She Doesn't Do It

Well, for the past 6 months (!) I've been consumed by a real-live illiterate peanut, so thinking that this blog might be expanded to include her in its nascent considerations.  Pre-baby, I was all about reading; post-baby, I am all about reading about babies. 

My sister-in-law recently loaned me a copy of I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson, a "chick-lit" book about Kate Reddy, a London-based hedge fund manager and mother of two.  The book was predictably (based on the hot pink cover) page-turnery, but it also still has me thinking, several weeks later.  This raises some questions about the fairness of the chick-lit designation, but we'll let that issue be hashed out elsewhere, for now.  Anyhow, Kate spins (and appears to have been spinning for some time) very close to out of control, trying to manage both what she perceives as fundamental motherly responsibilities and her demanding, testosterone-heavy, stimulating job. The titular question, asked many times throughout the book by various acquaintances and family members of Kate, is finally answered in the book's final chapter: How does she do it?  She doesn't.  She opts out.  She quits her job, sells her house, moves to the country. 

What does this mean?  What does it mean that even narratively, in a friendly fictional place, we can't figure out how to reconcile these things?  Granted, Kate's situation is extreme.  My current 30-hours per week job can't really compare with the demands of a hedge fund.  I work with other women, many who have children.  I work at a university, which would seem to be the height of flexibility and family-friendliness.  If I had read this book before I had Eleanor, I think I would have dismissed many of Kate's concerns as monsters of her own making--she chose that super-stressful career path, and I didn't, so why would I experience similar conflicts?  But STILL, the work place is much less friendly than I had naively assumed it would be.  The thing is, no one else wants to pick up your slack, whether you work in a coffee shop, law firm, or hedge fund.  And there is suddenly a much-heightened awareness of your availability--sure, everyone takes off for an occasional doctor's appointment or has a sick day, but when you are a new mother all of the sudden these things start to seem a bit symbolic.  Like, oh, so this is how things are going to be now.  The slippery-slope phenomenon.  The fact that you have likely just come off of a several month maternity leave serves to make you appear even more unreliable. 

So what is the answer?  How do we do it?  The fact is, most women with new babies don't want to work as much as they did pre-baby.  Time is precious, development is fast, and life has a whole new element of chaos that is grossly magnified when trying to coordinate job responsibilities with mothering responsibilities.  And let me go back a sentence: the not wanting to work as many hours in your former position has absolutely nothing, lest you labor under a very rosy picture of motherhood, to do with the amount of work you suddenly find yourself doing everyday.  (More on this in another post).  But yes, in my anecdotal experience of my neighborhood mom's group, nearly every woman changed her expectations and plans about how much she wanted to work outside of the home once the baby arrived.  This, of course, is not always possible, either from the perspective of the family or the employer.  But why does it come as such a surprise?  Especially to the mothers themselves?  Is the problem that we don't quite understand what motherhood entails, us highly-educated women who perhaps haven't touched a baby since our middle school babysitting days?  Or that the system hasn't really changed much to accommodate women in the workplace?  It's a beaten horse, but since I am just newly experiencing it, it boggles my mind that women worked so hard to get equal rights, and the result is a system that allows us to do exactly what men do, as long as we also do what women do and don't ask for exceptions to be made. 

Ah well.  If you have any solutions, let me know.  I'll close with a gratuitous baby picture, just so it's not all doom and gloom here. 

All is well.