October 18, 2002

• Musings.
  

  (Dwaber dropped me a line to say he'd missed me. I miss you too. I miss here, I miss the discipline of putting something down and seeing how it pieces together. Right now, things are so very very hectic that it's been hard to find a moment to myself - let alone organise my thoughts into something worth writing (or reading for that matter). But right now, it's still and quiet in the house, all the other beings are elsewhere - and my pencil is sharpened.)

  
  

  

  
  

  I am having another little girl. 

  
  

  And this is very confronting for me, as a feminist, as a woman and as a mother. 

  
  

  Let me explain. 

  
  

  When I discovered that Mouse was a little girl, I felt devastated that she wasn't a boy. Oh, it's not because I thought she was 'second best' or not as good as a boy, but because there so many things in my life that I've had to face, that I hoped to spare my child.

  
  

  I worked as a woman in a male dominated profession for most of my life. And I was good at it. I got things done, I stayed late, I put in the extra effort, I played for the team. if you'd asked me about a 'glass ceiling', or 'sex discrimination', I'd have sneered and told you that it didn't exist. Not for me. I could do anything you boys could. And in some cases, I was a whole lot better.

  
  

  But when I got pregnant, things subtly began to change. Not so much when I didn't have the bump, but once it became obvious to all and sundry that there was actually something in there - then attitudes changed. People's eyes would drop to my belly when asking when the budget figures would be ready, or making arrangements for early morning flights. As if everything I could do was now circumscribed by my bump. Okay. I could pass this off as simple concern - for me, for the project, for future business. And I redoubled my efforts to work harder, to put in longer hours, to be superwoman so no one could suspect I was using my pregnancy to not pull my weight. And I worked these ridiculous hours until the week before I gave birth. Proving something to someone who forgot all about me once I had the baby. My husband kept the same hours, and worked a 40 hour week.

  
  

  Ah yes. the baby. I've written about my difficulties in adjusting - so I won't go into that again. But I will stress that the biggest adjustment for me personally was that as a woman, I'd been told that if I only worked hard enough, tried hard enough, played with the boys, I could have it all.

  
  

  Bollocks.

  
  

  There was no way I could go back to the career I'd carved out over 20 years once I'd had a child. Both things required 100% of my energy and time. Both pulled at me, in opposite directions. There was no decent compromise. I could put the babe in childcare, and go back to work - but not 90 hour work weeks. And my former position in the company required that kind of commitment. For that kind of salary and that kind of prestige, you don't work 40 hour weeks. 
  I found a semi-job, a cut down version of my old one, that didn't require those hours and dedication - and used what was left over for my child. The semi-job required me to work a set amount of time from home, out of the loop, out of the office political maneuvering, out of the information web, out of the promotion ladder, out of the salary stream. I got work only when I pestered. I was a charity case really. I was underpaid and undervalued. And inevitably, when I had a deadline, the rest of my life didn't suspend in midair. There was still meals to be made, chores to be done, and a child to care for. Resentment. Frustration. Because after all, I'd been given this opportunity to continue working a decent job (ie. not flipping burgers), and let's not let mundane things like a baby's colic interfere with 'getting things done'. The client doesn't care. Why should they? And one final day, after I'd risen at an ungodly hour to get the baby ready, and humped the diaper bag and supplies over my suit shoulder, and grabbed my briefcase in the other, and hidden my child with my husband so she wouldn't be an annoyance in the meetings I had to take - I thought "fuck this'. I love my child, here I am, pretending she doesn't exist. That I never ever had her." 

  
  

  So I walked.

  
  

  And then I had a new set of issues. I never realized how unfriendly the world is to women juggling children. Children who act out in public when you have hissed at them to behave, children who refuse to sit down and be quiet, children who want to run around and look and point and shout and generally behave as children do. I became the apologetic mum - the one you see murmuring 'I am so sorry' when her little darling is behaving monstrously. Me. An apologist. For my child. Who is NOT badly behaved, or a little monster. She just can't be programmed. And in between apologies for my child, I was busy apologizing for not being able to cope with a career as well, for letting down my feminist sisters, for resenting the hell out of my husband whose life had changed but not to the extent mine had, and being angry that no one had warned me that despite being able to 'have it all' - you can't have it all without sacrificing bits and pieces along the way. Sometimes those pieces are small, like the chance to stay up late, drinking red wine and talking about grownup things to your partner, and sometimes those things are large - like having your whole identity and worth called into question.

  
  

  And the simple fact of the matter is - men don't have to make that choice. They CAN have it all - they can have a career that fulfills them, and be good fathers. My husband is adored by my daughter - never mind that he comes in past 8pm every weeknight if he isn't out on his weekly boys night out,  and his idea of spending time with her on the weekends is to take her round hardware stores and fly-fishing shops. She worships him. All on 8 hours a week of his time. 

  
  

  And this is what it means to be a woman in a post feminist world. We can have the hot partner, the high powered job and the prestige we were promised in university, or we can be the kind of mother we know we should be if we put any thought into having children at all. Maybe there are rare individuals who can find the time and the energy to burn both ends of the candle and not feel broken in the middle. And do a great job at both. But I suspect there's very few. Not me. 

  
  

  I remember crying when I discovered Mouse was a girl. Because when she became a mother, she was going to have to go through the same self examination and torment that I went through. I wanted that not to happen. I would do anything to spare her that. But the only way I can see to do that, is to tell her right off that it ain't possible - that even if she works her tail off and struggles and plays the game - she will discover that once you have a child, you have limited options.. You stay still, or you go backward but you don't go forward in the business world, once you've opted out. And if you don't opt out, you are left with the consequences, until the child you sandwiched in between meetings and business trips grows up and has a life of their own.  Did you make the right choice? Time will tell. You live with it and hope you haven't screwed up too badly. Either way.

  
  

  I want my daughters to have children.  I want my daughters to know what it's like to feel the kind of love I feel for them. To know that I would sacrifice anything, even kill for them, to keep them safe and happy.  But on paper, it looks like a raw deal. A very one sided deal. Your life that you lived and built, or a new one where everything is upside down and you have turned into someone who you don't even know. An angry apologist. A mother. One that, in all likelihood, your feminist daughters will patronize because, like me, they won't know until it happens to them.

  
  

  The choice. One that only girls have to make. And they don't know the payoff until the choice has been made and it's too late to change directions.

  • 4:52 am
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