An oldie but a goodie. I wrote this post in a fury one evening and several days later regretted it thinking it was dreadfully self-pitying and boring and that I should go back and delete it immediately. I went on-line to find that it had taken on a life of its own since. Lots and lots of parents related very strongly to the post and it has since been re-blogged and linked to all over the place, again and again. I have even been notified several times that university lecturers have used the post as reading material with their students. Who knows what they were teaching them with it?
I think I learnt a lesson with this post, sometimes my raw feelings make for more truthful and more interesting reading. Of course, sometimes my raw feelings are utter shite to read, too, so one should not get carried away on one’s blog.
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Why is the fertility rate across the Western world plummeting..? Ah, this is one clue.
Here is how I get to work and back:
- Get Lauca up.
- Change her nappy.
- Make her breakfast.
- Get self showered, dressed, hair and make up done.
- Sometimes have breakfast.
- Get Lauca dressed, hair brushed, face and hands washed.
- Check Lauca’s daycare bag, he packs it the night before but he invariably forgets something.
- Check I have everything I need for work.
- Pack handbag, folio case, Lauca’s daycare bag, (sometimes Lauca’s sheets if its a washing week), my lunch bag and stroller in to the car (thank myself for being sensible enough to enrol her in a daycare with a chef so I don’t have to make and carry her lunch with us).
- Get all our stuff and Lauca in the car.
- Drive to the station and try to find a spare park.
- Unload Lauca, stroller, handbag, folio case, daycare bag, sheets bag, lunch bag.
- Clip Lauca into stroller, walk up to the train platform.
- Buy a ticket, fold up stroller.
- Carry stroller, Lauca, handbag, folio case, daycare bag, sheets bag, and lunch bag on to train.
- Lay stroller in aisle-way to be cursed at later by other passengers tripping over it.
- Get Lauca in to the train seat next to me, prepare for 30 min trip.
- Feed Lauca (she is never hungry enough to eat much breakfast first thing in the morning).
- Train fills up with people squished together and standing all over my bags and stroller.
- Think about how Lauca is the only child here under school age but don’t wonder why – this is hard work.
- Try and keep Lauca from getting bored and making too much noise, asking to get out of the train, or wiping food on people or seats.
- Start reaching between people’s legs to collect our bags and stroller together before we get to our stop.
- Give Lauca a pep talk about how to get off the train.
- Scoop up bags and stroller and push Lauca along through the crowd of people squeezed together in the train.
- Stop Lauca from falling out the train door, drop bags and stroller on the platform and reach for her as the train door closes.
- Think about the minor miracle that happens every time we manage to get on or off a peak hour train together.
- Set up stroller and clip in.
- Gather bags and find an elevator because we can’t get up the stairs with a stroller.
- Find ticket and swim against stream to get through the one ticket gate that is large enough to fit a stroller through it.
- Walk 15 minutes to the daycare.
- Sign Lauca in, fold up stroller and put it away.
- Put daycare bag away in her pigeon hole, get a tissue to wipe her tears.
- Settle Lauca in, try and get her calm enough to stop crying, greet the carers.
- Leave and walk 15 mins to work wondering why I have to start my day in heartache and he is oblivious.
- Come in, sit down at my desk, feel hungry and wish I’d had breakfast, wish I could get to work earlier, feel exhausted, listen to inane jokes about my ‘long weekend’ (gentlemen, its not a long weekend if you don’t get paid for it and you don’t get to rest during it).
- Then at the end of the day….
- Wish I had longer to get the work done, instead finish work up in a mad panic and attempt to tell my boss telepathically not to stop me for a ten minute chat about work on may way out the door… I have stayed here until the very last possible second, I need to leave, now, right this moment, and collect my poor daughter from daycare.
- Wonder why none of these men I work with have to rush out the door to pick up their children from daycare.
- Carry lunch bag, handbag, and folio case and jog-walk 15 mins to daycare.
- Collect Lauca and her daycare bag.
- Check with the carers how Lauca’s day went.
- Collect notes to parents from the pigeon hole.
- Get stroller and unfold it and strap Lauca in.
- Fill out any paperwork and pay daycare.
- Sign Lauca out.
- Rush 10 mins to train station, find ticket, cut across a steady stream of commuters to get to the only ticket gate to allow a stroller to pass through.
- Get elevator down to the station and curse it for being slow – now I will have to go faster than a speeding locomotive to get us on the speeding locomotive.
- Fold up stroller and give Lauca a pep talk about sticking with me while I push through crowds of people to get us on a train.
- Carry handbag, lunch bag, folio case, daycare bag and stroller while trying to keep Lauca with me, and pick her up when she trips over and get on train.
- Am offered a spare seat and must get Lauca and I settled in to it with all our bags and stroller on the floor among people’s feet without falling over as train jerks away from the station.
- Try not to sweat on people, I am overheating from all the running to and fro.
- Think about the minor miracle that happens every time we manage to get on or off a peak hour train together.
- Chat to Lauca to keep her distracted as she starts to get tired, frustrated, cramped and teary – 30 min trip.
- Get out of train, slightly less difficult as not as many people by the end of the line but still have to carry Lauca (too tired now to walk), a stroller, handbag, folio bag, lunch bag, daycare bag.
- Unfold stroller and clip Lauca in, find car.
- Get Lauca in the car, shove assorted bags inside, fold up stroller and put it in the car.
- Drive home.
- Get Lauca, handbag, folio case, lunch bag, daycare bag out of the car.
- Get inside – unpack folio bag, lunch bag, daycare bag.
- Starts the evening grind – dinner, bath, get toddler to sleep, clean-up etc etc.
- Ask him to pack daycare bag for the next day.
Now, this is how he gets to work and back.
- Showers, shaves, dresses.
- Puts on a playschool DVD for Lauca.
- Sometimes changes her nappy and sometimes makes her breakfast.
- Makes and drinks a coffee.
- Sometimes has breakfast.
- Packs bag, gathers helmet and jacket.
- Kisses us goodbye.
- Rides motorbike 35 mins to work.
- Parks motorbike and walks straight into office.
- Then at the end of the day…
- Pack up bag, gather helmet and jacket.
- Ride motorbike home 35-40mins in worse traffic.
- Park motorbike and walk straight in the house.
- Kisses us hello.
- Starts the evening grind – cooking dinner etc etc.
- Sometimes packs daycare bag for the next day and sometimes complains that it is too hard and he doesn’t know where everything is.
Off the top of my head there are a few strategies that could make life a lot easier:
Flexible work arrangements to allow some work from home, or start and finish times outside peak hours. More jobs offering part-time opportunities and greater acceptability around men working part-time jobs so we could both be working part-time. More respect for part-time workers – we’re not paid for full-time hours so don’t treat it like we can stay back full-time hours. More funding for public service so peak-hour trains aren’t so cramped, and maybe even carriages with room to pack strollers away. Train carriages with ramps for strollers and hello, wheelchairs. On-site daycare centres at work. Greater expectations on men to take up more of their share of parenting responsibilities. Me, being a little bit less of a stupid martyr and negotiating a fairer division of labour with my partner.
But.
The very worst thing about this, the thing that is worse than living this insanity is that this gross inequality between men and women is completely silent. Some women know about it, I suspect these are the same women who offer to help me get Lauca on and off the crowded train (ie. older women who have raised children). But I’m pretty sure almost no men know about it, certainly not the man I raise our child with (though I’m working on it) and definitely not the men I work with. This endurance test of mine is not seen, appreciated, or valued. Were it not for my (almost) two-year old witness it would be as if it never happened. Maybe if it was acknowledged I wouldn’t feel so spent, though I’d still feel it was unfair. The truth is no-one wants to know about it. Who wants to take up any of the slack, to create solutions that share the burden and the rewards of working life more equitably? It is easier to let women keep carrying the load, silently, in the background, to keep the cogs turning. On a good day I have a satisfying time at work and it feels worthwhile, I don’t want to even talk about how hard it is on a bad day. (Now you decide we should write the submission in this other direction?! Why did I put Lauca and I through this struggle so you could change your mind at the last moment and make the last two weeks work of mine redundant?!)
It starts at home, as a mother you must fight for equality in parenting. You’ll probably never get it, but if you don’t at least try we’re all screwed.
Still loving this one. That is, loving the post, not the patriarchy.
This. Wow. I love my husband, and he does a lot, but he also feels completely able to just say, “I’m really tired, I’m going to go veg,” leaving me to care for our 7-month-old. He also is such a sound sleeper that the baby can wail for twenty minutes right next to him and get no response–so I do all the night parenting too. I should note, we both work full time–and I make about $15K/year more than he does!
On International Women’s Day, I posted the following quotation to my facebook page: “I’ve yet to be on a campus where most women weren’t worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I’ve yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.” — Gloria Steinem
The response really surprised me. Lots of guys were very offended. I talked to them, and it turned out that they think of this in monetary terms: “How can I *afford* to have children?” And that’s what they think Steinem is talking about. But really, they just don’t get it. They don’t get the biological clock (because OMG if you have a baby after you’re 30, who knows what will happen!). They don’t get the longer hours (a mother’s work is never done). They don’t get the fact that pregnancy is a big damn deal, and so is nursing and so is not sleeping for more than 4 hours in a row for seven months and then getting up and going to work the next day. Many of these men are married to working mothers. You’re right. They totally don’t see it and don’t get it.
The question is, how do we … help them get it? Did your husband read this post? Did he understand it?
On site daycare – pleeeeease.
I loved this list, altho it made me feel stressed just reading it.
On the daycare with own chef – ours does too thankfully, but one fantastic daycare near us lost me when they said ‘we get mothers to send in a packed lunch, as it helps them to feel they are nurturing their child through the day’ !
I think the tide is turning very slowly though. I know 5 couples where both parents work part time.
And our daycare is closer to His work – yay!!!
Just don’t do it all. Tell him you won’t. I know that this means that it won’t get done the way that you want it to be done, but that’s okay.
If only it were that simple. When you are acting in the best interests of your child, there are many times when ‘not doing it all’ is not an option that you will consider.
I didn’t see this when it was originally posted and although my daily routine is not nearly as hard as this (I can drive the kids to school and childcare and then work so there is no train in my equation) but I honestly feel every morning I’ve run a marathon before I even get to my desk. My husband does many things at home (if I ask him to) but he just does not understand the struggle of dropping off and picking up.
I never ever get to work before 9.30am even though I begin the rushing at 7.30am because we have to get to school, get into school, go home to pick up what we forgot, take it back to school, get to daycare, settle (takes at least 10 mins), and then head to work. It is exhausting. And you are so right when you say that this is not the struggle of a father. It is infuriating.
The big question: who does all the planning? Who decides who has to be when, where, and how they’ll get there? Who decides when grocery shopping happens and doctors’ appointments and washing machine repairs? Who has to plan date night, should we be lucky enough to have one and afford one? Who finds babysitters? Who realizes that children need clothes, and they have to be replaced frequently? I could go on, but you get the point.
And, what I love most of all, is that there are two capable adults in my household, but one of them, when faced with a tiny fraction of what I do every day for our children, falls apart with a chronic disease, and then I have to take care of him AND the children.
I’m mad too. People say, how do you do it all? I answer: badly. What I wish I could answer: because I have to.
For the last twelve months my partner has done most of the parenting drop off and pick up stuff while I’ve been doing more paid work. He knows the childcare people, I don’t remember the doorcode, he packs the kinder/childcare/swimming bag as appropriate and he gets the kid to the right place at the right time.
When he rang a place we were trying to organise childcare and left a message THEY RANG ME BACK. I responded “I don’t know what day we need childcare, you’ll need to ring the Bloke”. We were so desperate for a half day of good childcare (and it is good, it’s a small group and a properly qualified carer) that I didn’t say anything ruder.
I believe the key to the current situation (ending, at least for now, at the end of this week) is that childcare is close to home, not my work. The Bloke is also smart enough to act like a grown up. I’m constantly surprised by how rare this is.
Thanks for posting this again. You have no idea how much this post helped me when I discovered it in the early hours of a morning of furious rumination!
Motherhood is freakin amazing, and hard, but it has rocked my feminist ideas and principles to the core. This is the only thing that took me completely by surprise. Thank god for Blue Milk.
This everyday struggle to meet everyone’s needs and keep everything running smoothly, whilst also contributing to the household finances, it’s so invisible to my husband. Not in a deliberately selfish way – he just doesn’t see it or think about it.
I guess it is a series of negotiations, and we will eventually get to a more equal place, but…grrr!
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