Well this blog is developing as a "mommy" blog as a certain reader commented and somehow I am not able to stem the flow... It's just easy to write about stuff that occupies your mind everyday than to worry about Lebanon (Altho' I have to admit, I am particularly touched by this conflict given that Mid Eastern conflicts have been going on for the best part of my lifetime...)
I was reading a blog entry by Rashmi Bansal (Yes sissy, I use sites you've listed and like most of them)... Made for interesting reading on the matrimonial ads in newspapers...Now I have long perused these very ads and found them in varying degrees funny, tolerable and downright abominable...I read her rather funny account of all the various types of women listed by type and degree of wanting to work after marriage...
Unfortunately there isn't any real manual to predict what we're going to be in life and the baby curveball is truly something unexpected. Me for example: Those who knew me when I was "of marriageable age" (Rashmi Bansal, Southies are pretty much as bad while advertising... Check out the Hindu for the TN version of HT!!!) would have left the salary+job line completely blank...I was developing that "eclectic" resume and pretty much had no clue what I wanted to do...Fate or good luck led me to make the only independent decsion I had made in a long time and I married my lovely hubby... with misguided notions of feminism (prodded along by said hubby) I went forth into the world to find my place...And I became the career bahu (lucky me had a non-objectionable type MIL) and did pretty well for myself... Worked hard, first in journalism and then back in science and earned a PhD in the process of figuring myself out... and then D-Poo happened... and now everything was confusing.. this wasn't what I wanted my for child surely? To get up every morning and be left in the care of strangers for the whole day? Will they care enough for her? Will she develop the way I want her to (ABC before she was 2)? What about being at home when the kids need you there? That was the dream, wasn't it? But wait a minute, how about living up to the degree you fought so hard for? The bare knuckle way of dealing with stuff and the untiring energy to do your job that got you respect at work? And how come some days I am glad to escape to work?...
I am now at a stage where I come to work not convinced any more that I am doing the right thing always... That maybe the right choice was left at daycare 15 minutes ago. But then again, I console myself that my daughter will grow up to be proud to have a mom who did something to define herself by and have a role model to look up to in her times of conflict and find it a comforting source of strength. Maybe. But what if she doesn't?
And so I have come full circle... salary+job line blank ... followed by full details on both definitions of success and back again to blank...
Am I better off than the women who feel bad they gave up their job to be there for the kids? Or worse off than the moms who love that they can be? I think it's a matter of choice as Frost did say once ago and all the enjoyment is in the travelling after all. Isn't it?
And so all I can be grateful for is that at least I no longer need to be an ad in the papers...
I was reading a blog entry by Rashmi Bansal (Yes sissy, I use sites you've listed and like most of them)... Made for interesting reading on the matrimonial ads in newspapers...Now I have long perused these very ads and found them in varying degrees funny, tolerable and downright abominable...I read her rather funny account of all the various types of women listed by type and degree of wanting to work after marriage...
Unfortunately there isn't any real manual to predict what we're going to be in life and the baby curveball is truly something unexpected. Me for example: Those who knew me when I was "of marriageable age" (Rashmi Bansal, Southies are pretty much as bad while advertising... Check out the Hindu for the TN version of HT!!!) would have left the salary+job line completely blank...I was developing that "eclectic" resume and pretty much had no clue what I wanted to do...Fate or good luck led me to make the only independent decsion I had made in a long time and I married my lovely hubby... with misguided notions of feminism (prodded along by said hubby) I went forth into the world to find my place...And I became the career bahu (lucky me had a non-objectionable type MIL) and did pretty well for myself... Worked hard, first in journalism and then back in science and earned a PhD in the process of figuring myself out... and then D-Poo happened... and now everything was confusing.. this wasn't what I wanted my for child surely? To get up every morning and be left in the care of strangers for the whole day? Will they care enough for her? Will she develop the way I want her to (ABC before she was 2)? What about being at home when the kids need you there? That was the dream, wasn't it? But wait a minute, how about living up to the degree you fought so hard for? The bare knuckle way of dealing with stuff and the untiring energy to do your job that got you respect at work? And how come some days I am glad to escape to work?...
I am now at a stage where I come to work not convinced any more that I am doing the right thing always... That maybe the right choice was left at daycare 15 minutes ago. But then again, I console myself that my daughter will grow up to be proud to have a mom who did something to define herself by and have a role model to look up to in her times of conflict and find it a comforting source of strength. Maybe. But what if she doesn't?
And so I have come full circle... salary+job line blank ... followed by full details on both definitions of success and back again to blank...
Am I better off than the women who feel bad they gave up their job to be there for the kids? Or worse off than the moms who love that they can be? I think it's a matter of choice as Frost did say once ago and all the enjoyment is in the travelling after all. Isn't it?
And so all I can be grateful for is that at least I no longer need to be an ad in the papers...
Comments
Came here today again through Sissypooh's blog (metoo reading all linked blogs these days :), think will be outta a job pretty soon at this rate !!) Good to see that you are a roll here with the posts :)
Great to know that the job+salary line is blank for you at the moment.
My parents were both working (mostly out of lack of choice) and a big part of my childhood memories is sadly an empty home when I came back from nursery/ school and a random maid who used to pick me up/drop me off :( At one level, it did make me fiercely independent, however most times in those initial years, I was truly lonely.
I am clearly not qualified to comment on "mom" related matters :)) but in mind, I had always imagined that if I were lucky enough to be you someday, this would exactly have been my choice as well. Obviously imagining is one thing and having the courage to actually implement is quite another!
The questioning perhaps never stops, whether one has done the right thing or not, but I am sure D-Poo (which is the cutest name ever btw :) ) will grow up to absolutely love you for it :)
Hang in there and all that...
Rgds
Apologies :)
Love that you read my blog... I think this is something a lot of us go thru not just mommies necessarily... And no you haven't confused me... Me like Bill GAtes am trying to plan my temporary retirement from workforce around 2008!!! So MS and my household will both be feeling big changes... how's that for exalted company!!!
reading your blog, in so many ways, felt like, seeing/hearing some of my own latent future fears, in print.
Have heard variations of some of the same misgivings, fears and confusion-ridden pangs from many of my new-mother friends... and no one seems to have found answers they are completely comfortable with.
I sent your blog link to another friend who is contemplating about going the mother-to-be-way (im doing my bit in making you famous and all that..:-) ) and in the discussion that followed... my question was why is it so hard on women..as in, firstly a)do men also go thru as much trauma abt having to leave the kid in daycare/time away from children b) if not, why is it such a XX chromosome heightened thing? is it conditioning/evolution/something else , what?
And for these reasons and more, I want to thwack that Harvard guy for his "brilliant" paper on why he thinks women make poorer scientists as compared to men! BAH!
In many ways it makes me wonder..who is..or what makes for..a truly emancipated modern woman, when all we seem to be doing is building more compartments in the same existing space as 2 generations ago....
Anyways...personally, i think youre more of an involved-mommy, albeit the cool hard-working scientist type, than a lot others who think they have "sacrificed" their proffesional lives for their children....
like inkognito already said... hang in there...your daughter is going to grow up forever proud of your choices.
There's a whole debate out ther eint he science world... Larry Summers of Harvard fame set it off and thank God got sacked for it... there's a whole series written by this scientist Ben Barres (transgendered female to male at age 40) and how his experiences differed after he became a man... very incisive... you can find it in Nature (scientific journal) and followup articles in NY times and Newsweek too... Have fun with it...
a)do men also go thru as much trauma abt having to leave the kid in daycare/time away from children b) if not, why is it such a XX chromosome heightened thing? is it conditioning/evolution/something else , what?
In response, I think men for some reason don't have the same response to leaving a child behind and somehow are able to switch off that part when the yget to work... I however can't... I think though it's invidualistic since some late career mommies are able to do that and effectively...
However, I do believe they understand the problems of leaving the kids alone for long hours and commisserate with it but only for some men the solution is them doing the house bound thing out of choice... most see it I feel as a chance to do something for their wives that will give them the freedom to do what they want... and that starts off the work specialization... out of house for the hubby and inside house for the wife... not deliberate sometimes and often convenient...