....you have to "lean in", as American, billionaire businesswoman Sheryl Sandberg wrote. More like "bend over backwards" in my view. It's not easy and as part of the first cohort to "man" the feminist barricades, back in the late sixties, I ought'a know.
I decided early on I was not going to forfeit a career to have kids. But since I wanted kids, figuring out how to bend over backwards was the issue. When I had my kids, there was no such thing as subsidized $10-a-day daycare; you had to pony up the money.
After my marriage crashed, I was blissfully on my own with my two kids and a "wife", i.e., a live-in nanny, in my own home humming along under my own steam. No child support, but this was the happiest time of my life. Then, I had the misfortune to meet and marry a wonderful man. Trouble was, he was wonderful, but came with a shrew of an ex- wife and two kids.
What kind of shrew? At a time (1983) when it was unheard of, B -- the father -- was awarded custody of his kids, so, ya, that kind of shrew. His having custody meant that I also had custody and had to deal with an ex-wife who was a certified psychiatric hysteric who argued over every cookie and disputed the colour of socks a kid was to wear. Was it a nightmare. Yes. I ended up with supporting four kids. Did it cost me a fortune? Yes. Did I resent it? Yes, still do. We had custody and yet had to pay her support! Shouldn't she be paying us child support? "Well, I'm afraid that's the judicial attitude," said our lawyer. So much for "women's lib".
But I did it. I digress. What I really wanted to blog about was a column I read the other day by Vicky Mochama, a sporadic columnist in 'The Globe and Mail' and occasional talking head on CTV, I was struck by how uninformed women without children can be about what it takes to find that elusive work/life balance. Vicky said she wanted to be a husband, not a wife, because husbands have an easier go of it. Frankly, I can sympathize because, when it comes to finding childcare, it's the wife or mother who still has to do the heavy lifting.
So, I submitted my letter. At first I thought they had rejected it, because it wasn't in for a few days. But evidently they saved it for the Saturday edition, which is read by many more. Here's the letter:
Dear Editor,
The wrinkle in the wish that women could live the life of the average husband is the biological fact that women birth children, which means that the traditional and primary responsibility for caring for them defaults to the mother, or wife. When I was building my career and family, I realized that to accomplish the former, I had to purchase supports for the latter. This came in many forms – from having a live-in nanny (or pseudo wife), to daycare, neighbours, grandparents and after-four programs. Some solutions were expensive, but I recognized they had to be purchased.
The fact is that more than 50 years since women’s first trips to the equality barricades, it still falls to them to find the work/life balance. But care-givers – even live-in ones – have to be off work by a certain time and children collected at daycare centres to deadline. That restricts the overtime required in many cases to get ahead because the workplace doesn’t care if you have to get home to collect kids. Hard to believe, but it still looks bad if a woman clocks out, while her ambitious male colleagues are burning the midnight oil.
So yes, women can be spouses, but they can’t be traditional husbands because the latter have partners to cover the home front. As I said, hard to believe, but biology still bites. Here's the letter:
________________________________
Will things ever change? I doubt it. As I have written before, I was pregnant when I was up for a new job in 1975. During the interview, I had to hide my condition and even though I won, when they found out I was pregnant, they cancelled the competition. A few months later, when I was on leave (unemployment, not maternity; the latter didn't exist back then), the job went to the guy who had come second.
Unfortunately, women continue to be penalized for having the biological function of bearing children. Here we are for eternity..............
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