I journal almost every day. How I am feeling, what I liked and didn't like about the previous day, what I am proud of, where I wish to improve, apologies I owe, inspirational quotes, goals for the present day, dreams I had the night before.....As the journals fill up, I place them in a locked drawer and set about filling the next journal. Some of my writing friends were sharing recently about going back to old journals and re-reading them. I had no desire to do so until a strange, reoccurring dream set me to thinking about its possible significance. Curious about what was going on in my life the last time I had the dream, I began a journey back in time, through about 18 months worth of journal writings. I never found any notes about that dream, but I found something even more interesting - a dream about my daughter from about a year ago.
At the time the dream came to me, my husband and I were on "vacation" - i.e., a weekend in Monterey without the children to attend the Annual Meeting on the California Bar Association so I could fulfill my continuing education requirement. I dreamed that my daughter (at her then present age of 6) decided that she wanted a tattoo. It all came about rather informally - a tattoo artist just happened to visit our home. I was a little distracted and non-vigilant at some point and my daughter selected an enormous parrot design that would cover her entire left leg. I could hear her crying and whimpering as the artist worked on her. I felt intense sympathy for her, but did not interfere. After a while she took a break and came to me for a hug. I could see the outlines of the design on her thigh and I was shocked at how large it was. It also was magnificently beautiful. I felt there was no going back now, so I gently encouraged her to keep going and to be brave. She went back for more. This process repeated itself several times, as she would endure the pain as long as she could, take a break, come to me for loves, and then return for more. Each time she came to me the design was more and more beautiful - glorious, but eventually she was covered in sweat from enduring the pain and decided she would rest and finish up at a later date, which I thought seemed very wise on her part. I was proud of her. Then, suddenly, I felt fear. I was worried that her dad would be angry at me for allowing her to get a tattoo, especially one that was so large. It was as if the sweet bond between she and I, and the magical spell around what we had been sharing, had been broken, and the enormity of the whole event hit me. I felt some grief over the permanent alteration of her body. I felt self-doubt over allowing her to do it and guilt because I had been distracted when it all began and I could not influence her decision in any way. My husband appeared and was upset, but did not blame me. He appeared to unhappily accept what he could not change. At that point, the dream changed and I woke up. I note in my journal that "I awoke with gratitude - gratitude that it was a dream, not reality, and gratitude for the dream as well. It is a powerful metaphor for the challenge of parenting, the dance of power within the parent-child relationship, our struggle within ourselves to parent consciously and well and with all our hearts, and the creeping insecurities and concerns about what others (even our spouses) will think about our parenting. It is also a parable to teach me about detachment with love."
I still love this dream. I had forgotten all about it, but when I read my journal, the images and emotions of the dream returned to me as if I had just awoken from it. As I reflect in that dream today, I am awed by the wisdom in it. Ironically, I would be disappointed if my daughter chose to get a tattoo, even at a more appropriate age. But, I love that I allowed her to do so in this dream. I love that I respected her personal autonomy and supported her right to make this decision for herself. I love that despite my fear and disappointment at her selection of the design, I could appreciate its beauty. I love that when she came to me for love and support, I gave it freely, unconditionally; that she would come close and venture back over and over so reminded me of the fledgling attempts at adulthood that I made throughout my teens and early twenties, until I finally spread my wings and soared into my own independent life. Perhaps that is why she chose to be tattooed with the image of a beautiful and highly intelligent bird. I hope that as she works through her real life transitions I will be able to detach with love, and love her unconditionally, as I did in my dream life.
I have appreciated deeply my women friends who have had the interest and courage to share their "wage-earning mom" perspective with me. One friend, who has a senior management role at a Silicon Valley software company and three young children, described how her role model growing up was her mother - a wage-earning mom. Her husband, a successful engineer/inventor/entrepreneur, likewise considers his mother to have been the most influential person in his life, and proudly bills himself as "the product of a stay-at-home mom." I believe these two viewpoints - the yin and yang of modern motherhood - capture a powerful truth - mothers are role-models regardless of their employment choices and both models work.
Adding to this ongoing conversation of what it means to be a modern mother are two tangentially related articles that are worth reading and pondering. The first, "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/1/#.TjWOw12w0hw, offers support for the very sane proposition that there is such a thing as a "good-enough mother" and that allowing one's children fend for themselves and struggle a bit is good for them (a healthy reminder for those of us with a tendency to "over-achieve," who have made a career of motherhood), and second, "Against Nature: Elisabeth Badinter's Contrarian Feminism" http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/25/110725fa_fact_kramer, (unfortunately this links to just a short excerpt from the article). Ms. Badinter, a french feminist, states that our culture maintains a deep-seated (and in her opinion false) assumption that motherhood is the "natural" state for adult females, such that denying it, postponing it, or delegating aspects of it to others violates our sociobiological destiny, which makes everyone tense and miserable. She argues that a rekindled obsession with all things "natural," including breastfeeding, is holding back women's rise to equality. I do not fully agree with Ms. Badinter's opinions, and I suspect some of her positions are taken with the intention of inflaming others and sparking debate, but I am thoroughly enjoying the many perspectives on this topic. I may write again to analyze and discuss these two articles in greater depth. If any dear reader has the inclination to read them and join in an analysis or discussion, I welcome dialogue on this topic. For now, I will repeat the refrain: It is time to lay down our arms in the "mommy wars" and, instead, use our arms to support one another along whatever path we choose.
I love women. We are, quite simply, amazing creatures. I am a feminist and a grateful recipient of the benefits of the women's movement.I view the strides women have made in the past century to be the most remarkable social evolution in history – stunning, albeit imperfect, in its pace and success. If you doubt this, ask any woman in her 60s - things have changed quite a bit and for the better.
It is from this posture, that I read with great interest a recent New Yorker magazine article entitled: "A Woman's Place: Can Sheryl Sandberg upend Silicon Valley's male-dominated culture?" by Ken Auletta (New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2011) pp. 54-63.
Here is some background on Ms. Sandberg, for those who have not read the article.She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with an economics degree, was mentored and employed for many years by former Harvard professor and president Larry Summers, was then hired into an executive position at Google and is now at Facebook.She claims that there is no longer a glass ceiling in corporate America and that women's primary roadblocks are internal - that they, unlike their male counterparts, have to be talked into taking on new, tougher assignments, don't initiate salary negotiations, don't force their spouses to be fifty-fifty partners at home, don't "lean into" their careers, and "leave before they leave" (i.e., "When a woman starts thinking of having children, 'she doesn't raise her hand anymore . . . . She starts leaning back.' In other words, if women don't get the job they want before they take a break to have children, they often don't come back.")Id. at 58.
I wanted to like her and to applaud her success, and I do.All the same, when I finished the article I felt angry and, to be honest, some of my anger was directed at Ms. Sandberg and other women who have chosen to remain in the corporate workforce and appear to look down on, or at least bemoan, women who have chosen a different path.I felt like screaming:Focusing my life on motherhood and household work is a valid career choice!!!I was angry enough that I wrote a first draft of this essay that was a pretty nasty attack on Ms. Sandberg, her perspective, and her advice to young women.Thankfully, my legal training kicked in and before I published a forever-indexed-and-cached on Google diatribe, I watched Ms. Sandberg’s TED talk on YouTube, and listened to her actual words, as opposed to her words reinterpreted through the author’s filter. What she actually says is the following, “If you want to stay in the workforce . . . .” here is my advice to you:Sit at the table, not on the sidelines; keep your hand up; and, don’t leave before you leave.[1]
Ironically, in my former career as a corporate litigator, I instinctively and unknowingly followed Ms. Sandberg’s advice to women who want to remain in the corporate workforce, and perhaps it was by doing so that I felt so free to leave that world behind with no regrets.I always “sat at the table, not the on the sidelines” – when it came time to select an office at my law firm, I picked the one right next door to the head of my department; I almost always raised my hand (perhaps more often than was prudent), and I loved the job I had before I left.I chose to leave, and I did so to focus exclusively on parenting and homemaking, rather than on a corporate career, or trying to balance both.[2]
Why did I leave the corporate workforce?It was the best choice for me.It was a bit frightening to leave all those obvious trappings of success behind, but I viewed and continue to view motherhood and household duties to be valid and highly valuable career choices, and taking this path has made all the difference. I am sharing this with all of you because I hope to inspire a change in perception and attitude.I am an educated, empowered woman and this was my choice.I am not "wasting" my Stanford University education, my Boston University J.D., magna cum laude, or my five years of corporate litigation experience.I am using aspects of all that knowledge and experience every day to make my home and the world a better place, and I am happy and at peace.I work hard and I take time for myself to do things I enjoy.I actively and conscientiously parent my two children and invest significant time and energy into maintaining our home and almost every other non-wage-earning aspect of our family life.My family is thriving.I feel whole and fully actualized.I have friendships and hobbies.I am learning to play the guitar and sew.I exercise almost every day, tend my garden, cook, and bake.I also perform less glamorous and sometimes down right disgusting tasks related to children’s bodily functions and other relatively unsavory housecleaning duties.I do laundry and grocery shop, which are tasks that I love, and I iron (sometimes) and dust (grudgingly), which are tasks that I dread.I volunteer in my daughter's classroom and in the community. I call friends, read books, write, meditate, and pray.Sometimes, I nap!My education serves me well. I feel confident in my ability to answer my children’s questions about the world, or know where to find the answers.I encourage them to think critically, to be curious, to challenge me (politely).I can also engage in intelligent conversation with my husband and our friends. I can initiate stimulating discourse at a cocktail party and know how to throw a really good one. Life is good.
I did not drop out of the workforce.I would love to earn a paycheck for the job I do, but I am fortunate not to need one to survive.I am grateful to have had a choice of where to focus my time, energy, and skills, and I made the best choice for me.I respect other women’s choices, and I would appreciate equal respect for mine.
But, this is not just about me. Ms. Sandberg’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, states: "She could go be the CEO of any company that she wanted to . . . . But I think the fact that she really wants to get her hands dirty and work, and doesn't need to be the front person all the time, is the amazing thing about her. It's that low-ego element, where you can help people around you and not need to be the face of all the stuff." Id. at 64. Good for her. Now, a shout out to all mothers: Motherhood is the ultimate low-ego position. All you mothers, whether you have remained in the wage-earning workforce or not – Live your choice! Love your choice! Support the choices other women have made. Let’s call a truce to the “Mommy Wars.” Do I hear an "Amen, sister"?
[1] The conditional statement that prefaces Ms. Sandberg’s advice is a very important qualifying statement.I have found myself asking, did the New Yorker leave this out because they failed to realize its importance, or was it a purposeful attempt to incite another round of the “Mommy Wars”?Who knows?Suffice it to say, I am no longer angry with Ms. Sandberg and I highly recommend watching her TED talk.It is well done, at times poignant, and contains some good advice for women who want to succeed long-term in the corporate world.
[2]Word choice is important.Many people, including Ms. Sandberg, use the term “dropping out” to describe women leaving the corporate workforce.Choosing to leave the wage-earning workforce is not “dropping out” of the workforce.I dislike the term “dropping out,” because it bears the negative connotation of “high school drop out” and, furthermore, it implies that the work I do as a mother and homemaker is not “real work.”
