Composing Myself

Essay in The Globe and Mail

2010-03-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to an essay of mine that appeared in The Globe and Mail on Ocotober 9th 2009. It's called "In Praise of Stupid." The title is only partly ironic.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/in-praise-of-stupid/article1317387/

Falling in Love as a Girl; Becoming a Person While a Wife (Or: How I Came To Point With My Middle Finger)

2009-06-30T01:47:00.000-07:00

I met Craig when I was a month shy of my 19th birthday, and we were married when I was 21. There are frequently times when I wonder if this is why I slipped so naturally into some of his mannerisms and habits -- many of my own were still in formation. I've said a few times, it's a miracle we're still together. When we met, I was a second-year literature student, and he was a 25 year old musician. Since then, we've earned 5 degrees between us, started and changed careers, and lived in five different cities. Craig now spends his free time doing construction, not drumming, and we started breeding dogs. And then there are our three children. Hardly anything, in fact, is the way it was when we met, so sometimes it's hard to tell what of myself is mine and what of myself came, in part, from him.

There are a few things, however, I know I got from him, and I'm not happy about them. Before I met Craig, for instance, I hardly ever picked my nose and I NEVER picked it in front of other people. The longer we were together, the more free Craig became with his nose-picking, and as if mesmerized, I started to wonder: "What's in there? What's the problem? Is there a problem with my nose too?" And Bob's your uncle, I not only became a nose-picker, but I started picking my nose with my thumb, the way he does. The way old redneck guys do.

Nor did I ever point at things with my middle finger. This little bit of weirdness is all him. "Where are we going?" "Over there," he'll say, and he goes to point, but instead of using his index finger, his POINTER FINGER, if you will, he sticks out his middle finger. He also uses it to push buttons and scratch his face. I remember clearly the first time I pointed at something with my middle finger: instead of looking at the object of my attention I stared, flabbergasted, at my hand. I might as well have suddenly sprung a penis. Where did THAT come from?! And what's coming next?

My childhood home never had reading material in the bathroom. I remember being puzzled, in fact, when I went into other people's bathrooms and saw books and magazines, never really stopping to think what they might be for. For Craig, however, bathroom reading is a longstanding ritual. It's his "me time." And it can go on for a while. So deeply ingrained, for him, is the relationship between reading and pooping that getting a new magazine in the mail actually inspires him to toddle off to the loo. Something in me still feels that it's wrong to be settling in quite so comfortably with a toilet and a stack of magazines -- it's like an admission that not only does shit happen, it can take a long time so why not enjoy it? Walking into the bathroom with a book in my hand is like announcing "Helloooo! I feel a poop coming on and it's a big one! Might take a chapter!" But there I go. The multi-tasker in me realized long ago that it's a sensible use of my time. And shit does happen. And sometimes it takes a while.

Before I met Craig I'd never watched hockey. Not even a bit of it. And this despite the fact that I was born and raised in Brantford Ontario: Home of Wayne Gretzky. I'd never heard of a hat trick or shinny; I didn't know what a Zamboni was; when the guys on the radio talked about the "habs" I had no clue who they were; and I only had a vague notion of the penalty box. Now, however, I can tell you that it was Boom Boom Geoffrion who devised the slap shot. I can tell you that Claude Lemieux is probably the ugliest player in NHL history, and Jean Belliveau the classiest and most handsome (even today, in his seventies). I can tell you why Ken Dryden is the most interesting player, and what's meant by the "original six." I know what a five hole is and I know what's meant by "Gretzky's office." Etc. I actually lectured -- knowledgeably -- on hockey when I taught Canadian Studies.

My talent for absorbing information about his interests extended into drumming, too. Who's Neal Peart? Manu Katche? Tony Williams? Brian Blade? Steve Gadd? What's a roundhouse fill? What's a paradiddle? The difference between a crash cymbal and a ride cymbal? Who makes the best double bass pedals? Ask me. I'm not happy that I can tell you the answers, but I do know them.

I think all of this makes me vaguely uncomfortable because I don't see any vice versa; Craig's no more likely to pick up a cookbook today than he was before we met. He rarely remembers to pick up the camera or take note of its settings. And while I will regularly give him fiction that I've read and enjoyed, he won't want to talk about them after he's finished them. Like, at all.

The drumming and hockey have sort of disappeared from Craig's landscape lately. Now he's into cycling, which I refuse to learn anything about. Or maybe I just don't have the time and energy. When I was 19 I was a devoted student, throwing myself into whatever struck me as an interesting course of research. Craig wandered innocently into my field of vision and whammo! he became my favourite class. I was a student, not a woman. Not a mother or a teacher or a wife or a PhD (or even a B.A.). Not really a person, the way I am now. And I think that I was hopelessly girlish in my desire to mould myself to him -- to become Mrs. Craig Hunter. What did I know?

I knew I loved him. The ways I love him and the reasons I love him have changed too, but thank goodness the fact that I love him hasn't changed. But these artifacts of my girlhood fascination with him -- these odd bits of his personality that embedded in my own -- seem so naively old-fashioned now, after all the mileage we've put in together.

Me and My Money

2009-06-07T19:40:00.000-07:00

This morning -- Sunday morning -- my husband pulled a tub of cream cheese out of his school bag:

"Shit."
"Has that been in there since Friday?!"
"No."
"Really?"
"No."
"How much is in there?"
"Not much. It's practically empty."
"Craig it's three quarters full! That's almost three dollars worth!"

I'm pleased to say that a fight did not ensue, but I pursed my lips. There was definitely pursing. Bad enough he made the move to cream cheese and bagels from the much more economical peanut butter and jam sammies, but this?! This means I clipped three dollars worth of coupons for nothing.

Those of you who've read my short essay in the Globe and Mail (see blog posting May 6th) know that I am a keen saver (who bought a big expensive painting and learned a valuable lesson about life in the process blah blah blah). Because of that essay, a columnist -- Sarah Hampson -- at the Globe contacted me last week for some quotes about money-loving for a piece she's writing about obsessive savers. I told her that I don't consider myself obsessive:

"As I stand here, we have a geothermal furnace being installed downstairs and a patio and landscaping being done in the backyard. I know how to spend money."

It's a funny thing to be asked how you feel about money, especially knowing that those feelings might be quoted in a national newspaper. I come from a family -- and indeed, a society -- where talking about money in actual figures is impolite (although I regularly break this rule...and then realize it and feel guilty about it afterwards). How much do I need in my bank account to feel comfortable? Where did my feelings about money come from? Do I have a credit card balance? How big is my mortgage? (I have no idea why I completely shied away from that last question but had no qualms saying that I liked to have a $3,000 float in our account. Why the difference?)
I am fascinated by money and people's relationships to it, even though it's tough to be voyeuristic given that money matters are kept so private. (I have to satisfy my curiosity with shows like Til Debt Do Us Part.) I don't know how my interest started. My family was middle class -- I never wanted for anything, but I do remember money being a vague source of tension between my parents once in a while. And my impulses to make money and save money began when I started highschool -- a logical extension of my perfectionist / controlling drive that later also blossomed into anorexia. My own personality must come into play -- my brother and I grew up in the same household but had, and have, different ideas about money. After my parents' divorce and my post-secondary education in feminist theory and cultural theory, I saw money and labour much more politically.

Women in this country and the USA make 75 cents to a man's dollar. Women are almost always the financial losers in divorce settlements, especially when there are children. Jobs that are considered "nurturing" and traditionally feminine are underpaid: in my neck of the woods, the average salary for a daycare worker is about $20,000 a year, and the starting salary for an elementary school teacher is just under $30,000. The starting salary for a police officer, however, is as much as $60,000. Men are four times more likely to negotiate a higher starting salary than women. Research has shown that statistically, a woman's educational and professional attainments are inversely linked to marital stability; as the attainments increase, so does the likelihood that her marriage will fail. Marriage for men, however, means an increase in their wages.

But let me shift from that for a moment to relay an anecdote that I grew up hearing about: my parents' longtime friends Tim and Gail were young and in love and had just gotten married. After they got back from their honeymoon Tim presented Gail with money for the week's household expenses: $20. She calmly took that $20 bill, ripped it in half, and gave it back to him. Gail handled the finances from then on. They are now happily retired in Arizona, playing golf and attending various country club events, neither of which would be my cup of tea but clearly they've done alright.

Utlimately, my attitudes about earning and saving and spending are in reaction to one or more of several things -- an upbringing where money was clearly available but either a vague source of tension or an overwhelming irritation for adults; a panicked effort to save for university; an attempt to exert more control over my life; a response to the statistics about women and money and my mother's own divorce experience; and the logical outcome of learning about materialism and consumerism via Cultural Studies. Whatever the combination of factors that are responsible, I feel fortunate to have avoided the today's financial norm: consumer debt in the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. Is this obsessive?

The Globe column out today notes that Craig and I are careful with our money -- we don't drink, we don't go out to eat, we don't travel, and I don't buy beauty products or purses. I can just hear people thinking: "What do they do for fun? Count their money?" I'm sure there will be many such comments on the column's discussion board. Let me say in total and complete honesty: I have travelled. Craig has travelled. We have lived abroad. We don't miss it. This summer we're renting a cottage and having friends and family over. It will cost much less than a week at some resort; it will have none of the hassle of air travel and less of an eco footprint. And if our previous cottage trips are anything to go by, it will be a hell of a lot of fun. Let me also say: I have, basically, two pairs of shoes: Birkenstocks and Blundstones. They are wonderful. They last for years. They're good for my poor flat feet and weird toes. Furthermore: jeans go with everything.
"Fun" is now largely an idea constructed by advertisers. We have fun with our dogs, but this kind of fun doesn't really yield the same kind of corporate profit as a trip to Disney World. We have fun cooking together, but this gives exactly nothing to the folks at Boston Pizza. We have fun on hikes. We have fun at public parks and in our garden. We have fun with our play group. WE HAVE FUN WATCHING SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE AND IF YOU DON'T TOO THEN THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU.

Really, we can debate what's fun and what isn't -- what's worth the money we spend and what isn't -- but these are relative and personal things. Here is what I think is true for all of us: we give too much money to corporations, and too many of us suffer as a consequence. Corporatized fun is someone else's profit dressed up as our nirvana. But it's such a pretty dress. This is why I regret something that I said to Hampson -- something glib and thoughtless that, heaven help me, ended up being the punch line in her column. I said that when I watched people on TV trying to cope with their debt that I thought they were "poor suckers." I'm ashamed this came out of my mouth. People who fall deep into consumer debt have been convinced by a very cunning and pervasive capitalist system that buying things is a necessity, or even a human right of sorts. We need more education about how this system works against us, and we need it sooner -- we need it to start in grade school. I've made colossal spending mistakes, but I've also been lucky to have the kind of education that counteracted many of the harmful effects of living in a consumer culture.

I recently read about a women's "Money Club," which is like a book club but instead helps women cut costs, save, budget, invest, etc. Here's the kicker: the women have to use real numbers. Not only are these women taking control of their finances together (thus breaking down the isolation and gender inequity of money matters), but they're bucking a longstanding social rule about the supposed gaucheness of money talk. I wonder about this: would being more open about our dollar amounts demystify money, or would it only increase its centrality? Not that I want everyone to walk around with an assigned dollar value scrawled across their chest, but I think that just maybe, more openness about our finances would give us a sense of solidarity and shared experience that would defuse the competitive nature of conspicuous consumption. I once heard a debt expert on the radio say that if everyone driving a sparkling new car spray painted the amount they still owed on it, plus their interest charges, on the side of the car, then far fewer of us would be striving to keep up with the Joneses. If we all knew what our financial situations were, would we be more inclined to do potluck rather than go to a restaurant? To have smaller weddings rather than lavish affairs? Would we find something to do together other than shopping?

Would we recognize that our social connections needn't be mitigated so heavily by the commerical?

And would we PLEASE just spread the damn cream cheese on the bagels BEFORE we leave for work rather than take the whole tub to sit in our bag all the live long day?!

Picture Books and the Default Male

2009-06-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

When I had my first girl I dressed her in red, green, orange, blue -- anything but pink. For a long time I thought this was why people always thought she was a boy, but there were a few times when I wondered. She had a green shirt with a ruffle around the collar and someone at the grocery store called her "handsome fella," for instance. When I had my second girl, my standards lowered. Someone gave me a bunch of pink sleepers and frankly, I was glad to save some money (by the time the third baby comes along one tends to resent having to buy any more baby stuff). So out she went in her pink sleepers and still people called "him" cute. Granted, I don't gussy up my girls in earrings and barrettes, and my babies tend to stay bald for a strangely long amount of time, but still it's not as if they're overtly masculine-looking. No baby five o'clock shadows. No infant goatees. No tiny Adam's apples bobbing under their drooly chins.

I was chatting with another mum at the Y and she noticed the same thing when she took out her baby girls: "People always assume they're boys." Unless, of course, you're pushing a pink stroller with a pink-swaddled baby under a pink blanket with little pink booties sticking out from under it all. Bows also help.

Gradually, after having two girls and reading a couple hundred kids' stories, it has dawned on me: our default is male. I grew up with Sesame Street at a time when all the Muppets were male. Prairie Dawn and Betty Lou came later and they were insults -- both pink with long blonde hair, hard to tell apart. On Sesame Street there were lots of ways to be male -- a panoply of masculinity in a dazzling array of voices and shapes in fur, feathers, and felt. There was only one way to be female, and it was a boring, predictable addendum. And the only female major cast member on The Muppet Show? Miss Piggy. Enough said.

I also watched the Smurfs, where there were umpteen male characters and only one female: that long-haired pearl-necklaced minx, Smurfette. Again: lots of ways of being male, but one way of being female.

So we've been trained since childhood -- since the development of our conscious, really -- to assume that the bulk of our society is male. Think of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends: all male (Owl, Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit, Roo, Christopher Robin...) except Kanga, who is but a mother, perpetually trapped in an apron, and rarely part of the plot. And I have banned all Richard Scary materials: every single adult female in those books is a mother and wears an apron. Every. Single. One.

As I've built up our collection of kids' books, I've become frustrated with how many of the best -- the classics -- default to male. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is male. Harold and the Purple Crayon. The Snowy Day is about a boy. The Velveteen Rabbit is male. The hugely popular MacDuff series is about a male Westie dog. Ferdinand the bull. Peter Rabbit. Frederick the mouse. Oliver Button. Curious George. Harry McLary and his five doggie friends, all male. The Runaway Bunny. The Rainbow Fish. Slinky Malinki. Joseph Had a Little Overcoat. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. John Brown and the Midnight Cat. The Man Who Walked Between Towers. Snowflake Bentley. Corduroy. Paddington Bear. Max in Where the Wild Things Are. Swimmy the fish. Harry the Dirty Dog. Angus the Scottish terrier. Carl the Rottweiler. In The Mitten not only is the protagonist a boy, but out of the EIGHT animals that stuff themselves in that damn mitten, only the last, smallest one, is female -- the mouse.

It's tricky to find picture books about girls that don't talk about dresses, fairies, dancing, or flowers. Two standard classics -- The Gardener and Miss Rumphius -- are about females with the power to...plant flowers. Another -- Rosie's Walk -- is about a clueless hen who evades a fox by pure dumb luck.

Here are a few books we've enjoyed that provide a bit of balance. Not nearly enough, but a bit. All but one are for ages 3 and up. Ish.

Olivia (although still a bit girly for me)

Officer Buckle and Gloria (Gloria's a girl dog, slightly more clever than Buckle)

Eloise (seminal text of my youth)

The Paper Bag Princess (for my money, the only Munsch really worth reading -- I find the rest flat and repetitive, although he is probably the most prolific kids' writer who regularly features girls in non-girly characters...like girls who wear smelly socks and highjack planes...)

Diary of a Wombat (a girl wombat)

Dinos to Go (3 of the 7 dinos are female)

Ten, Nine, Eight (about a girl's bedtime -- for babies and toddlers)

The Very Busy Spider and The Grouchy Ladybug

Strega Nona

Ruby Sings the Blues

What Katy Did (Katy is a bulldozer)

The Caboose Who Got Loose (the caboose is a girl)

Pirate Girl

Jennifer and Josephine (about a cat and a car)

Pamela the Camel

Martha Speaks

Madeline

The Red Book (representationally correct! 50% boy, 50% girl. No pink.)

Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale

A New Coat for Anna

The Year I Didn't Go To School

Betty Lou Blue

Room on the Broom

Brave Charlotte

Why I Let My Four-Year-Old Watch Grey's Anatomy

2009-05-26T19:28:00.001-07:00

It's true that Grey's Anatomy hasn't been all that good since Shonda Rhimes started working on Private Practice (little more than Ally McBeal in a dr's office). One of its most disapointing failures has been its inability and/or refusal to come up with a storyline -- ANY STORYLINE -- for George since T.R. Knight came out. It's also pretty dismal that McDreamy and McSteamy -- both men -- are still the reigning attendings under a male chief of surgery. Burke left to be replaced with another male character, Hunt. I could go on. Despite all these failings, Grey's Anatomy remains the only show on television to feature women of Asian, Black, and Latin descents in professional roles that exude skill and complexity. So Roy watches it sometimes, even though he can't actually pronounce it ("Mummy, is it Greysnatmee tonight?!").

Statistically speaking, men outnumber women on TV by a ration of three to one, giving kids the impression that women just aren't as important as men. And what of the women who are represented? Cat Deely, the host of So You Think You Can Dance, comes to mind. Watch Grey's Anatomy and the frame is usually dominated by women. Miranda Bailey is short and round. Callie Torres is big and brawny. Christina Yang looks as though she wouldn't touch make-up with a 10 foot pole, and she's brusque and angry. Meredith Grey's hair is limp. Izzy Stevens is split between the professional the domestic -- she loves to bake cupcakes and decorate for Christmas, and she loves being a surgical "rock star." They are all, every one of them, professional dynamos in what is a male-dominated field. I love these women.

Essentially, my hope is that the show helps to balance the incredibly imbalanced representation of gender roles on TV. He rarely watches TV; typically, he sees blips of channels when he wanders into his grandmother's, or when his father or I flip on the tube to see if we should record anything airing later on. The blips are enough. When daddy watches the Tour de France all the athletes are male. The hockey? Basketball? Same thing. When Fa (his grandmother) watches the news, he sees mostly male soldiers and male politicians and male businessmen. The commercials feature housewives lovingly using cleaning products. Etc. But on Grey's, men and women share the same professional space, and men are often shown talking about their feelings and emotional struggles, rather than repressing them as per the usual gender construction. Moreover, the storylines communicate the fragility of life and the importance of loving human connections -- things that are perhaps a bit weighty for a four-year-old, but I am disturbed by how Roy has become so captivated and delighted by the concepts of fighting, shooting and crashing (and this is a boy whose parents never uttered the words "gun" or "shoot" in front of him). I want him to see the real, human, devastating ramifications of shooting and crashing.

I felt prompted to write this post last night when my mother turned on a new TV show called Mental. It was the pilot episode, and the guide description read something about a gifted, renegade doctor at a mental institution. I heaved a great, impatient sigh: "Let me guess, this is about another MALE genius with almost superhuman powers of diagnosis and truth-finding. I've seen this before on House, The Mentalist, and Lie to Me." We sat uncomfortably for about two minutes before she said defeatedly, "Well, now you've ruined it for me."

I can only think of one show with a woman cast in a similar role, and that's The Closer with Kyra Sedgewick. Is that even on a major network? Is it still on, period? I've seen a few minutes of it (two years ago?) and she seemed, well...kooky.

Maybe I'm also writing this because I'm pissed off that two of the most popular shows on TV today -- Grey's and Ugly Betty -- each ended this season with a dying woman getting a last-minute big white wedding. I find this shocking. The gist is obvious: it's crucial that a woman be a bride before she dies. It's at the top of her Bucket List. (See also: A Walk to Remember.) And at the very end of both the season finales? Both the brides are dead. But at least they got to wear The Dress.

(In fact, the dead bride is a pretty perfect illustration of how we talk about relationships in our cultural texts: the wedding / happy discovery of monogamous true love is the persistent, inevitable happy ending. That's where the story ends. When the bride dies and turns into a wife. But I digress.)

Meanwhile, Patrick Jane on The Mentalist gets to be the heroic genius solving crimes and avenging the deaths of his dead wife and daughter. His female supervisor is left to follow him around quizzically / exasperatedly, waiting for him to solve the mystery in his own brilliant way. On House Greg House is a cad but again, a genius, so his female supervisor is left to fume in his wake, eating his shit because he's so professionally important. In Lie to Me Cal Lightman (i.e. his gives light...like Jesus....subtle, eh?) works alongside two women -- gifted lie-detectors in their own right -- but they're still conisgned to standing in awe of his skills.

So even though Grey's is rife with its own representational pitfalls, beggars can't be choosers. In a perfect world , I wouldn't turn the TV on in front of the kids at all, and this was the case for a while. But it's just too....too there. Being turned on and off, however quickly, as we check in to see if there's anything on. Anything. Our silent, despereate pleas: "Divert me! Distract me! Show me something interesting! Entertaining! Surprising! Enlightening!" It can happen, after all, which is what keeps us hooked. In spite of all the dead brides and man geniuses.

My Son, Myself: On Parenting Forwards and Backwards

2009-05-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

I named my son Roy for many reasons, but the fact that it's linked to "royal" wasn't one of them. In retrospect, it should have been. I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I watch him stalk through life, stomping his feet and flinging himself into hysterical fits of anger when he doesn't get his way -- a classic little aristocrat.

"Roy it's time to get your shoes on."
"WHAT?! ARGH! Nooooooooo!!!!" (pitches face into sofa cushions while fists punch at the air)

"Roy, would you like eggs or grilled cheese for lunch today?"
"Stop that. STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!!" (holds up one hand like a stop sign while other makes fist that punches air)

"Honey, don't forget to do a pee before we get in the car."
"MUMMY I TOLD YOU I ALREADY DID A PEE TODAY!!!" (makes two fists and punches self in thighs)

"Morning Roy -- how did you sleep?"
"I need a bottle and Word World."

Okay, now I realize that most four-year-olds have a touch of the lunatic monarch in them, but I defy them to put on the kind of full-out drama queen fit of hysteria my son regularly serves up in response to the slightest, seemingly most innocuous, events of daily life. Things like turning off the TV. Getting into a booster chair. Putting on socks. Taking off socks.

Here we go: high-pitched wail. Arms flung up in helpless despair. Sudden bonelessness followed by collapse into heap. Limbs suddenly rigid. Body thumps floor in seizure-like rhythm. Feet pound floor. More wailing. Real tears. Switch gears to panic no-nos: "NO!... NO! ... NO!..."

I used to feel sorry for my girls because they've never gotten the time and attention Roy got, as the first baby. Oh, the hours I spent dancing with him, singing to him, diligently pointing out various farm animals to him in umpteen board books.... What if, however, the first child is actually at a disadvantage precisely because of all that one-on-one time?

My friend Ann runs an organic farm nearby, and she and I (both eldest children) were comparing notes. She hires farm help from all over the world -- a lot of students from Europe and Japan, especially. "I always know the first-borns," she said, "because when we finish dinner they're the ones that get up right away to do the dishes. They want to please me -- do everything right. But the ones I get to know are the ones who don't care about impressing me, because they're the ones who stay at the table and chat."

Roy needs to be first. He needs to show that he knows the answers. He can't stand being on your bad side, so he keeps on arguing, desperate to swing you towards his way of thinking. He loves nothing more than having a job -- working hard, helping out, being of use. He is ambitious and enthusiastic and a charming social animal.

There's evidence to show that sending Roy to school will only reinforce his sense of primacy -- his sense that he simply must excel and be loved. January babies are the oldest in their classes. As Malcolm Gladwell writes in his bestseller, Outliers, kids born at the beginning of the year customarily find themselves to be the most advanced because they've had the extra time to learn and grow, which breeds confidence which breeds advancement etc. (For example: professional soccer players are statistically more likely to be born in January, February, or March than the rest of the population.)

It's taken me well over a week to write this post. I keep coming back to it, wondering what it means. My preoccupation with What To Do With Roy is constant. I want to homeschool him, but would sending him to a classroom tame his inner spoiled aristocrat? Is it such a bad thing, really, to be the oldest person in his grade? There's plenty of evidence to show that traditional schooling only teaches how to dominate others (see, for instance, Tomorrow's Children) and suppress imagination and self-motivation. But according to Malcolm Gladwell, being January's child means a better chance at succeeding in this world. This capitalist, dog-eat-dog world. What price that success?

Okay, so I admit it: I'm writing about myself as much as I'm writing about my son. How much of parenting is an attempt to go back in time and re-parent one's self? Like Roy, I am a first-born January baby. I see myself in Roy, and no doubt I'm trying to fix my miserable childhood (school was primarily a source of anxiety for myriad reasons) by trying to steer him away from all possible pitfalls, both real and imagined. But there are too many variables.

Not long after I had Roy my mother sighed at my worrying, and said: "You know, Latham, mothers swear they won't make the same mistakes their own mothers made, and they don't. They make all new ones." To which I replied: "So, if you're living with us, does that mean my kids will have to deal with twice the number of mistakes?"

The Blind Leading the Blind (Or: Upon Parents Meeting Their Waterpoo)

2009-05-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Type A perfectionists LOVE getting the right answer. We love finding it, knowing it, and then making sure others know about it, and agree with it too. First-borns with early month birthdays love these thing even more. And so, as a Type A eldest child born in January, let me be totally upfront and tell you that I know all the right answers and if you're smart you'll follow my lead. And be happy about it.

So imagine the chaos -- the awesome clusterfuck -- that I found myself in when I became a parent. The thing with parenting, I am learning, is that no one really knows. Witness:
1. Sometimes other parents have expertise, but only with their own children, who are different from yours and therefore require different expertise.
2. Parenting books can offer helpful tidbits, but overall I am too tired to a) read them or b) remember in the heat of the moment what they said to do in heated moments.
3. Doctors can't tell you much for fear of being sued if their advice doesn't work out. And they can't get personal for fear of your 10 minute appointment running over.

Getting my son to learn how to pee in the potty was so misleadingly easy that I assumed that the pooping know-how would quickly follow. For a year, however, my son would either come to me and ask for a diaper (and then retreat behind a closed door to do his business) or else wait until he got a nap time or nighttime diaper. At age two-and-a-half, a few boys his age from his playgroup were fully trained, but my son stubbornly refused to get on the toilet and doo the deed.

I tried being upbeat and positive. I tried bribery. I tried reasoning. I made an environmental impact statement. I got angry. I got sad. I tried peer pressure. I tried a kitchen timer. None of it worked. My doctor told me not to "force the issue" and turn it into a "big deal." A year later, as I was bitterly changing yet another of his gargantuan shitty oozy steamy nappies, he looked up at me, smiling slyly (the little bastard), and said "Mummy, are you tired of changing my dirty diapers?" At that point I decided to force the issue and turn it into a big deal.

I took away his diapers entirely, along with his sheets and blankets. I told him that if he was going to mess up his bed at night then I didn't need any extra laundry. The deal was that if he pooped in the toilet in the day, he could have a diaper at night. My mother and husband hung back a bit and looked glum as I put him to bed. For three nights he woke up wet and cold and crying. For nearly three days my champion grade A daily pooper held it in. And then he pooped in the toilet, celebrating afterwards with triumphant whoops while galloping around the house.

Naturally, my daughter went the same route, but I was much quicker this time around. She became fully trained three months before her third birthday after a few wet nights and even a couple of mornings when we found her sitting in a shit-ridden bed (which she had to help clean).

These were dark (brown) times. What I learned is that finally, if my kids knew enough about defecating that they could tell when it was about to happen (ergo ask me for a diaper), then it was my right to bid adieu to scraping thick poopy paste off little buttocks 2-3 times a day. I found myself in a power struggle, pure and simple, and no one could tell me what to do to fix it. My way worked, but it probably wasn't the best way. Does anyone know the best way? Or is it more like the blind leading the blind?

And what about naps? My son stays up later in the evening when he has a nap but he's better behaved. Food? If my daughter is refusing to eat do I ignore her (indicating that food isn't important and and that I don't care if she eats) or help her eat (indicating that she can use not eating as a way to get special treatment) or put her in her room until she eats with us (indicating that the dinnertable is a battleground over which mummy rules? Or indicating that family dinner is important?). When my baby girl cries at night, if I go in and pick her up right away am I encouraging her to make it a habit, or am I showing her that she can express emotional needs and trust in emotional attachments? And so on.

I compensate for all these unknowns by fastidiously keeping a photographic record of their fantastic childhoods, so if I am scarring them with poopy beds and irregular sleep habits then I have something to show them: "Look! Here's another picture of you holding a puppy! Tobogganing! Gardening! Skating! Feeding birds! At the park! Reading! Riding a horse!" If I keep piling on the puppies, I'm sure all will be forgiven.

Government Boondogle, C'est Moi

2009-05-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

Oh how I love a good boondogle. You know -- when a grotesque amount of taxpayer money is wasted and various politicians are dragged through the mud. And then the Canadian public is outraged for a few vociferous minutes, an inquest is called, and then 3 years later the media reports on the inquest results. By which time, of course, no one cares. Remember the National Gun Registry? Exactly.

My favourite boondogle, however, is one that tends to stick with me. It's me. Herewith I will conduct my own inquest.

It's difficult to put a price on how much taxpayers have spent on my edumacation. There are the early, years, certainly -- those treasured elementary days of being bullying, shunning, and various other forms of childhood torture. And then highschool. Also known as the Anorexia Years. But let's start where I became a Special Case -- let's start with the Full Scholarship Years. Over and above the usual subsidized university education, I got $15,0000 towards my tuition (which in those days actually covered four years of tuition and all my books). During my undergrad I got about $3,000 in smaller bursaries. And then came Grantapalooza: $12,000 during my MA year, then over $50,000 over my 4.5 year PhD. Add that to my paid job training (as a marker, research assistant, and teaching assistant) and I figure that my post-secondary years earned me well over $100,000. Now, of course I worked hard for this money, regularly weeping over my keyboard at my intellectual insufficiency and occasionally throwing my dictionary at the wall when I couldn't come up with the right words (not kidding -- my mother's basement wall was dented from the force of my verbal shortcomings). One could debate the nature of "work" in this context, but let's just say that whatever standards were set for me, I did everything I could to surpass them. Fine and dandy.

So I was good to go. I could research, publish, and teach.

And I could procreate. I had my first baby 5 days after I defended my PhD thesis. And so two worlds collided with all the force of...oh, let's see...with all the force of 9 lbs of bloody flesh and bone ripping its way out of a vagina.

In the hours before my son was born (3 weeks early) I doggedly finished three job applications and mailed them on the way to the hospital. Two months later I went to two interviews. During the first, a day-long affair without a single break, at lunch I found myself crouched in a bathroom stall pumping breastmilk and thanking God I wore black as milk leaked and sprayed everywhere. The department chair (who knew I had a baby because of the crying in the background when I was called and invited for the interview) came in, knocked on the stall door, and asked politely if I'd like to use her office. (I assume she had figured out what I was doing, unless she had some special post-grad potty in there.) I tittered something inane about "being all set up in here" (#$%^&?!). She paused outside the door. I said, probably with an air of defeat: "I didn't expect my professional life to start this way."

I didn't get that job.

I did get the job with the half-day interview, but it was a year-long contract and ended early due to complications from my second pregnancy.

During that same pregnancy, I went to another full-time interview. I was 7 months along. At the welcome breakfast it was me and 17 men. At the presentation it was me presenting to 9 men. The interview? Me and 8 men The lunch? Still more men. Even the two student reps were both male. I didn't meet another woman all day long at that interview.

I didn't get that job, either.

I'm not sure I'm bitter about those experiences anymore. I don't think I interview terribly well. And in the end I do have a teaching job, even though it doesn't really use any of the expertise I gained at uni. Occasionally I get to do what I really love, when I get to teach pop culture as a part-time professor. Ultimately, I feel as though my education has been political window-dressing. Dressed up but nowhere to go. My sharp critical skills are mainly turned on myself these days: "You're a feminist! You know better! WHY are you doing these dishes AGAIN?! Are you REALLY happy because the weather's nice and you get to hang the laundry outside again?! REALLY?!!! You should be ashamed of yourself. Go research something! Publish something! Do ANYTHING besides sweep the goddamn floors and put away board books!"

The thing is that I know too much. I know that breastfeeding is the best thing for your baby, and truthfully I love doing it. But it pretty much seals the deal. You're the number one most important thing to that kid -- for the warmth of your body and the fact of your milk -- and that importance evolves into so many other forms of comfort and need.

And I know that my husband and I have been conditioned to play out the roles that only reinforce my identity as Nurturer-In-Chief.

And I can feel my kids' eyes on me as I scuttle about the house -- hauling laundry baskets, wiping countertops, disinfecting potties, making dinner -- and I know that they are learning, too.

So, am I a waste of taxpayer money? If so, then the waste is growing exponentially: in my old department (where I got my degrees and where I've taught) the full time teaching staff went from 35 to 25 in less than ten years. In that same period, student enrollment in the department's classes went up by 60%.

If one stands back it's quite spectacular, actually: an ever-shrinking pool of learning as people are sluiced out because they are women and want kids; because tuition's going up and more kids can't afford it; because there's no point in going to grad school because there are so few faculty positions available.

Someone should do an inquest.

National Exposure!!!

2009-05-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

I've supplied the facts and arguments on the Facts & Arguments page of the Globe and Mail today. I can't reprint the essay here as they paid handsomely ($0) for the rights, but if anyone out there is still actually paying for newspapers, I hear they might be found at local Feed 'n Seeds...or maybe you can track down a newsie on some city corner somewhere...

Here's the link: www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090506.wfacts06/BNStory/lifeMain/home

Swishes,
L

The Billionaire's Family

2009-05-05T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'd never heard the term "millionaire's family" until I had my second child -- a girl. Now that I had one child of each sex people kept congratulating me on having the millionaire's family. This raised two questions: first, if I'd had another boy, would I have had a fork lift operator's family? And second, do a girl and boy represent the entire range of human experience? In other words: is that really the best that we can expect? To have a girl and a boy gives a family the best possible demographic? As if there are no other factors in determining a child's worth? Do people really believe this?

This latter question stayed with me as I grew into my third pregnancy and people genuinely seemed surprised that I was having another baby. I was, I suppose, being a bit excessive. What was I going for, anyway -- the billionaire's family?!

A few weeks ago my friend Caroline (who has three children too, God love her) tapped her steering wheel and peered at me over her sunglasses: "So Latham, according to my calculations, you should be pregnant again any day now." It's true, I've been either pregnant, breastfeeding, or both for more than five years now. But when I was pregnant with my third, I was faintly embarrassed. Well, a little sheepish at least. After all, I had the MILLIONAIRE's FAMILY! What more could I ask for?!

I do want another child. And I feel guilty about it. I picture my thesis committee shaking their heads over the news of yet another Latham baby, and sighing "She had so much potential." Most academics I know have one baby -- such control! such care! such dedication to one's career! With all the precision of a research project..."I have had a child. I have experienced it. And now I am moving on to an equally intense exploration of the ideological function of the transgressive in Midwestern American literature from the 1980s." And there I am having sex and breastfeeding and doing all kinds of other sloppy things. Messy things. Feeding mouths and cleaning bums. Intake and output. For YEARS.

Of course this is stupid. Academics have lots of kids and lavish them with love and attention. Or not. Just like people in any other field. But I have this feeling that because I want a big family (four kids max...most likely...) I've somehow betrayed all the teachers and employers and publishers and editors that ever saw me as deserving of professional respect for my exactitude -- all my arguments that made the complex so clean.

Unbelievably, after I had my second daughter someone actually asked me if I was going to have a fourth to "try for another boy." From now on I'm just going to tell people I want the billionaire's family. I want more. They make me crazy with love and anger and frustration and glee and fatigue, and I want more. I belive I have the potential.

Another Day Another Dinner

2009-05-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

I've long said that if the world were run by men, that would have been the saying.

I used to love cooking. I mean, LOVE it. A little too much, really. When I was a teenager I was severely anorexic and cookbooks were my obsession. I collected them, hoarded them, read them... and then I would cook and watch Anyhow, out of that tortured, sick place came a healthy relationship with food (it took years). Now I'm a vegetarian with an organic focus and locavore aspirations. The kids and I have a garden and we cook together. It's all very progressive. Alice Waters would give me a gold star.

But now I understand why my mother faced down 4:00 with such...hold on, let me go ask her....

....Right, with such "I'm tired and I don't want to have to do one more thing....frustration...boredom."

And my mother never worried about what was local and organic and palatable to a picky 3 year old (the only thing my brother and I ever hated was squash...we still do, thanks very much...and I think that if we were ever served brussels sprouts we would have hated them too).

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah: by the end of the day I don't want to have to make dinner. How did this happen? How did I end up married to a man who doesn't cook? Ooooo, I'm so feminist blah blah blah. Mum is right -- it's not so much the cooking of the dinner but the kick-in-the-pants that at the end of a long day of doing myriad household things, you have to conquer The Dinner. And while the labour of making the dinner is certainly a factor in Dinner Fatigue, I think it's the mental labour that really gets to me -- the sense that the dinnerhour is waiting for me all day long. Looming. Lurking. What to make. What...to...make. What.

One of my most favourite books is Wifework by Susan Maushart, in which she points out that (and this is a longstanding, well-researched and widely agreed-upon statistic) when women and men live together and both work full time jobs outside the home, the woman does 16 more hours of housework per week than her male partner. Here are some of the details, culled from studies throughout the English-speaking world:
- Wives do on average 90% of the laundry and 82% of all indoor cleaning and tidying.
- The difference between the domestic workload of husbands with employed wives and husbands with non-employed wives was found to be exactly ten minutes a day.
- 70% of US fathers were not responsible for any child-care tasks, and an additional 22% were responsible for only one such task.

Maushart ups the ante by pointing out that this stat ignores all the emotional and mental labour ("emotional caregiving") that wives typically do. Things like:
- buying all the birthday gifts and Christmas presents, for his side of the family, too (I no longer do this. In fact, I'm now radically anti-present...er, anti-gift)
- scheduling appointments and handling the kids' schedules and activities (guilty)
- taking pictures and doing photo albums; writing a journal on the kids' experiences (really guilty)
- arranging social outings and hosting social gatherings (yep)
- maintaining social connections (phone calls, emails, cards...) (check)
- sensing emotional difficulties and trying to resolve them (check and I never get any thanks for this one)

Etc.

If you're not in a relationship that is reflected in the above, then I salute you. You and yours have beat the odds. REALLY beat the odds. If you read Wifework, with its relentless and unflinching army of studies and statistics, you'll quickly get a sense of those odds.

My new favourite website is The Free Mortgage Caluculator. It lets you plug in your mortgage amount, interest rate, term, and then -- this is the good part -- you can see how much faster your mortgage will be paid off if you make extra payments!!! This excites me. I mean, there's sex and then there's this website. Website it is! If I were to make a $10,000 lump sum payment RIGHT NOW then I would save $8, 536 in interest and own my home 9 months sooner! I can cut TWO YEARS off our mortgage by going from accelerated biweekly to accelerated weekly!

I have it all planned out. We are going to pay off our house in 5 years, even with the money I'm putting away for the kids' education. I've done the math. I've calculated the budget. I've worked the extra jobs and started the home-based business to ease our tax burden. It's all planned out. I'm handling it.

And tomorrow I'm making tempeh chili. I can do a triple batch and freeze the extra. Maybe with those spinach brownies...

Fairy Princesses and the Tyranny of Pink

2009-05-03T19:08:00.000-07:00

It took me a few weeks to get used to the idea of being pregnant, and then a few weeks more to get used to the idea of having a boy (not because I didn't want a boy, but because the idea that the baby was one or the other made it...him...more real and therefore more imminent). When I started to allow myself to relax into the idea a bit -- to grasp the concept of Myself as Mother -- I was at a mall. I went into a Gap Kids. (What can I say? I was young and foolish....)

What I learned at Gap Kids was in many ways more instructive than the gender theory I was studying at the time as a PhD student. What I learned is that things were actually worse than the academics were letting on. They weren't really up on the front lines of gender issues, fighting what I've come to call The Tyranny of Pink.

The Gap Kids I so naively wandered into was divided into a boy camp and a girl camp. I obediently walked over to the boy camp and there was a shirt with a basketball on it. And there was one with a surfboard. And a skateboard. And there -- camouflage pants in size 12 months. There was a persistent pulse of blue, navy, and olive running through the racks. The girl camp, however, was liberally sprinkled with flowers and hearts and slightly desperate announcements such as "Daddy's Little Sweetheart" and "Too Cute." And pink. Good Christ there was pink everywhere.

Having studied gender theory, I was of course aware of the longstanding differences in how we construct "boy" and "girl," but I wasn't aware of how extreme these constructions were. If, in fact, one were going by the kind of clothing available for children when I was a child (in the mid 70s) versus the kind available now, one could only conclude that gender equality has regressed.

I took the above picture at a massive bookstore chain. It's a shelf display in their children's section, not far from a train table that my children are always quick to find. The shelf is only about 3' off the ground -- a pefect kiddie sight-line. I can think of few better examples of how low -- how ludicrously, horribly low -- we've sunk in the creation and division of gender roles. The four "boy" books are a fireman, policeman, race car driver, and astronaught. The two "girl" books are a princess...and a fairy.

Where does one start?

The boys are employed in dominance-based and/or conquest jobs -- our culture calls these men "firefighters" and crime "fighters," or else competitive racers (either around a track or to the moon). These jobs, however, are at least identifiable jobs. The girls, already diminished by representing only one third of the display, have no employment (unless of course they are costumed singing telegrams, in which case they are worse than unemployed). They have no identifiable function, unless it is decorative. In the inimitable words of John Berger in his book Ways of Seeing, "men act and women appear."

People who believe that feminism has done its thing and is therefore outdated would typically argue that these are only kids' books in a bookstore, not detrimental determinants. Really, how can wearing pink or blue limit a kid's sense of self? The colours, of course, don't exist in a vacuum; they're a shorthand for inclusion in an overarching narrative where girls are princesses and boys are race car drivers.

What researchers are finding is that children's imaginations are grown, limited, diversified and sculpted not only by their parents and experiences but by the kinds of texts they grow up with -- the books, clothes, movies, songs, shows, toys, etc. If girls constantly see representations of girls as princesses and fairies then those representations act as as the fence posts around their own ideas about what is possible for their lives.

Gender Exhibits

I am at a playdate. Two four year old girls have flung open the tickle trunk and it's filled with crinoline and lace and tiaras and sparkly shoes. Within minutes one has dressed the other head-to-toe in the stuff. One watches the other totter around on tiny heels, swishing in her taffeta skirt, and mumurs reverently: "You're much more prettier than me." They both dress up and stay dressed up the whole morning and through lunch, though it limits their mobility considerably. At one point my son is in tears because they tell him that the Dora The Explorer knee pads he's found are only for girls.

I am at the Y. I look through the window of the room where my daughter is playing with others during "Toddler Time" and count up the girls: 6 of them. And they are all wearing pink. Even my daughter, who I typically steer away from the pepto-abysmal, has pink trim on her green top. There are four boys and all of them are wearing mostly blue outfits.

We are at an indoor playground and I've helped my kids build a fort out of accordioned tumbling mats. We're joined by a little girl. My two nestle into corners and exclaim that they are bears in a cave! They're in bear corners! The little girl sits up primly and says "I'm in a princess corner."

I'm picking up my youngest from a drop-in centre and another mother is talking at one of the child-minders: "Can you believe it?! She had her son dressed in a pink shirt! How could any mother do that to her son?!

My son is at his dance class on Hallowe'en. They've all been told they can wear costumes. My son, the only boy, is dressed as a dragon as per his request. The rest of the class -- all 15 girls -- are dressed as princesses.

I'm teaching a communications course to a class of Early Childhood Education students. There are 42 students in the class and only one is male. Later in the day I teach a class to auto mechanics and welding students. There are 28 students and only one is female.

I'm watching a rabble of 3-6 year olds slosh out of the pool and then tiptoe gingerly towards the changeroom. One little girl is wearing a pink bathing suit emblazoned with the three newly-annointed and so-called "Disney Princesses": the red-haired one who gave up her voice so she could use her body to attract a man; the blonde one who had to toil thanklessly and wait passively for her man to find her; and the brunette who, despite brutal domestic violence, stayed with her "beast" because it was her job to rehabilitate him. When girls talk about princesses, these are their princess templates. The Disney Princesses and their stories are superimposed on millions of little girls' bodies around the world.

Latham is Composing Herself: Arranged Ideas on Gender, Motherhood and Other Derangements

2009-05-03T09:43:00.001-07:00

Lately, I've been mulling over what comes next. I've been to school and finished school. I've met a man and married him. We've bought a starter home and an ender home. I've gotten a good, stable job that some might even call a career. And I've had three kids in the past five years. And now....

And now.

At the ripe old age of 33 I am both entirely fulfilled and completely bewildered.

A little background: I gave birth to my first child exactly five days after I defended my PhD thesis in gender and popular culture. It was a pretty extreme collision of gender theory and gender experience. Ever since, I feel as though I've lived between those spaces, attempting to analyze gender issues as I live them. Attempting to understand them and organize them as I flail around in working motherhood.

It could be that no one other than my husband and my mother will read this stuff. I'm not sure that matters as much as having a place where I can write down -- make real, somehow -- the things I say to myself while I'm driving, hanging laundry, making dinner, picking up books and toys, and so on. There was a time (it might have been this morning) when I thought that writing was my main skill. I've published a scant number of poems, essays, and articles, but my main occupations are mother and teacher, and this blog (I hope) will encourage me to create a reasonably ordered place where my skill and occupations can coexist...happily or not.

There will also, no doubt, be many topics I veer into that are not specifically related to gender or motherhood, but whatever I say, I have a gender and I have children, so I figure my bases are pretty much covered all the time.

And so, dear reader, I become...a blogger. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.*

*The above was brought to you despite the following interruptions:

1. My three year old runs in, brandishing children's scissors: "Mummy what can I CUT?!"
2. My four year old yells from the bathroom: "Mummy I need a WIPE!"
3. My husband wanders in and asks when the laundry is coming off the line so he can start a fire in the backyard without burning up our clothes.
4. I make grilled cheese sandwiches.
5. I get my nine month old up from her morning nap, and put my three year old down for her afternoon nap.
6. I breastfeed my youngest.