cacophony

What the fuck does that mean?

Stay-at-home-mom. Women have gone through this “evolution” of what they want to be called when they don’t work outside the home (god help you if you say they “don’t work”). Once upon a time, we were called housewives. At some point, we became homemakers. Now we are SAHMs. We even get our own acronym. If you spend much time in the internet mommy world (on mommy blogs, forums, etc) you’ll find all mothers have acronyms attached to them — WOHM, WAHM, SAHM. Everybody’s got a little box to jump into.

The idea behind the current term is that we don’t stay home in order to cook, clean, or otherwise do “house” stuff — we stay home to mother our children, and that is what the focus should be on when we describe what we do. So the phrase “stay-at-home-mom” was coined.

You’d think this would be simple. It’s just a phrase, right? But I have seen so much ugliness over this issue. Some mothers don’t like SAHM because “well, that implies we stay home all day, and we don’t — we’re usually out doing interesting stuff.” Some call themselves “full-time mothers,” which of course offends the WOHMs (work outside the home mothers) because they, of course, are also the full time mothers of their children — it’s not as if someone else becomes “mom” while they are at work all day. I could go on and on and on about all the different “titles” that have been suggested, and all the criticisms of them.

The things I want to say about this issue are complex, and convoluted, and it may take me many, many tries before I can truly articulate them.

But. What does it come down to? Women — mothers, specifically — fighting among themselves about “who’s doing it better.” This is what the press knows as “The Mommy Wars” — and they are awful. Women already have enough problems on their plates. Why are we adding infighting among ourselves to the battles we need to wage?

Is it better for a child to have mom at home, all the time, rather than go to daycare? Is it better for children to have the role model of strong, independent women who work outside the home to emulate? How do you decide? Is what’s better for one the same as what’s better for another? Is it setting feminism back to have so many college-educated women choosing to opt out of the workforce? Does my individual decision to stay home with my child have a negative effect on society as a whole? Does it have a positive one?

And that doesn’t even touch the surface of the mommy wars. Where it gets really vicious is in the “I have it harder than you do” battle, the “I’m a better mother than you are because I’m willing to make the sacrifices for my child” rhetoric. All of which, to be perfectly honest, makes me want to vomit. I’ve done both. I’ve been a WOHM and now I’m a SAHM. Without a single doubt, being a WOHM was harder for me day-to-day, and caused significantly more guilt on my part. Without a single doubt, my being a SAHM is harder for my child, and harder for me in a long term sense. But that’s ME, and MY family. I would never presume to judge for another family which way would be harder, or best, for them.

Some of the things I’ve heard from other women are stunning in their venom. As a WOHM, I heard “Why did you have children if you were going to let someone else raise them?” “How does it feel not to be the primary caregiver for your child?” “How can you call yourself an attached parent when you spend so much time away from your child?” “You know, your child doesn’t really THRIVE in daycare, you just tell yourself that so that you feel good about leaving him. I understand that sometimes we have no choice, but don’t fool yourself that daycare is really BETTER for him.” “I really miss working outside the home, but I care enough about my kids to give it up for them.” “It must be nice to have that break from your kids, to go to work so you can get some rest.” ” Being a SAHM is so much harder than working.” As a SAHM, I’ve heard “So how does your child get any stimulation during the day?” “It must be nice not to have to DO anything all day.” “Aren’t you concerned that he’s growing up seeing that you don’t have anything of value to offer society?” “Being a WOHM is so much harder than staying at home.”

It’s never ending. And watching it play out in my life, in the lives of so many women I know, just makes me sad.

Here’s the truth as I know it: having a SAHM is NOT best for every child. No matter how much the “world” at large would like us to believe it, it is simply not true — and, moreover, I think the idea is something that a bunch of men came up with that does nothing but weaken women. This pisses a lot of women off, because they are living in poverty, making supreme sacrifices, going on welfare — so that their children can have a mom at home. They don’t want to hear that it might not be the best choice because having that SAHM is not the most important thing in a child’s life. But there are so, so many things that are just as important, that are more important. And EVERY mother has a hard job. And working outside the home does NOT make a person less of a mother, in any way.

I wish mothers would quit fighting amongst themselves. I wish we could unite to push for BETTER care for women and pregnancies, better care for babies, MORE choices for women.

Instead, we fight amongst ourselves.

Which, I think, means the people we SHOULD be fighting against have already won.

The kitchen table that lives in my house now is the same kitchen table that I grew up with, at least from the time I was a preteen. The brown one, with the carved-back chairs. I remember the kitchen table we had before that was black and very heavy — visually and physically. That’s the kitchen table I sat on, wrapped in a blanket eating grapes, while Mama was on the phone (I assume with the doctor) after I split my head wide open while riding the 3-wheeler with Daddy. But that big, black table is not the kitchen table that is sitting in my house right now. The table in my kitchen is oval (rather than rectangular) and brown (rather than black) and lighter than the black table could ever have imagined being.

I like the kitchen table that we have. I remember sitting around it as a faimly — and as a much extended family — for so many every night dinners, and so many holiday festivities. What I remember the most about being around that kitchen table is laughing. So many dinners where we were at the table forever — forever! — just laughing, even after the food was long gone, everyone long finished eating. I want that for my son. And I think — I really think — that he needs to have siblings for him to really experience that.

I remember folding load after load after LOAD of laundry at that table — until it was piled high with stacks of clothing. I remember — after the family dinners had, somehow, become more of a thing of the past than a thing of the present — those piles of clothes staying on the table for so long, and how somehow it aggravated me, made me angry. Only now do I realize that anger was because I was reminded that we didn’t have the laughing family dinners anymore.

I remember coloring maps that were spread out all over that table — trying to earn a little extra cash from Daddy. I remember doing homework projects there, and study groups, and tutoring. The nights I spent with the few friends I had, and many more acquaintances, crowded around that kitchen table trying to learn about English literature — and I remember laughing, again. Hours and hours of laughter.

And now that kitchen table sits in my house. It gets covered by a tablecloth — which never happened in my mother’s house — and sometimes it gets piled high with junk (though never laundry). And more and more often, as Nate gets older, it holds our family dinners — the three of us, together, sharing our meals, our days, and our lives.

This brings me a great feeling of contentment. I hope — though I know we will probably someday replace it with a new kitchen table — that Nate (and any siblings he ends up with) will have the same treasured memories that I have of the kitchen table.

I love this photo.

It’s not great photography — The logo on his shirt is distracting, the knee in the frame is distracting, he’s on the wrong side of the bench, looking out of the frame.

But. I love it anyway. I love the color and the backlighting and the DOF and the texture of the bench.

And I love the expression on his face, and the gesture with his hand.

My boy is a storyteller. He loves to make up long, rambling tales in his head and share them with anyone who will listen. And I do mean anyone who will listen. He talks to everybody. All the strangers we see in a day — at the store, on a walk, in the doctor’s office — if there are people there, he’s talking to them. For his Mama, who is painfully shy, this is a difficult habit of his — I have to battle with the need to shush him, or to apologize for him, daily — even though he’s doing nothing wrong. I am learning. He teaches me, challenges me, as much as I do him, I think. I am a better, more complete person for being a mother to this child.

He was out riding his tricycle when he decided he wanted to rest on the bench for a few minutes. Crouched down in front of him, I asked him what he was thinking about. And there’s my little storyteller. He tells me about the race he’s in on his tricycle, who’s winning, how fast he can go. He gets so excited. He’s got that grin on his face, and in that moment, I don’t think he remembers that I’m there. He’s lost in the world in his head, seeing things no one else can see when he looks out at the street.

This is one of the things I love about photography, particularly people photography. This is a glimpse into his world, and at the same time, a glimpse into my brain. I love looking at photographs because I love seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. I love taking photographs because I love capturing what the world looks like through my eyes, for just a moment. No one else would have taken exactly this photo. Someone else would have seen something completely different.

I learn a little something new about the world every time I look at a photograph.