Dear Blog,
I am very sorry for ignoring you for so long. I have not logged in for at least three days. I am so happy that you are still here.
Let’s see… It is 1:40 am right now. I am sad to say that I can at most spend 15 minutes with you. A quickie. And I will not even be able to cuddle afterwards.
My flight back home was delayed tonight so I did not arrive home until after 11 pm. I remembered this time to curb my urge to immediately pick up the house as soon as I stepped inside. I had a great conversation with The Husband about wine and wine glasses. Then I strayed: I thought, “Let me check work email for just one second.” You know how that turned out…
The Husband went to bed on his own. So I started feeling guilty. I did go upstairs to check on him and when he sounded really sleepy, I’ll be honest with you, I was relieved because I did not have to feel guilty about neglecting him. I mean, the man is tired anyway. I am actually being a nice wife for letting him sleep, right?
I rubbed his back for 3 seconds and he purred. That’s more affection than I have shown him most of the time. So, yeah, no guilt on that front.
I proceeded to pick up the bedroom and dragged the laundry downstairs because it would just be as easy as throwing stuff into the washer. It would be quick and easy so why not do it now rather than this weekend.
Turned out the amount of laundry will take about three loads…
I am now mentally calculating how much time it would take for me to clean up downstairs, put the clean dishes away (thanks to my trusted babysitter who comes every day after school), and do the dishes. I would like to get to bed at a reasonable hour, well, as reasonable as it could be considering it is now 1:50 am. I have to catch the 7:20 am train tomorrow to be in the office for a 9 am meeting with Da Boss.
So… why do I feel compelled to clean up the house NOW?
Why do I feel I would be a failure if I leave a messy house behind and go off to work tomorrow morning?
Why do I feel so guilty about traveling for work, and now that I am home, about not being here to maintain the household?
I cannot form a cohesive thought right now so I am going to quote some passages from this article, The Bad Mother Complex that I came across around Mother’s Day. I have been thinking about it a lot, actually, ever since I became a mother.
The guilt had nothing to do with women’s actual ability to navigate competing obligations at work and at home; on the contrary, the study found that logistically, women were able to juggle the two spheres just as well as men. It’s how women felt about themselves while doing that juggling that set them apart.
Blair-Loy’s research centers around a concept she calls the work devotion schema — a kind of invisible, coercive mandate that permeates culture and requires us to see our work as a sacred calling, with meaning and value beyond just a paycheck… … it can trigger the uniquely moral emotion of guilt when family demands butt up against work allegiance.
The problem with the work devotion schema, Blair-Loy says, is this: While men and women both experience it, only women experience its mirror image at home. Blair-Loy calls it the family devotion schema; gender studies scholar Sharon Hays has termed it the ideology of intensive motherhood. Either way, it sets up a collision course of competing devotions for working women.
“Just like our culture has constructed work to have certain meanings and obligations, it has also constructed motherhood to have certain meanings and obligations,” says Blair-Loy. “Mothers who work full time are still trying to live up to this ideal of family devotion; they just have fewer hours to do it in…” From The Bad Mother Complex
The guilt I feel as a working mother does not subside as the kids get older. In fact, it gets worse: now that they are old enough to notice the other mothers and how the other families live, esp. those presented on TV and in the movies.
Mr. Monk often demands requests that I make him food from scratch. It is not good enough if we make pancakes from the box of powder. It has to be made according to a recipe. I don’t blame him though. I suspect that to him it is a sign that I care as a mother, wherever he gets that idea of an ideal mother from (seriously I have no idea where he got it…) Perhaps it also serves as a reassurance that we are like every other family, just a bit different, but not too much, now that the mother, i.e. me, also makes food in the kitchen as it should be. I am the embodiment of the family. If I am normal, we are normal.
Or something like that…
When I say, “No. I am sorry honey. We cannot do that this morning because of ____________.” the look he gives me is enough to send me on a guilt trip 8000 miles away and back.
It feels almost like an indictment.
So here I am. 2:20 am.
Time to put the load of laundry into the dryer and start another load.
ETA: 3:30 am. House picked. Dishes put away. Laundry #2 in progress. Kind of unpacked by emptying the luggage and throwing stuff either into a laundry basket or my work bag. As I was doing all this, I also remembered something else: Why is finding a babysitter my responsibility? Because I want to work so I am the one that should solve childcare issues? Whenever there is a scheduling conflict, I am the one being pointed at to figure out a way to hold my job. You know, all because I want to work, so of course I have to pay the price. I should stop now. I am just going to sound more and more bitter.
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