My answer to both questions is three words - part time work. I've been part time since my twins were born over six years ago and while it's not nearly as common/accepted as it should be, it's not as uncommon as you might think - I recommend Work, Pause, Thrive by Lisen Stromberg for those who might be interested in the details of who/how/how often workers make that choice. Similarly I had what amounted to an unofficial job share at my prior employer; I worked M-Th-F and I had a coworker who also had two young children who worked Tu-W-Th. We worked on similar projects and made a point to cover for each other on the other's days at home. It was a great setup and one I've never successfully replicated. If part time work was more common for parents I can see teaming with another family to cover child care. For example, our beloved nanny who cared for our children part time for 6 years just changed fields and started a new job in the financial industry. If she had a part time job I would have HAPPILY watched her daughter along with mine 2.5 days/week and she could have had them both the other 2.5 days.
Also, because work outside the home for pay is not the only kind of work that I do, I have always been grateful when systems have a communal aspect baked in. For example, our church has a Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium for children who don't attend K-8 at our parish where CGS is part of the curriculum. Each room of the atrium has a lead guide and an assistant, and the program provides child care for both of these roles each week if it is needed (and all these roles had to be assigned since each person in them had to have safe environment training). Pre-COVID I was a child care provider but there was always a specified "back up" provider because the idea that sometimes the primary child care provider might have a sick child, or during the course of the school year become too pregnant to provide care, or any number of other scenarios was accepted as normal! I mean, I'm sure the primary goal was to allow kids enrolled in the program their time in the atrium no matter what, but the result at least for me was the feeling that we were all banding together to care for our passel of progeny.
former Atrium catechist here! I know so many women who went through training or would do it, but childcare prevents them from actually being in the atrium. So in our parish, our director has started focusing on recruiting older, grandma type women to be catechists, and they're great, but it excludes a whole army of other volunteers who'd be happy to serve if only this need was met.
a huge problem for any parent is working in a place where receiving phone calls from home is not allowed. back in the 50's and 60's when my sibs and i were latchkey kids, my mother, who was an RN, wouldn't work any place where she couldn't receive a phone call and that ruled out a lot of jobs for her. but, it was a genuine life line. consider someone working on a production line. i know it would be difficult - but it must be allowed if we are to value parents (not just women altho' this often falls only to the mothers) in the work force. i worked for 7 years at a small engineering firm where the key man was a custodial parent. his views on parenting were light years ahead of those of most (male) engineers. when anyone's kid called, he just said 'go'.
every boss should be like that. the company was highly productive because, since the convivial attitude was from the top down, we all worked really well together.
I loved how babysitting my friend's daughter allowed me to fit her into our lives without leaving my own child and also allowed her mother to work. Before covid, I worked 30 hours a week (20 hours of babysitting, 10 hours of bookkeeping work), but it felt very easy and interwoven with the rest of my life. After covid started, I dropped babysitting but picked up extra bookkeeping work - but all of a sudden, 15 hours of bookkeeping work was more arduous than my previous 30 hours, because it's hard to attend to a toddler and a spreadsheet (also, I no longer had childcare for my computer work hours).
I would like to go back to part-time, casual childcare when the logistical burden of quarantines and runny noses is not so great. It was a good fit, and also I just enjoy caring for my friends' children!
COVID quarantine and working from home was the best thing for my family. I can do my entire job remotely and it feels downright cruel to have to return to the office - especially when I am still nursing my 6-month old baby.
My ideal situation is I work part time, fully remote, and we live in a multi-generational home so that grandparents can help with kids, and we can help grandparents to age in place.
In the real world, I'm working full time, but remote a few days a week, and my mom is planning to build a house on our property, so she'll be right outside the door. We're lucky we can make that happen.
We are very lucky to be on 45 acres in a rural area - we love all the space and peace and quiet, and it's a bonus that it's a relatively easy zoning thing to build another house. And it's all due to my mom's savings/retirement funds. We could never afford to build for her on our own.
I really like the trends of multigenerational housing, even from cookie cutter builders like DH Horton. I think it is really good idea, and could potentially lead to better care for older adults.
Belatedly reading and wanted to say thanks for all the lovely comments and thoughts!! I've thought about this a lot, as a lot of writing work isn't easily interruptible and is difficult to set aside, which makes mothering and writing difficult to do together (at least in certain seasons). I think living in community/proximity with other mothers would make it easier, and am curious what possibilities would open up if we shared child care responsibilities and supported each other's work! Perhaps something that will become more possible if more people continue working from home.
Another random thought: I've brought my oldest daughter with me to think tank events and speeches. She brings a coloring book and a snack, and is usually super excited about getting a special mommy date. I think it's good for her to be included in my work, and to get to experience some of these places / events, but perhaps just as importantly, I think it's good for other people to see children included in such spaces, and hope that eventually it will encourage mothers to not feel as if their children should prevent them from entering certain professional spheres. (Obviously little ones have to learn to sit still and quietly, but this is something they also learn from other spaces — church, sitting on airplanes, etc. I think they *could* be included, if we allowed space for them to be there!)
You might like The Anthropology of Childhood by David Lancy. It talks a lot about how moms combine childcare and work in hunter-gatherer and pastoralist societies. He repeats again and again that mothers are valued workers in their societies, and that they need childcare help so they can heard goats and gather berries. He sites one group that has a village square called the "mother ground", where the smaller kids play while the moms sit in the shade and weave fabric.
The book does sometimes harp a bit long on American mothers who the author believes make their lives difficult by doting on their kids too much, without thinking too hard about why post-industrial mothers might feel like they have to do this. Also, not all of these societies treat their kids well, which can make for grim reading.
Would love to read this. Nonparental childcare so mothers could do work necessary to help provide for the family is historically common. The Proverbs 31 woman had servants so she could do the market work that made her family affluent. Ruth had her MIL Naomi as her baby’s nurse. Care by older siblings, village kids, other alloparents is observed across cultures.
In all honesty, this is something that has vexed me as a new-ish mother! I care full-time for our boys and wouldn't want to be away from our babies for 9+ hours a day even if I could. But, stay-at-home parenting has it's own in-humane nature. It's solitary in a physical sense. What I've been fascinated by is Strong Town's work, particularly their advocacy for walkable communities/neighborhoods and varied zoning. (Tiffany Owens in particular has some great writing on this.) As we prepare to buy a house in the next few months in our new state... this is one thing I now see as extremely valuable — not needing to be chained to a car for any outing with our two boys. Ideally, we would able to walk to the grocery store, the playground, the library, a walking trail, downtown businesses, friend's homes, etc. But if I could access a couple of those more easily, on foot and bringing small children... the barrier to connection, outside life, and building relationships is so much lower.
- It's more pleasant for the kids. When the baby starts crying, I can comfort her immediately, instead of waiting until I can pull over.
- My four year old has a great sense of direction and knows lots of people who live in our neighborhood. It seems to make her more confident.
- Everyone gets more fresh air and sunshine.
- We know our neighbors and local businesses better (BUT you have to be intentional about it).
Unfortunately, it does not solve the problem of getting the kids out the door - it's still a lot of work to get little people suited up for the weather, pack diaper bags, etc. Kids don't always want to walk outside, especially in bad weather.
One aspect of women’s communal work and having children be present during the work is the imitation that they can do. I am a singer and whenever I practice with my kids around, it’s their favorite thing to run around the house doing the vocalises that I’m doing, except much higher and cuter and then I can do it. Back when I was in grad school, my daughter came home from preschool one day with a piece of paper she’d drawn on and folded in half that she called her “laptop“ and she would sit down with me or her dad and type essays on it. Back in ye olden dayes, when production of anything (textiles, in your essay above) was a family affair, it was easy to train one’s children to inherit or take over the family business, because they were there the whole time, watching their parents work and imitating them and even helping out with small tasks that they were capable of.
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, as the double whammy of a Covid surge and winter weather has left me without childcare more often than not. My paying job is part-time and extremely flexible, so in some senses it’s “easy” to take lack of childcare in stride…but the bulk of my job is copywriting, which is not especially interruptible—sometimes I have to rush away in the middle of a sentence and then I can’t remember how I was going to end it! Without someone else watching my baby (or him sleeping), it’s hard for me to give writing the kind of attentive focus that allows me to produce my best work. I would love to have work to do that balances better with my other role as caretaker, particularly if it had a communal aspect as well. (There’s a mom in my town who owns a gift shop and nurses her baby while she talks to customers, and she’s who comes to mind when I think of modern ways to achieve this.) But on the other hand, I love the writing work I do and I’m good at it… I just feel this constant tension between trying to grow this solitary career and my need to also care for and give attention to my family.
In April 2020, we moved in with my parents for six weeks. My daughter was two, and I was pregnant. I was working part-time, my husband full time, and I needed help. My parents were healthcare workers and were still going into the office three days/week.
I know this sounds bleak, but it was some of the happiest time we've had as a family. My mom doesn't like cooking, and I love it, so I would cook dinner for her every afternoon, and have it ready for when she came home. She was so grateful to have someone else feeding the family. Then, she would watch my daughter while I caught up on emails in the evening. My extremely social daughter benefited from having more people to bounce off of (and it gave me a break, too). My parents even helped potty train my daughter while we were there! There were four adults in the house, and we were probably doing 100-120 hrs of paid work/week without childcare.
Unfortunately, we live a few hours from them, and this lifestyle couldn't continue after lockdown. But it was lovely while it lasted!
Very intrigued! I think a lot (and not just bc we're in the throes of a stomach bug...) about what a difference washing machines make in women's lives. Even just 60 years ago, my grandmother in the Philippines was using a hand cranked washer/wringer, and not long before that she probably would've been gathering with other women to do the kind of communal work of washing clothes you're talking about. There is no way I'd trade away my washing machine, even for washbasins and chatting with friends in a courtyard. But I'm coming up short with what child-friendly, communal work would look like today. Maybe workplaces with childcare attached/breastfeeding-friendly policies come close? In terms of sharing motherhood, my hands down best neighbor experience was when another stay at home mom moved into the duplex unit that shared a parking lot with ours. We were so physically close -- you could have conversations from each other's dining tables with the windows open -- it wasn't a big deal to come over and just sit in another messy house while your own toddler napped.
I think the challenge is that the ease of washing machines has upped the ante of what we expect in terms of cleanliness. Instead of washing bath towels once in three months, we wash them more frequently. (We wash ours every other week and I would wash them even less if it were only up to me - meanwhile my mother would be disgusted that it’s anything less than once a week.) So it’s easier in one sense, but it’s ease has also made us add more work in another way. In the end, it probably evens out to be honest.
Yeah, I wonder if the washing machine's impact could be equally compared to, say, the car, in terms of what it suddenly opens up for better or for worse. We definitely have more clothes now, and a higher standard for how often to wash them, but -- women still had periods and the cloth rags to deal with them back in the day of handwashing. They went through rags for cleaning. Babies had cloth diapers. That....is a lot of washing!
My great grandmother lived with my parents for a whole decade before they had to place her in a care home for the last year of her life. She would do their laundry for them, because she hated to not be “useful”. One thing you could always count on if you bumped into her in the laundry room was an earful about how “wonderful modern washing machines are” and how she could never go back to washing clothes by hand. She passed away last month at 94 years old and I miss her spunky presence.
In many ways, my remote and asynchronous work has been wonderful as a parent. Its normal for kiddos to join zoom calls and the bulk of work to happen at night or during brief screen-times whenever someone's daycare shuts down. At the same time this isn't work my kiddo can *participate in* or really understand. Similarly, many activist communities bake in child care to their plans, so parents know their children are cared for while they participate. But the children aren't *part* of the work.
One of the things I love about the image of looms and children underfoot is that the physical presence and produce of the work was tangible to the kiddos. They could understand the flow of work from beginning to end, the way the community cared for one another through cooperation and production.
I'm reminded a bit of a scene in Le Guin's The Dispossessed, reflecting on how different it is to live in a city where shops produce goods and sell them right there in the same space, vs living in a society where production is hidden and shops wrap goods in an excess of plastic and tissue paper and boxes and bags. Kids in our society can live a decade thinking a chicken is a plastic-bagged and breaded artificial creation instead of an animal.
My own little intervention here has been to consciously center people whenever my kiddo asks 'how' or 'why' something happened. "How did that building get made?" leads to a discussion of the different tradesmen and women who participated in its creation. Cranes don't build buildings, they're built by crane operators. Similarly for food production (farmers > field workers > truckers > grocery store workers), or where garbage goes, or how water comes out of our tap.
But talking about our interdependence is a lot different from *feeling* interdependent, relying on one another and participating with one another in community. I guess this is a long way of saying a group of houses with a courtyard is very much my dream too!
"I love about the image of looms and children underfoot is that the physical presence and produce of the work was tangible to the kiddos. They could understand the flow of work from beginning to end, the way the community cared for one another through cooperation and production."
Beatrice sees me typing and says "Mommy making letters!" She likes to make letters, too, but the connection to what the work is for is pretty attenuated relative to cooking.
This reminds me of some volunteer work I've been doing the past couple weeks -- my 4yo's been accompanying me to ESL tutoring of a new refugee family, and a couple days ago she came up to me with a piece of paper that she'd scrawled letters on. She told me (after a lot of haltering attempts to get the thought out, ha), "You can use this for English class!" I don't think I've ever found another service opportunity that worked so perfectly for bringing along a young child (who also happens to be learning her letters and their sounds.)
I often think that the fact that most modern work is not complementary to raising kids is THE reason, perhaps even more than economics, that the birth rate is declining so precipitously around the globe. Even as recently as around the 1910s when much of the world was still agricultural (though changing fast), for many families it made sense to have a houseful of children. As soon as those kids reached around elementary school they could begin making themselves useful. Michaeleen Doucleff describes in Hunt, Gather, Parent how in some cultures even today the words "Fetch me..." are those most commonly heard by young kids, as their parents teach them to be helpers. And not only was a child in an agricultural (or pre-agricultural, if you want to take it way back) family helping parents, but the child was learning his or her own future job. Farm chores used to be the same whether you do them at 7 or 37. I also think this benefit of having kids applied equally to parents of both sexes - you can see the parents making comments about children as helpers in much juvenile literature set in the 19th century. When more economy was home economy for both men and women, children were more easily, maybe even rightly involved. I'm definitely here not talking about the kind of child labor that is rightly illegal now, but rather kids being involved in work that is familial.
In the modern world next to none of this applies, outside of a few chores like laundry and dishes. Like another commenter I also work part time outside of the home. It certainly allows me a life with more room for homekeeping and parenting, but it's not a job my children can be involved in at all. At the same time, the things that I must do for their future flourishing are even MORE work for me. Even though they go to school, I'm still their primary teacher and oversee their learning. I must know what they are learning, if they are getting it, and when there are gaps I fill them. "Good" modern parenting requires me to make sure there are appropriate enrichment activities and keep an at least vague eye on the future college resume. It would take a wiser woman than me to figure out how, say, travel sports could be at the same time helpful to a parent's work while they are good for a kid's future.
I don't know how society fixes the fact that having children is almost exclusively more labor, without the sense that children will at any point in their first 18 years help their parents in the business of making a living (they can, at least, help with the housekeeping). But I do think it's majorly under discussed as a factor in our current birth rates. You always see the economics discussed, but rarely the work aspect.
I think modern jobs _could_ involve your children though, especially with remote work. Imagine a sales rep who lets his teenage daughter observe his calls, and pull statistics when a prospect asks a particular question. Or a data engineer who teaches his 10 year old python and lets him do some basic data cleaning while he takes a call with his product manager. The kids wouldn't always want to do the work, or always do it well, but they would be involved in the parents job, and hopefully learn a skill.
It's weird to imagine these scenarios - how would compensation change? Would parents be paid less, because they are teaching on the job, or more, because they are getting some labor out of the children? Are we okay with this level of nepotism? What about confidentiality agreements? But I think it is possible, and perhaps worth trying.
This got me thinking about the Great Resignation. I wonder what impact kiddos watching parents work (and asking them *why* they did what they did) prompted people to rethink the value of the work they do?
The highlight of my childhood was when my parents had a commercial art studio where I went after school every day to work with them -- sometimes into the evenings, or sleeping on a cot while they worked longer. To do real work with one's family? Fabulous. Still possible today with small family businesses of many kinds. Work doesn't have to be paid to be communal, either. There are so many examples of adults and kids working together to make things to raise funds, or offer services.
When I was raising my own kids and going to college at the same time, my life was abundant in co-ops -- first a neighborhood play group, then a large babysitting co-op (could ALWAYS get a sitter who'd been well vetted), and close-knit neighborhoods with good fenced playgrounds and helpful neighbors. And the kids always helped with chores, and after good family time early in the evening, went to bed! So my partner and I could study from about 8 till midnight. Some work needs focus and concentration.
I can 100% confirm that "to do real work with one's family" is a wonderful thing, or at least it was for me. My father owned a small business for 38 years and it was a first job for me and all my siblings. When I was too young to "work" I have fond memories of him bringing me along on deliveries, which often took the better part of the day and meant I (as the oldest and the only one who was allowed to come on these outings) got to have dad all to myself, pick where we stopped for lunch, read books in the passenger seat while he drove, and help carry small boxes inside to his customers. I loved every minute of it!
On a related note, I used to work in an office where it was not completely unheard of for people to bring their kids to work (think elementary aged kids in the summer or over breaks). Usually their parent would be working a shorter day that day and the kid would read or color or whatnot in their parents' office, but I would always make a point to greet the child, try to make them feel welcome, and thank their parents for bringing them in. In addition to the fact that I genuinely liked seeing them, I hope it made things less stressful for their parents!
I do extremely part time work as a tutor and what I make goes towards paying a part time babysitter. I charge a lot per hour, but then I only have to work 3 hours a week to cover 12 hours of her work, so the extra 9 can be spent on other things. Of course the time is never really my own and it always seems to go to doctor’s appointments or taking a nap because the baby didn’t sleep or my husband wanting quality time or whatnot. We also made deliberate financial choices to stay lean (cheaper single car, smaller house) and put that toward the babysitter.
One of my other big challenges is actually the work I do as a mom- I find cooking with two small children underfoot very challenging. I don’t know well how to show the three year old to be helpful, and the 16 month only no longer stays quiet happily in the carrier but is prone to grabbing things (always glass things!) when I’m not looking. I had spent time when I was single practicing my cooking but I hadn’t really done it with an eye toward easy recipes. It might not have helped anyway, since I developed food allergies and then my husband started having food sensitivities as well. My husband has suggested finding more recipes but I find that they are either allergy friendly (but complicated and/or “too bland” (Indian tastebuds)) or contain too few many ingredients that require significant modifications. I am surprised that more recipes are not designed to be easier to make with children underfoot. It seems today that the loudest contingent are always advocating for some new gadget - instapot! Air fryer! - that doesn’t actually solve anything and just requires more work to actually learn how to use.
The same goes for home organization. The number of books that just expect you to be able to go through your house solo with a clear head is impressive. Not a single of the books I read had any suggestions for how to declutter or reorganize with small children underfoot. The best I got was advice on how to get your ten and twelve year old to clean with you on weekends. Very very different situation obviously.
I agree with both of Cecilia's tips, and I'll add two more of my own (I have 3 kids 6 and under, I know the struggles of making dinner with kids underfoot!)
1. Definitely do prep in stages, but even more so, do prep while they are eating either meals or snacks. When I had 3 under 4 I would prepare their lunches, strap them into their high chairs, and do prep work while they ate. I would sneak bites of my lunch while prepping or (more likely) after the kids were done and off to play. Our dining room table is right on the other side of the counter where I do most of my prep work, so I was always facing them and merely two steps away in case of shenanigans, but if I had wanted to be closer I could have simply worked at the same table where they were eating.
2. It's fine to have certain toys/activities that they only have access to while you are working in the kitchen. For my twin boys I had a "rice bin", an underbed storage Tupperware filled with uncooked rice that they could drive trucks through, pour from an old measuring cup through a toilet paper tube, etc. These days my 3 year old daughter loves to paint and draw so I keep a Melissa and Doug WaterWow pad tucked behind the fruit bowl and if I am making something that she can't help with I will hand that to her which buys me at least 10 minutes. Play dough and puzzles are other ideas that will keep little hands busy while in your sight at the table or the counter while you work.
Finally, I will give a small defense of my beloved (off brand version of the) Instant Pot - I held out for a few years but what finally convinced me was that I could use it to cook rice without having to be in the kitchen to make sure it didn't burn or boil over (which happened several times when I had to tend to minor injuries/diaper blowouts at the wrong moment). That was a life changer for me!
I have kids the same age, and I have two tips that might be helpful for cooking with little kids:
1. Do prep in stages. You can rarely get 30 minutes to yourself with little kids, but 5 and 10 minute chunks are common. When you get one, chop an onion, make the dressing for the salad, etc, and put whatever you made in the fridge.
2. Ignore your kids when you are cooking unless they have a serious problem. Make sure their environment is safe, and has some toys. A 3 yr old and a 1 yr old can play together for 15 minutes while you manage the stove, mine do it all the time. They will figure out that you will only help them if they have a serious problem, and stop asking for your attention unless they have a serious problem.
I have never figured out how to declutter with little kids - I do that when they go to bed or when my mom is visiting!
Honestly I’m not emotionally at the point where I can even accept tips. We have been virtually perpetually sick since Thanksgiving through getting COVID last week. I can’t even think right now about how to do things differently because it’s taking every last bit of energy I have to even muster basic function.
Solidarity. I have trouble remembering when I last cooked a 'real' dinner, vs me chowing down on a bagged salad and doing a hummus + cracker + veg + meat dinner for my kiddo (his fave, my fave cuz it's so easy). I try to remember that we all go through seasons and choose our battles. Of course, the difficulty of this moment (parenting in practical solitude vs communally, a raging pandemic) is also a reminder about how terrible choices have led to the way things currently are...
I'd like to recommend another book on women's earliest work. "Woman's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society," by Elizabeth Fisher, "put the ground under my feet," as Alice Walker would say. Fisher shows that women, not men, were the first creators, the ones whose work was creative. That was of immense value to me in daring to be the only woman in the blacksmithing classes and guilds that enabled me to make a career as an artist-blacksmith.
My answer to both questions is three words - part time work. I've been part time since my twins were born over six years ago and while it's not nearly as common/accepted as it should be, it's not as uncommon as you might think - I recommend Work, Pause, Thrive by Lisen Stromberg for those who might be interested in the details of who/how/how often workers make that choice. Similarly I had what amounted to an unofficial job share at my prior employer; I worked M-Th-F and I had a coworker who also had two young children who worked Tu-W-Th. We worked on similar projects and made a point to cover for each other on the other's days at home. It was a great setup and one I've never successfully replicated. If part time work was more common for parents I can see teaming with another family to cover child care. For example, our beloved nanny who cared for our children part time for 6 years just changed fields and started a new job in the financial industry. If she had a part time job I would have HAPPILY watched her daughter along with mine 2.5 days/week and she could have had them both the other 2.5 days.
Also, because work outside the home for pay is not the only kind of work that I do, I have always been grateful when systems have a communal aspect baked in. For example, our church has a Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium for children who don't attend K-8 at our parish where CGS is part of the curriculum. Each room of the atrium has a lead guide and an assistant, and the program provides child care for both of these roles each week if it is needed (and all these roles had to be assigned since each person in them had to have safe environment training). Pre-COVID I was a child care provider but there was always a specified "back up" provider because the idea that sometimes the primary child care provider might have a sick child, or during the course of the school year become too pregnant to provide care, or any number of other scenarios was accepted as normal! I mean, I'm sure the primary goal was to allow kids enrolled in the program their time in the atrium no matter what, but the result at least for me was the feeling that we were all banding together to care for our passel of progeny.
former Atrium catechist here! I know so many women who went through training or would do it, but childcare prevents them from actually being in the atrium. So in our parish, our director has started focusing on recruiting older, grandma type women to be catechists, and they're great, but it excludes a whole army of other volunteers who'd be happy to serve if only this need was met.
Part time work has been the solution for me.
a huge problem for any parent is working in a place where receiving phone calls from home is not allowed. back in the 50's and 60's when my sibs and i were latchkey kids, my mother, who was an RN, wouldn't work any place where she couldn't receive a phone call and that ruled out a lot of jobs for her. but, it was a genuine life line. consider someone working on a production line. i know it would be difficult - but it must be allowed if we are to value parents (not just women altho' this often falls only to the mothers) in the work force. i worked for 7 years at a small engineering firm where the key man was a custodial parent. his views on parenting were light years ahead of those of most (male) engineers. when anyone's kid called, he just said 'go'.
every boss should be like that. the company was highly productive because, since the convivial attitude was from the top down, we all worked really well together.
I loved how babysitting my friend's daughter allowed me to fit her into our lives without leaving my own child and also allowed her mother to work. Before covid, I worked 30 hours a week (20 hours of babysitting, 10 hours of bookkeeping work), but it felt very easy and interwoven with the rest of my life. After covid started, I dropped babysitting but picked up extra bookkeeping work - but all of a sudden, 15 hours of bookkeeping work was more arduous than my previous 30 hours, because it's hard to attend to a toddler and a spreadsheet (also, I no longer had childcare for my computer work hours).
I would like to go back to part-time, casual childcare when the logistical burden of quarantines and runny noses is not so great. It was a good fit, and also I just enjoy caring for my friends' children!
COVID quarantine and working from home was the best thing for my family. I can do my entire job remotely and it feels downright cruel to have to return to the office - especially when I am still nursing my 6-month old baby.
My ideal situation is I work part time, fully remote, and we live in a multi-generational home so that grandparents can help with kids, and we can help grandparents to age in place.
In the real world, I'm working full time, but remote a few days a week, and my mom is planning to build a house on our property, so she'll be right outside the door. We're lucky we can make that happen.
"my mom is planning to build a house on our property"
This is awesome (and unfortunately so often illegal!)
We are very lucky to be on 45 acres in a rural area - we love all the space and peace and quiet, and it's a bonus that it's a relatively easy zoning thing to build another house. And it's all due to my mom's savings/retirement funds. We could never afford to build for her on our own.
I really like the trends of multigenerational housing, even from cookie cutter builders like DH Horton. I think it is really good idea, and could potentially lead to better care for older adults.
Belatedly reading and wanted to say thanks for all the lovely comments and thoughts!! I've thought about this a lot, as a lot of writing work isn't easily interruptible and is difficult to set aside, which makes mothering and writing difficult to do together (at least in certain seasons). I think living in community/proximity with other mothers would make it easier, and am curious what possibilities would open up if we shared child care responsibilities and supported each other's work! Perhaps something that will become more possible if more people continue working from home.
Another random thought: I've brought my oldest daughter with me to think tank events and speeches. She brings a coloring book and a snack, and is usually super excited about getting a special mommy date. I think it's good for her to be included in my work, and to get to experience some of these places / events, but perhaps just as importantly, I think it's good for other people to see children included in such spaces, and hope that eventually it will encourage mothers to not feel as if their children should prevent them from entering certain professional spheres. (Obviously little ones have to learn to sit still and quietly, but this is something they also learn from other spaces — church, sitting on airplanes, etc. I think they *could* be included, if we allowed space for them to be there!)
You might like The Anthropology of Childhood by David Lancy. It talks a lot about how moms combine childcare and work in hunter-gatherer and pastoralist societies. He repeats again and again that mothers are valued workers in their societies, and that they need childcare help so they can heard goats and gather berries. He sites one group that has a village square called the "mother ground", where the smaller kids play while the moms sit in the shade and weave fabric.
The book does sometimes harp a bit long on American mothers who the author believes make their lives difficult by doting on their kids too much, without thinking too hard about why post-industrial mothers might feel like they have to do this. Also, not all of these societies treat their kids well, which can make for grim reading.
Thank you for sharing this!
fascinating - adding it to my list of to-reads! (the ever-growing list)
Would love to read this. Nonparental childcare so mothers could do work necessary to help provide for the family is historically common. The Proverbs 31 woman had servants so she could do the market work that made her family affluent. Ruth had her MIL Naomi as her baby’s nurse. Care by older siblings, village kids, other alloparents is observed across cultures.
In all honesty, this is something that has vexed me as a new-ish mother! I care full-time for our boys and wouldn't want to be away from our babies for 9+ hours a day even if I could. But, stay-at-home parenting has it's own in-humane nature. It's solitary in a physical sense. What I've been fascinated by is Strong Town's work, particularly their advocacy for walkable communities/neighborhoods and varied zoning. (Tiffany Owens in particular has some great writing on this.) As we prepare to buy a house in the next few months in our new state... this is one thing I now see as extremely valuable — not needing to be chained to a car for any outing with our two boys. Ideally, we would able to walk to the grocery store, the playground, the library, a walking trail, downtown businesses, friend's homes, etc. But if I could access a couple of those more easily, on foot and bringing small children... the barrier to connection, outside life, and building relationships is so much lower.
We picked a house for it's walkability.
- It's more pleasant for the kids. When the baby starts crying, I can comfort her immediately, instead of waiting until I can pull over.
- My four year old has a great sense of direction and knows lots of people who live in our neighborhood. It seems to make her more confident.
- Everyone gets more fresh air and sunshine.
- We know our neighbors and local businesses better (BUT you have to be intentional about it).
Unfortunately, it does not solve the problem of getting the kids out the door - it's still a lot of work to get little people suited up for the weather, pack diaper bags, etc. Kids don't always want to walk outside, especially in bad weather.
absolutely to all of this!
One aspect of women’s communal work and having children be present during the work is the imitation that they can do. I am a singer and whenever I practice with my kids around, it’s their favorite thing to run around the house doing the vocalises that I’m doing, except much higher and cuter and then I can do it. Back when I was in grad school, my daughter came home from preschool one day with a piece of paper she’d drawn on and folded in half that she called her “laptop“ and she would sit down with me or her dad and type essays on it. Back in ye olden dayes, when production of anything (textiles, in your essay above) was a family affair, it was easy to train one’s children to inherit or take over the family business, because they were there the whole time, watching their parents work and imitating them and even helping out with small tasks that they were capable of.
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, as the double whammy of a Covid surge and winter weather has left me without childcare more often than not. My paying job is part-time and extremely flexible, so in some senses it’s “easy” to take lack of childcare in stride…but the bulk of my job is copywriting, which is not especially interruptible—sometimes I have to rush away in the middle of a sentence and then I can’t remember how I was going to end it! Without someone else watching my baby (or him sleeping), it’s hard for me to give writing the kind of attentive focus that allows me to produce my best work. I would love to have work to do that balances better with my other role as caretaker, particularly if it had a communal aspect as well. (There’s a mom in my town who owns a gift shop and nurses her baby while she talks to customers, and she’s who comes to mind when I think of modern ways to achieve this.) But on the other hand, I love the writing work I do and I’m good at it… I just feel this constant tension between trying to grow this solitary career and my need to also care for and give attention to my family.
In April 2020, we moved in with my parents for six weeks. My daughter was two, and I was pregnant. I was working part-time, my husband full time, and I needed help. My parents were healthcare workers and were still going into the office three days/week.
I know this sounds bleak, but it was some of the happiest time we've had as a family. My mom doesn't like cooking, and I love it, so I would cook dinner for her every afternoon, and have it ready for when she came home. She was so grateful to have someone else feeding the family. Then, she would watch my daughter while I caught up on emails in the evening. My extremely social daughter benefited from having more people to bounce off of (and it gave me a break, too). My parents even helped potty train my daughter while we were there! There were four adults in the house, and we were probably doing 100-120 hrs of paid work/week without childcare.
Unfortunately, we live a few hours from them, and this lifestyle couldn't continue after lockdown. But it was lovely while it lasted!
Very intrigued! I think a lot (and not just bc we're in the throes of a stomach bug...) about what a difference washing machines make in women's lives. Even just 60 years ago, my grandmother in the Philippines was using a hand cranked washer/wringer, and not long before that she probably would've been gathering with other women to do the kind of communal work of washing clothes you're talking about. There is no way I'd trade away my washing machine, even for washbasins and chatting with friends in a courtyard. But I'm coming up short with what child-friendly, communal work would look like today. Maybe workplaces with childcare attached/breastfeeding-friendly policies come close? In terms of sharing motherhood, my hands down best neighbor experience was when another stay at home mom moved into the duplex unit that shared a parking lot with ours. We were so physically close -- you could have conversations from each other's dining tables with the windows open -- it wasn't a big deal to come over and just sit in another messy house while your own toddler napped.
I think the challenge is that the ease of washing machines has upped the ante of what we expect in terms of cleanliness. Instead of washing bath towels once in three months, we wash them more frequently. (We wash ours every other week and I would wash them even less if it were only up to me - meanwhile my mother would be disgusted that it’s anything less than once a week.) So it’s easier in one sense, but it’s ease has also made us add more work in another way. In the end, it probably evens out to be honest.
Yeah, I wonder if the washing machine's impact could be equally compared to, say, the car, in terms of what it suddenly opens up for better or for worse. We definitely have more clothes now, and a higher standard for how often to wash them, but -- women still had periods and the cloth rags to deal with them back in the day of handwashing. They went through rags for cleaning. Babies had cloth diapers. That....is a lot of washing!
My great grandmother lived with my parents for a whole decade before they had to place her in a care home for the last year of her life. She would do their laundry for them, because she hated to not be “useful”. One thing you could always count on if you bumped into her in the laundry room was an earful about how “wonderful modern washing machines are” and how she could never go back to washing clothes by hand. She passed away last month at 94 years old and I miss her spunky presence.
I love how they gave her job that was something she could feel proud of doing and was also something she could handle!
In many ways, my remote and asynchronous work has been wonderful as a parent. Its normal for kiddos to join zoom calls and the bulk of work to happen at night or during brief screen-times whenever someone's daycare shuts down. At the same time this isn't work my kiddo can *participate in* or really understand. Similarly, many activist communities bake in child care to their plans, so parents know their children are cared for while they participate. But the children aren't *part* of the work.
One of the things I love about the image of looms and children underfoot is that the physical presence and produce of the work was tangible to the kiddos. They could understand the flow of work from beginning to end, the way the community cared for one another through cooperation and production.
I'm reminded a bit of a scene in Le Guin's The Dispossessed, reflecting on how different it is to live in a city where shops produce goods and sell them right there in the same space, vs living in a society where production is hidden and shops wrap goods in an excess of plastic and tissue paper and boxes and bags. Kids in our society can live a decade thinking a chicken is a plastic-bagged and breaded artificial creation instead of an animal.
My own little intervention here has been to consciously center people whenever my kiddo asks 'how' or 'why' something happened. "How did that building get made?" leads to a discussion of the different tradesmen and women who participated in its creation. Cranes don't build buildings, they're built by crane operators. Similarly for food production (farmers > field workers > truckers > grocery store workers), or where garbage goes, or how water comes out of our tap.
But talking about our interdependence is a lot different from *feeling* interdependent, relying on one another and participating with one another in community. I guess this is a long way of saying a group of houses with a courtyard is very much my dream too!
I love this point:
"I love about the image of looms and children underfoot is that the physical presence and produce of the work was tangible to the kiddos. They could understand the flow of work from beginning to end, the way the community cared for one another through cooperation and production."
Beatrice sees me typing and says "Mommy making letters!" She likes to make letters, too, but the connection to what the work is for is pretty attenuated relative to cooking.
This reminds me of some volunteer work I've been doing the past couple weeks -- my 4yo's been accompanying me to ESL tutoring of a new refugee family, and a couple days ago she came up to me with a piece of paper that she'd scrawled letters on. She told me (after a lot of haltering attempts to get the thought out, ha), "You can use this for English class!" I don't think I've ever found another service opportunity that worked so perfectly for bringing along a young child (who also happens to be learning her letters and their sounds.)
I often think that the fact that most modern work is not complementary to raising kids is THE reason, perhaps even more than economics, that the birth rate is declining so precipitously around the globe. Even as recently as around the 1910s when much of the world was still agricultural (though changing fast), for many families it made sense to have a houseful of children. As soon as those kids reached around elementary school they could begin making themselves useful. Michaeleen Doucleff describes in Hunt, Gather, Parent how in some cultures even today the words "Fetch me..." are those most commonly heard by young kids, as their parents teach them to be helpers. And not only was a child in an agricultural (or pre-agricultural, if you want to take it way back) family helping parents, but the child was learning his or her own future job. Farm chores used to be the same whether you do them at 7 or 37. I also think this benefit of having kids applied equally to parents of both sexes - you can see the parents making comments about children as helpers in much juvenile literature set in the 19th century. When more economy was home economy for both men and women, children were more easily, maybe even rightly involved. I'm definitely here not talking about the kind of child labor that is rightly illegal now, but rather kids being involved in work that is familial.
In the modern world next to none of this applies, outside of a few chores like laundry and dishes. Like another commenter I also work part time outside of the home. It certainly allows me a life with more room for homekeeping and parenting, but it's not a job my children can be involved in at all. At the same time, the things that I must do for their future flourishing are even MORE work for me. Even though they go to school, I'm still their primary teacher and oversee their learning. I must know what they are learning, if they are getting it, and when there are gaps I fill them. "Good" modern parenting requires me to make sure there are appropriate enrichment activities and keep an at least vague eye on the future college resume. It would take a wiser woman than me to figure out how, say, travel sports could be at the same time helpful to a parent's work while they are good for a kid's future.
I don't know how society fixes the fact that having children is almost exclusively more labor, without the sense that children will at any point in their first 18 years help their parents in the business of making a living (they can, at least, help with the housekeeping). But I do think it's majorly under discussed as a factor in our current birth rates. You always see the economics discussed, but rarely the work aspect.
I think modern jobs _could_ involve your children though, especially with remote work. Imagine a sales rep who lets his teenage daughter observe his calls, and pull statistics when a prospect asks a particular question. Or a data engineer who teaches his 10 year old python and lets him do some basic data cleaning while he takes a call with his product manager. The kids wouldn't always want to do the work, or always do it well, but they would be involved in the parents job, and hopefully learn a skill.
It's weird to imagine these scenarios - how would compensation change? Would parents be paid less, because they are teaching on the job, or more, because they are getting some labor out of the children? Are we okay with this level of nepotism? What about confidentiality agreements? But I think it is possible, and perhaps worth trying.
This got me thinking about the Great Resignation. I wonder what impact kiddos watching parents work (and asking them *why* they did what they did) prompted people to rethink the value of the work they do?
The highlight of my childhood was when my parents had a commercial art studio where I went after school every day to work with them -- sometimes into the evenings, or sleeping on a cot while they worked longer. To do real work with one's family? Fabulous. Still possible today with small family businesses of many kinds. Work doesn't have to be paid to be communal, either. There are so many examples of adults and kids working together to make things to raise funds, or offer services.
When I was raising my own kids and going to college at the same time, my life was abundant in co-ops -- first a neighborhood play group, then a large babysitting co-op (could ALWAYS get a sitter who'd been well vetted), and close-knit neighborhoods with good fenced playgrounds and helpful neighbors. And the kids always helped with chores, and after good family time early in the evening, went to bed! So my partner and I could study from about 8 till midnight. Some work needs focus and concentration.
I can 100% confirm that "to do real work with one's family" is a wonderful thing, or at least it was for me. My father owned a small business for 38 years and it was a first job for me and all my siblings. When I was too young to "work" I have fond memories of him bringing me along on deliveries, which often took the better part of the day and meant I (as the oldest and the only one who was allowed to come on these outings) got to have dad all to myself, pick where we stopped for lunch, read books in the passenger seat while he drove, and help carry small boxes inside to his customers. I loved every minute of it!
On a related note, I used to work in an office where it was not completely unheard of for people to bring their kids to work (think elementary aged kids in the summer or over breaks). Usually their parent would be working a shorter day that day and the kid would read or color or whatnot in their parents' office, but I would always make a point to greet the child, try to make them feel welcome, and thank their parents for bringing them in. In addition to the fact that I genuinely liked seeing them, I hope it made things less stressful for their parents!
I do extremely part time work as a tutor and what I make goes towards paying a part time babysitter. I charge a lot per hour, but then I only have to work 3 hours a week to cover 12 hours of her work, so the extra 9 can be spent on other things. Of course the time is never really my own and it always seems to go to doctor’s appointments or taking a nap because the baby didn’t sleep or my husband wanting quality time or whatnot. We also made deliberate financial choices to stay lean (cheaper single car, smaller house) and put that toward the babysitter.
One of my other big challenges is actually the work I do as a mom- I find cooking with two small children underfoot very challenging. I don’t know well how to show the three year old to be helpful, and the 16 month only no longer stays quiet happily in the carrier but is prone to grabbing things (always glass things!) when I’m not looking. I had spent time when I was single practicing my cooking but I hadn’t really done it with an eye toward easy recipes. It might not have helped anyway, since I developed food allergies and then my husband started having food sensitivities as well. My husband has suggested finding more recipes but I find that they are either allergy friendly (but complicated and/or “too bland” (Indian tastebuds)) or contain too few many ingredients that require significant modifications. I am surprised that more recipes are not designed to be easier to make with children underfoot. It seems today that the loudest contingent are always advocating for some new gadget - instapot! Air fryer! - that doesn’t actually solve anything and just requires more work to actually learn how to use.
The same goes for home organization. The number of books that just expect you to be able to go through your house solo with a clear head is impressive. Not a single of the books I read had any suggestions for how to declutter or reorganize with small children underfoot. The best I got was advice on how to get your ten and twelve year old to clean with you on weekends. Very very different situation obviously.
I agree with both of Cecilia's tips, and I'll add two more of my own (I have 3 kids 6 and under, I know the struggles of making dinner with kids underfoot!)
1. Definitely do prep in stages, but even more so, do prep while they are eating either meals or snacks. When I had 3 under 4 I would prepare their lunches, strap them into their high chairs, and do prep work while they ate. I would sneak bites of my lunch while prepping or (more likely) after the kids were done and off to play. Our dining room table is right on the other side of the counter where I do most of my prep work, so I was always facing them and merely two steps away in case of shenanigans, but if I had wanted to be closer I could have simply worked at the same table where they were eating.
2. It's fine to have certain toys/activities that they only have access to while you are working in the kitchen. For my twin boys I had a "rice bin", an underbed storage Tupperware filled with uncooked rice that they could drive trucks through, pour from an old measuring cup through a toilet paper tube, etc. These days my 3 year old daughter loves to paint and draw so I keep a Melissa and Doug WaterWow pad tucked behind the fruit bowl and if I am making something that she can't help with I will hand that to her which buys me at least 10 minutes. Play dough and puzzles are other ideas that will keep little hands busy while in your sight at the table or the counter while you work.
Finally, I will give a small defense of my beloved (off brand version of the) Instant Pot - I held out for a few years but what finally convinced me was that I could use it to cook rice without having to be in the kitchen to make sure it didn't burn or boil over (which happened several times when I had to tend to minor injuries/diaper blowouts at the wrong moment). That was a life changer for me!
I have kids the same age, and I have two tips that might be helpful for cooking with little kids:
1. Do prep in stages. You can rarely get 30 minutes to yourself with little kids, but 5 and 10 minute chunks are common. When you get one, chop an onion, make the dressing for the salad, etc, and put whatever you made in the fridge.
2. Ignore your kids when you are cooking unless they have a serious problem. Make sure their environment is safe, and has some toys. A 3 yr old and a 1 yr old can play together for 15 minutes while you manage the stove, mine do it all the time. They will figure out that you will only help them if they have a serious problem, and stop asking for your attention unless they have a serious problem.
I have never figured out how to declutter with little kids - I do that when they go to bed or when my mom is visiting!
Honestly I’m not emotionally at the point where I can even accept tips. We have been virtually perpetually sick since Thanksgiving through getting COVID last week. I can’t even think right now about how to do things differently because it’s taking every last bit of energy I have to even muster basic function.
That is really hard. I hope things get better soon.
Solidarity. I have trouble remembering when I last cooked a 'real' dinner, vs me chowing down on a bagged salad and doing a hummus + cracker + veg + meat dinner for my kiddo (his fave, my fave cuz it's so easy). I try to remember that we all go through seasons and choose our battles. Of course, the difficulty of this moment (parenting in practical solitude vs communally, a raging pandemic) is also a reminder about how terrible choices have led to the way things currently are...
Ugh, good luck! Parenting while sick is so hard.
I'd like to recommend another book on women's earliest work. "Woman's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society," by Elizabeth Fisher, "put the ground under my feet," as Alice Walker would say. Fisher shows that women, not men, were the first creators, the ones whose work was creative. That was of immense value to me in daring to be the only woman in the blacksmithing classes and guilds that enabled me to make a career as an artist-blacksmith.