By Ann Bibby
Does anyone remember Ally McBeal? And her therapist? The one who suggested she find a theme song for herself? I have a soundtrack for my life. I think that most people do. Perhaps it’s not appropriate but The Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go is my theme music of late.
When I emigrated to Canada not quite a year ago with my then nearly five year old daughter, it was with the understanding that I would be taking the 2008/09 school year off. My husband to be was in a position that allowed me to be a stay at home mother for the first time in my child’s life and my status as an immigrant meant that I couldn’t seek employment until I’d gone through the process of becoming a permanent resident anyway. I was set to work on my writing and be just a wife and mother. Note the order of the aforementioned and the word “just”. Telling is it not?
I came of age in the early 80’s. During the “women can have it all” phase of the movement. I fell in line like so many others. Got my degree. Established my “career”. Married and procreated in my middle 30’s - barely.
And I discovered that I could not “have it all”.This revelation did not come as a shock. By this time there had been numerous opportunities for me to observe family, friends and acquaintances in full “having it all” or “not” mode. I still felt as though I’d purchased a lemon more sour than the 1987 Ford Tempo I bought straight out of university.
I was the breadwinner. My late husband was ten years my junior and without a degree, so it was my teaching job that paid the mortgage and furnished us with health care insurance. I was back to work when our daughter was seven weeks old because we couldn’t afford the extra 5 weeks of maternity leave despite the fact that during my pregnancy I’d planned diligently and paid the mortgage off until the end of the year. The reality was that we were a working class family and we both needed to work.
A year later my husband was diagnosed with a progressively terminal genetic disorder. With physical disabilities and dementia, his company fired him and I was the sole income earner with two dependents. I juggled job, child and care-giving for the next two and a half years, navigating Social Security, Medicaid and a world that many of us are merely one catastrophe away from most days.
Having it all really sucked.
Widowhood brought single parenting with it though in reality I had always been a single parent and known all the headaches that go along with juggling job and childcare and the daily care and maintenance of a home and life in general. So when Rob, my current husband, came along and the relationship headed towards marriage and emigrating and the prospect of stepping out of teaching, being a wife and mom and working on my true career love - writing - one would have thought I would have been relieved and joyous.
Not so. I agonized over turning in my resignation. I was depressed when the new school year began without me, and this despite the fact that I was torn about my role as a teacher. I had come to feel that I was simply a tool in the great cog, churning out more dutiful little widgets for the great American economy to grind into submission while sedating them with consumerism.
And the question is why?
Was it because I had been socialized to believe that I needed work to be fulfilled as a person as much as I needed marriage and motherhood to be fulfilled as a woman? Was I half a person only with just one or the other?
I began as a whole person. It was life that sliced and diced and compartmentalized me. My career grew out of my need to support myself and my desire to do that in a way that I found meaningful. My child is a direct result of biological hardwiring that resulted in a baby lust that could only be satisfied by having one of my own. Satiated now, my clearer mind finds the whole idea of procreating again abhorrent though this could be my proximity to menopause too.
Unable to fully immerse myself in this stay at home gig, I find myself looking for work that is not in tune with my passion - writing - but is in keeping with my early training, which is that women work - children or not. A lifetime of employment and paying one’s own bills is not something easily shaken off.
I tell my husband that I feel “kept”.
“I wish someone would “keep” me. When are you going to write that bestseller by the way?”
Last fall I finally got around to reading Leslie Bennetts’ Feminine Mistake which only muddied the waters. I can’t fault her objective or her information. I wondered how much of it applied to me actually as I didn’t jump from the work ship as much as I was beached by Canada Citizenship and Immigration. It did stir up the anxiety. I am only too aware of the precarious nature of life having been widowed.
Some of the points Bennetts made are sound ones.
- loss of seniority in terms of advancement and pay
- lost time contributing to retirement funds
- Social Security retirement loss
- financial strain (though admittedly not for everyone)
She also pointed out that women who drop out of the workforce often don’t have contingency plans in case of divorce, job loss or the death of their spouse (conversely many men don’t plan for the latter either and are caught flat-footed without a will or even life insurance). Although my husband and I planned for all worst case scenarios, there is still a sense on my part that even with just a year out of the work force right now and twenty years of experience, I might have made life harder for myself should something happen to him (and I am no longer naive enough to believe that the unthinkable couldn’t happen again).
There are the non-tangibles too. The loss of meaningful work and adult interaction are huge, and there is the embarrassment - shame almost - of not having what others perceive as a “real” job. I found myself at the Starbucks one afternoon wanting to apologize to the barista for not having a job. Ridiculous? Yes. But still I feel trivial even though I am not. My husband correctly reminds me that what I do is important to the running of our family. We are well enough off for me to stay home but not so much so that we could pay someone to do all the things that I do.
And in addition to all the “wife” and “mom” things that I do, I write. A lot. In some ways I feel more energized mentally and creatively than I have in years. But in terms of income I am not producing, and that is how society measures and assigns value to what we do.
