I "solved" the problem by writing about my children, until my (ex)husband told me he didn't want to read about the family in the local newspaper. Fair enough, thought I. This constraint forced me to write a personal essay column, rather than a mother-column. Writing short personal essays was good training for the long personal essay that I wrote after the divorce: "Leaving Babylon: A Walk through the Jewish Divorce Ritual." Lemons and lemonade.
Just want to point out that fathers face the same dilemma, especially those who are self-employed and work at home. At the infant and toddler stage, as long as the child is nursing, there are some things we can't do, but once that's over the duties are much the same and it's a matter of how the parents decide to share them.
Indeed! I've chosen to focus on mothers because—with no insult intended to fathers—women in heterosexual relationships still tend to take on the major share of childcare duties.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece, Ruth, with which every mother-writer (like myself) can identify! There is one aspect of writing-like-a-mother that I always share with my students: I am grateful to my children for having helped me select topics to write about that truly matter. How? After I became a mother, I realized that anything I wrote would take time that I could be spending with these amazing, delightful little beings. It made me EXTREMELY choosy about what projects I embraced. Writing-like-a-mother means selecting topics not only that you can DO (yes, opportunities to use your skills can become more rare and precious when you're doing that notorious 'juggling act') but also that are WORTH DOING. Whenever I see a truly trivial publication or one that is not worth the paper it's printed on, I say to myself, "hmm. Clearly the author is not a parent....." Children make us wiser about how we spend our time!
I "solved" the problem by writing about my children, until my (ex)husband told me he didn't want to read about the family in the local newspaper. Fair enough, thought I. This constraint forced me to write a personal essay column, rather than a mother-column. Writing short personal essays was good training for the long personal essay that I wrote after the divorce: "Leaving Babylon: A Walk through the Jewish Divorce Ritual." Lemons and lemonade.
Just want to point out that fathers face the same dilemma, especially those who are self-employed and work at home. At the infant and toddler stage, as long as the child is nursing, there are some things we can't do, but once that's over the duties are much the same and it's a matter of how the parents decide to share them.
Indeed! I've chosen to focus on mothers because—with no insult intended to fathers—women in heterosexual relationships still tend to take on the major share of childcare duties.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece, Ruth, with which every mother-writer (like myself) can identify! There is one aspect of writing-like-a-mother that I always share with my students: I am grateful to my children for having helped me select topics to write about that truly matter. How? After I became a mother, I realized that anything I wrote would take time that I could be spending with these amazing, delightful little beings. It made me EXTREMELY choosy about what projects I embraced. Writing-like-a-mother means selecting topics not only that you can DO (yes, opportunities to use your skills can become more rare and precious when you're doing that notorious 'juggling act') but also that are WORTH DOING. Whenever I see a truly trivial publication or one that is not worth the paper it's printed on, I say to myself, "hmm. Clearly the author is not a parent....." Children make us wiser about how we spend our time!
This resonated with me so much! I have written many essays around this dissonance, both in my own life and the wonderful women writers I discuss here.