Anyone who knows me in real life knows that Hubby and I were avid travelers before we had kids. In fact, this blog was originally going to be a place for me to write up stories about a four month trip around the Pacific and Asia that we took. We've managed a few trips since Pumpkin was born- Seattle, Kauai, Oregon, as well as several trips to Arizona to see my family- but these were nothing like the trips we took pre-kids. Unencumbered travel is the number one thing that I miss about my life before I became a mother, followed closely by the freedom to sit in a pub with my husband and get pleasantly buzzed on some good beers.
I know that these things aren't gone from my life for good- they're just on hiatus. And there are some aspects of traveling with kids that are actually better than traveling without them. I certainly enjoyed the sea lions in Oregon more with Pumpkin there to show me just how cool they are.
But for the most part, I view the parenting thing as a trade off. I lost unencumbered travel and beer buzzes. I gained a little hand in mine as we walk and the feeling of giving and receiving unconditional love. Recently, I discovered the number one thing I've gained, which completely compensates for the inability to jet off to exotic locales: my toddler pulling silly faces to make my baby laugh. It heals the soul.
Unrelated aside- I am still adding to my post on scientists who are mothers. I've started putting in links to other posts/articles about being a mother and a scientist. I welcome suggested links.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Who Is Exploiting Who?
One of the interesting little side notes in the housework study that I wrote about in my last post was a mention of the idea that some people have been advancing recently that hiring household help is somehow exploitative.
I don't really understand this argument. How am I exploiting someone whom I pay to do work? I chose my housecleaning service carefully, and found one that provides a decent wage and benefits to their cleaners. Does the woman cleaning my house make as much per hour as I do? No, not even close. But she makes more than she would make working at a typical fast food restaurant, and I don't hear anyone saying that eating fast food exploits the people working in the restaurant.
I have even seen arguments that I am exploiting my child care workers, although, to be fair, those are usually aimed more at women who use nannies than those of us who use day care centers.
Yes, we have a problem with low wage jobs in this country, and with the use of illegal workers that are more easily exploited than legal workers. Some people who employ housecleaners and nannies are no doubt bad bosses, perhaps even exploitative. But I don't think these jobs are necessarily exploitative. Let's address the real problem of low wages and lack of work place protection for these workers, and not heap more guilt on the working women who employ them.
I also don't think that it is the natural order of things for a mother to have to raise her children without any help from other members of her community, be that paid help or otherwise. In fact, as I have written about before, there is at least one anthropologist who thinks that humans are naturally "collective breeders" who rely on our larger social group for help in raising children. I am thoroughly tired of people looking back at a relatively short period of time in which all child-rearing and housework was done by a single woman in each nuclear family and crafting arguments that imply that this is the one "correct" way to raise children.
I think there is something more than concern for the nannies and housecleaners going on here. There are almost certainly some class issues bubbling under the surface- do I think I am too good to clean my own toilets? (Answer: No, and either Hubby or I in fact clean them once a month.) I suspect there are also some issues with powerful women at work here. Afterall, the families who hire nannies and housecleaners usually have women working in fairly high power positions, and maybe that makes some people just a little bit uncomfortable. We must have gotten there by exploiting someone else, right?
Whatever. I try my best to avoid exploiting anyone, but I won't claim my life would stand up to careful scrutiny by someone determined to prove otherwise. But do you know who I think really exploits other women? The women who make careers out of writing books and articles that tell other women that they shouldn't have careers, or that they shouldn't use the resources available to them to enable them to thrive in those careers while also having a reasonably clean home.
I don't really understand this argument. How am I exploiting someone whom I pay to do work? I chose my housecleaning service carefully, and found one that provides a decent wage and benefits to their cleaners. Does the woman cleaning my house make as much per hour as I do? No, not even close. But she makes more than she would make working at a typical fast food restaurant, and I don't hear anyone saying that eating fast food exploits the people working in the restaurant.
I have even seen arguments that I am exploiting my child care workers, although, to be fair, those are usually aimed more at women who use nannies than those of us who use day care centers.
Yes, we have a problem with low wage jobs in this country, and with the use of illegal workers that are more easily exploited than legal workers. Some people who employ housecleaners and nannies are no doubt bad bosses, perhaps even exploitative. But I don't think these jobs are necessarily exploitative. Let's address the real problem of low wages and lack of work place protection for these workers, and not heap more guilt on the working women who employ them.
I also don't think that it is the natural order of things for a mother to have to raise her children without any help from other members of her community, be that paid help or otherwise. In fact, as I have written about before, there is at least one anthropologist who thinks that humans are naturally "collective breeders" who rely on our larger social group for help in raising children. I am thoroughly tired of people looking back at a relatively short period of time in which all child-rearing and housework was done by a single woman in each nuclear family and crafting arguments that imply that this is the one "correct" way to raise children.
I think there is something more than concern for the nannies and housecleaners going on here. There are almost certainly some class issues bubbling under the surface- do I think I am too good to clean my own toilets? (Answer: No, and either Hubby or I in fact clean them once a month.) I suspect there are also some issues with powerful women at work here. Afterall, the families who hire nannies and housecleaners usually have women working in fairly high power positions, and maybe that makes some people just a little bit uncomfortable. We must have gotten there by exploiting someone else, right?
Whatever. I try my best to avoid exploiting anyone, but I won't claim my life would stand up to careful scrutiny by someone determined to prove otherwise. But do you know who I think really exploits other women? The women who make careers out of writing books and articles that tell other women that they shouldn't have careers, or that they shouldn't use the resources available to them to enable them to thrive in those careers while also having a reasonably clean home.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Housework Logistics
I came across a study this week about how much housework academic scientists do. There are quite a few interesting statistics in the study- you should go read it and get the full story. The statistic that was highlighted in the news article that lead me to the study, and the statistic the study authors lead with, is this: partnered female scientists do 54% of the housework in their households, while partnered male scientists do only 28%. Even when the partners of the male scientists work, they male scientists do far less than 50% of the housework.
I doubt anyone is surprised by this statistic. I agree that it is unfair. But I am also inclined to think "so what?" It seems to me that the female scientists have it about right- housework should be split roughly 50-50 in a household in which both partners also work outside the home. The male scientists are getting a free ride on the housework, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they are spending that extra time on their science. For all we know, they are spending their extra time at the pub drinking beers. In fact, the study found that the men and women were spending roughly the same amount of time in the lab/office:
"Partnered science faculty in our sample average nearly sixty hours a week at work. Men and women scientists log the same number of hours (mean hours for men is 56.4, mean for women 56.3, and standard deviations—about 11—are the same as well)."
So this study just tells me that a woman who wants to work outside the home should be wary of marrying an academic scientist. Those dudes aren't pulling their fair share of the household chores, and their wives aren't getting their fair share of the time at the pub drinking beers. My take home message from this study is very similar to the advice I already give young women scientists who are wondering about how to balance career and home life- namely, to choose your partner carefully.
I actually find the 54% number heartening, even though a closer look at the numbers shows that the partners of these women are not actually doing 46% of the work- these couples are using paid help, such as cleaners, to fill the gap. Still, the numbers show a far more equitable distribution of household labor than what is normally presumed to happen. I have written before about how Hubby and I have a very equal split of household chores. Anytime I comment about this on a women in science blog, I get told that my arrangement is not normal. But these statistics indicate that there actually are other women scientists with a similar arrangement.
Another type of comment I've seen a lot on blog's like Female Science Professor is the plea for specifics. The writers of these comments want to know exactly how women with successful careers and "balanced" home lives arrange things. I have replied to these sorts of comments with the observation that the specifics are going to vary for different families. Heck, the specifics are varying within my family for different babies. The things we did to make our lives work when we had a baby who didn't sleep very well are different from what we're doing now, with a baby who sleeps pretty well and a toddler.
I still think that each family will need to work out the specifics for themselves, based on the constraints provided by their jobs, their children, and their tolerance for mess/dirt in the house. However, I thought I'd share one of the things that works really well for us. We use a chores schedule to make sure that Hubby and I are on the same page about what needs to get done and when, and to help us carve out some guilt-free time to not be doing chores.
Here's how it works: I (with input from Hubby) wrote up a schedule showing all of the recurring chores that need to get done. I also included opportunities to pull one time chores from our master to do list. Here is our current schedule:
Every night: dishes, clean booster seat, sweep kitchen
As needed: Make bread (we have a breadmaker, and use it to keep Pumpkin supplied with the bread- often the only thing she'll eat from our dinner)
* pay bills 2x/month, on which ever weeks contain the 1st and the 15th
**run washer cleaning treatment, pick up clutter
Each night's chores are supposed to only take about 30 minutes to do. Every night, someone gives Pumpkin a bath, someone reads her stories, and then I snuggle her to sleep (this last step takes about 20-30 minutes). Petunia's bedtime is so easy that it doesn't figure into the planning- at about 6:45, I nurse her, burp her, and put her into her cosleeper, and then she falls asleep. (And no, I don't know why Petunia's bedtime is so easy. If I did, I'd write a book about it and get rich. I think we just got lucky.)
Whoever is not giving Pumpkin a bath either cleans up the kitchen or picks the chore from the schedule. The person giving the bath does the same once he or she is done with his/her part of the bedtime routine- if the kitchen is already clean, he/she does a chore. Otherwise, he/she cleans the kitchen. Sometimes it is obvious from the chore who needs to do the kitchen. For instance, on nights when "photos" is the chore, I clean the kitchen, because Hubby does the photos in our family.
There are also weekend chores, and obviously, someone has to cook dinner every night. Hubby does the yard work on the weekends, because I am quite allergic to a lot of things in the yard, like grass. I do the cooking during the week more often than Hubby, because I get home from work first. I also do the meal planning, because it makes Hubby really cranky to do it, and I don't usually mind.
This system works well for us. Hubby and I don't waste our precious "adults only" time after the girls are both in bed arguing about chores. We each know what needs to get done every night, so we don't waste time and energy figuring out what needs to be done. It is important that all of the recurring tasks that either partner considers a chore must be on the schedule. This ensures that there are no problems where one person "sees" a chore that the other doesn't, and starts to get resentful because he/she is always doing that chore. It is also important to revisit the chores schedule from time to time, because things change. For instance, we suspect we'll need to add a mid-week load of laundry to the schedule once we're both back at work and no one is at home during the day to do a quick load of laundry to get us through to the weekend.
The system is not perfect, though. We're currently struggling to figure out how to make sure that we each get some nights off without having to discuss it- we want that to just happen automatically if we follow the schedule. Right now, since I always do the last step of Pumpkin's bedtime, I find that I tend to feel like I should be doing a chore- I can't goof off until that night's chores are done. Therefore, I don't get many nights off. And everyone needs a night off now and then. Because if you work your fingers to the bone, and what do you get? Boney fingers.
(My Mom used to play this song while we cleaned the house. I plan to do the same for my kids some day.)
I doubt anyone is surprised by this statistic. I agree that it is unfair. But I am also inclined to think "so what?" It seems to me that the female scientists have it about right- housework should be split roughly 50-50 in a household in which both partners also work outside the home. The male scientists are getting a free ride on the housework, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they are spending that extra time on their science. For all we know, they are spending their extra time at the pub drinking beers. In fact, the study found that the men and women were spending roughly the same amount of time in the lab/office:
"Partnered science faculty in our sample average nearly sixty hours a week at work. Men and women scientists log the same number of hours (mean hours for men is 56.4, mean for women 56.3, and standard deviations—about 11—are the same as well)."
So this study just tells me that a woman who wants to work outside the home should be wary of marrying an academic scientist. Those dudes aren't pulling their fair share of the household chores, and their wives aren't getting their fair share of the time at the pub drinking beers. My take home message from this study is very similar to the advice I already give young women scientists who are wondering about how to balance career and home life- namely, to choose your partner carefully.
I actually find the 54% number heartening, even though a closer look at the numbers shows that the partners of these women are not actually doing 46% of the work- these couples are using paid help, such as cleaners, to fill the gap. Still, the numbers show a far more equitable distribution of household labor than what is normally presumed to happen. I have written before about how Hubby and I have a very equal split of household chores. Anytime I comment about this on a women in science blog, I get told that my arrangement is not normal. But these statistics indicate that there actually are other women scientists with a similar arrangement.
Another type of comment I've seen a lot on blog's like Female Science Professor is the plea for specifics. The writers of these comments want to know exactly how women with successful careers and "balanced" home lives arrange things. I have replied to these sorts of comments with the observation that the specifics are going to vary for different families. Heck, the specifics are varying within my family for different babies. The things we did to make our lives work when we had a baby who didn't sleep very well are different from what we're doing now, with a baby who sleeps pretty well and a toddler.
I still think that each family will need to work out the specifics for themselves, based on the constraints provided by their jobs, their children, and their tolerance for mess/dirt in the house. However, I thought I'd share one of the things that works really well for us. We use a chores schedule to make sure that Hubby and I are on the same page about what needs to get done and when, and to help us carve out some guilt-free time to not be doing chores.
Here's how it works: I (with input from Hubby) wrote up a schedule showing all of the recurring chores that need to get done. I also included opportunities to pull one time chores from our master to do list. Here is our current schedule:
| Week 1 (Cleaner comes) | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | |
| Monday | to do list chore or extra shopping | photos | clean bathrooms | photos |
| Tuesday | garbage out | garbage out | garbage out, pay bills* | garbage out |
| Wednesday | to do list chore or pay bills* | to do list chore or pay bills* | clean kitchen (cabinets, stove, etc) | to do list chore or pay bills* |
| Thursday | garage cleanup** | Free | clean living room, sweep floors | Free |
| Friday | Free | photos | Clean office | photos |
| Weekend | Outside chores, water plants, meal plan, declutter, sort mail, grocery shopping, laundry | Outside chores, water plants, meal plan, declutter, sort mail, grocery shopping, laundry + 1 deep clean chore | Outside chores, water plants, meal plan, declutter, sort mail, grocery shopping, laundry + clean bedrooms | Outside chores, water plants, meal plan, declutter, sort mail, grocery shopping, laundry |
Every night: dishes, clean booster seat, sweep kitchen
As needed: Make bread (we have a breadmaker, and use it to keep Pumpkin supplied with the bread- often the only thing she'll eat from our dinner)
* pay bills 2x/month, on which ever weeks contain the 1st and the 15th
**run washer cleaning treatment, pick up clutter
Each night's chores are supposed to only take about 30 minutes to do. Every night, someone gives Pumpkin a bath, someone reads her stories, and then I snuggle her to sleep (this last step takes about 20-30 minutes). Petunia's bedtime is so easy that it doesn't figure into the planning- at about 6:45, I nurse her, burp her, and put her into her cosleeper, and then she falls asleep. (And no, I don't know why Petunia's bedtime is so easy. If I did, I'd write a book about it and get rich. I think we just got lucky.)
Whoever is not giving Pumpkin a bath either cleans up the kitchen or picks the chore from the schedule. The person giving the bath does the same once he or she is done with his/her part of the bedtime routine- if the kitchen is already clean, he/she does a chore. Otherwise, he/she cleans the kitchen. Sometimes it is obvious from the chore who needs to do the kitchen. For instance, on nights when "photos" is the chore, I clean the kitchen, because Hubby does the photos in our family.
There are also weekend chores, and obviously, someone has to cook dinner every night. Hubby does the yard work on the weekends, because I am quite allergic to a lot of things in the yard, like grass. I do the cooking during the week more often than Hubby, because I get home from work first. I also do the meal planning, because it makes Hubby really cranky to do it, and I don't usually mind.
This system works well for us. Hubby and I don't waste our precious "adults only" time after the girls are both in bed arguing about chores. We each know what needs to get done every night, so we don't waste time and energy figuring out what needs to be done. It is important that all of the recurring tasks that either partner considers a chore must be on the schedule. This ensures that there are no problems where one person "sees" a chore that the other doesn't, and starts to get resentful because he/she is always doing that chore. It is also important to revisit the chores schedule from time to time, because things change. For instance, we suspect we'll need to add a mid-week load of laundry to the schedule once we're both back at work and no one is at home during the day to do a quick load of laundry to get us through to the weekend.
The system is not perfect, though. We're currently struggling to figure out how to make sure that we each get some nights off without having to discuss it- we want that to just happen automatically if we follow the schedule. Right now, since I always do the last step of Pumpkin's bedtime, I find that I tend to feel like I should be doing a chore- I can't goof off until that night's chores are done. Therefore, I don't get many nights off. And everyone needs a night off now and then. Because if you work your fingers to the bone, and what do you get? Boney fingers.
(My Mom used to play this song while we cleaned the house. I plan to do the same for my kids some day.)
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Geek Joy
I have a little task at work that will be trivial with UNIX tools (some basic PDB file munging, for any readers in the field) but that I honestly do not know how to do in Windows. All of my serious techie work has been done in Unix. Windows is for management work. I don't know how to do much of anything truly techie in Windows. In fact, I am having our IT support guy (who reports to me) train me in basic Windows administration, so that I can be his back up and let him take vacation days that aren't interuppted by desperate phone calls and emails from work.
So tonight, I logged in to my work machine and downloaded Cygwin. It took maybe five minutes to get it installed and get some soft links set up so that I can easily access my desktop and My Documents files without having to escape a bunch of spaces in directory names.
It is sort of pathetic how happy it made me to type the commands. I was literally bouncing up and down in my seat with joy. I should have installed Cygwin ages ago (to which Hubby says "Duh!")- I already feel less like a hopeless manager and more like a techie again.
So tonight, I logged in to my work machine and downloaded Cygwin. It took maybe five minutes to get it installed and get some soft links set up so that I can easily access my desktop and My Documents files without having to escape a bunch of spaces in directory names.
It is sort of pathetic how happy it made me to type the commands. I was literally bouncing up and down in my seat with joy. I should have installed Cygwin ages ago (to which Hubby says "Duh!")- I already feel less like a hopeless manager and more like a techie again.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Traffic Reporting by Pumpkin
Here is a conversation I had with Pumpkin on the way home yesterday:
Me: Wow, we're making good time. We'll be home to Daddy and Petunia in no time!
Pumpkin: Because there are only a couple of other cars.
Me (confused): What?
Pumpkin: You can go fast because there are only a couple of other cars. Just a couple.
Me: Oh.
Pumpkin: When there are lots and lots of cars, you go slow.
Me: You're right.
Pumpkin: And that's nasty traffic.
I can't argue with her logic. And yes, I do frequently comment on the nasty traffic on our ride home.
Me: Wow, we're making good time. We'll be home to Daddy and Petunia in no time!
Pumpkin: Because there are only a couple of other cars.
Me (confused): What?
Pumpkin: You can go fast because there are only a couple of other cars. Just a couple.
Me: Oh.
Pumpkin: When there are lots and lots of cars, you go slow.
Me: You're right.
Pumpkin: And that's nasty traffic.
I can't argue with her logic. And yes, I do frequently comment on the nasty traffic on our ride home.
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