By Julie Shields
Excerpt from How to Avoid the Mommy Trap. Read Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. Check back over the next several weeks to read the final excerpt.
Mary Clayton turns away as her husband Mark tries to kiss her goodbye. Resigned, he leans down to kiss their eight month-old son Jeffrey instead. Mark has grown accustomed to Mary's resentment, which rises each day as he prepares to leave the house for work. Mary would like to walk out that door a couple of times a week to go to her own job but has not yet found a childcare replacement she can trust.
Mary Clayton's situation represents a new version of the same old story. Until giving birth to Jeffrey eight months ago, she held a tenure track position as economics professor at a state university. Now, she takes care of Jeffrey full time. A tall, striking blonde from the mid-west, before becoming a mother, Mary enjoyed committee work, running, and many friendships, in addition to her marriage. Her predicament depicts "the problem with no name," dressed up a bit for the twenty-first century.
In 1963, Betty Friedan gave the first chapter of The Feminine Mystique the title of "The Problem With No Name". The Problem With No Name described the plight of housewives matching slip covers, eating peanut butter sandwiches, driving carpool, and lying in bed at night next to their husbands wondering "is this all?" The Problem With No Name was bad enough in 1963. It's even worse for contemporary women brought up to believe they could and should do it all.
If the life of the happy homemaker isolated mothers before, today it's even more isolating. Fewer people inhabit neighborhoods during the day. Entering a playground filled with nannies can lead at-home mothers to feel that few parents see merit in spending time with their children. The social stigma attached to staying home doesn't make full-time moms feel valued. I have yet to meet a stay-at-home mother who hasn't expressed fear of being at a party and asked what she does.
Staying home to do the important work of raising children still has its drawbacks—the same drawbacks that led to the women's movement (namely, the desire for something beyond, house, kids, and marriage) and then some. Every night when he comes home from his job as a software developer, Mark hopes Mary will be glad to see him. Instead, she hands the baby off and eagerly leaves the house for a walk. True, she'd called Mark a number of times from 4:30 on asking when he would be home, but apparently she wanted a break, not him. Before Jeffrey was born, Mark and Mary had a lot of fun together. Now, everything's changed, and not the way they'd expected.
When Jeffrey was a month old, Mary started looking into nannies and daycare. She read articles and studies about childcare, asking everyone she knew about their arrangements. She visited daycare centers, and interviewed countless nannies. Though she hadn't expected to, Mary concluded Jeffrey would do best at home with his parents.
She has noticed that in some ways Mark took better care of Jeffrey than she did, particularly with bathing and diapering. Far neater than Mary, Mark spends hours every night cleaning—vacuuming up soggy bits of teething biscuits and re-washing pots and pans smeared with crud even after Mary has tried to clean them. Though she finds it demoralizing to live with the mess she and Jeffrey create, Mary cannot fix it.
Mary Clayton doesn't want to quit her job. She needs to work to feel complete. She misses the adult interaction and stimulation of campus life. Mary has asked for and received a year sabbatical, and hopes to convince Mark to telecommute and work a compressed schedule so she can return to her very flexible job.
Mark has resisted making a career accommodation for what he views as her decision. While he agrees they have not met any terrific nannies, and that Jeffrey should not go to daycare at this age, he has left things to Mary's sense of responsibility for their son. Mark wants her to keep the house neat, or at least neater, and show more interest in sex. At an impasse with each other, they both adore Jeffrey, who is thriving.
How'd this couple get here? They didn't do their homework ahead of time. Failure to research and map out parenting roles often defaults couples back to the so-called "traditional" division of parental labor, where women nurture and men go out in the world to provide income. Because she didn't look or plan ahead as her neighbor, Ann King did, Mary Clayton fell into the Mommy Trap.
If you are interested in learning how families can create more balanced arrangements, click here to purchase or read more of How to Avoid the Mommy Trap.
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