The Baby Decision

by Merle Bombardieri

  3.Get out of the house as often as you can, with and without the baby.

  4.Spend time with other grownups when you can. When you can’t, use your telephone or email to reach out to other adults.

  5.Join a mother’s group or cooperative play group to give both yourself and your baby a chance for fun and friendship.

  6.Seek professional help if you feel frustrated and depressed. Try talking to your husband and your friends. If that doesn’t help, see a counselor.

  7.Consider going back to work if you haven’t been happy at home. You might enjoy your time with your child if you also had the stimulation of your job. You may also find that work offers you a breather from your child, making your time together more fun.

  Advice for Working Mothers

  If you work, you have the advantage of getting a tangible pay-check and getting out of the house on a regular basis. But chances are you’re overburdened, especially if you are a perfectionist or if your partner hasn’t taken on a reasonable share of the household burdens.

  1.Make a date with yourself. Set aside a block of personal time each week to do whatever you please. Don’t skimp on this time because you have so much else to do. Your “for myself” time is no luxury; it’s an absolutely essential form of burn-out prevention.

  2.Be realistic. If your partner won’t do his/her share, don’t try to do it yourself. Better to let some dust pile up, than the resentment. If you are fortunate enough to afford it, hire child care or cleaning help, or barter these services.

  Advice for All Mothers

  1.Don’t be shocked by your feelings. Occasional urges to throw the baby out the window or to run away from home are quite common in mothers of young children. If you sometimes have these feelings, you’re neither neurotic nor “bad.” There’s a big difference between fantasizing about something and actually doing it. The temptation to strike out at the baby or to run away from him is a natural psychological response to the unnatural conditions of motherhood. I say “unnatural” because it is only in postindustrial Western culture that mothers of young children have been so isolated. For most of human history, mothers have had much more contact with and support from other mothers and from their own female relatives. They have also been able to stay more involved in adult activities. The problem is not you or even motherhood itself, but rather the isolation chamber our society makes of motherhood.

  2.Get rid of your tension. There are two necessary steps in breaking out of your frustration. The first is to reach out to caring adults—your partner, your friends, a mother’s group, a professional counselor, or a parenting class. The other is to release your tension. Leave the baby in a crib or playpen, go to your room, close the door, and do whatever will make you feel better—scream, cry, pound a pillow or bam it against a wall, count to ten, taking deep breaths. When the baby is napping or has gone to sleep for the night, meditate or do yoga or relaxation exercises. Leave the baby with someone else long enough to get some physical exercise. Running, swimming, bike-riding, and tennis are all great tension-releasers. If you are too exhausted to do any of these, perhaps you could take a quick walk around the block, try one or two yoga poses, or listen to a visualization or meditation or self-compassion recording. (See the Bibliography for mindful parenting books.)

  3.Express your anger and ask for changes. Let your partner know when you are angry. Explain why as specifically as possible and focus on your feelings. Don’t say, “You’re inconsiderate. You don’t care about anybody but yourself.” Instead say, “You haven’t paid attention for the last three nights when I’ve tried to tell you how frustrated I am with the baby.” If you’re not angry at him/her, but just want to let out your frustrations, be sure to tell him/her that.

  Once you’ve talked about how you feel, discuss what you can both do about it. Make specific requests for change. Don’t say, “I never have any fun and you do. I want to start having a good time for a change!” Instead say, “Will you stay with the baby on Monday nights and on Saturdays so I can paint, swim, and see my friends? I think I’ll be a lot happier.”

  When your children are old enough, the two steps described above will work with them, too.

  4.Don’t force yourself to take your child to every activity that someone thinks is good for children. While it is important for children’s development and self-esteem to plan activities that excite them, don’t go overboard. Include your child in some things that you especially enjoy. If you love the woods, put the baby in a backpack and take her for a short hike. If you love to dance, put on music and move to the rhythm together. Your child will find your enthusiasm contagious. She’ll be glad you care enough to share it with her. Of course, you should not try to make your child into a carbon copy of yourself or discourage her interest in other things, but also take your own interests into consideration. As your child gets older and develops her own interests, encourage her to pursue them on her own, with other children or other adults. You can provide the money, the materials, and the transportation required, but you don’t have to provide your constant presence. Willing encouragement is better than unwilling participation.

  5.Don’t force yourself to be an earth mother. Your child needs warm hugs but not warm bread. She won’t die of malnutrition if her milk comes from a bottle instead of a breast or if her carrots come from a squeeze packet instead of your garden. Baking, nursing, and making natural baby food are great if you do them because you love to. But if you’re only doing them out of a sense of duty, you would be better off skipping them. Instead, use the time to have fun with your baby.

  6.Don’t let guilt get the best of you. Don’t read child care books that make you feel guilty. The recycling bin is the rightful place for any child care book suggesting that one false move will land your child in prison or on the analyst’s couch. Most children manage to survive a wide variety of parents and parenting styles. If you’re reasonably happy, love your child, and respect her individuality, your child will probably turn out fine. A few emotional scars in the course of growing up are unavoidable, but endurable. In fact, with your guidance, a child’s pain can stimulate his growth and understanding that some frustration and disappointment is part of life. This is excellent training for resilience and maturity.

  You should be concerned if you’re ignoring your child, yelling constantly, being cold or critical, or failing to discipline. But if you avoid such behavior, your guilt is unwarranted and will only interfere with your pleasure in parenting. Even if you do engage in some of these behaviors, you can change. Seek professional help promptly, and ask your partner and other mothers for support.

  If you’re suffering from counterproductive or immobilizing guilt, try a talking cure. Other mothers and family counselors are two of the best sources of help. You need someone who can be supportive and objective.

  7.Insist on retaining your personhood. Never let go of the identity questions you dealt with before becoming a mother. Always seek and make the most of whatever meaning and mission you have in life in addition to motherhood. No matter how good a mother you are, no matter how satisfying you find this role, your children are going to walk out the door later on. Don’t let them take your whole reason for living with them. As Susan Rawlings knew, “Children can’t be a center of life and a reason for being. They can be a thousand things that are delightful, interesting, satisfying, but they can’t be a wellspring to live from.” If you find and enjoy other wellsprings, you’ll enjoy motherhood more than ever.

  I had to ask myself why, when 90 percent of my manuscript was already in my editor’s hands, did I keep postponing, again and again, the section I wanted to write on career and motherhood? I frowned at and crossed out much of the first draft. I just couldn’t get it right.

  The fact is I haven’t really wanted to write this chapter because part of me rejects the reality. I want to write utopian science fiction of a society where mothers and fathers have the paid leave, quality day care, and other social supports that make it poss
ible for both sexes to fully contribute to their jobs, fully enjoy nurturing their child, and not be overwhelmed by financial worries and time pressures. I believe I have been waiting for society to magically change before my book went to press! At the very least, I wanted, somehow, to find some brilliant, clever strategies for parents to live enjoyable, more leisurely lives balancing work and family time, and even personal time.

  When I wrote the first edition of The Baby Decision in 1981, I had young daughters. I assumed that if either of them chose to have a child in the twenty-first century, there would be an abundance of day care, paid leave, flex-time, home, telecommuting, etc. I assumed that with the absence of sexism and advances in social supports for parents of both sexes, the struggles of the 1980s a thing of the past, a draconian tale that my daughters wouldn’t even be able to imagine. Unfortunately, these problems are still making the work/family balance precarious.

  Fortunately, some of the other predictions I made did come true, or at least are moderately trudging toward becoming true: greater acceptance of childfree people and of single and LGBT parents. Also, working women are less likely to be told that they are neglecting their children or that day care is bad for them. Another positive change is that both studies and interviews with millennial men show how attached they are to their children; they do more child care and housework than previous generations, and they often report that they would work less outside the home if economics weren’t a problem. However, despite their commitment as fathers and husbands, they are afraid to take paid paternity leave even if their company offers it for fear of being considered less committed to work. We still haven’t arrived at the society I dreamed of for my daughters.

  Recently, journalists have criticized women executives and professionals for quitting, assuming that they had little work commitment or that they were turning perfect at-home parenting into a career. But this is unfair and unrealistic. Countering the attitude that well-trained, successful women just whimsically abandon their careers to play with their children, Pamela Stone asserts in Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home:

  This decision is not a return to traditionalism. It is not women who are traditional; rather it is the workplace, stuck in an anachronistic time warp that ignores the reality of lives of high-achieving women . . . and resists and rebuffs their efforts to change it.

  Ann-Marie Slaughter attacks these same critiques strategically and creatively. The author of the groundbreaking Atlantic Monthly article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” and Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, and Family, Slaughter describes small breakthroughs that are currently happening and argues for more sweeping changes that families would require to be able to make their best career contributions to society, earn living wages, and be able to enjoy and care for their children. She goes on to recommend an “Infrastructure of Care,) a set of arrangements and institutions that allows citizens to flourish not only in the pursuit of their individual goals but also in their relationships to each other.” Her recommendations address the needs of elders as well as young children and parents, who may be sandwiched between the needs of both generations while working demanding jobs and having little time to meet their own or their partner’s needs.

  Slaughter’s infrastructure includes affordable child care, higher wages for child-care workers, paid leave for both parents, and job protection for pregnant workers.

  Of course, American society is not likely to accept a higher tax structure to pay for the changes, but Slaughter also points to actions taken by corporations, motivated by attracting and retaining the superstar, hard-to-replace millennials, to offer paid leave for fathers as well as for mothers, flexible schedules, and telecommuting. She thinks that when CEOs of these companies take fatherhood leave, they will make it less terrifying for other fathers to actually use their leave. Currently, if fathers take a leave, they risk being written off as “not a serious player,” more likely to find themselves derailed from the fast track.

  While we can take a little heart in these changes, we are looking not only at too little too late, but also these corporate advances/ experiments have a long way to go before they fit Slaughter’s infrastructure: only a handful of companies are offering paid leave, and they are typically offering it to their most elite employees and not to their secretaries or support staff. This method is ironic because the elite employees typically need these benefits less than the hourly employees since they could more easily afford leave of absence without pay than the lower-level employees.

  How did you react to the “Swedish Family Hotel Exercise,” in Chapter 2, “Secret Doors”? If you are leaning toward parenthood, how big a factor in your decision-making is the lack of family supports such as those that Slaughter recommends?

  Slaughter points out that companies offering better family services and flexibility are rated higher financially and are more highly regarded. If companies thrive when they offer these benefits, attracting talented leaders and thinkers of childbearing age, she believes other companies will follow suit.

  Juggling Career and Motherhood

  Can you combine a career and motherhood?

  1. You can if you get some form of support.

  A partner who shares the workload at home.

  High-quality, reliable child care.

  Role models in the form of other working families.

  A cheering section, including your partner, your friends, and also your children when they’re old enough to admire you and appreciate the ways you contribute.

  2. You can if you let go of perfectionistic expectations. You’ll have to accept the fact that you probably won’t be as outstanding a worker as a single, childfree colleague. You’ll also have to accept the fact that you won’t be as available to your child as a mother who is home full-time.

  3. You can if you’re willing to give up some of your leisure. Of course, it is essential to give yourself at least a little leisure time each week. Unfortunately, many of the women who successfully combine career and motherhood do so by skimping on their social life, exercise, recreation, and downtime.

  4. You can if you don’t have high housekeeping standards. Will nothing less than spotless floors and gourmet meals be acceptable? Unless you have someone to help, or a lot of energy, you’re going to find the going rough. Some clutter in the form of toys and equipment is inevitable, but try to figure out the combination of standard-lowering and streamlining that works best for you.

  5. You can if you want to badly enough. It’s certainly hard to cover all the bases, but perhaps you would rather be overtired than forced to sit out the game. Some mothers who have tried both staying home and working, prefer working. They say they would rather be worn out from doing too much than depressed from not doing enough satisfying work. Similarly, many women who are already committed to their work decide to have children anyway because, even though they know they’ll be overloaded, they think it will be worth it.

  Journalist Letty Cottin Pogrebin, in “Motherhood!” Ms., 1973, expressed this succinctly when her daughter asked her on a hectic day whether she regretted being a mother. Ms. Pogrebin answered: “Sometimes my life is a little too full because I have you children, but, for me, it would be much too empty if I didn’t.”

  6. You can if you explore options. There are other options besides carrying your briefcase into the labor room and showing up at the office two hours postpartum. You can:

  Take a maternity leave of three to twelve months. Then decide whether to go back to work or stay home.

  Switch to part-time, or possibly share a job with someone else if your budget will allow it. Unfortunately, it is often impossible for low wage earners to cut back.

  Take a few years off.

  Switch to consulting, private practice, freelancing, parttime teaching, or volunteer work. These activities allow you to develop professionally while devoting large blocks of time to motherhood. Many women planning pregnancy strategically develop expertise that is indispensa
ble to their employer and/or profession in order to prepare for consulting.

  7. You can if you limit the size of your family. If you both want or need to continue working full-time, having an only child may be your best bet. For most two-career couples, two is the absolute limit.

  8. You can combine career and motherhood more easily if you don’t try to do it all at the same time. As Sherrye Henry, New York radio commentator, whom I interviewed on December 5, 1979 put it:

  I personally have been able to manage motherhood and feminism and do them both justice, as they have done me. The problem that lies ahead for my daughters, though, which did not burden me, is that they may think they have to accomplish all things at once. Impossible. The time required to fire up a career will not allow quiet nurturing moments with babes; high-powered executive actions are not consonant with lullabies. The women who try to put it all into one time-frame will pay a terrific price in terms of physical and emotional punishment. Just the time deciding how to make the trade-offs will be debilitating!

  Unfortunately, thiry-seven years later, many families are doing it all in one time-frame, an economic necessity. And of course, women aren’t the only ones who are suffering. Partners and children, too, are rushed. Relaxed family times are a rare commodity; despite the joys they provide.

  One woman who decided not to try to do it all is Liz, who worked for twelve years as an occupational therapist before she married Eric and gave birth to Daniella. Liz had enjoyed her work, but she was ready for a change. She enjoyed staying home with Daniella for three years. During this time, to keep up in her field, she attended networking events and conferences and read some journal articles.

  Gloria, a thirty-eight-year-old paralegal, had two conflicting realizations. The same year that she realized she wanted a baby, she also realized she wanted to go to law school. But she is the kind of person who gets caught up in whatever she does and prefers to savor one experience at a time. Her solution? She’s going to stay home with the baby for a couple of years and then apply to law school. While she is reversing the typical chronology for professional women, her fertility cannot wait. And she really wants to settle into the motherhood role without being stressed by a rigorous training program. She is grateful to have the financial security to make staying home possible, even though she will take on the burden of education loans later on.