not a thing to say.  It doesn’t make me sad, really, but it irritates.  Maybe this will get better as Mavis gets older.

10)     Validating my daughter’s emotions helps a whole lot.  When she whines, “I don’t like shopping!” in the shopping cart, I sympathize: “I know! You wish you could go home and play! You don’t like looking at shoes!” It buys me time every time, usually enough time to then change the subject to something more interesting.  It looked corny and ridiculous in the parenting books, but it works.

11)     The other bit of parenting advice that has served me very well is to understand the toddler’s need to distance herself from me but then, paradoxically, to need continual reinforcement of my presence.  When Mavis is playing, I understand better her “check-ins” with me and am sure to take the time to rub her back a bit, to say some kind word, or to tickle her somehow.  That time helps so much.

12)     One of the hard things about being a working mother is proving wrong the ideas that a woman who has a child is going to start slacking off or doing half-assed work.  I’ve definitely felt sometimes that people were watching me for missteps.

13)     The Shanghai-style restaurant with the red doorway in Guangzhou, near the place where they take the visa photos, is really tasty, but no one ever seems to mention it.

Fifi’s Octosavers February 25, 2008

Hey all…the slacker Octomama is finally chiming in on what small measures I have put in place to help out in the Fifi-household.  Better late than never, and I fear that I am going to have a hard time adding suggestions to the fabulous lists already put together by Coco and Lulu…but here it goes:  

1. Planning outfits ahead. This goes for both my outfits and Sadie’s. I usually plan for the five day work/school week on Sunday, and it has worked out really well for us. I do have an alternate on hand, and use two things for this process: our calendars and a cool organizer much like the one found here http://www.kangaroomstorage.com/product/kids-storage/27/kangaroom-hanging-5-shelf-organizer.html  for Sadie’s things. It helps in the morning rush to have these things ironed, organized, and within reaching distance.

2. Meal planning. I know that this has been mentioned before, and it is the best thing for our house, our health, and my mental well-being.  We plan six meals for the week (dinner, but I plan lunches for myself as well). We post this, and then Ken can help to defrost, prep, and even pop things in the oven before I get home with Sadie. About twice a month I will prepare and freeze about ten-twelve meals, using the cool freezer-to-oven Gladware stuff. All I have to worry about then is a side dish or salad.

3.  Making chores fun. Easier said than done, and this may not work for everyone. Sadie loves to organize, and so we have systems set up for her toys and books, our mail, coats, and other stuff. She has just started helping to hang up her coat on a hook at her level, putting her shoes away, and singing the “clean-up” song when we are decluttering or just clearing up dinner dishes. We sing, we remind about our patterns, and we finish a bit more slowly than we normally would…but I think that we are teaching some good lessons along the way.

4. Communication…first, last, and always. Ken and I have always split the chores and responsiblities around the house, and we have continued this with Sadie. He is really involved and is fabulous with her, so we just try to make sure that each person gets time to do their “own thing” when needed, and talk it out instead of getting frustrated or upset.  This has saved me much time and grief…as I tended to be one of those people who had a hard time letting someone pick up the slack for me.

5.  Letting some things go. I used to get so stressed out over the little things..but remind myself that not everything can get done perfectly, and sometimes they are just not as important as some down time and fun with my family.  

6.  Making the most of my “work” day. I use my lunch hour to run small errands, make phone calls, etc…even paying bills on-line. I go in early and often will skip lunch to leave an hour early, giving me a bit of a lead on the evening stuff (and sometimes  

Reupping on Attachment February 21, 2008

Generally, Mavis has done extraordinarily well with attachment, but I think we’ve had a little setback this past week or so.  Last week Mavis got sick and so was understandably more Mama-needy and also away from school.  Then my mom came to visit and, more than usual, spent a lot of time caring for Mavis.  It was very helpful to me, and Mavis delights in her grandmother, but sometimes she was more clingy for me because of it.  For example, she wanted me rather than my mom to give her a bath (or even be closer to her in the tub) and got agitated when I would just leave the bathroom for a moment to go fetch a towel.  At preschool this week, she’s been more upset by my leaving. This afternoon I picked Mavis up from preschool and took her to Starb*cks for a while; Jasper met us there and then we went out for an early dinner before I was off to a night class.  She spends about an equal amount of time with Jasper as with me, but this time when I went for my car and she stayed with Jasper, she cried, “Mama, mama!” And when I went to the bathroom in the restaurant, I could hear her calling for me from the table.  And just now, as she stirred in her sleep, she called for Mama in her half-sleep.

I feel rotten about this.  I have a plan to wake up a little early tomorrow morning and go scoop her out of her crib for a 20-minute or so morning cuddle before I have to get her ready for school.  I’ve been trying to do more tickling and physical play, which she relishes. Sometimes I whisper to her forehead to forehead, which we both like an awful lot. I think I just need to go into kind of an attachment huddle for a little bit.  Do you guys ever have phases like this with your girls?  I think so much of what we learned about attachment was about the beginning, about how to establish it.  But I’ve read and understand less about how their level of need might fluctuate with mood, sickness, or other issues.

Also, at school today I was talking about her increasing clinginess with one of the childcare providers.  She was saying how it’s terrible for all the kids when they’ve been away from school for a while because they all come back clingier and less confident.  It’s such a cliche in the adoption community to even say this, but damn, sometimes it’s just so hard to know what’s “adoption” and what’s not.  Also, why does she never seem clingy to Jasper?  He is a very, very involved father, and she spends as much time with him, on average, as she does with me.  I suppose, though, the bottom line is that whether it’s an adoption need or just some other need, I still need to attend to the need in pretty much the same ways.  But I do have to admit that I wouldn’t mind feeling a little more sure.

Any advice or thoughts on an attachment huddle?  On why me and not Jasper?  On anything at all?

Lulu’s Octosavers February 18, 2008

Not to get off track, but Octosavers makes me think of Creamsavers from Lifesavers.  Mmmmmmmmm.

A lot of my timesaving thoughts are similar to Coco’s, so my apologies for repeats. I will think of them as reinforcements instead.

1.  Hire a cleaning service. This is not a luxury.  Really. At my house, it’s the price of a happier marriage. If you love to clean, fine. But really, who loves to clean? And who wants to spend evening/weekend time on cleaning?  Not me.  Besides, our service does a better job than I do, and it forces us to clean up/tidy things every two weeks.

2. Reconsider what home cooking means. I enjoy cooking, but the universe has conspired to make pre-dinner time the witching hour for most kids. Add in the transition factor (i.e. I just got home), and a need to get dinner on the table quickly, and it isn’t generally pretty at our house. Like Coco, I heart Trader Joe*s, and I’ve also embraced Take-and-Bake places like Let*s Dish and S*ciale. And I truly do Take, I don’t go in and prepare stuff myself. I order online and pick it up. It takes some trial and error to find dishes that are easy to fix and tasty, but I’m getting good at spotting a winner on their menus.  Combine this with take out, eating out, and fending for yourself (ok, I don’t make Elsie “fend,” really) some nights, I can still satisfy my love of true cooking from scratch while really only having to “cook cook” 1-2 nights a week.

3.  Project time = fun time.  This may sound idiotic, and I’m sure other people do this all the time, but since I do work all week, I used to save nearly every “chore” I needed to accomplish until after Elsie’s bedtime. But recently, I’ve taken a few organizational projects and turned them into fun/together time. One example was organizing Elsie’s out of season clothes and sorting them by season into categories like donate/consign/regift.  I spread the project out on our futon in the basement, brought her down there, put on a video we hadn’t seen in a while and pulled out some toys that hadn’t had recent attention.  We chatted and sang during the video, and while I took more than a few play breaks, it was great to get something productive done and have fun with her at the same time. Plus, it gave my husband some free time to catch up on some reading, which earned me sleep in time the next day. Ah, the wins never stop… 

4.  Yeah, me too.  I am just going to chime in a “yes, me too” on a few of Coco’s items.  Baths are definitely every other night, we take Elsie all sorts of places (she loves to go bye-bye, and even enjoys grocery shopping to a point — other types of shopping, no way), and our girl loves the occasional You Tube video. She loves to look at blogs with photos of little kids even better. Sadly, she loves to look at photos of herself even more.  I can review email while she looks at photo slideshows from China or when we were first home.  It’s nice in a pinch.

I don’t know what else I do to save time. I guess I’m still figuring it out.

I used to be able to run more errands over lunch than I have done lately, but that’s always nice. I also try to get into the office quite early every once in a while so I can leave early without setting a bad example (I have a “work from home” abuser on my staff). It’s amazing what I can accomplish when I get home an hour before Elsie does.

I’m particularly interested in ideas others have around #3 above. I know I need to be more productive in general, but I don’t want to do too much tag-team parenting where my husband plays with Elsie while I do this thing, then I play with her while he does something else. It’s too tempting to fall into that pattern…

Coco’s Octosavers February 15, 2008

I’m not actually a very efficient or organized person, so it’s kind of funny for me to write out my ten best timesavers, but Lulu, who has all the big ideas around here, suggested it, and I was game (mostly because I want to hear from others). It’d be easier to write a list of the things I really *should* do (especially: not nap when Mavis is napping and I am home [but I often do], pack things the night before [can't seem to get myself to do this], etc.) than to give advice on what works for us, but here’s the best honest version I can offer.

1. Hire a cleaning service. It’s worth it. Ours comes twice a month on my longest work day. Our cleaning guy uses only environmentally friendly products that he makes himself (he used to be a chemist). I used to be embarrassed about hiring a service, but now I’m strangely not. Cleaning my house is not my domestic womanly duty.

2. Trader Joe’s. We live very near one. If we eat meat for dinner (which isn’t v. often), we almost always have gotten it from Joe’s: preprepared fish, some good chicken/apple sausage, or even their barbequed shredded chicken in a pinch. Mavis loves their freeze-dried mangoes and their free balloons; I love the fast in and out of the store. We also are fond of their premade pasta things, curries in a box, and 90-second microwaved rice things (Mavis hearts the multigrain pilaf). I have also rediscovered of late my Crock Pot and am trying to remember to use it. We also like to sometimes go to a grocery store salad bar and just make a giant salad for dinner, tossing some cans of tuna or hard-boiled eggs or whatever in for protein. The salad bar thing is nice because we don’t have to spend time chopping the ingredients and get more variety. (Perhaps we should have an Octorecipe post?)

3. If possible, do separate loads of laundry for towels/linens, etc. as well as separate loads for me, Jasper, and Mavis. This means I don’t have to sort the piles and rooms. In our house, everyone’s least favorite chore is putting laundry away. In my house, Jasper is responsible for putting away linens and his clothes, and I’m responsible for mine and Mavis’ (mostly because Jasper is woefully unable to understand women’s or girls’ clothing), so if I can’t do separate loads for each of us, I mix linens with Jasper and Mavis with me. My other new laundry innovation is to have a small basket in the kitchen that I use for dirty kitchen laundry. With Mavis, there is always kitchen laundry.

4. Buy a kitchen scissors. This has nothing in particular to do with being an Octomama, but I find a good kitchen scissors wildly helpful in prepping food that minimizes choking hazards. Way easier to cut a grape or dried apricot, say, with a scissors than a knife. I’m slightly evangelical about this.

5. Bathe Mavis every other night. I used to bathe her every night, but her skin was getting dry, so I cut back. Saves some time, too. When I do bathe Mavis, I try to straighten up the bathroom while I’m in there with her and she’s busy playing.

6. A video in the morning. Mavis’ old high chair is in our bedroom, and when I’m doing my hair, etc. in the morning, she sits in it and watches a video or Sesame Street. I am reluctant for Mavis to watch television at all, but I finally decided a few weeks ago that my impatience in the morning with her grabbygrabbygrabgrab while I was trying to get ready for work was probably, all told, more detrimental to her than 15-20 minutes of television/videos were. Sometimes I can do her hair while she sits in the chair. I also let her brush her teeth in the chair. I have also improvised toy makeup to give Mavis to put on while I’m doing mine and she’s with me in the bathroom. Sometimes I also put her in the tub in the bathroom to play, even if she is fully clothed and there is no water in it.

7. Bring Mavis places. Since we met her, we’ve always taken Mavis to grownup restaurants. We try to take her other places, too, within reason. Doing this is the only way to continue to see some of our friends, and we think it’s also good to raise a child who knows how to behave in public without Chuck E. Cheese or the like dancing about. Mavis is, for the most part, pretty good company. We also have toy suitcases with items that travel for emergency entertainment.

8. Stay firm about the hours I commit to sending Mavis to school. If I treat them as inflexible, work has to treat them that way too. It’s more respectful to Mavis’ childcare providers anyway.

9. Whenever possible, I get away from work to do work (I am lucky in that I don’t have to be in the office any particular hours except for my 3 office hours a week). I’m most productive when I can take my work to a coffee shop. When I’m in the office, I’m constantly distracted or interrupted, and it drives me crazy. Working outside of work is a hundred times more productive. I’m also generally bad at working at home, so the coffee time is really important. Most of my other Octosavers related to work relate specifically to teaching, so I won’t detail those here.

10. Try to make my time in the car with Mavis count. I talk to Mavis a lot in the car. It’s really easy to zone out as you’re driving, but I try pretty hard to make her car rides interactive and interesting before I drop her off, so that she feels attended to and less clingy when she leaves me. We talk about the other vehicles we see or about what so and so likes to do or about things she “remembers.” I like this talking we do, and she’s too mobile the rest of the day to really chat with me like she does when she’s stuck in her car seat. I like how it encourages conversation, and she often starts the conversations herself. It doesn’t save time per se, but it’s a more conscious use of time, I guess, so I mention it here. I admit, though, that the first mile of each drive in the morning usually has me just taking deep breaths to counter my deep sense of frustration lingering from my bumbling out the door a few minutes prior. The five or so minutes between my saying “let’s go” and my getting behind the steering wheel are consistently some of the least pleasant, most intensely stressful times of my day.

11. One more, which I recommend you use with caution: I learned to hold Mavis on my lap, while showing her a YouTube video (she, for instance, loves Jessica the hippo from South Africa–search for it!) in one window and working in another window. I thought I was a genius when I first came up with this one, but I soon found that whenever Mavis saw my laptop, she was moaning for Jessica or for whatever other video she could think of. I think her disinterest in the laptop is probably preferable, overall. But if you’re in a pinch….

Anyway, those are my ten or so meek attempts at timesaving. How are you grabbing a few extra minutes here or there?

Why I Work: Fifi’s Thoughts February 13, 2008

This topic? Throwing for me a HUGE loop. There is much to say about the topics of working outside of the home, and I am hardly the most qualified person to offer additional opinions. So, I can only speak for me, and that is my preface to this post…these are just my thoughts, and they may be jumbled.

If my income was not essential for our family, I would probably work part-time. I know that I would not stay in a full time position…or at least not the one that I am currently in. And that is part of the problem…are my thoughts on this topic colored by what is (currently) a very stressful and non-supportive working enviroment. I dunno.  I can tell you what the list that I jotted off in preparation for this post said:

Pro’s (in working outside the home):

-Guaranteed non-kid time…including lunches out (without cutting someone elses’ food up, cleaning up spilled drinks, and eating my own food while it is still warm)

-Disposable income

-Security in that if (for any reason) I am in a situation where I am without my partner, I can maintain my daughter’s lifestyle and still plan for our future.

-A sense of accomplishment and satisfaction outside of my home (and my roles as a mother and a wife)

Con’s (in working outside of the home)”

-A huge block of time every day that is taken from my own interests

-Stress that is sometimes hard to dump once I get home

-A feeling of missing out on Sadie day to day…and I do feel that, often. My mom, my husband, and her caregivers get more time each day than I do. I never expected for that to bother me, but it does.

-Constant nagging feeling of being behind on EVERYTHING…home, work, personal, public obligations.

Like Coco and Lulu have already written (beautifully, of course)…I do derive a solid sense of self from achieving and promoting professionally. I was always tagged as the “smart girl”, too, both within my family and in school. It was never a question of if I would go to college, but instead it was when and where. I was the first in my immediate family to complete college, and I did it largely on scholarships and grants (but with a healthy amount of loans…got to love private Catholic college tuition!).  When I entered the workforce, it was jarring to be just one of many, but I began to find ways to distinguish myself. As a result I have promoted and am the primary breadwinner in my marriage. For many years I carried our health benefits, and if I am being honest I fed into this role…I was carrying a burden, but it was MY burden, it was a great way to highlight my role as caregiver, as the responsible one.

When we decided to adopt, it was after years of infertility. I had never questioned whether I would work after we became parents..it was a given in our situation. So I was surprised and dismayed (yes, I was..) with my own reactions after Sadie came home. I was angry that I had to go back, that I didn’t have a choice. I mourned the days that I would be missing before I even went back, and it was a huge part of my depression issues. I remember crying on and off (in the bathroom, of course…why do we always find ourselves sobbing in the bathroom when things get crazy?) the whole first day I was back in the office. I was rabid to get home to Sadie, and when I got there?

She was as cool as a cucumber. As the days and weeks went by, she positively thrived in the extra time with her daddy, with her grandma, and eventually with her teachers at pre-school. I realized that the time that we spent together also enhanced, as I was focused and we really rocked out the time that we were together. My longevity with my employer was a bonus, too, as I have a large block of vacation and personal time to utilize when I do want to take time to be at home. All in all? It has turned out really well.

So, back to the first paragraph. I believe firmly that working does make me a better mom…but I don’t necessarily think that full time is the best thing for me as a woman. There is much that I want to pursue creatively that I just do not have the time for, and I do wish that I had the choice and the options to explore those paths. For now, I am making the best of it, and really? It is going much better than I could have hoped for.

This balancing act is one of the hardest things that I have ever done. A lot of the worry has fallen away, but has been replaced by its cousin fatigue. Some days are good, some not so good. But the important stuff gets done, and I am healthy and able enough to get up and do it all again.

Looking forward to more discussion on this.

Why I Work: Lulu’s Ramblings February 12, 2008

There’s a Jackie Kennedy quote that I have been thinking about lately, perhaps a little too much: “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”

While I have to remind myself that this is the same woman who said, “I don’t think there are any men who are faithful to their wives,” there is a lot of truth to the first quote. (I hope I don’t have to say that the second quote is complete crap.) 

I take our/my job of raising Elsie very seriously.  So, why do I work?  Why is raising my child not my full-time job, and so, why am I not a stay at home mother?

I have had people express their views about this topic to me as we came close to getting our referral.  Some were understandable since they came from people like my 80-year-old uncle who could not imagine that we would “ship our child off to have other people raise them.”  Because, um, that’s what daycare is, right? Anyway, other comments came from more credible sources, like my cousin (the gay Republican, how does that happen?). He expressed himself well, and his statement was “You want this child so much and you’ve waited so long to get her, I’m just surprised you aren’t planning to stay home with her.”

There’s something to that statement, yes, and I think even my own mother was a little surprised I didn’t take more than 12 weeks off from working.  So, back to the question, why am I still working?

It’s a little more complicated for me than it might be for some families.  The biggest technical reason that I cannot stay home is that I make more money than my husband. He is self-employed and his income is quite variable, but even so, I outearn him by enough to make me the primary wage earner (unlike Coco, my job is well-compensated, but short on meaning/impact in the bigger picture). An adjunct reason is that my husband is self-employed, and I am therefore the link to benefits. Story over, right?  In fact, before we brought Elsie home, there was a part of me that resented the fact that I had no option to stay home, even if I wanted to.

But really, after 12 weeks of leave, I knew I didn’t want to stay home.  I knew that I would not be happy staying at home. And in some ways, it was nice to not even have the option.

I don’t think I am less of a good mother because I don’t want to stay home.  Like Coco, I was a strong student, and I went back to school in my late 20s to get a graduate degree. I have had a successful career, with growing responsiblities, and I enjoy corporate life (it feeds my need for achievement and an overall competitive nature).  I was raised being told that I could do/be whatever I wanted to.  It never occurred to me that it might mean “oh yeah, until you have kids, then you need to stay home and be a full-time mom.”

As Coco wisely states, no one asks this question of men. And it’s not 1950 anymore. So why do I get defensive when I discuss this topic?

I have a few friends who have decided to stay home until their kids are in kindergarten. But I’ve had other moms say that they found that their kids needed them MORE as they got older. Being home after school when kids were pre-teens and teens was equally if not more crucial than being home when their kids were toddlers. So is that it? Is the only good choice to give up your career for 18-20 years to be at home with your kids?

It’s easy to say of course not, but it is a little less obvious than that for me. If one parent is not going to stay home, what are the “must dos” to make sure you’re not selling your kids short?  It’s different for every family, but here are ours:

1.  Find great daycare. Easy to say, very hard to do. We lost a slot at a great, small center, but were fortunate enough to find a wonderful, nurturing in-home situation near our house. The hours are not convenient, but we will move mountains to make it work since Elsie adores it there and clearly looks forward to it every day.

2.  Try to be flexible at work. Again, easier said than done. I work in an office where many people are here by 7 a.m. and stay until 6 p.m. or later. I can’t and won’t do that. And I don’t think it has to limit my career.  I am always available if someone needs me, and I squeeze in additional work before Els is up and after she is in bed.  Even better, I work from home every other Friday when we don’t have daycare.  That’s mom and Elsie time, and we make the most of it.

3.  Share the load. Unfortunately, I don’t have the advantage of Coco’s husband who seems to really share household duties equally. My husband is not particularly organized or able to multi-task productively, and he doesn’t always seem to know what to do to help without my asking. But he is always willing to do what he can, so I make sure I ask often.  For single mothers or those with partners who are busier than they are, there are other solutions too.  I have started leaning on take-and-bake dinners, and they aren’t bad (and I don’t make them myself, I have them do it for me).  We have people who come clean our house every other week. And I’ve simply let go some of my standards (probably a bad choice of words since I’m not a huge neatnik anyway) in terms of having a tidy house.  It will get better as Elsie gets older, right?!

4.  Have a backup plan. This is the hardest, and one where we don’t feel 100% certain that we have it in place at our house. There are some children who, for whatever reason, need more than a daycare situation. They need more parental care. It might be a special needs situation, or an attachment concern, or an extended illness. You need to know what you are going to do in that situation. When I went back to work after 12 weeks of leave, my husband took 12 weeks off to stay home with Elsie. So, we didn’t do daycare for six months, and even then, we transitioned her really gradually.  And it paid off.  It was a significant financial sacrifice for us to do this, and we will be paying that debt for a while. And we had decided that if Elsie had attachment issues and wasn’t ready for daycare, my husband would have stayed home with her. But could we/would we really have done that if push came to shove?  I don’t know, but it felt good to at least talk about a plan.

We have neighbors who have five children (she had two kids from a previous marriage, and they have since had three more), and they are constant reminders of how I do not want to parent. They both have highly demanding jobs, and you almost never see them with their kids. They have a nanny, and relatives who help out as well, but those kids always seem a little sad, a little less adjusted, and a lot more needy. In warm weather, the other parents in the neighborhood (including us now) are out in our front yards after dinner, watching our kids play together.  But we never see those parents. The kids are out, running around and playing, and if one gets hurt, an older child will run home to get the nanny or someone to help.

At our block party this summer, the father of this family said to my husband that he loves having kids, and he’d love to have more, but his wife has said that five is enough. Loves having kids?  From my outsider’s view, it seems like “having kids” means spending an hour a day with them and passing them off to other’s to raise. Unfortunately, most people know a family like this, and I think it is this type of situation that gives working moms a bad name.

We are all guilty of judging other working parents at some point.  The Sr. VP of my area at work was here at headquarters on Halloween.  Someone commented that her kids must be sad that she won’t be trick-or-treating with them, and she said “no, I haven’t been home for trick or treating in at least three years, so they won’t miss me.”  Of course, her husband was there, so why did I suddenly think a little less of her?

I think that’s why I get defensive on this topic — I do judge others in terms of their commitment to parenting. How do we reconcile our vision of good parenting vs. others’ expectations vs. reality?

For me, as in almost all things, it is about finding balance. Am I going to have the career I would have had if we hadn’t adopted Elsie?  No, certainly not, but should we assume that people cannot have amazing/demanding jobs and parent successfully? If Michele Obama was running for President (my dream, FYI), would we judge her ability to parent and be president as well? At what point are we sacrificing our careers, and at what point are we sacrificing our kids?

Are we all destined for the mommy track?  How have other people tackled this issue?  I’d love to hear about it!

Why I Work: Coco’s Meanderings February 12, 2008

Lulu suggested that we start by writing about why we work. Well, let’s be honest. First of all, there are many days that I don’t know why I work and many days when I wish I didn’t work. I work in academia, in an unglamorous position with a lot of responsibility but little in the way of compensation (and I count time as a major form of compensation). I’m often bitter about the fact that my job duties keep expanding and that my compensation does not. My job is prestigious in that I can say I’m a college professor, but my salary is modest and hours extensive, the work too often surprisingly repetitive and/or drudgy. Also, my students can be incredible bores, or worse.

At other times, though, I get all misty about my job. I like most students–especially the handful of students that I most closely advise/teach in a program that I created. My students are mostly first-generation or working-class students, and I like serving this population. I can’t think of any other job that I’d be good at and also really have an opportunity to improve the world (especially when I teach courses that touch on social justice issues). I have interesting colleagues. I get paid to think.  My work is sometimes very creative. My job is different semester to semester. I only have to go into the office three days a week (though I do an awful lot of work at home, in coffee shops, at night, on the weekends), and I get to (for the most part) choose which days I go in for each semester. I can teach at night if necessary. It’s cool that I get to read things and think about them and call that my job (sometimes). If I get sick, I don’t go to work, and no one asks me where I was. My job is basically recession-proof. And I’m pretty good at my job, so I feel competent, which is a nice way to feel, I suppose.

My job is meaningful even if it is not always pleasurable, and that’s a big part of happiness.

But there are other reasons more practical and fundamental. I work because we need the money to support certain choices we’ve made (such as where we are sending Mavis to school—just a decent public school system with strong diversity, nothing fancy). But also because, for instance, I’m not comfortable with depending on my husband’s money or with withering my professional credentials, even though our finances are intertwined and my safety nets intact.

I work because I grew up as a “smart girl,” defining myself as a good student. When I stopped being a good student, I became a good teacher. It’s pretty close to how I conceive of who I am, for better or worse. I’m also recovering, still in some ways, from a serious workaholism that really did go overboard in my first few years out of (my first round of) graduate school. From 2000 until about 2003, I worked nearly every single moment. My first year out of graduate school, I was working 40 hours a week at a cubicle job and then teaching three college classes as an adjunct instructor in the evenings. I became a full-time instructor the next year but took on mounds of freelancing work. I was always afraid I wouldn’t have money around the corner. I also believed that working hard and well was what I was about.  In those last two sentences, you see the influence of my (long divorced) mother and father, respectively, who have wildly different views on and experiences with money, both of which have been oppressive to me at different points in time and for different reasons.

I think I’ve mostly gotten over that, but it hasn’t made me want to work less.  Since we adopted Mavis, I’ve actually found that I cared more rather than less about my work.

In the summer when I was home with her all day, I was often intensely bored. I was simply not as good a mother to Mavis when I was home with her all day as when I spent quality time with her. We both seemed to need some stimulation outside of the house–stimulation that taking her to a Gymboree or Kindermusik class really wasn’t going to achieve on my end.

I realize now that I work because it makes me a better mother both in the short- and long-term. I hope that as Mavis grows up and sees my work she will learn the value of her own brains and service to the community. I hope she will see that my voice is important to other people besides her dad and herself. I hope she will believe that her intellect, her service, and her voice matter. I’m not saying that I couldn’t teach her those things without working, but I think working helps.

Frankly, I also think it matters that women are equally represented (in terms of numbers and influence) in work, and we can’t do this if we all stay at home. I notice that my husband, Jasper, has no pressure on him to explain why he works, no need to rationalize his not staying home with Mavis. And that just isn’t fair. I work in part so that if when Mavis gets older and has her own child and keeps soldiering on at whatever it is she becomes (I’m predicting now some sort of singing veterinarian / talk show host), she won’t have to bother to explain why.  I work so that if I someday have a son or a nephew, he can stay home if he wants to without it reflecting on him or his partner one way or the other.

Mavis puts a pressure on me. Her presence means that if I am actually going to live up to my hopes for myself, I have to set the time aside. There’s an urgency now. I have to find the space to be those things I could easily put off for “someday. Mavis is a gentle–okay, not so gentle–nudge to put up or shut up.

I can’t put up all the time, and I should probably shut up more than I do (all my work colleagues are intimately familiar with my meaningful sighs).  But I am making headway, I believe, toward something that matters. There are many ways to matter in the world, of course, and many ways to raise a strong daughter at home in her own voice.  But working is the way I think I can be most effective to her and to the world, as a mother and as an individual.  So, I guess, that’s why I work.  And it’s why, to be honest, I don’t feel so guilty about that choice.