Further thoughts about women's roles

So one of the books I picked up at the library is called, "America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines" by Gail Collins. It's good so far. One thing she says right near the beginning that really grabbed me was this line, "The center of our story is the tension between the yearning to create a home and the urge to get out of it."

Smacked me right between the eyeballs, that did. Yep, that would describe my life in a nutshell. Having been a child in the 70's and a teenager in the 80's, I was taught that the sky's the limit and I could do anything I set my mind to. Of course, they failed to tell me that while a woman can have it all, she can't have it all at once. And some things are incompatible no matter which way you look at them. And some things are true whether you want them to be or not.

Like having to take the job that's available because it pays the bills. Or having to put off graduate school indefinitely because even 2 salaries only just let you squeak by each month. How about the fact that a woman's body has a certain biological clock ticking that all the advances of science cannot stop even though they've set it back a few years? If a couple wants children then it's still the woman who has to carry and give birth to them. And then make the decision to nurse or bottle feed, with all the ensuing hormonal consequences. (Or go through the adoption process with all its fees and paperwork and pitfalls.) Or that if you have children and don't make enough money to have the luxury of a nanny and housekeeper the stay-at-home parent will become responsible for the home and all living creatures in it.

Those "realities" were quietly swept under the rug during my schooling years.

So I did what was, at the time, a very countercultural thing. I went with my heart. When the man who would become my husband stepped onto the stage of my life, I made the conscious decision that my relationship with him was more important that any of those other goals. My parents were older than all my friends' parents and I was an only child and I'd decided long ago that I did not want that for my child(ren) if at all possible. So I was 25 when I married - young for the 90's. And though I've sometimes wondered what my life would have been like if I'd chosen differently, I've never regretted it.

It's funny though, whereas my mother and grandmother's generation fought for the right to work outside the home, now I find myself defending the right to stay in it. Or having to prove to people that I still have a brain even though I don't have an "outside" job (well, most days I have a brain....some days I don't).

And all this is made harder by the fact that I'm an extrovert. I need people around to bounce thoughts and ideas off of - I process things on the outside. I need that sounding board, that feedback. During my short stint with our worship band, I learned that trying to sing, or play, and stay together and in tune without a properly working moniter is impossible. Without your monitor functioning, you can't hear yourself - and if you can't hear yourself, you can't make those necessary adjustments. Without people around to bounce all these ideas off of, they all go flying around my head and clutter up my brain. And so began the need to write it all down.

But then, of course, there's the guilt and the perfectionism. As in, if I'm the stay-at-home parent then my worth is decided by how well I perform (or not) that job. (Or so society tells me.) I spend my days striving for balance between my children's needs and my own, cleaning the house and living my life, supporting my kids' interests without neglecting mine, and somewhere in the middle of all this figuring out where God and my spiritual walk fits in. Theologians would say that of course my relationship with God comes first and everything should flow out of that. Theoretically I believe that - practically speaking those theologians have never had to do a dozen tasks before even seeing their first cup of coffee in the morning. And do those tasks sick and with 5 hours of sleep.

I've had people call me a good mom, and supermom, and say that they see me as a very gentle nurturing person. But I don't feel that way - most days I feel like a volatile, emotional trainwreck trying to hold this mothering thing together by the skin of my teeth. Trying to parent my autistic son without neglecting the other two or going crazy, trying to keep a house clean while battling crippling allergies to dust, mold, and pollen, trying to get enough intellectual stimulation to satisfy my seeker brain, trying to figure out what God wants me to do - ending up most days feeling like the guy who tries to keep a dozen or more plates spinning atop little sticks.

Many days find me wondering how God could have entrusted the care of these 3 beautiful little ones to one so scatterbrained, emotional, and random as myself. I pray constantly that God will fill in the gaps where I drop the ball (which lately seems daily).

It's nice to know, as I read this book, that many, many American women before me struggled with this same dichotomy.