IT’S HERE, IT’S HERE! YOU GUYS, IT’S HERE: MY BRAND-SPANKIN’ NEW BLOG!

This is a big day for me. I feel nervous and excited and a little bit queasy, to be honest. This thing has been over two years in the making (two years of planning and dreaming; three months of actual work).

So. Wanna know what it’s all about? OK.

My new blog is entitled Becoming Peculiar: Adventures in living out the backwards ways of Jesus.

In Becoming Peculiar, I want to explore ways that we can actually practice Jesus’ radical, counter-cultural, counter-intuitive Way, and to document my attempts to put these things into practice in my own life. The idea behind it is that followers of Christ should look different from the rest of the culture in how we live, besides going to church on Sunday mornings. The world should find us strange, shocking, even messed up — like it did the early church — because our values should be so scandalously different from theirs.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case here in North America. We look pretty much like everyone else.

I look like everyone else.

The project began with the question, “How can anyone tell that I’m a follower of Jesus by the way I act and live?” And the sad answer was, they probably couldn’t.

The title comes from 1 Peter 2:9, which says: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Some of the things I want to focus on are deconsumption, environmentalism, non-violence, and practicing Sabbath. In my own life, I want to work on being generous, hospitable, and peaceful, and on living simply.

Because I’m so interested in the topic of parenting right now, I also plan to spend a lot of time focusing on what I call “peculiar parenting”: i.e., raising children in a way that shows them who Jesus is, not just through our words but our daily practices. Oh, I have so much to say (and learn!) on this topic!

And so some of the topics that you’ve come to expect from Project M will still be featured in Becoming Peculiar, but there will be a broader focus in general. A lot of things will be the same, then — I will still be talking a lot about family and motherhood, but from a “Kingdom perspective,” as my favourite pastor Greg Boyd likes to say.

I know that not all my readers are into Jesus, so I know my new blog may not interest all of you, for which I am sorry. I hope we don’t have to completely part ways!

Project M simply hasn’t been giving me the space to explore all the things I’ve wanted to talk about lately. In all honestly, Project M started out as an experiment — a wildly successful one, in my opinion, where I learned so much about writing, community, and the internet. And also about marriage. I never realized how much I could learn from others when trying to offer my own thoughts! But I feel ready to move onto something bigger and better.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking with me. Thanks for hanging out in my tiny corner of the Interwebs. I have been so blessed to get to know you. You have provided friendship and support I never would have expected from the virtual world. I hope some of you will stick with me and provide guidance and wisdom.

Thanks again!

Please join me over at Becoming Peculiar!

Image courtesy of rex dart.

Hi folks,

sorry for my continued absence. The trouble is, the new blog project is nearing completion and I’m busy obsessing about that right now. I have a feeling that once it’s ready, that’s going to be the only place you’ll be able to find me. Hope you’ll join me there when the time comes!

Things are going smashingly here at the Quiring household. We got over that slump I told you about and Lydia has two shiny new little teeth to show for it.

We got back on track with EC and we’re better than ever. We’re back to staying dry all night — one pee at night in the potty, and again in the morning — and she also generally pees every time I give her an opportunity during the day, so that we wet maybe six diapers a day. (When it started at 24 a day, that’s pretty amazing). I think I’m starting to tap into that intuition they talk about in all the books on EC . . . I just kind of know when it’s about time to go on the potty. I hold her over it, say, “Go peepee!” and she goes. Back on goes the dry diaper!

We’ve been casually starting with solids over the last month (starting at six months), following the principles of baby-led weaning: we just put her in the high chair, stick on a plastic bib, and hand her chunks or slices of whatever we’re eating. Her favourite foods so far are Camembert cheese, medium-rare steak, and orange slices. And she’s passionate about drinking water from a glass. I don’t understand it. It’s so fun, and I love that I never have to pack her special mushed-up food when we go out. Narnia is also a big fan of this method of eating, because she gets to clean up the floor while Lydia plays around with sweet potatoes, meatballs and cheese slices.

Anyway. The response to my last post on husbands and home birth has been fascinating to say the least. Take a look at the interesting comments if you are so inclined!

And again, thank you, thank you, for reading.

Image from Bring Birth Home

I recently read a thoughtful, thorough article comparing the different options of birth settings available to mothers: home, birthing center, and hospital.

The author concludes the article by explaining that she personally chose to give birth in a hospital because her husband felt uncomfortable with a home birth, and she wanted to be submissive to him in the matter. In fact, she admits that she didn’t even bother to give much thought to the question of a home birth after her husband’s initial response.

The comments to that article were filled with similar stories: women who may have wanted to give birth at home opted to birth in a hospital because their husbands were uncomfortable with the thought of a home birth.

When I mentioned this to a friend, she said, “Oh definitely. My husband doesn’t want me to have a home birth, either.”

Let me begin by saying that I understand that these husbands are objecting to home births primarily out of love and concern for their wives. They want their wives — and their babies — to be safe. They believe hospital births are the safer option. It’s wonderful that these men care so deeply about their wives’ well-being.

But these men’s objections to home birth are also rooted in ignorance, fear, and androcentrism (more on these in a moment), and that’s a problem. I don’t think, then, that the matter of childbirth is one in which female submission is entirely appropriate.*

Before I go any further, I also want to say that I’m deeply impressed by these women’s lack of resentment or bitterness towards their husbands. That takes a level of maturity that I don’t entirely share.

The thing is, if there is only one realm in which women ought to have authority, it’s in the realm of childbirth.

This is, in my opinion, one area where women need to educate men, regardless of their particular take on female submission. Most men simply don’t have the information or inherent feminine wisdom regarding birth to unilaterally make a responsible decision in the matter.

Like I said, objections to home births are often rooted in ignorance: Westerners — and Western men in particular — generally aren’t aware of the fact that there is no difference in the safety of births that take place in the home versus those planned to take place in the hospital (see here and here). ^ Men have a hard time grasping what women’s bodies are capable of without the help of medical intervention. This is a problem that needs to be corrected with proper education.

Objections to home births are also rooted in fear and discomfort surrounding the unknown — and for men especially, the unknowable mysteries of pregnancy and birth can be disconcerting. Our culture is so far removed from the realities of birth that most people are quite uncomfortable with it. This needs to be dealt with through increased familiarity with childbirth. (And what better way to expose families to the nature of childbirth than through a home birth?)

Objections are also rooted in androcentrism — in other words, the masculine assumption that doctors, machines and medications can accomplish the work of giving birth better than women who are attended by midwives but otherwise left alone.

The matter of childbirth is not an area where it makes sense for women to submit to their husbands. It is an area where husbands and wives need to engage in open dialogue. A woman should feel free to express her desires and know that her husband will keep an open mind about it.

A husband and wife can decide together to give birth in a hospital: I have no issue with that. But I think it’s important that the woman’s preference take priority over the man’s. She is, after all, the one who is going to be doing all the work.

Birth happens best when the woman feels safe, secure, and confident. Her muscles work better and more efficiently when she’s relaxed,resulting in less pain and a speedier labour.  So one of the most important factors in choosing a birth setting is determining where the woman will feel the most secure. And if that’s at home — well, then, that might be the best, safest option.

Of course, a woman’s sense of security is highly influenced by the people around her, so her husband’s feelings need to be taken into account, too. She’s not going to fare well if her partner is overwhelmed with anxiety. If there is just no getting around his angst, it might be best to go with a setting where he will feel at ease.

But may I suggest that this is perhaps an ideal time and place for a man to exercise his masculine virtues of courage and strength?

If bravery and fortitude are such important masculine attributes, this might be the perfect time to draw upon these qualities. If there was ever a time a woman could really use her husband’s courage, it’s during childbirth.

* * *

I want to see a cultural shift in the way we view childbirth, not as a medical event, but as a natural, normal, healthy process. I would love to see a shift, therefore, away from doctor-attended hospital births (which suggest that there is something inherently dangerous about the birthing process) to more midwife-attended births in homes and in birthing centers. This is all part of my desire to see a change in our perceptions of women’s bodies as whole, strong, and capable rather than deficient and diseased.

This can’t happen as long as men are fearful of birth and women are complacent.

I know that nobody likes getting advice, but if I had to offer any, it would be this:

Women: if you believe in natural birth and want it for yourself, you need to educate your husbands. Don’t be hostile or demeaning, of course; be gentle. Listen to his objections and carefully consider them. But make sure he understands the situation. Don’t stop trying just because his initial reaction is discomfort. Every man’s initial reaction is discomfort. Persist. He might change his mind once he understands how important it is to you.

Offer him information. I would suggest starting with The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth, which is laid out in a fairly straightforward manner, perfect for the more systematic thinker.

Men: if your wife wants a more natural birth, the manliest thing you can do is try to understand her and support her. This is one area where you have to trust that your wife has more wisdom than you have. She was built for childbirth, after all; you’re fortunate just to be able to witness it.

This is not a time to give in to squeamishness or fear of the unknown. Be strong for your wife.

Fight ignorance with information. Learn about the benefits of birthing at home. You might want to start with this article. Listen to your wife and try to understand why it’s important to her. Become familiar with how birth happens. Read some books on the topic, perhaps even consider watching some videos with your wife to familiarize yourself with the process.

Deciding where to give birth ought to be a joint decision, giving precedence to the woman’s desires. It’s a wonderful opportunity for couples to draw closer together and discover how miraculous the female body is. It’s a perfect chance to connect on an intense level and come to a mutual understanding. I’d hate to see the conversation end at a man’s instinctive discomfort. Let’s keep the conversation going!

*Of course, I am coming at this from an egalitarian perspective, and I have a husband who shares my perspective, so that colours my thoughts on female submission generally.

What do you think?

You might also like . . .

My Home Birth Story

Why I’m Choose a Home Birth

I know I said I was taking a break from the blog, but I just wanted to say this.

I sometimes worry that I’ve made parenting sounds so fun and easy-breezy, like I’ve got it all figured out and we never have any difficulties here in the Quiring household.

So I thought it was important that I share with you some of our recent struggles and failures.

For the last five days, we’ve been a mess. I don’t know why, but Lydia has been absolutely wretched every night from dinner time to bed time. She yells, whines, cries, and howls. She’s not happy anywhere or with anybody. I can’t figure it out and I feel like a wreck.

She then wakes up hollering in the middle of the night, as if waking from a nightmare about all the horrible ways I’ve been abusing her.

Elimination communication has suddenly become a disaster. She’s peed in our bed twice in a row now, so that I have to strip off all the bedding in the morning and do enormous loads of laundry. Her elimination timing suddenly changed, without warning, and I’ve been completely caught off guard. Partly because I’m so exhausted from all the yelling, I can’t wake up to respond in time. This morning she also peed all over her change table, soaking everything. At six months old, this is no longer a little newborn trickle of clear liquid that I’m talking about. It’s a fountain of yellow urine that soaks through all her clothes and whatever she’s lying on.

And oh, how she spits up. And spits up and spits up and spits up. I thought this was supposed to subside by now. By the end of the day my clothes are a patchwork of crusty white spots, and the floors are pocked with dried milk. The other day I actually stamped my foot like a four-year-old after yet another stream of warm, milky fluid went down my shirt and into my bra and yelled, “I just can’t deal with this anymore!”

Last night I paced around the living room with my screaming 18-pound baby in my arms and just sobbed, repeating, “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong . . . I don’t know what I’m doing wrong . . . I’m so sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

I tell you all this, not to complain, but just to let you know: I still find mothering a struggle sometimes, even with all my “Secrets to Making Parenting Easier” stuff.

I’m still besieged with doubts. I still wonder whether I’m messing everything up. And my baby still cries relentlessly sometimes.

I still feel confident that the principles of attachment parenting — keeping her close, paying attention to her cues, etc — will help us to find a good rhythm and solve some of these problems. I still feel this approach makes parenting more manageable and fun by encouraging trust and open communication.

But it doesn’t make parenting effortless. I’m still fumbling through this, just like everybody else. I still throw fits and feel helpless and lose sleep.

I haven’t got it figured out. And thank goodness I don’t, because what would life be for, then?

Hey you guys,

I just wanted to let you know that I’m taking a little break from Project M to focus on my new bloggy endeavour.

I know. Take a break? From posting once a week?

Remember how I admitted in my earlier posts about becoming a stay-at-home mom that I’m really, really slow at everything I do? That applies to writing, too. It’s quite sad. I can barely handle one thing at a time. I want to focus my energies on this thing that has been over a year in the making.

I was about to tell you all about the new project but then I decided to keep it a little bit of a surprise while I figure it all out myself. I’ll tell you all about it when it’s a little closer to completion. It’s getting there. It would be faster if I wasn’t so darn obtuse when it comes to all the technical stuff.

Anyways. For now I just want to say thanks for reading and for being awesome. Hope to talk to you again soon!

Kathleen: Did you see Pete showing Trinity his new iPad in church today?

Ben: Eye patch? Why the heck does Pete have an eye patch?

K: Not eye patch, iPad.

B: Oh, so now Pete has an iPad, too?

K: I dunno, maybe it’s not his. At least I think it was an iPad. It was a big, flat screen. Wait, wasn’t he selling his iPhone? Maybe he upgraded to an iPad.

B (laughing): An iPad is not a phone. That wouldn’t make any sense.

K: Well, whatever. It looked bigger than an iPhone.

B: An iPad is more like a digital board game.

K: A what?

B: A board game. I saw a kid using one on the plane on the way to Mexico. It looked fun. It looked kind of like Dr. Mario.

K: I don’t know what that is. Does it having anything to do with the Mario Brothers?

B: Yeah . . . I think so. It’s a game kind of like Tetris. Only with, like, coloured capsules.

K: Oh, I think I played that at my cousin’s one time. But anyways, now that I think about it, I think an iPad is more like a laptop. I remember people talking about it on Twitter. It’s like a whole computer on one . . . thing. But it has no keyboard. The keyboard just . . . kind of . . . appears every once in a while. It works . . . like . . . magic or something.

The saddest part of this story? Ben and I are 28 and 26. We have since learned — kind of — what an iPad is. It is kind of like a magical laptop, right?

In my last post, I explored my personal journey towards becoming a stay-at-home-mother. The reasons I’ve decided to stay home can be summarized as follows:

a) Working outside of the home makes me utterly wretched. First, because waking up to an alarm clock destroys me; and second, because I suck at doing almost anything that an employer would want from employee, which makes me feel like poop.

b) My husband and community are supportive of me staying home and deeply respect my desire to do so.

c) I find being at home incredibly satisfying and enjoyable. It just feels right.

d) I would earn so little at a real job, it wouldn’t be worth my time.

There is a little more to it, though.

* * *

First, note that my list does not include, “Because home is where a woman belongs.”

I believe that some women are better off in the workforce. Lots of women are good at their jobs, and we need female doctors, teachers, ministers, and engineers. Oh, and gynecologists. Why is there even such a thing as a male gynecologist??

Other women need to work simply to survive, and these women shouldn’t have to feel guilty about their occupations outside of the home.  Getting food on the table is sometimes more pressing than being able to snuggle with your babies every day. I get that.

And other women, quite frankly, just aren’t cut out to be stay-at-home moms because of their temperaments and interests. Some women really do feel imprisoned by domestic life, and thrive in out-of-home careers. In these cases, it makes sense to make alternate living arrangements.

And yet.

I do think one-on-one care is ideal for a baby’s first year, and that the mother is the ideal person to provide this care because her breast milk is the ideal source of nourishment.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other good ways of caring for children in that first year. Dads, grandmas, grandpas, and plenty of other people can make excellent caregivers when mom can’t be there.

After that first year, I still think it would be nice if children could get lots of one-on-one attention and care. But again, there is more than one way to raise a healthy, happy child, and staying home just isn’t possible for every mom.  That’s just the reality we live in.

However, I would say that it’s a shame that not every mom has the opportunity to stay home for at least the first year.

Lately, Lydia likes to wake up around 5 a.m. and stay awake for at least an hour. It’s kind of annoying. But since I don’t have to go to work, that’s all it is: kind of annoying. I just lay there next to her while she wiggles and laughs until she’s finally ready to nurse back to sleep. Then I go back to sleep, too. No biggie. I don’t have anywhere I need to be in the morning. I can sleep in.

It’s a shame that not everyone has that freedom, in my opinion. It would be wonderful if all moms could be that relaxed about their babies’ sleep and other needs because they don’t have other pressing responsibilities. Many families would probably be healthier and happier if moms didn’t have to divide their attention between so many things in those early years.

But that isn’t the reality we live in, and so we have to be realistic and gracious. We can’t judge other families for the decisions they make about child care because we can’t possibly know all the factors involved. And there is no universal law that says women should stay home with their children.

While I love being a stay-at-home mom, and I am fully confident that it’s the best thing for our family, and a big part of me wishes all moms could do the same, I can’t say that it’s right for every other family. I have no way of knowing what’s right for other people.

I do wish that moms who stayed at home could all recognize the dignity and beauty of their jobs. I wish they all felt affirmed in their decision, knowing that they are doing important, meaningful, and hopefully enjoyable work.

If you’re a stay-at-home mom, I hope you realize that what you do every day takes courage, intelligence, and dedication. If you’re a mom who has returned to work, I hope you realize that you are still a loving and nurturing mother while simultaneously blessing the world with your talents and hard work.

We’re all kind of awesome.

I’ve always kind of expected I would be a stay-at-home mom.

First, because my mom stayed home when we were young, so it just seemed natural that I would do the same.

And second, because I’ve always been aware — at least on a subconscious level — that I have absolutely no lucrative skills whatsoever. My talents lie in portraiture and the stringing of words together on paper . . . not exactly talents that have employers chasing me down.

There was a brief period of time during grad school when I seriously considered becoming a university professor. I knew I’d be good at it. I’d gotten a chance to teach first-year composition for two semesters, and the student evaluations suggested I had a knack for it.

But I also knew I’d be miserable for the rest of my life if I did that.

I woke up every morning of my academic life overwhelmed with crushing anxiety and ennui. To tell you the truth, I woke up that way nearly every day of my life prior as well, as long as I had gone either to school or work. I just assumed it was because I was a miserable person. The question that plagued me throughout most of my adolescence and young adulthood was “Will I ever be happy?”

I am half sick of shadows, I posted on my cubicle wall where students came in to go over their papers with me.

Becoming a professor would mean six more years of graduate school (I’m a very slow worker). It would mean moving to a big city (horrors!) away from my family; it would mean having to continue waking up at God-forsaken hours to commute under bleak skies to decrepit offices and dreary libraries.

Ugh.

I just wanted to be at home.

I wanted to get up when my body told me it was ready, not when an alarm clock told me I had to get up. I wanted to be able to rise after the sun had come up, as nature intended. I wanted to be able to take my mornings slowly, to let my weak eyes and stomach adjust to wakefulness after the rawness and vulnerability of night.

I wanted to paint. I wanted to write.  I wanted to cook and bake and tidy and sweep and weed the garden. I wanted to cuddle with babies and read them little board books and have them fall asleep at my breast.

I wanted the outside world and all its bustle to just leave me alone, particularly in those sensitive mornings when my brain was still vibrating and tender.

I knew I had to choose between success and happiness.

Ben and I were already trying to get pregnant before I graduated. In the meantime, I started working from home as a research assistant for a professor in another department. A year later when I still wasn’t pregnant I took a job at a small publishing house, just so I couldn’t spend any more of my days curled up on the kitchen floor, bawling my eyes out because I didn’t have a baby.

Working there was the worst experience of my life. I was positively dreadful at my job, and my boss let me know it. I was the skid mark on the company’s underpants. I have never felt so useless, talentless, and insipid.

Lydia finally rescued me after about a year of this. Finally, I could stay where I belonged: at home.

* * *

In Marriage:  A History, which I discussed in my last post, Stephanie Coontz talks a lot about the changing roles of women through history, both at home and in the workplace. She seems to assume, throughout, that work=freedom for women. And for many, this does seem to be the case:

“Working wives consistently tell interviewers they like the respect, self-esteem, and friendships they get from a job, even though they find it stressful to arrange acceptable childcare and negotiate household chores with their husbands,” she says (p. 269).

The idea of getting respect, self-esteem, and friendships from work is totally foreign to me.

Besides teaching at the university, I have sucked at every single job I’ve ever done, from working in the fields as an adolescent to working as a publishing assistant as an adult. I’m slow. I’m terribly inefficient. I’m clumsy, forgetful, easily confused, and I possess no social graces. My bosses were always either threatening to fire me or at least insinuating that I was a strain on the company by being on their payroll.

And as for making friends? Not really my thing. Given the choice, I’d eat my lunch in the car alone to avoid making conversation around the lunchroom table.

The fact that I was barely making over minimum wage didn’t help. It doesn’t boost morale to know that you’ve got a master’s degree and you’re earning as much per hour as your friends working in the greenhouse or the packing shed.

Coontz goes on to say that “Women consistently say they get more respect when they are employed, not only from society but from their own husbands. Women who earn incomes have much more decision-making power in their marriages than those who are full-time housewives.” (269)

Again, this hasn’t been my experience.

My Mennonite community affirms my choice to stay home. In fact, most of the women my age aspire to be stay-at-home moms, if only they can afford it. Moms who have to return to work for economic reasons are pitied. I’ve even heard women say they feel sorry for men, who have to work at jobs their entire lives while we get to stay home and play with babies. (Of course, the alternative for most of us is unskilled labour, so staying home is almost always preferable).

My husband is also very supportive of me staying home.  He routinely tells me how much better I make our lives by staying at home. And because of my education, he thinks of me as the Smart One in the relationship, and defers to me on all kinds of issues.

In my last post, I highlighted Coontz’ observation that stay-at-home moms are concentrated in the poorest and richest rungs of the population. Interestingly, the factors at play in both of these communities are at work in my life.

Like wealthier stay-at-home moms Coontz describes, I have the resources (i.e. higher education) to develop skills that help me earn respect even though I don’t earn an income: I blog. I don’t feel like “just” a mom because I have other facets to my identity. And my well-honed research skills give me the confidence that I could learn how to do just about anything.

But like the poorer women Coontz describes, I couldn’t really afford to go back to work. Childcare and fuel costs wouldn’t make it worth my time to return to a minimum-wage job. There’s no one in a 40-mile radius from our house who would want me except as  a minion.

* * *

Goodness. Since I’ve been so long-winded with this I will stop here and wrap it up tomorrow, when I’ll reflect on the reasons being a stay-at-home mom has been totally right for me. If you’ve made it this far: thanks for listening!

What has been behind your story, either towards staying home or returning to work?

(This post is a part of Emerging Mummy’s Practices of Mothering Carnival. Hence the title, which is modeled after her way of entitling blog posts, A. A. Milne-style. Tomorrow I’ll return to my series about stay-at-home moms).

I’ve stumbled upon a secret to making mothering easier on me.

The secret is quite simple: I’ve assigned some of the responsibility to my five-month-old baby. And I’ve been doing it since she was born.

* * *

We place so much responsibility on parents these days. Parents think it’s up to them to make their babies sleep and eat. They think they’re responsible for making them poop and pee in the right places and behave and dress appropriately. Which is really quite silly, if you think about it, because no human being can really make another person sleep or eat or poop or pee or anything.

So I’ve decided to let my baby make some of these decisions herself.

Like sleeping, for example. Some parents drive themselves crazy trying to get their kids to sleep. They lose their minds, trying to coax babies to sleep through the night and to take the right number of naps every day for the right amount of time.  These parents lose all kinds of sleep, worrying and fretting about how their kids aren’t getting enough sleep. It sounds oh-so-hard.

I thought that sounded like way too much effort, so I decided to let my baby decide for herself when to sleep.  I encouraged her to do most of it at night, though, by keeping her warm and cozy and safe right next to my body when it got dark, and by feeding her as soon she woke up, and by keeping the room quiet and dark until morning. It didn’t take too long before she was doing most of her sleeping at night. She still wakes up a couple of times each night, but I don’t let that bother me too much.

Ultimately, she makes the decision about when and how long to sleep.  I just offer her guidance. Like, when she’s rubbing her eyes and acting grumpy, I don’t just leave her to do her own thing. I’ll make suggestions — “Are you sleepy? You look sleepy. Should we try a nap?” — and I’ll help her get comfortable, maybe offer her some milk to calm her down. If she falls asleep, awesome. If not — well, that’s not really my responsibility. I’ll keep holding her or rocking her or letting her play. Hopefully she’ll listen to her body sooner or later.

And if she’s not sleepy, I also won’t just put her in her crib and leave her there, just because I or some expert have decided it’s the appropriate time for her to sleep. Because really, what do we know?

It feels good to be released from the responsibility of being the expert on When Lydia Should Sleep (and Eat). That seems like too big a job for me (or anyone) to have to take on.

I let her be the expert.

See, I think that the best authority on what my daughter needs (at least at this point in her life) is my daughter herself. She knows best whether her stomach feels empty or full, whether she feels tired or alert. I don’t know those things, though I can make guesses based on her behaviour and kind of help her see it for herself if she seems confused or overwhelmed. And if she refuses to listen to her own body? Well, there’s not really much I can do about it. What makes me think she’ll listen to me if she won’t even listen to her own body?

It’s liberating, not having to be the boss of everything.

It has worked out so well that I plan to keep extending the realm of her decision-making as she gets older. Like what to eat (within a certain range of options, of course), and what to wear (even if it’s a dinosaur costume and we’re going to the store).

Not only does this help make my life easier, but I think it has benefits for her, too. It teaches her that her needs, her wants, and her preferences matter. It teaches her that she has agency — she can make decisions for herself. And it teaches her to listen to her body and intuition, which most of us have lost the ability to do.

So if, one day, she ever points to me in a fit of frustration and yells, “You’re not the boss of me!” I can pause, sigh, and say, “You’re right. I’m not. What a relief.” And we can work on a solution together.

It’s nice having someone else to share the load with, even if she’s only five months old.

What are some of your practices of mothering or fathering?

After two months, I finally finished reading Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz. It was a terrific read — I highly recommend it if you have any particular interest in the topic of marriage.

Central to any discussion of the history of marriage, I discovered, is an exploration of men and women’s changing roles through history. So a major topic of discussion in this book is the history of the male breadwinner and the female housewife.

This is a topic of great interest to me, as an educated woman who has recently chosen to be a stay-at-home mom (or SAHM, as I’m begrudgingly adopting for this post).

What intrigues me most about the the stay-at-home mom is the colossal variation in people’s feelings about her in Western culture today.

On the one hand, we have the deep sentimentalization of the SAHM. For some, the SAHM is the pinnacle of feminine self-sacrifice and love. She is honoured because she is so selfless and nurturing.  In communities where the SAHM is idealized, moms who return to work are perceived as less loving and somewhat selfish, overly-preoccupied with money and status.

On the other hand, we face the equally pervasive notion that being “just” a stay-at-home mom is degrading, menial, and a waste of a woman’s talent and intellect. Many SAHMs feel underappreciated and condemned for being weak-minded, unsophisticated, and slightly masochistic.

So which is it? Do we revere the SAHM or do we disdain her? Is SAHMhood a dignified life choice or a degrading one?

We seem to have very mixed feelings about her. And that’s why I’m intrigued by her history.

The History of the Housewife

Coontz begins by looking at the roots of marriage in human prehistory, when hunter-gatherer societies developed marriage as way to establish a socially-approved division of labour between partners. (She emphasizes that marriage also provided a way to establish cooperative relationships between in-law families, and allowed property and status to be passed down to the next generation in an orderly manner, but my interest here lies especially in divisions of labour).

Men and women have almost always done different kinds of work, women sticking with activities that enabled children to remain close to them. (This didn’t always mean women stayed “home,” though: for hunter-gatherers, it meant carrying young children in slings as they walked over great expanses, gathering food. In farming societies, by contrast, husbands didn’t leave the home but worked the land alongside their wives.) The idea of “different spheres” — where wives are “designed” to care for home and kids while the husband goes out to work for wages — only emerged in the eighteenth century.

As Coontz explains, the male breadwinner model of organizing families developed with the spread of wage labour and the market economy. People began to insist on money for payment for goods and services in the eighteenth century, but it was not yet possible for a family to survive on cash alone. Since few commodities could be bought ready to use, most families still needed someone to specialize in household production (sewing clothes, growing and preparing food, etc) while someone else devoted more hours to wage earning. Enter the female housewife and the male breadwinner.

During this time, a new sentimentalization of wives and mothers also emerged. Coontz explains that as housekeeping became “homemaking,” it came to be seen as an act of love rather than a contribution to survival. This had a combination effect of re-valuing women but de-valuing their work: “Women’s traditional tasks — growing food, tending animals, dairying, cooking, and making clothes — though no less burdensome, were no longer viewed as economic activities” (p. 153). Coontz explains: “Homemakers, now cut off from the sphere of the cash economy, became more dependent on their husbands financially. Women’s diaries in the early nineteenth-century reflects a new self-doubt about the worth of their contributions to the household economy” (156). According to Catherine Kelley, women’s labor was “radically undervalued in the world of cash transactions” (Coontz, p. 156).

So while housewives were highly romanticized, women in these roles were plagued with doubts about whether their work was really all that meaningful or important.

I think women today are faced with the same paradox: motherhood is sentimentalized, and yet mothers have misgivings about the value of their work.

Housewives Today

I was especially intrigued by another of Coontz’ observations:

Today . . . stay-at-home mothers are concentrated in the poorest and richest rungs of the population. The only two segments of the population in which male breadwinner families predominate are the bottom twenty-five percent of the income distribution and the top five percent. (p. 295)

These two different kinds of stay-at-home moms have very different statuses.

Coontz explains that in the high-income male breadwinner marriages, “wives usually have the resources and time to develop skills that earn them respect from their communities and their husbands even though they don’t bring in income” (p. 295).

In the low-income families, though, mothers stay home because they don’t have enough money to pay for things like child care or a second car or suitable clothes to allow her to work. Moreover, the kinds of jobs available to these women typically don’t pay enough for the family to recoup these costs (295).

That would help explain our mixed feelings about stay-at-home moms: for some, staying home represents a luxury that enables the woman to develop valuable social skills; for others, it’s something they’re forced into.

Now that I’ve explored our culture’s varying attitudes towards the stay-at-home mom, I want to explore my own feelings and experiences in the next post.

Stay tuned for the story of my path to becoming a stay-at-home mom. Exclamation mark!

What kinds of attitudes have you come across in regards to mothers who stay home? Have they been mostly negative or positive? How has that influenced the way you hope to organize your family life?