All Joy and No Fun

[houseelf]

I'm heartily recommending this book to everyone. It is a parenting book about the effect of parenting on the parents.

If you want a very abbreviated version, read her article here: http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/

EAch chapter is a universe of conversation and thought.

I've heard she has a TED talk too.

[ladymoreta]

I agree! I read this a couple months ago, and DH and I had a lot of great conversations from it!

[Ladybug]

That article is fascinating. Nothing, in my entire life, has changed me more than parenthood. So much of it has hurt, put me in therapy, on meds...it's a life-alterning experience. It has definitely left me less happier…but a better person too. I dont' know how to explain it. I was a narcissitic beyotch before kids…now I'm a beyotch you'd enjoy hanging out with. I get other people…their moments, their struggles, their despair in a way I never got before my kids brought me to my knees. My kids make me crazy (in the clinical kind of way), and I know they've made me mentally/emotionally unhealthy in some ways too. I can't gloss over it without honoring the growth. That's what this article/book is reflecting on. I'll kindle the book

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

I recommend the book as well.

I agree with Ladybug. Parenting has made me a much better person...more likely to understand the struggle of others or "walk a mile in their shoes". My kids make me crazy but also more empathetic and kind. I think some people are born with more emotional IQ/sensitivity and I wasn't born with much...so parenting has been a pretty big growth experience that way.

[moonlight]

I just read the first page of her article.

Why do people think having a baby or two or three or four will make them happy? I've heard that all my adult life and I still don't get it.

I was 31 years old when I had my first baby and had worked part time in child care during college. I never once thought raising a child was going to make me a overall happier person. I already was a happy person before becoming a parent. I'm certainly happy that I have a child and one on the way... its always good to get what you want in life. But my family has not really made me happier, and I didn't expect it to.

I very much expected a metric ton of hard work ahead of me. That's one reason why I put off motherhood for so long. I knew to expect the unexpected, but getting out easy was never going to happen. I've always had to work very hard for the things and achievements in my life. Many times I've worked hard and still fall very short or fail. Perhaps that set me up for a more realistic outlook on becoming a mom? IDK, what do you think?

[spaz]

I really like the article a lot. I always knew that parenting would be hard. I remember the first year we were married and I was teaching 8th graders. I had 180 of them (6 classes with about 30 in each class) and I had 3 pregnant girls. When they found out I had been married 6 months they couldn't understand why I wasn't pregnant yet.. To which I replied...well lets see, first I put on a ton of weight, then I am in pain for 24 hours and what do I get to show for it? Something that cries and poops that I have to drop my life to take care of...

They looked at me like I was a monster. But all of these girls were just oohing and ahhing over he pregnant girls and how wonderful it was and how cute the clothes were.... I wanted them to understand it was WORK. I did want children. I love my children but I knew they would be a lot of work. That said, it was even harder than I thought it would be. (And my first labor was 23 hours... I didn't exaggerate much.)

[PrincessFiona]

Well, I got through page 1. My mommy brain can't read anymore. I just spent 2 hours scraping deodorant off the kitchen floor, cleaning up the toothpaste that mysteriously erupted all over a bedroom, carrying down dirty laundry, and cleaning the dishes I found hidden in someone' bedroom. My house looks like a bomb went off in it, but I don't have the energy to continue with the drudgery of cleaning it up. I was in my car driving kids to lessons or sitting in the hot sun watching kid' soccer for 6 hours today. Tonight I have laundry to fold, the dinner to cook and grocery shopping to do. I can't even care about the discussion anymore. I'm sure it was a great article. I'll pretend I read it. I can't pretend, however, that I'm happier than non-parents. I would argue that I have become less compassionate and more withdrawn with each year of parenting in part because I have been raising two kids with a higher range of needs. I didn't expect parenting to be easy, but I also didn't think it would be like this. I didn't always feel this way. Back to my cave.

[Ladybug]

My mom is reading this book too so I downloaded it. I found this fascinating...

Back in the fifties, women felt great pressure to keep an impeccable house. The words “Occupation: Housewife,” which women wrote on census forms if they didn’t work outside the home, form a leitmotif in Friedan’s book. Women felt pressure to be fine mothers too, of course, but the symbol of it all, and the locus of their efforts, was the home. Dinners had to be splendid and punctual; beds had to be made; floors had to be buffed to a high shine. Never mind that single-minded devotion to these pursuits often left women feeling hollow and unfulfilled, an emptiness Friedan famously called “the problem that has no name.” The upkeep of a fine home was a woman’s work, and if she found it unrewarding, well, she simply had to turn the prism another thirty degrees to see that she’d been mistaken: it was an important job, and by no means beneath her. Madison Avenue was in the business of telling her so. One of the most revelatory parts of Friedan’s book was where she quotes from internal research documents she’d secretly obtained from a consultant: One of the ways that the housewife raises her own prestige as a cleaner of her home is through the use of specialized products for specialized tasks when she uses one product for washing clothes, a second for dishes, a third for walls, a fourth for floors, a fifth for venetian blinds, etc., rather than an all-purpose cleaner, she feels less like an unskilled laborer, more like an engineer, an expert. This was Madison Avenue’s solution to the problem that had no name. If women felt restless, or like their jobs as housewives were beneath their educational attainments, the answer was to counter that their jobs most certainly did require educated people— women were domestic scientists. Today women have abandoned this form of domestic science, spending almost half as much time on housework as they did in Friedan’s day (17.5 hours per week, to be precise, versus nearly 32 hours per week in 1965). But they have become domestic scientists in another way: they’re now parenting experts, and they spend more time with their children than their mothers ever did. It was a woman in Minnesota who clarified this shift for me. She pointed out that her mother called herself a housewife. She, on the other hand, called herself a stay-at-home mom. The change in nomenclature reflects the shift in cultural emphasis: the pressures on women have gone from keeping an immaculate house to being an irreproachable mom. And the market today, still hoping to appeal to women’s professional instincts, offers the same differentiation in baby products for mothers that it offered in cleaning products for housewives sixty years ago. Back in the fifties, women were told to master the differences between oven cleaners and floor wax and special sprays for wood; today they’re told to master the differences between toys that hone problem-solving skills and those that encourage imaginative play. This subtle shift in language suggests that playing with one’s child is not really play but a job, just as keeping house once was. Buy Buy Baby is today’s equivalent of the 1950s supermarket product aisle, and those shelves of child-rearing guides at the bookstore are today’s equivalent of Good Housekeeping, offering women the possibility of earning a doctorate in mothering. The rebellious reactions to these different standards are tailored to their eras. In the late 1960s and ’70s, women rose up against perfect housewifery. Sue Kaufman wrote Diary of a Mad Housewife in 1967; in 1973, Erica Jong wrote Fear of Flying, which included a rant about the ideal woman: “She cooks, keeps house, runs the store, keeps the books, listens to everyone’s problems. *. *. *. I was not a good woman. I had too many other things to do.” Today, on the other hand, the typical rebellion story is not about being a bad wife. It’s about being a bad mother— which in fact is the title of a 2009 book of essays by Ayelet Waldman. Tales of maternal malfeasance capture our imaginations because the imperatives of “intensive mothering” still persist, driving mothers to seek moral reassurance in all sorts of ways. Hays, for instance, notices that whenever stay-at-home mothers confess to ambivalence about the choice they’ve made, they justify their decision by saying that staying home is best for their kids. But whenever working mothers confess to ambivalence about the choice they’ve made, they say the exact same thing: working is best for the kids. “The vast majority of these women do not respond,” Hays writes, “by arguing that kids are a pain in the neck and that paid work is more enjoyable.” Instead, she says, they argue that they are providing their children with added income for extracurricular pursuits. Or that they are modeling a work ethic. Or that work makes them more focused parents and improves the quality of the time they spend with their kids. They use the effect on the child, every time, to justify any answer.

[Sheherezade]

That's a very insightful analysis. Dead on, I'd say.


Angie

[SoonerTexan]

Well we may still be on the wrong track but at least children are a better focus than the Venetian blinds?

[PrincessFiona]

Well we may still be on the wrong track but at least children are a better focus than the Venetian blinds?

Or at least saying I'm a stay-at-home mom can be a good excuse for why there is an inch of dust on my Venetian blinds ... and the ceiling fan? Oh my!
I'm focusing on the kids. That's why this place is a mess!

[Ladybug]

It explains a lot about Leni!

[PrincessFiona]

That is exactly what I thought when I read this!

[MrsK]

I'm still trying to be both a SAHM and housewife....and a devoted wife too. I spend hours cleaning and my house still looks like a tornado passed through. I spend nearly every waking moment caring for the kids and I still go to bed feeling like I should be reading to K1 more, making more diligent efforts to get K2 toileting, and making sure that Lambie has more tummy time. I feel badly about the 2-3 hours per day that my husband parents the boys and worry that he'll feel deprived because I'm too tired for him. It is endless.

[samssugarmomma]

The "stay at home mom" title vs " housewife" title part spoke to me. For some reason, I see a difference in those words...... Even though they basically mean the same thing. Honestly, I get a little miffed about being referred to as a housewife.......
I'll have to check the book out!