Being an Adult

Moms of daughters know we have an important task.  Our little girls look up to us to define what it means to be a woman.  When they grow up, they will develop the skills and desire to define womanhood for themselves, but still, their first imprints will be of their moms.

And I take that responsibility very seriously.  I understand that what I do will be the “normal” that my children will hold for the rest of their lives more or less.  I try to make good decisions and be a good role model.

When Magoo was first born, my whole world was rocked.  Besides the obvious bliss of having our much longed for little girl, I had to, essentially, change the way I had viewed myself and the world around me for many years.  I was so grateful that I had had a stay at home mom, and I wanted to be that for my children.  But sometime through the years, I had started to value my time solely based on ideas of productivity.  And when you are living with a newborn, productive is not something easily achieved.  Needless to say, my sense of self worth was challenged.

Those first days were a heady experience, but as days turned into weeks which turned into months, I started to question my time.  Is it productive to clean the house?  What about when the baby is asleep?  Am I allowed to sit down and rest, or is that lazy?  Don’t “real adults” spend all of their time doing something that is necessary rather than something that is recreational?

Luckily, I had come to some answers in my own head before I came across this article by Elizabeth Wurtzel published today in The Atlantic.

If you want to read the article, go ahead, but I can basically sum it up in this one sentence from the beginning of the piece, “Let’s please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don’t depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.”  The first word that came to my mind was “ouch!”

I’ve never really considered myself to be a feminist.  I’m not sure why or why not.  Surely I believe in equal rights and I think pay should be equal as should opportunity.  I think men and women are different, but I think that all individuals should be free to walk down any path that their desires and abilities should lead them.  I want my girls’ abilities, accomplishments, and personalities to be just as respected as that of your boys.

But even though I don’t necessary call myself a feminist per se, I think that as a woman and as a mom and even just as a human being, I have a right to be offended by the ideas brought forth in this piece.  Because that quote is not sensationalist; it is the thesis of the entire piece.

Now I don’t get into the mommy wars.  I don’t believe that it’s better to be a working mom or a stay at home mom.   I think what is most important is that the members of a family are provided for and that all members are given an equal opportunity to live respected and fulfilling lives.  Within that framework, there are millions of ways to make things work.

But this article isn’t just about stay at home moms versus working moms.  It’s about how we value our time and our worth.  She states very clearly that to be an adult, a person needs to be economically self-sufficient.  Well, I have a household I run, two children I take care of full time, a (very) part time job, both a Bachelors and a Masters degree, and ten plus years of professional experience.  But according to the author, I am not a real adult because at this moment, if nothing else changed regarding my employment, I could not support our family.  According to her, I couldn’t be a feminist even if I wanted to because I am not economically self sufficient at this moment.

But why is economics so important?  I’m not naïve; I understand that a family can’t survive without some way to bring in the necessities.  But why is the person who does this valued over others?  Why have we gotten the idea that productivity is measured by the time we spend in the marketplace?  Why are we judged (and why do we judge) more on what we provide to corporate America than what we provide for our families and communities?

Our country needs strong and intelligent men and women to run corporations and law firms.  We need doctors to care for the sick and teachers to teach the young.  These are valid, respected, and incredibly important positions.  Our country couldn’t thrive without them.  But is that all our country needs?  Are the people who provide those services more important than the ones who do domestic work?  Is the nanny who takes care of children for pay being more productive than the mother who does it for free?  And are the doctors, lawyers, and teachers being more worthwhile when they are at work than when they are at home?

Concerning motherhood, Wurtzel says, “But let’s face it: It is not a selective position. A job that anyone can have is not a job, it’s a part of life, no matter how important people insist it is (all the insisting is itself overcompensation).”

Most of that statement is offensive and belittling, but with one part I do agree: I do not consider what I do to be a job.  And I also don’t need people to come up with complicated calculations to say how much what I do is worth in marketplace dollars.  Because I don’t do it as a job and I don’t do it to either make or save money.  I do it as a way of life, as a way of living out my priorities and values and passing them on to my daughters.  I do it because I can only live my life once, so I believe I need to do it in a way that is consistent with what I believe and most desire.

So when my daughters look at me and try to determine what womanhood is, I hope they don’t see that being a woman means opting out of the workplace and staying home full time with kids.  I hope they see that being a woman is making choices that are most consistent with your values.  When they see my husband and myself, I hope they believe that being an adult does mean providing for your family, but that providing means a lot more than acquiring income.  I hope they don’t judge people’s worth, value, and contributions by the amount of money they are worth in the marketplace but rather by the individual contributions they make to an entire society – whether their reach mainly extends only to their own four walls or if it reaches across the world.

Once we are finally able to judge ourselves and contributions on more than the amount of money they are worth, I think we will finally be able to create the culture that our children deserve to inherit.