Stay at Home

Right now is a great time because the school year is over and Jake's summer class hasn't started up yet. So I am now free of teaching and service responsibilities, mostly, and can focus hard on writing, and Jake is free, period! It is so awesome because he has so much time right now and has been doing all of the weeding, and lots of cooking, and of course a lot more childcare too. I guess this is a little taste of having a stay-at-home spouse. Our house is cleaner, our yard looks nicer, and things are just a little slower paced.

It is such a treat and I feel lucky to have this situation right now. I have been able to get so much more work done with Jake taking care of things more at home. It gives me a sense of the kind of advantages that people with stay-at-home spouses get to experience, and I know it's a real privilege. 

That is just part of why I am so disappointed with the recent article in Slate's new xx column, which is supposed to provide a feminist viewpoint, but really, really doesn't. Dayo Olopade, in trying to explain a NYT piece (in which the economics reporter for the New York Times chronicles his descent into unpaid bills, mounting credit, and ultimately the inability to keep up with his mortgage), places all of the blame on the guy's first and second wives. She refers to stay-at-home wives as arm candy, trophy wives, and little better than mistresses.

It's ridiculous and insulting. Stay-at-home moms are not gold diggers sitting around doing nothing all day. They actually (surprise, surprise) work. Taking care of kids all day is work. It is really hard work. (At least, I personally find it hard). Men benefit enormously from the unpaid work that wives do. Men get ahead in their careers because they are supported at home, because they don't have to worry about how the kids are doing during the day, because they have somebody to take care of the house, the kids, the dinner, the laundry, the shopping, and the thousand other details that make a household run. Having another adult making sure everything runs smoothly at home allows a person to focus on work, advance in his career, and climb the ladder. Meanwhile the stay-at-home spouse is willing to make a very real sacrifice by not spending those years building up her career.

I dislike the stay-at-home / work-out-of-the-home debates because from what I can see, moms everywhere are working their asses off, regardless of whether they stay at home. Taking care of kids is difficult, valuable, important work. People talk about the costs or benefits to the kids as if that's all it is about but guess what, the husbands benefit too. 

I have fantasized about being able to stay at home for a couple of years (which, in academics, is not an option), but I know that I probably wouldn't be very good at it. I kind of have a bad personality for it, which is something I didn't know about myself before I had kids. Jake doesn't think it would be good for him to do long-term either, but being able to do it on a shorter term is really nice. I know that I am really grateful for his ability to take care of the home front this month. We lucked into a situation where Jake could go back to school because I bought this house when I was a single gal, only taking on a mortgage that I could afford on my own. We have one more year of flexible dad time and then he'll probably be back to normal 9-5 work hours, assuming there are jobs out there in a year. So I'm trying to enjoy this now while it lasts. I think Milo and Nora are enjoying it too!