People say this to me a lot, as a working mom of three little sons. It’s just kind of a thing you say, so this isn’t directed at anyone in particular. In fact, I’ve said it myself. It’s intended to be high praise, I think, and I always try to receive it with grace.
I suppose, though, I’d rather a world where working as a lawyer and also being a mom was not so damned impossible that it inspires disbelief when people manage it. The subtext of “I don’t know how you do it” is “this thing you are doing is beyond the ability of mere mortals, and your ability to accomplish it is awe-inspiring.” It sounds like I’m humble-bragging, but that’s not what I intend with this post. What I want is private law practice that is amenable to managing life with small children for whom the lawyer has significant responsibility. I, and all other mothers, and a growing pool of very active fathers, contort and deprive ourselves in ridiculous ways to try to manage the demands of work and family. And the legal profession is not changing AT ALL to accommodate this changing demographic. This is not necessary. People often tell me it IS necessary – it’s the nature of the business – and I’m like ‘yeah of course, it’s the nature of the business. The business was DESIGNED by and for men with wives at home to manage all domestic affairs and children’s needs. ALL BUSINESS was designed this way, to fit a division of labor that was more common decades ago but is fading fast these days, almost vanished.’ In many developed countries, women are entering the workforce in growing numbers. They are also surveying the crappy work-life balance issues and declining to procreate.
There is nothing fundamental about the nature of most jobs that is incompatible with having outside responsibilities. If we sat down and designed our work lives from scratch, with the twin goals of meeting business needs and also allowing parents to meet their significant domestic responsibilities, we could certainly do it. I can think of a million ways it could be accommodated.
So I guess I’m saying that living with the status quo, changing zero things, and then calling working moms* some sort of hero, is not good enough. I do not want praise. I want change.
*An increasing number of dads are also participating fully in the domestic sphere, and suffering at work because of that. They don’t suffer the Parent Penalty that women do – they also never get the “I don’t know how you do it” line.
All the people said amen!
I am not even in private practice, and I am dreading, dreading the end of my maternity leave and the beginning of the juggle. Not because I wish that I could be a stay-at-home parent instead of working outside of the home, but because I know that I will constantly be stretched too thin on both fronts, no matter what I do. And because I know that all of our disposable income and then some will go for child care.
Yes. Exactly. SO many women drop out and then the men who remain comfort themselves with the myth that we are just biologically more inclined toward caring for domestic issues, and we didn’t really want to be at work and “away from the kids.” That we must have missed our children in some deeper way that they don’t. But that’s not true. The truth is that just as many of us want outside stimulus, and have good ideas, and find dirty diapers and dishes quite boring, and want some economic power, and want adult conversation. And many of us don’t mind dovetailing that with the dirty diapers and dishes, because doing the work of the home also bears its reward (and should be regarded much more highly than it is – as routine as much of this work is, it also requires a great deal of intelligence, patience, coordination, planning – all valuable human resources that are taken for granted in the SAHM, because she’s just eating bon-bons as they say). But we simply cannot pull 60 hour weeks and also do 10 loads of laundry and cook every meal and clean toilets and do all of that work on top. We simply must have some accommodation for the fact that these germ-factories we call children are out of school sick sometimes once a week, for months on end.
On the flip side, men would be benefit so beautifully from all of the drudgery of being up to their elbows in dirty diapers and dishes and scheduling piano lessons and following a toddler with a wet rag as he careens around the house leaving a sticky film on every surface he comes near. It’s completely mind-numbing and yet, being in those tall weeds gives you and your kids this “WE EARNED THIS” bond that you simply cannot get if you just check in after dinner. SO many of the older dudes I work with speak with a sigh about how much closer their children are to their mother. They don’t have to be. This is really the secret – men must participate in the home as much as women do, and must start demanding the flexibility to make that work. If we all do it, then there’s nobody left to work 90 hour weeks and take the jobs away. Meanwhile, I propose a significant paternity leave and everyone laughs at my idiocy. “Men aren’t going to take it,” they say, “it will affect their careers.” YOU DON’T SAY. Perhaps men should share in the burden. They can’t carry the baby for me, but that’s all they can’t do.
And all the people said amen AGAIN. Yes, yes, a million times yes to paternity leave, and then to fathers being fully present as parents.