I hesitated last night when I typed that Jasper and I share the parenting load 50/50. Because some days, I know, it seems a lot more like 65/35, with Jasper spending more time with Mavis than I do. I feel inordinately guilty about these days, even though I do spend 1.5 days a week with her by myself every week, which evens out the time he spends with her on the weekends while I catch up on work. He does more of taking her to the playground and even takes her to more of her doctor’s appointments than I have. He toured a preschool without me. Once he even took her to a birthday party without me–which we didn’t think much of, but birthday parties are kind of mom zones.
Jasper doesn’t complain about our arrangement; in fact, he thinks I do in fact give 50%. It’s been hard for me to feel like that because it just seems like the maternal default position is something like 80% or even higher. But I was thinking this morning, as I was choosing what toys and clothes to bring with us on her trip and getting a bit frazzled, about the other things I do for Mavis that don’t always get recognized. I do a lot more of the behind-the-scenes parenting for her. Sure, we both clean up after her after bedtime. Jasper makes sure her preschool bill is paid and sometimes collects advice about things like good preschools or pediatricians from his colleagues at school. But I do a lot more: buying all her clothes, choosing them each day (she just knows that he puts them on her), buying all her gifts (for herself and for her friends and teachers), planning and throwing her birthday parties, keeping photographs organized, keeping her history through a blog (though you could argue that’s not solely for Mavis, of course) that helps her stay close with her grandparents, who all live far away. I always pack for her for all of our travels. I build the traditions. I write Christmas cards with her pictures in them. I pack her lunches and plan for snack when it’s our week at school. I spearhead research on everything: adoption issues, parenting issues, where to send her to school, whether X weird potential health thing is to worry over, what classes I could enroll her in. I weed out clothing and other stuff she doesn’t need anymore and tend to her keepsakes. I wrote and published her lifebook.
Some of this stuff is day-to-day operations that she just doesn’t see. It happens mostly when she’s asleep or I’m at work or whatever. But a lot of it is about tending to her past and to her future. Jasper’s maybe more of our go-to man on the day-to-day, but I’m doing a lot more of shaping the bigger picture (not, of course, that those are really separable). And really, I’m not complaining at all: I like doing almost everything I listed above. But I think they sort of don’t get noticed or counted in the scheme of “parenting” sometimes–by me, especially. Maybe I’m just rationalizing here, but it strikes me that these things I do for Mavis behind the scenes–things she doesn’t necessarily know about–oughta count too, in the constant accounting I do to make sure I convince myself I do enough.
