Quitting: The Ideal Celebration of Mother's Day?

Throughout the week last week, I encountered a new high of articles and emails about what to get mom for Mother's Day or suggestions from other moms on how to celebrate it. Some were nauseating and completely off base if only because they were the usual marketing shenanigans - my personal favorite being the email I got from the Brooklyn Children's Museum offering that if I didn't know how to celebrate Mother's Day, I should bring my family to the Brazilian dance fest at 10:30 in the morning at the Children's Museum. Because clearly what mothers everywhere want is to get up early and drag their families to places where they will be surrounded by hundreds of other people's children throwing their bodies around.

The irony of course is that my active dancing toddler son loves a dance fest and probably would have had a blast at such an event. I just don't think moms on Mother's Day should be out of their pajamas at 10:30am. I actually think that moms should be in bed with a good book and a mimosa on Mother's Day, but that's just me.

The suggestion I thought about the most for Mother's Day came from Lisa Belkin, the New York Times author of Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting blog. Her piece, "Why Moms Should Quit" suggests that this year for Mother's Day, moms around the world should stand up at their dinner tables and give their notice and declare the end to their infinite list of family chores.

At first reading her piece, I was appalled - not by what she was saying, but that she had to say it.  I admit, I looked down on the women that would need to be told such a thing - and even, I'm sorry, but if you're a mom who does all the housework, seeping in resentment for your family - husband included - taking advantage of you, it's your own fault. And I only mean that you teach people how to treat you, so if you're raising your children to think you'll always be there to pick out their clothes and do their laundry, whose fault is it when they complain they have no clean clothes? Honestly, in this day and age? Are mothers really doing everything?

Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963. It is now 2011. Do we really need Belkin to write such a piece?

Given that her piece resulted in 73 comments, all of them fascinating in themselves as little microcosms of what people think the role of women and mothers should be, I quickly realized that yes, sadly, we do need Belkin to write such a piece.

Seriously. Read through the comments. When I did, I felt sad. It's like Betty Friedan and the Women's movement never existed. Or it did out in the world, but women forgot to bring it home, though you would think that while we were out bringing home the bacon, we'd stop to pick up a cleaning service on the way. And take out. Unless of course we had thought to marry someone who had already thought about and taken care of dinner.

And I realized what a gift I got from both my mom and step-mom, because I wasn't raised that women should do everything. Simply because women can't. Men can't either.

Which I think is why I find Belkin's piece so disturbing, that in almost fifty years after Friedan's wrote The Feminine Mystique our culture still links - without even thinking - motherhood to housework. That in our culture - and in many around the world - by definition, motherhood means laundry, making lunches, cleaning, scheduling play dates and all the rest. While the same culture expects rather little of fathers, as Michael Chabon points out in his book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs where he says that he just takes his kids to the store and strangers beam at him and tell him what a good father he is. The last time I took my son to the store and a stranger told me what a good mother I was? Never. But on the way to the store, when my son insisted on walking instead of sitting in his stroller, and I let him, and he then saw that he could climb an 18 inch high iron gate around a tree planted in the sidewalk, a stranger had no issue telling me I was the most irresponsible mother who ever lived, letting my child playing where clearly he could hurt himself or expose himself to germs she felt certain would cause the next bubonic plague. That my son is 2 1/2, as tall as kids a year older, has the physical strength and agility of some five year olds, and regularly climbs things far more daunting at the city's playgrounds was besides the point. But I digress.

Both my mom and step-mom worked. And in the case of my step-mom, she came home to four kids due to the combined nature of the family. Our parents raised us to be independent out of pure self-defense. I was eight, the oldest, while my brother, the youngest, was three when my dad and step-mom married. Nonetheless, Sunday evenings were spent with all of us at the dining room table making our week's worth of lunches that then went into the freezer with our initials marked in a sharpie on the outside of the plastic bags. When we were younger, my step-mom did the laundry, but we had to fold it, and it wasn't long before we did our own laundry. We even had our own sheets and towels, and it was our responsibility to keep them clean. We each got to pick out what we got to have for dinner, but that meant it was our night to help cook the meal. We had a rotating list of chores, whether it was cleaning the bathroom or sweeping the floors or washing windows or whatever.

My mom didn't have four kids in her combined household, still, by the time I was eight she had taught me basic cooking and baking skills - that didn't involve a box or mix. She had taught me basic chores at five. By the second grade, it was my responsibility to get myself to and from dance class (granted, that was the seventies - when kids could walk through neighborhoods without helicopter parent supervision).

It wasn't just about making the life of our parents easier. It was about raising us with the skills that we would need to be competent adults. It was about having pride in one's home. To me, this all seems common sense, so I am shocked when I talk to moms on the playground, when they say how their son loves to help them in the kitchen and they then shrug and say, "I guess he can help his wife make dinner."

Really? What about cooking for himself? Don't men need to eat before they get married, or do they just gain appetites after they say their vows? Is that the real reason receptions and buffets follow ceremonies?

I end up wondering if it would be rude of me to point out to the mom I am talking to that she is raising her son to be sexist. I don't actually point this out. I just say, "He'll have to cook for himself too..."


As a parent now, I see more than ever that catering to children doesn't teach them anything - that it actually only cripples them. I realized in reading Belkin's piece that I take this idea for granted. I have realized it before too, aside from playground interactions, when a friend complained about how much she hates making her kids' lunches. Her youngest was four. When I suggested that her kids were actually old enough to make their own lunches, with supervision of course, you would have thought I suggested she move to the moon. But why not include them? Why not teach them where lunches come from?

And given how many mothers do do everything and end up seeping with resentment, wouldn't it be better for one's entire family dynamic to from the get go just not do everything? I can't imagine it's much fun being a child or a spouse in a household where one parent is constantly bristling and resenting as s/he folds yet another pile of laundry. 

My son has recently taken over feeding the dog. If my husband and I try to do it, Fyo will throw a tantrum. If he spills the dog food, like he did yesterday, he declares that he needs the broom. He then sweeps the food up and dumps it in the dog bowl. He thinks it's a game, but when he's done he beams, "I did it!" When he plays in the back yard, he insists he needs plastic bags so he can clean up the dog poo. Obviously we supervise this activity as well as the hand washing that follows, but as a pregnant woman I'm happy to let him clean the yard. If he's thirsty, he goes to the fridge for his favorite green juice. When I pour it in the cup, he then puts it away. He helps me unload the dishwasher - every time he hands me a dish to put in the cupboard he says "thank you." When my brother was three, he too unloaded the dishwasher, and to accommodate him, my parents moved all the dishes down to the lower cupboards. We don't have the lower cupboard space to follow suit, but if we did, we would (except for my very favorite dishes). He loves our kitchen appliances as much as I do - he insists on grinding our morning coffee in the grinder and blending our morning breakfast smoothie. He loves to put the clothes and soap in the washer and then the wet clothes in the dryer. The only thing my son is lousy at in this regard is folding laundry. He thinks stacks of folded clean clothes are like blocks and meant to be knocked over.

But so far, I don't think I'll need to be a mom who quits.  Because I'm not a mom who feels she needs to do everything, and as a wife, I'm blessed with a husband who does a lot around the house. I'm blessed that we got married in our thirties - and that my husband spent a considerable number of years living alone and knows that he prefers a picked up house and well-prepared food - and that he thinks the investment in household help is a wise one. We each have things we'd rather do than wash floors (and yes, I realize that household help to many is a luxury).

In our house, we say often that things have to work for everyone. Everyone gets their needs met, but everyone contributes.

For Mother's Day, my husband did make me brunch, he did bring me flowers and he did give me a thoughtful gift of a vintage gorgeous nightgown. Sadly, he had to spend the afternoon away at a course he is taking, but I still have a rain check for what I really did want for Mother's day - a day spent alone in bed, with neither husband nor child, reading a book and drinking (decaf) coffee in my pajamas. It's the one indulgence I'm craving before second child arrives on the scene. Funny - none of the emails or things I read in anticipation of Mother's Day mentioned what I think most mother's want, aside from acknowledgement - and that is just a bit of quiet.