Then FeMOMhist took the idea of that post and expanded it, organizing a blog carnival about work-life logistics. While I still think the details of my daily routine are pretty dull, I think that the details of lots of working parents' daily routines will be powerful, because it will be a counter voice to all those voices in our culture telling parents (and especially mothers) that they can't do X, Y, or Z and still be a good parent.
FeMOMhist has timed the blog carnival to coincide with the Blog for International Women's Day, which has a theme of "Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures." I think this is a great topic for the day. American culture sends so many messages to girls and young women that they can't "have it all" and that they must choose between motherhood and a role in the public realm. That is a false choice, as so many of us are showing with how we live our lives. But our reality is often overlooked, and we are scaring girls and young women into limiting their own options.
So, anyway- go check out the posts FeMOMhist has gathered for her carnival. Since I already wrote my post about my work-life logistics, I won't write another. But I will take a minute to highlight some related posts, both of mine and from other people.
First some links to other people:
- Bad Mom, Good Mom wrote a post comparing how she and her husband manage their work-life balance to agile programming. I love that analogy more than I can say. I think it is very apt. And she added a post with her tips for making it all work, which is awesome. She has very good tips!
- The Women in Tech blog had a post up by Kristal Bergfield challenging the myth that moms can't work in start ups. As I wrote at the end of a recent rant- I hate the fact that people try to declare certain careers off limits for mothers.
- This old weekend reading post has links to some things written by and about men and "work-life balance".
- I came across a PDF from EMC, with stories from the mothers who work for EMC. There are several schedules in there, and lots of thoughts and opinions about what it means to be a working mom.
- I keep a running list of scientists who are mothers. It is incomplete and heavily slanted towards women who keep blogs. But I think it pretty handily dispels the myth that it is "impossible" to combine a career in science with motherhood. In general, whenever you hear someone say "that career is impossible to combine with motherhood" you should be skeptical, because I suspect you will find examples of women doing just that if you look.
- I wrote a rant about how men like my husband- who are full partners at home and fully supportive of their partners' work outside the home- are left out of the discussion about working mothers. That post includes some more details about how we split up the chores.
- Lest you think that I am married to the perfect man and we have this all sorted out, here is a post about an argument we had about chores. It was another post that I thought was dull but that was surprisingly popular.
- Here is an older post about our housework logistics before we decided to have our cleaning service come twice a month- i.e., back when we did more of the cleaning ourselves. That post is also interesting because it links to a small study looking at how much time academics spend in the lab/office and how much they spend on housework.
- One of my original popular rants was about how young women shouldn't "lean back ahead of time."
- My post about being a feminist mother has more about the little negotiations that my husband and I make as we both try to make sure that our work and home obligations are covered.
- I wrote a post awhile back about all the ways in which I buy time.
- I also once posted the results of an actual time-tracking exercise I did, which tells a little bit about what my routine was like at that point in time. It was also written back when we did more of the cleaning ourselves. I doubt I spend as much time on chores now as I did then. Time-tracking is a great tool to see where your time actually goes- it turns out that when most people actually track their time, they are spending far less time on work than they would have said if they'd just been asked to estimate it.
- You'll find a lot more details and thoughts on the subject (and quite a few rants) in the posts that I've labeled as being about working motherhood.
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* The actual quote from Kabat-Zinn is:
"I keep coming back to one line from the movie of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel Zorba the Greek. Zorba's young companion turns to him at a certain point and inquires, "Zorba, have you ever been married?" to which Zorba replies (paraphrasing somewhat) "Am I not a man? Of course I've been married. Wife, house, kids, everything... the full catastrophe!"
And a little later:
"Ever since I first heard it, I have felt that the phrase "the full catastrophe" captures something positive about the human spirit's ability to come to grips with what is most difficult in life and to find within it room to grow in strength and wisdom. For me, facing the full catastrophe means finding and coming to terms with what is most human in ourselves. There is not one person on the planet who does not have his or her own version of the full catastrophe."
the unicorn post will forever live in my mind! It is one of my all time blog posts EVER
ReplyDeletejust recently discovered your blog...looking forward to reading some of these posts this weekend! thanks from another working mama scientist!
ReplyDeleteI used to work for a local startup that would have been great for parents. Everyone was out the door by 5:30pm and they rarely had email or work flying around after hours. And 4 years later, they're still around and doing well.
ReplyDeleteam going to be clicking on and reading all those lovely links! thanks :)
ReplyDeleteI had fun reading everyone's posts. I remain completely fascinated by people's schedules. Life is lived in hours.
ReplyDelete"The full catastrophe" - that is too perfect.
ReplyDelete