Thursday 16 August 2018

Choice, Time & Imbalance

I totally understand the dropping birth rate. I love my son so much, and I also often feel swindled about the motherhood deal.

The thing is, it's not even close to enough to have one reliable person at your side when it comes to kids. I have a wonderful husband, who is a fixer and a doer and an excellent daddy, who also works for a company that is portrayed as "family friendly," and I am still stuck with no help incredibly frequently.

I am the only one I can count on to look after my kid.

I am lucky that I do not have to choose between a conventional career or my child, because I do not see how I could reliably get to an office right now. And I'm the person that bears being constantly on-call so that my husband can have a conventional job. (Hats off to the households that are pulling off two parents having 9-5 gigs. I literally do not know how you do this.)

While it is an honor to be with my child each day, I also feel very stuck here. I have the flexibility to never be able to reliably plan anything, lest someone else's time become more important without notice.

It used to be the case that new parents had family nearby to ease the stresses of parenthood, extra hands that could either hold the baby or do the dishes or generally pitch in to the work of life. There used to be an economy of scale, with similar ages of children occupying each other, allowing for something less than a 1:1 ratio with supervising adults.

Women, very rationally, are doing the math, and realizing that at about the time they have built up enough stability in their own lives to support a tiny human, they will be constantly on the verge of giving up that vocation to ensure the little one has a caregiver. Kids require resources, but they really require time, and there is an unbearable tension that remains unresolved, pulling at mothers far more than anyone else.

In almost everything I do these days, I can feel how our society is not built to support women and children. I feel it like sandbags heaped upon my shoulders while I'm trying to carry a beautiful little being through the world and grow him up right.