Someone in this family is in EUROPE on business AND IT’S NOT ME.
IT SHOULD BE ME. I’M THE ONE who studied French. I’M THE ONE who loves to travel. I’M THE ONE who has a list of European clowns and circuses and opera companies I want to see. I’M THE ONE creating a non-verbal physical theatre that I hope will take me to EUROPE someday.
Instead, I am hiding in the bedroom trying to write (as a journalism grad it was supposed to be my career once upon a time) while My Kid watches too much “Spongebob Squarepants” and eats sugared cereal in the other room. I feel guilty because as a “stay-at-home-mom” I am supposed to prepare frugal yet organic meals in my beautiful yet practically decorated home while simultaneously presiding over creative art projects and planning educational outings for my offspring.
When a couple has a baby, as a general rule, one of the careers takes a back seat. Nursing mothers have to work so hard not to stay home that they generally stay home. Then one by one women on maternity leave go back to work and after a while the only adults pushing strollers to play group and playgrounds are the professional caregivers, freelancers and artists.
Subsidized childcare outside weekday office hours is rare. Jobs with irregular hours are not. Nannies can cost less than daycare, but the economy comes from being able to offer a regular schedule. If I was in rehearsal for a play now, instead of “working on a piece”, I’d be screwed.
I am enabling The Husband to have both career and family simply by being the one who is always around. It is the path of least resistance. For a woman without paid help or near-by relatives involved with her children to the point of sleep-over babysitting, it would be almost impossible to leave the country for a week WITH ONLY 2 DAYS NOTICE.
When I was still single, I worked in Japan as part of a group of 10 variety entertainers on a 4-month contract. Two of the men had toddlers and neither was still with the mother.
“She was into having a baby…but, I couldn’t practice at home…so I had to leave…” said one of the jugglers.
The mother of a teenager almost broke her contract when her own mother, who her daughter was staying with, called to let the performer know that her child was cutting classes and threatening to drop out of high school. Her juggling partner and husband (who was not the father of the teenager) didn’t think it was his problem.
Another juggler desperately missed his 3 boys, but his relationship with his wife was not good.
Sigh.
Work is hard. When combined with family life it can seem almost impossible.
There is ego involved as well.
When My Kid was a baby, I met several men who were stay-at-home-dads (because they worked in the arts and their wives had the jobs with insurance). Inevitably when I next saw their kids on the playground they were with a babysitter and when I next ran into the men, they had gone back to work because being home with the kids and not working was making them crazy.
I can’t find it now, but a while ago, I read a blog that was started by a man who was staying home with his infant son. He blogged about how easy it was to plop his kid into the jogging stroller and go for a run. He blogged about training seriously each morning before his wife left for work. He was a triathlete or marathon runner or something like that. The days were going so smoothly he didn’t know why more men didn’t stay home with their babies. The blog ended abruptly after a month or two. No more entries.
Thanks Kathy– you are giving me a lot of hope! :o)