Would Guilt By Another Name Sting As Much?

Mom-101 had another beautifully written post about the push and pull of being a working mother, in which she has to send her kids to "take the kids to work day" with the nanny, because she has to be out of the office on a big project. The post got me thinking about a couple of things. The first was that my kids are getting seriously cheated out of any awesome "take your kids to work day" goodness. We don't go in for that stuff in the biotech industry, possibly out of fears about liability with having bunches of children wandering through the labs, and possibly because we aren't, for the most part, actually profitable companies, and venture capitalists expect us to use their money to make drugs, not provide cool things to the employees' kids.

The second was that there sure are a lot of people feeling guilty about doing the right thing.

Let me explain. The original post mentions feeling guilty, but the actual vibe I got from it wasn't of guilt- more of "boy, this sucked... but my kids actually made it all better." But then a lot of the comments talk about "working mom guilt." And that sort of bothered me, because why, exactly, are working moms feeling guilty? For making the money that helps feed and clothe their kids? For doing the thing that makes them happy, well-adjusted women (and mothers)?

I've written before about how I think mothers have always worked at something other than mothering, and I wrote a comment mentioning that. Mom-101 responded that she didn't feel guilty for working, but rather for disappointing her kids. Which is fair enough, but her kids didn't sound disappointed in that post. (Of course, I wasn't there, and actually have no idea whether her kids were disappointed.) She sounded disappointed, and who wouldn't be? It sounds like an awesome event and I would want to take my kids to it, too. But is that really guilt? And if it is guilt, why? She didn't do anything wrong. She had a work commitment that rightly had to take priority over a "nice to have" event for the kids, so she found another way for her kids to go and have fun at the event while she did the work she needed to do. This sounds like the absolute right thing to do to me.


This got me thinking about a comment Today Wendy left on an earlier post of mine, in which she said that she thought people often conflate guilt with other negative emotions, like frustration, possibly because it is more socially acceptable to express guilt.  Today Wendy's comment has been bouncing around in my head for a long time, and I've been meaning to write a post about it. So I took this idea and ran with it.... Here is what I said on Mom-101's post:

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But is that really guilt?

I’ve been thinking about this off and on all day, and almost didn’t come back to leave this comment because of course I can’t say how you feel and only a complete jerk would try.

And now I’m going to be that complete jerk, because I kept thinking about another comment someone once left on a post of mine. (I get such smart comments… it is the best thing about blogging! Well, that and the chance to ramble on about whatever I want to.)

Anyway, the comment said that she thought people sometimes conflate guilt with other feelings that make us feel bad. So we say we’re feeling guilty, when really we’re sad, or just wish that things could be different. It seems like semantics, but I think it is important, because guilt implies we think we’re doing something wrong and that we should have done something differently. The rest of the world picks up on that and the idea that we ARE doing something wrong perpetuates, when of course we aren’t. We are just making the trade offs that come with life. We have done the right thing, it is just that the right thing isn’t the perfect thing.

So, I feel guilty if I have a hard day at work and therefore lose my cool at my kids and yell. Or, for that matter, when I have a hard day at home with them and therefore lose my cool and yell. But I don’t feel guilty when I have a late meeting and their father has to take them to soccer practice- then I feel a little sad that I’m missing something, but not guilty, because my family needs my income and I need my job to stay sane. Staying for that late meeting was the right thing to do, even if in a perfect world it would have been on a different night and I could have gone to BOTH the meeting and soccer practice.

FWIW, I read your original post and didn’t read guilt. I read “gee, this sucked but my kids are so awesome that they fixed it.” My comment about guilt was more in response to the guilt I read in other comments than what I read in your original post. Sorry, I failed to say that. And of course, only you know if you felt guilty or sad or something else altogether. I don’t mean to imply I know how you felt, or- worse!- that I know how anyone SHOULD feel. I’m just throwing something out there for us all to think about as we try to make happy lives as working mothers.

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What do you think? Does it matter if we say we're feeling guilty when we're actually feeling something else, like sad, or frustrated? I don't feel a lot of honest-to-goodness working mom guilt. If you do, do you know why? What is that you think you're doing "wrong?" Or do you think guilt can come from something other than feeling like you are doing the "wrong" thing?

A Book Recommendation

I just finished reading Kindred, by Octavia Butler. I know- that's not what the sidebar says I'm reading. I'm reading The Rational Optimist, too. I can read a fiction and a non-fiction book at the same time. Kindred is the book my book club is reading this month. I've read it before- I picked it up at random during a visit to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco many, many years ago, and read it then. I remember liking it, and recommending it to other people then. But now I have a blog, and can recommend it to more people! It is the sort of book that sticks with you, so I remembered the basic outline of the plot- a modern black woman finds herself repeatedly transported back to a Maryland plantation during slavery, and realizes that she is there to save her ancestor, who is the white son of the plantation owner- but the details were lost. So I figured I should read it again.

Once I picked it up again, I had a hard time putting it down. It is an absorbing, fascinating, disturbing story. I think every American should read this book to better understand the horror of slavery. But leaving that aside, you should read it because it is a well-told story that will teach you something about being human.

I think my book club picked it because it was on some list of top sci-fi books (I wasn't at that meeting, so I'm not sure). That classification surprises me, not because the book isn't wonderful, but because I wouldn't call it sci-fi. I'm not sure what I would call it- maybe magic realism. But why bother classifying it? Just read it. The Kindle version is only $4.95- that is an absolute bargain.

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You may or may not have noticed that I've switched back to Amazon links. They reinstated their associates program in California after coming to a deal about the tax issue. It is a short term deal and I may get booted out again if they don't sort out a long term solution, so I considered not going back. I briefly felt guilty about leaving Powell's, whose program is pretty awesome- except no one bought anything from them using one of my links. So me staying with them wasn't going to do either of us any good. If I read the rules of the two programs right, I can stay a member of both, so I'll leave the Powell's link up in the corner, but switch back to Amazon for the in text links.

Trip Story: Merced

When I started planning our California road trip, my husband made only one request- he wanted to go to Sacramento. This may seem like an odd request, but he has a thing about visiting state capitols, and he was bothered by the fact that he hadn't seen ours. I agreed, even though Sacramento was quite a bit out of the way, given the rest of the itinerary I had in mind. The only place in the itinerary that it made any sense at all to go to Sacramento was between Sequoia and Monterey- but I also didn't really want to try to drive from Sequoia to Sacramento in one day. My goal on this road trip was to keep the driving to ~two hours per day- i.e., the length of Petunia's nap.

I pulled out my map, and looked for something that was approximately halfway between Three Rivers and Sacramento. Fresno wasn't far enough. Modesto was too far. But Merced- it was just right. So we decided that we'd stop in Merced for the night. The plan was to find a hotel with a decent looking pool, and spend the afternoon swimming. The problem was that none of the hotels on offer were particularly inspiring, so I dithered more on this hotel selection than any other on the trip, trying to decide which mediocre option was the best.

In the end, I went for room size- so we stayed in a place with two full bedrooms, which was nice. The pool was decent, but there was no spa. It turns out that my little girls are wimps and don't like to be cold when swimming (good luck to them when they decide they want to start swimming in the ocean!) so next time I pick a hotel solely for an afternoon's worth of swimming, I should make sure there is a spa.

But it all worked out OK, because the shorter than anticipated swim left us with time on our hands before dinner, and forced us to go out and explore the one place my pre-trip Google searching had identified as a sight to see in Merced: Applegate Park. It turned out to be worth the effort.

The drive to the park took us past the iconic theater that the literature in our room told us was in the process of being renovated.

But we didn't stop to explore Main Street. We headed straight to the park, which turned out to be a large, grassy expanse, shaded by mature trees. Petunia chased squirrels.

And the rest of us chased her. Then we all enjoyed a stroll along the really rather picturesque river.

Then the girls played on the good (but crowded) playground until it was time to go back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. We had dinner at Mi Casa Cafe, a Mexican restaurant across the street from our hotel. It was very good- my only complaint was that they didn't have margaritas, forcing me to "settle" for a Negro Modelo instead.

While I snuggled with Petunia that night, waiting for her to go to sleep, I thought about how Merced felt like a visit to an alternate universe, in which I had stayed strictly in science and gone for a tenure track job. I could see alternate universe me realizing at some point that she was unlikely to land at Harvard, or even a well known state school, and deciding to try for a position at a place like UC Merced, and (if I was lucky) landing it, and ending up living in a town like Merced. I don't think I would have been unhappy, although it is a far cry from San Diego in terms of things to do. But it would definitely have been a very different sort of life.

Then Petunia fell asleep, and I shook off thoughts of alternative life courses and headed into the second bedroom to have another beer with Hubby, and plan for the next day.

We needed something to do before lunch, and pretty much the only thing that was open and even moderately interesting to us was the Castle Air Museum. It is on a former air base, and has a large collection of planes, particularly from the WWII era. We thought there was a chance that Pumpkin might think it was sort of cool.

She didn't. But Hubby did- he ended up taking a lot of pictures, including this one, of a plane that made me glad that Pumpkin isn't really reading yet:

I'm not ready to explain the meaning of that airplane name to her.

If Pumpkin was unimpressed, Petunia was positively bored and annoyed. I ended up spending the majority of our visit sitting on a bench under the wings of the B-52, nursing her. And I got a mosquito bite on my back in the process, which annoyed me for the rest of the trip. Still, it was a cool place to sit and nurse.

Finally, as we were leaving, Pumpkin and Petunia found something they liked- some coin operated rides.

We hung out there while Hubby went over and looked at the stealth bomber.

We tried to explain its importance to Pumpkin, but failed miserably. I think it would have been easier to explain "Virgin's Delight."

We packed into the car and headed off in search of lunch. My pre-trip research had turned up some pizza places, but we weren't in the mood for that. We ended up at a Jamba Juice. Petunia loved her smoothie. Pumpkin said it wasn't as good as the ones I make, and wouldn't drink it. In retrospect, this was no big deal. One lunch of Pop Chips and Pirates Booty won't kill her. At the time, though, I was mightily annoyed with her.  Then Petunia started dancing in her chair to whatever top 40 music was playing. That was cute enough to break my bad mood, and we headed off towards Sacramento reasonably happy with our stop in the Merced area.

Weekend Reading: The Sexism is Everywhere Edition

I have lots of good links this week, all with a feminist slant.

First, an opinion piece on CNN about the popularity of the new "retro" shows, which show women in outdated roles- and how young women today see these as period pieces, much like we view Jane Austen novels. (I doubt the writing in these shows measures up to Austen, though!) Personally, I don't think the shows are worth getting worked up about, but I doubt they are just benign period pieces, either. I suspect there is a fair amount of male nostalgia been pandered to (and perhaps amplified) by these shows.

But I don't watch much TV, so I can't speak about these shows from personal experience.

Sticking with pop culture, here is a very funny piece in the New Yorker about the unrealistic nature of the female roles in Hollywood movies.  My favorite is the career woman stereotype:

"And since when does holding a job necessitate that a woman pull her hair back in a severe, tight bun? Do screenwriters think that loose hair makes it hard to concentrate?"

Of course, sexism is not just found on TV and in movies. @Rambleginger led me to an excellent funny-but-sad-because-its-true Jezebel post about the unwritten rules for women in America. I agree with the last line in the post- I read the post, recognized it was true, and was so sad for my little girls, who will largely have to navigate the same crap as I did. Someone please convince me that it is actually getting better...?

Oh well. Failing that, here is an awesome post that showed up on several blogs I read (including Nicoleandmaggie's) about the phrase "...like a girl" and so much more. Go read it. It is good.

I've also come across two pieces about research that tries to correct the myths about why there aren't more women at the top in business and why there aren't more women in tech. Hint: it isn't because we have babies or because we don't want these things.

I found that last link via a new Women in Tech blog, which I found because Anandi (who comments as ARC here) had a guest post up about how she negotiated her ideal work schedule. The same blog has a great post up from a Microsoft general manager about how she found work-life balance. The blog is off to a good start- I hope they keep it up.

The research pieces got me thinking about the conventional wisdom that tech is somehow a "bad" career for women, because of the sexism in the field. I certainly agree that there is sexism in the tech world, but I also believe (and have argued) that tech careers are great careers for women.

How do I square those two things? I guess I just don't think that the tech field is unusual for being sexist. That other research piece indicates that there women will face sexism in business careers, too, but I've never heard anyone argue that business careers are "bad" for women. I can't think of a single career that you can pursue and be untouched by sexism. You could argue that the female dominated fields are less sexist but (1) that isn't always true (often men are over-represented in the top ranks relative to their prevalence in the overall field) and (2) often, the field itself has been devalued and therefore suffers from low pay or low respect. Given the choice, I'd rather keep my high pay and respect, and just work through the sexism I encounter, particularly since my chosen career offers a lot of other benefits, such as the potential for a lot of flexibility in my work.

(Of course, some sexism is so egregious that you can't work through it. But again, I don't think the tech field has a monopoly on that.)

So I think we should continue to study the reasons why women are underrepresented in some fields, and we should work to fix those problems. But we should also remember that sexism extends beyond any one field or career path, and the solution does, too.

Now She's Just Messing With Me

Remember the post I wrote awhile back, about how Petunia wasn't going along with my plan for an after work run once a week, while her sister was at swim lesson with Hubby?

I eventually decided that I'd stop trying to go for a run, and come home and try to get some exercise in my backyard instead. I used to do Muay Thai kickboxing, and I still remember the moves for shadowboxing. I figured I could do a few rounds of shadowboxing, plus some jumping jacks and other similar things, while Petunia played happily with her backyard toys. I had a grand daydream about how this would eventually morph into me buying a heavy bag and getting to actually throw some punches and kicks.

Well, one thing after another kept me from implementing my plan. I got sick. Petunia got sick. A vendor meeting ran late. Etc., etc. But finally, today nothing was in my way. Except traffic- but even with bad traffic on the drive home, I was home in time to squeeze in a 30 minute workout before dinner.

I got changed while Petunia ate a snack, and then we went outside to "play". It all started out well enough. Petunia readily agreed to go "ai-ide" and insisted that I drag the plastic play gym out for her so she could slide.

I started some marching in place for a warm up. But then she didn't want to slide, she wanted her kitchen toys to play in her little house. So I marched into the garage and got them. She marched along with me, and thought that was pretty funny.

Then she wanted the timer I had brought out to time my rounds. So I gave it to her and went and got a clock to use.

And then she decided she wanted to go for a walk. I tried to ignore her and keep to my original plan, but shadowboxing around my yard while my toddler wailed at the garage door just didn't work for me. I caved, and let her in, expecting her to go find the umbrella stroller and ask for that. Instead, she went to the jogging stroller and asked to be put in.

So I went and got my house keys, and we set off for a run. My asthma has been bad these last two days since we have Santa Ana winds blowing a bunch of junk in from the desert (running is the hardest form of exercise for me when my asthma is acting up) and I felt a little silly running in my loose kickboxing shorts, but I figured I should just take what I could get.

But about 5 minutes in, Petunia announced that we should go back. When I said no and kept going, she actually figured out how to wriggle out of one of the shoulder straps in the stroller.

So I turned back, thinking that maybe I could get away with turning down one of the cross streets and going around the block. No dice. She screamed loudly when I did that.

I gave up and went home. We went inside and I tried to do some sit ups. Petunia helpfully added some resistance by sitting on my stomach.

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All of this will no doubt be very funny to me some day. But right now, it is just frustrating. My weight has inched up since my last post about running, and I now need to loose 8-10 pounds to get back down to the healthy range. My pants are too tight. I didn't like how I looked in roughly 90% of the pictures from our vacation. It is definitely time to do something about this. It is not going to get any easier as I start getting serious about weaning Petunia.

I recently came across a body weight simulator from the NIH. It is a little Java applet that lets you put in your current weight and height, etc., and then put in a target weight. You get to choose how active you are now and how active you plan to be while you try to lose weight, and it tells you how much you need to restrict your calories. I'm sure there are flashier simulators out there on some commercial sites, but this one gets the job done.

I hate restricting my food intake. I figured that I could restrict it enough to stop the weight gain, but that losing any weight would require more exercise. I ran some simulations and decided I needed to add one hardish workout per week and two easy ones. For the two easy ones, I'll walk. I can usually get a 20-30 minute walk around lunch time on Fridays. My current location is nowhere near as nice for walking as my previous one was, but there is a reasonable "out and back" route I can take. I have also started taking Petunia for a walk during her naptime once per weekend. I miss my "quiet time" (really time during which Pumpkin watches shows and I try to do some work or read), but it is actually quite nice to walk around my neighborhood, so I don't mind the trade off.

But I'm still stuck for the more vigorous workout. I'll have to do some more thinking and see what I can come up with to try next. I'm desperate enough that I have even considered trying to stitch together a workout from kids songs with actions. Petunia loves those right now. But I'm not sure I could stomach that many repetitions of "The Noble Duke of York" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."