Will that Stuff ever go Away? ...on being a girl today

I remember the exact moment I discovered that I was going to give birth to a daughter. For a split second, while staring at the cloudy image of my little girl on the sonogram monitor, my heart sank. I instinctively turned to my husband and said, “Oh, she is going to have to deal with all that stuff”. He looked at me like I was crazy. “What stuff?” He was thrilled. Our three-year-old son would have a little sister to play with and we would get to experience the joys of parenting both a son and a daughter.

Seventeen years and two more daughters later, he now knows what I meant – he understands the “stuff”. As much as things have changed since I was a teenage girl growing up in the 1970’s so much has stayed the same: there still exists the emotional growing pains of female adolescence and the drama that so insidiously undermines all of our parental instincts, the enticement of the media to wear just the right clothes that adorn a perfectly shaped unattainable body and the peer pressure to be the most popular kid in school no matter how hurtful it can be to yourself or to anyone else who gets in your way, even your best friend.

And my daughters are yet to confront some of the biggest stuff, which I faced as a young woman growing up in the 1980’s: to stay home and raise a family, to enter the work force or to try to find to some perfect, impossible balance between the two? If they choose to work, will they find the best care for their children, and how about their salary, will they still be making less than their male counterparts? If they decide to step out of the work force will they find personal satisfaction without the societal benchmarks of job promotions and salary increases? Will they be able to come to terms with the fact that they are dependent on somebody else for their food, clothing and shelter?

I opted to stay home to raise my children and I love my life. I wouldn’t change a thing if I were to start over again. However, despite the voracity by which I have embraced my role as a stay at home mom, I sometimes wonder if I have done an injustice to my daughters. When they were younger they would tell me they want to be doctors and teachers and librarians - even a fast food operator at the McDonald’s window. I would wonder, why wouldn’t they want to stay home and raise their kids, don’t they think that what I am doing is important too? Now, as teenagers, as they think more seriously about their futures, they tell me how I have the best life - I have no boss, no schedule, and the autonomy to pursue causes and do work I enjoy on my own time.

This is all very true. I am lucky and very fortunate. And I love that I have been home all these years with my kids - to experience every part of each of their lives. There is not a moment that I look back with a touch of regret. Just sometimes I wonder. What if I had pursued a career in Child Advocacy? What if I had put in the number of hours my husband has put into his career? What would I be doing now?

So my daughters, all three of them, will face similar decisions sometime in their lives. Just like all of us, they will survive the absurdity of female adolescence and they will grow up to be contributors, in some form, to this world. The way I see it, that “stuff” will never go away and as women we will probably be forever trying to figure it out.

Best Laid Plans

Today. Today is the kind of day that typifies the life of any stay-at-home mom. For the last 2 days, I had organized myself with meal planning, house cleaning, chores and meetings so that I could spend today writing - something I am trying very hard to carve out time to do. 

I woke up this morning, knowing that by 9:00 am, I could sit down for 4 hours (luxurious to many, especially with young kids, I know), before I had to do some quick chores, prepare dinner and get one of my kids to a doctor's appt and deal with after school activities. At 8:00 am, I get a call from the high school nurse, my 17 year old needs to come home, she is having eye trouble. Our eye doctor, who's office has moved 30 minutes away, can see her - we arrive by 8:45. Home by 10:00. She goes to bed and since I am already out, I decide I will do my errands so that MAYBE I can still carve out some writing time when I return. Just as I enter the grocery store, I get a call from my middle schooler who forgot a notebook (her school is right down the street from the grocery store). I go home, unload groceries, go back to her school to drop off her notebook. When I get home, I decide to prepare some of the dinner ahead of time because again, better now, then I can extend my writing time further into the afternoon. In the middle of the preparations, I receive another call - from our optical shop, my daughter's eyeglasses are ready (which we needed to have rushed because she had lost her other pair and clearly the extended wearing of the contacts contributed to the abrasion of her cornea). So, again I get back in the car to the optical shop (which is located equidistant between the grocery store and the Middle School) before they close for lunch.

It is now 1:00 and I am finally sitting down - I have exactly 60 minutes, before I need to leave again to get my daughter to that doctor's appointment, which originally was the only commitment on my calendar today.

Here is my question: How do families where both parents work do it? and what about single parents? I was available to do all that I did, and yes, my writing will now have to wait until next week (tomorrow is filled with commitments and forget the weekend), and yes, I am frustrated and annoyed - and I better hear a thank-you from both kids - but I didn't lose work hours and I wasn't docked any pay. I know if I was at a job, my daughter probably wouldn't have gotten her notebook and she would have lived with the consequences and wouldn't forget it a again - or would she? Would my daughter have not gotten to the eye doctor today? And how would have I felt if I just couldn't have helped her? Relieved that I didn't have to be hassled? Guilty because I couldn't do that one single thing? And am I doing my kids any justice by being available all the time? Enabling them to forget notebooks or even having their needs taken care of immediately and so easily? I guess my point is that as parents we all face the same dilemmas and it's our circumstances that dictate how we deal with them.

I have always believed that we make our choices, or sometimes life's circumstances make our choices for us, and we do the best we can do. After all we are only human, and if we are lucky, we get to be parents, and in that journey we have no way of predicting where each day will take us. As mothers, we are no better off if we stay home or if we work - we are only winners if we are happy with our choices, even if somedays, we may wish we had taken a different path.