out-sourcing parenting chores

A Monday Feeling on a Sunday


Monday Monday

Image by soonerpa via Flickr

And it’s totally wrong. A Sunday should never feel like the beginning of the week even if technically it is.

The phone rang at eight this morning. I’ll give CB props from not calling an hour earlier when his pothead downstairs neighbor woke him with that phlegm soaked hack that makes smokers of any ilk so endearing. Off-hand I can’t recall too many other sounds as unsettling and gag-reflex triggering as someone whose lungs have been used to filter all manner of toxic substance, so while I sympathize with little brother, he could have waited until lunch.

Sunday is the only day of the week I really sleep in. Saturday is soccer practice, and I have to be up by 8:30 at the latest – which still feels like sleeping in after a week of getting up at quarter to seven. I look forward to banking zzzz’s on Sunday. Rob and I even treat ourselves to a longer dvd on Saturday night because Dee has long since been trained to fend for herself on a weekend morning and Sunday just shouldn’t be a “should” or “have to” day.

So I am up, barely, and listening to CB’s recitation of a list of things that are currently causing him stress. I will grant him the right to feel stressed. Losing his apartment and job when he has kids to take care of and in one of the worst job markets of our lives is no joke.

It could have waited another hour … or two. Just saying.

Calming people down and on my feet damage control/spin seems to be my prime directive for the moment. I am good at it. No doubt about that. Twenty years as a public school teacher trained me well. It gets old though. Reminds me of the scene in Jesus Christ Superstar where Christ is being swarmed by the lepers, who are symbolic of the needy and the not able to think for themselves, and he finally breaks down and screams at them, “Heal yourselves!”

Probably I am just feeling that sleep deprivation but working miracles is difficult enough when I am within hug distance but across the phone lines, the degree of difficulty ratchets up.

He did apologize. Admitted that he was overwhelmed and slipped up. I appreciated his honesty and owning it. Not everyone will.

Things are slightly more under control. I have N1 fact-finding this week and with luck by mid-week, there will be solid information on which to formulate Plan … uh … might be D or E by now.

DNOS continues to chuckle and offer warnings so dire I have to hold the phone a full arm’s length from my ear to avoid hearing loss, but I am not willing to write this venture off. N1 is stepping up every time he is asked and CB and xSIL appear to be on the same page – more or less. We’ll call that good.

Tomorrow is actual Monday. The neighbor will rev up the yellow bus in her backyard at some point after 6 AM. Rob’s alarm will go off at 6:30 and by the time mine goes off at 6:45, we might be able to open our eyes to face another week.

I’ve Become My Mother


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.