When we were children, warm weather meant our mother could safely banish us to the outdoors for hours on end. She would even lock the screen doors and find us our lunch on the picnic table. Getting back inside for any reason other than using the bathroom called for inventiveness and mom usually would just hand us whatever we asked for and closed the door with us on the other side.
Today, I became my mom.
BabyDaughter and NephewTwo have been told that the indoors is off limits because it is a beautiful day out and their grandparents are sleeping. I haven’t hooked the screen doors but I am beginning to understand why mom did all those decades ago. Just putting the indoors off limits have made them infinitely more attractive than anything they could be doing outside. And they have plenty to do outdoors.
After a morning spent at the local version of Home Depot shopping for supplies that Rob needs to make a few repairs and to get a new handrail up for Dad, a trip to hospice with mom for more information and the usual laundry and cleaning (wasn’t I supposed to be on holiday?), my inner muse was cranky and wondering when we were going to get a little writing time. This meant banishment for the wee ones.
I joke about how mom spent more time attending to the house and the chores associated with family than she did on actual quality time with me or my siblings, but an article at the Huffington Post today by Laura Vanderkam confirmed that women spent less time in 1965 with their children than do mothers today and this is in spite of the fact that 50% more moms are in the workforce now than then.
Vanderkam was writing about the growing outsourcing trend of parenthood which I wrote about not too long ago. Apparently this type of mothering has a name. Didn’t you just know that it would? Is it possible to be a parent today without being slotted into some demographic or other?
Core Competency Moms are, as nearly as I can tell, women who believe that “quality time” with their kids trumps cleaning, laundry and food prep. This applies primarily to working women as SAHM’s are still spending more time on being the house’s wife than entertaining their children.
The idea is essentially that things like washing clothes, doing dishes and feeding your family fresh food are time sucks. How can you be a good mom and work AND take care of what is basically maintenance that you either aren’t all that good at or just dislike? A core competent mom has a housekeeper come in and with the time saved, she takes her kids to the pool or the park or volunteers to buy cupcakes for the school bake sale (because baking sucks and someone at the local grocery does it better anyway).
Children need to be reassured about a myriad of social issues and how can this be done while folding laundry simultaneously?
My biggest issues with this core competency thing – aside from the fact that there is a difference between being a parent and a hand servant – is that the whole idea is terribly elitist. What does the working class mom do to outsource her housework? How does the single mom shift responsibilities when she is the only adult in the household? Where is the money for all this “convenience” coming from and at the end of the day are we trading the notion of teaching our children basic survival skills and healthy eating habits for a couple of extra hours a week of entertaining them?
How will our children learn to problem solve and occupy themselves if as they age we don’t begin to disengage from their every waking moment?
Can’t heart to heart talks be accomplished while preparing dinner or over the clean-up afterwards?
And if my teenager’s jeans need washing on a Saturday when I’d like to take her to a movie or on a hike, what’s preventing her from tossing them in the wash? Last I checked we weren’t taking the laundry to the nearest source of running water to beat them against rocks. Wash is an hours long process that doesn’t require much watching (unless you are that apartment dwelling working family from whom the laundromat doubles as an outing).
More and more society seems to expect that mothers in particular indenture themselves to the fruits of the womb. I think I am going to pass on this Competent Core Mommy thing. It sounds like more work than I am already doing.
anniegirl1138 
“Core competency moms”–I think I’m gonna hurl at the label alone.
Best bit of parenting advice I ever read was that children should pay more attention to their parents than parents pay to their children. I still think it’s brilliant. Kids, like everyone else, need room to breathe and to figure things out on their own. They do not need their parents hovering every single minute, nor do parents need to feel guilty if they can’t or don’t.
You go, girl! I’m a working mom with a messy house, but who cares? My husband helps a ton, but what’s more important…family time or a dust free home? And yes, The Boy is a huge help – dishes, cleaning, you name it. Still, we just live life, enjoy each other and don’t sweat the small stuff. My mother was a SAHM…she didn’t sweat the small stuff either. She was always there for us. The house was a complete mess – but she didn’t care. She had it right. I would be lucky to be half the woman/mom she was!
Let’s see. I learned to do dishes at 7, iron at 10,(yes, I’m old), clean at 10, cook at 12. I was the oldest of seven. Even when I was in college, my boyfriend and I got to take our five-year-old brother and sister with us everywhere. My mother kept us fed, clothed, and the house was immaculate. The rest of the mommying she outsourced to our grandparents.
preach it, sister annie! i worked 40-50 hr weeks, did laundry only on weekends – teaching my sprogs that if they wanted mid-week laundry, they could do their own – which they both started doing around 12 yrs old!
funny thing? i didn’t start outsourcing til they were mostly out of the house… we did chores together. they devloped useful life skills!