Geeky Mom comments on a letter to Salon. The woman writes that she’s thinking about having kids, but is really grossed out by women who self-identify as moms.
As my friends have gotten married and started having children, I’ve
heard this kind of thing coming out of their mouths. I realize that
being a mother is fun and rewarding, and all-consuming at times, but
why does it have to be the primary identifying factor in some women’s
lives? I would think being a mother is sort of a family affair, and
making it your calling card, so to speak, is no more appropriate than
saying, "I’m a wife."
Well, I can identify. To a point.
I’m very happy that the kids are tucked safely
away in their elementary schools, and I’ve been able to spend more time at work. I like
that I can tell people that I’m a professor. For some reason, our
kitchen rehab guys think it’s really funny that I’m a professor (is it
the big hair?) and keep saying things like "So, professor, you really
want to expose the brick on the chimney? Well, if the professor says
so, we gotta do it."
It’s kinda nice having a job
description that gets a little respect. Sadly, the mom name tag doesn’t
come with too much street cred. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it
is.
But even if I don’t have to use the "mom" name tag, it’s still
there. Like Laura at GeekyMom, I’m spending a lot of timing worrying
about my kids’ school. Actually, Ian is doing great right now, so there
are few worries coming from that department. My older kid, Jonah, is
coasting in school right now and need a lot of work at home. His
teacher has written him off at the smart kid who likes reading and
knows more than she does about history and geography. She’s not
checking his work over. She’s more concerned about the girl who is
punching herself in the face to get out of doing math work. So, Jonah
is daydreaming through school and making tons of careless errors.
When I don’t have the big worries, there are always the smaller things that are always on my mind.
When I’m giving a lecture on Plato, I have my cell phone on just in
case one of the kids gets sick, and I have to rush out of class to pick
them up. On the way back from school, I run into Shop Rite to pick up
bananas for lunch. I don’t make spicy food for dinner, because the kids
won’t eat it. My husband and I took turns going to a Super Bowl party
next door, because someone had to be home with the littlest one. We
picked out the boring Corian countertop for the kitchen, so the kids
wouldn’t have to worry about spilling drinks. I know exactly how many
slices of bologna are needed to get us through the week of lunch boxes.
Frankly that "mom" name tag doesn’t come off. I can use the
"professor" name tag to get attention from the kitchen workers and the
cocktail party people. I’m pretty good at the professor thing and
really get a kick out of the classroom performance thing. But my job as
a mom is pretty enormous, too. It does bother me that that part of my
life gets so little respect.
Aspazia, another mom-professor, writes in response to this letter,
I guess if there is one thing I want to emphasize in this post about
how my worldview differs from the "Dear Cary" letter writers’ it is
that being a "mom" is never just about being hermetically sealed up
with your children. Children open the world to you and get you out in
the world more than ever. So, the fact that being a mom has become
associated with a kind of shut inness is just plain wrong-headed.So,
let’s reclaim "mom" to connote cosmopolitan, worldly, publicly engaged
and throw away, once and for all, the outmoded view that moms are
nothing more than the emotional and nutritional providers for their
children.To sound trite–every mother is a working mother.
Apt. 11d 
“My older kid, Jonah, is coasting in school right now and need a lot of work at home. His teacher has written him off at the smart kid who likes reading and knows more than she does about history and geography. She’s not checking his work over. She’s more concerned about the girl who is punching herself in the face to get out of doing math work. So, Jonah is daydreaming through school and making tons of careless errors.”
[Insert several paragraph long education rant/scream of existential despair.]
OK, now that I’ve got that out of my system, some women do basically climb into their own wombs, at least for the initial, highly hormonal phase of maternity. Fortunately, just about everybody eventually climbs out. I think treatment of mothers can be very problematic, the way that people assume that that’s all there is to you, and you don’t have a past or a future that’s worth talking about. (When I came out to Texas to visit before my husband and I made the final decision for a job offer, I was really pleased to be treated as an individual with a life story, rather than a completely fungible “mom.” The university also has a big women’s group for both female faculty and faculty wives, and I think it’s great.)
That said, I think there are a lot of self-descriptions that are much worse than
“I’m a mom.” Here are a few off the top of my head:
“Hi! I’m a mortgage broker and I do a lot of ARMs and “creative financing.””
“Hi! I’m a real estate agent, and I’ll get 6% of the price of your house for listing it in the MLS.”
“Hi! I’m a doctor, and I don’t listen to patients, even simple visits to my office take two hours, and I fill out prescriptions without checking for allergies.”
“Hi! I’m an engineer and I build bridges that buckle.”
“Hi! I’m a contractor and I cut a lot of corners and pad my invoices.”
“Hi! I’m a credit card collector.”
“Hi! I’m a teacher and I don’t check the work that I assign.”
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laura: great post. I totally agree…being a mother has given me a connection with the world and other people that I never imagined. One thing I loved, even while pregnant, is how other parents would come up and talk with me and how women totally different than me suddenly felt like I was worth their time. That said, its also really important to me to have a bunch of other identities (librarian, reader, Daniel Day-Lewis fanatic) and every hour I am something different. But you are right…being a parent doesn’t go away.
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I was thinking of you when I wrote my post, so I’m glad you responded. I do a lot of the same things you mention–always have the cell phone on, always knowing how much food we have, etc. I wonder if you feel your career is constricted because of having kids? Do you ever feel that you could do more/could have done more without kids? And that’s not to say you’re resentful of the kids. I’m certainly not resentful of mine, but that doesn’t mean I’m not conflicted on occasion. 🙂
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Have my kids had a huge impact on my career? YES!
I had to take off two and a half years from the classroom, because Ian screamed all day. I got some research done during naps, but it was very slow going. We can’t move around to take advantage of jobs elsewhere, because the kids are settled in school. I have to work weird hours, because I have to help the kids with their work and get them to after school activities. I don’t have the unencumbered brain that my childless colleagues have.
But on the other hand, having kids really pushed us to finish our dissertations. I am not the party girl that I was before kids. No hangovers and late nights to slow me down. My new life has led to new research interests — the internet, special education, and family policy. I’m more mature. All that has been a plus for my career.
Also, I want to be more than my career. Yes, I love my job, but I think a good life has to about more than the length of your CV.
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You know, the Salon letter just strikes me as one of those 5 million things that you think about being a parent before you actually become one. Whether mothers choose to label themselves as “a mom” or as “a professor/gardener/etc. with kids” doesn’t change the demanding nature of being a mother, or the need to balance that with some form of self-actualization. Some mothers put the emphasis on the former, some on the latter. Does it really matter so much how we describe ourselves? I mean, I am absurdly passionate about my obscure corner of history, but I’ve never gotten up fifteen times a night for it.
I think there are a lot of category mistakes and false analogies in the letter’s assumptions. Being a wife and being a mother are not the same type of thing. Neither is being personally committed to a career that you love verses being committed to your child.
Also, please insert education rant/scream of existential despair here at the end on my behalf, too. Man, was I bored in school.
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Somewhere else, I describe myself with verbs: I teach, I mom, I watch tv. It’s not about *being* a mom, though I am. But it’s also something I do. I even mom my students sometimes, though I try not to do that too much.
I assert for myself the same right men have. Describing a man as a “dad” isn’t putting a label on him.
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I object to being identified by a career far more than I do to being identified by my relationships. I work for money; I’m glad I have work I enjoy and am good at, and a workplace that values me and treats me well, but I still do it for the money.
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The thing with the mom label is that it brings with it this assumption that a woman’s entire value resides in her potential for caring for others. Women traditionally have been defined by the others in their lives; not so long ago a married woman was identified as “Mrs. HusbandsFirstName HusbandsLastName”. In Egypt I think it is a woman is called Umm (meaning mother) of EldestSon. (You, Laura, would be Umm Jonah.)
And this is what bothers me about “I’m a mom.” You existed before your kids and your life theoretically had meaning. Should not the kid thing be a component of your current life, not completely overwhelming?
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Aren’t they, though, “completely overwhelming”. This was a surprise to me. I thought my kids would fit into my current life, be a component. My husband was even more delusional. And, then, as Laura writes, everything about your life changes (from the vacations you take to the shoes you wear to the friends you have to the time you work to where you shop to what you think about to what you read to where you live). I don’t regret it for a moment, but I am a different person as a mother than I was as a non-mother. My first instant of an inkling of this change occurred when I was holding my new born and rocking her, and a flash ran through my mind about my own mother. I thought “My god, my mom felt this way about me, and I treat her so terribly.” (I don’t, really, treat her terribly, but I certainly take her for granted, and the love she pours towards me is of a different kind than the love I feel for her). I don’t want that overwhelming love back from my children, but there’s no question that I feel it. Being a wife didn’t change me like this because that was a partnership between equals.
Now I know different people’s experiences are different, and I don’t think anyone has to feel this way. But, I do know that my children are not a component of my old life, like I thought they would be, even though I actually still have much of my old life, including my job.
I also believe men can experience fatherhood like this, and have only recently been permitted by society to feel this way, too. I have heard many men talk about the overwhelming change in their self that came when they picked up their newborn for the first time. So I don’t see it as necessarily needing to be gendered.
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The whole “mom label” though didn’t originate from mothers – it originated by people who look at mothers — the medical establishment, the media, the government…Part of the reason we identify as mothers, is because once we are mothers, that’s how society primarily identifies US, whether we like it or not.
I suspect what the big turnoff is in being known as “mom” to those who aren’t mothers yet, is the societal perception that lends itself to those women who have children – and not the real emotional, developmental, and physiological changes that come with becoming a mother.
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The whole “mom label” though didn’t originate from mothers – it originated by people who look at mothers — the medical establishment, the media, the government…Part of the reason we identify as mothers, is because once we are mothers, that’s how society primarily identifies US, whether we like it or not.
I suspect what the big turnoff is in being known as “mom” to those who aren’t mothers yet, is the societal perception that lends itself to those women who have children – and not the real emotional, developmental, and physiological changes that come with becoming a mother.
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I have several women co-workers who are struggling with being new moms, and there are two things that I always tell them about balancing work and life as a mom. 1–you are the only person in this workplace whose responsibility it is to stand up for the rights of your kid to have a mother who is present in his/her life–the rest of us/them can respect that, but don’t expect anyone else to do it for you. And 2–as an organizer, you now have a topic of conversation in common with any worker you will ever meet.
It’s hard to get over that tough realization in number 1. I know that for me, I had to go through a difficult period where I felt guilty for being the only person leaving at 5, etc. But being a mom has made me a more valuable employee in many ways, too. It hasn’t just made me a person who’s focused on ‘being a mom.’ It made me a whole person.
And I realize that it’s not that way for everyone, and that’s okay. But this is okay for me.
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I had more to say than fit in a comment thread, so I posted it on my blog.
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It’s interesting what happens when a label has different meanings for those who have the label versus those who are external. I think many moms are proud that they can balance all parts of their life; however those who are not proud moms are quick to discriminate against them. There was a recent study showing that a woman’s resume with evidence of parenthood in place (such as PTA volunteering, etc.) was reacted to much less positively.
It doesn’t surprise me to hear that a new mom would be afraid of the mom label. Every new mom I know has felt acutely the loss that comes with attaining this label — the body image issues, the loss of personal freedom, the change in dynamic with your spouse. I used to refer to pregnancy’s “insta-dork” powers. No drinking! No smoking! No spicy food! In bed by 9pm, up by 5:30 am! A total end to spontaneity!
It’s not that parenthood isn’t worthwhile. It’s more that it takes a while to understand what you got in that trade. For me, it took at least a year. And it wasn’t until the kids were talking that I really hit my parenting stride and could see the mom label as something hard-fought.
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Like bj said, this feeling is tied to being a parent in general, at least from this dad’s perspective.
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Hugs for the good dads.
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