What I do– what parents do– is work, actually.

[brigid]

I’ve been seeing a little bit of discussion floating around on the intarnutwebizenbloggz lately about “stay at home parents” and how it’s foolish and short sighted to call what a parent who does not work outside of the home does as “work.” Because it’s not! Parenting should be joy and sweetness and light and we should never ever ever make our kids feel they are a burden!

Except here’s the thing.

If you walked up to someone who wasn’t related to you and said “Hey, could you spend 12 or more hours alone with my kid(s) cooking and serving healthful, nutritious meals and snacks; scraping poop off the underside of his nuts; potty training him; cleaning up after him; teaching him colors, numbers, shapes, the alphabet, rhyming songs, and which feet his shoes go on; reading the same book six times in a row; etc PS YOU WILL NOT GET PAID ANY MONEY, you won’t get any sort of health benefits, and you won’t accrue any kind of retirement benefits except a kid who might decide to put you in a crappy home, and society will look at you like a giant sucking leech” they would look at you like you’d lost touch with reality in a very big way.

When stay at home parents tell people they are stay at home parents, unless those people are ALSO stay at home parents, there’s this expectation that the parent staying at home is just goofing off and having fun all day. Perhaps a sofa and bonbons are involved. And don’t get me wrong! I’m a stay at home parent and I love huge chunks of it; vast swaths of it. My kid is HILARIOUS. We sing songs together and dance in the kitchen and he cracks himself up with jokes I don’t understand yet. But I also work really hard trying to prepare him for school and for life, trying to help him become a human being who can function in and contribute to human society.

And people who do that kind of work, whether it’s a stay at home parent or a paid child care provider, are generally treated like crap. Because it’s “just” child care… which HAPPENS to be “woman’s work.” And in the USA, as in many other countries, jobs that are “woman’s work” (like cooking, cleaning, child care, teaching) are shit jobs. They have shit pay, shit benefits, shit hours, shit job security, and no respect. What’s that you say? Teaching is an honorable profession? Ah. That must explain why so many teachers are getting laid off, having their benefits stripped, and expected to work more hours for less pay. There’s no government bailout for our schools but Wall Street? Let’s give them some money and tax breaks while telling teacher’s unions to go screw.

By insisting that parenting isn’t work, parenting is devalued.

The act of washing laundry is work. The act of cooking a meal is work. The act of cleaning a pile of ground up cheerios off the floor is work. Teaching a child the alphabet is work.

It can be enjoyable work! Just like hand crafting a mahogany table, rebuilding a car engine, sculpting a statue, or writing a poem can be work. But it is still work. And how many jobs– how many careers– are there where people are expected to work for nothing more than love?

You can’t eat love. You can’t pay rent with love. You can’t retire on love.

Parenting is hard work that can take your all. It’s stressful. It’s difficult. Sometimes, it’s dangerous. It’s work that is forced upon some people whether they want it or not. It’s frequently enjoyable. But it’s still work. And saying that it isn’t work sets a dangerous precedent that strips parents of dignity and respect and puts children in a dangerous place. Because if we’re not respecting and supporting parents, we aren’t respecting and supporting kids, either. If parenting isn’t work, then new parents don’t really need maternity/paternity leave, do they? Or child care subsidies? Or respite care? Or subsidized insurance? Or WIC? Or La Leche League? Or postpartum support? Because parenting, child care, is all long sweet walks in the park and “got your nose” games and fun sunshine times, right?

Except it’s not.

It’s work. Unpaid, disrespected, difficult, stressful, wonderful, awesome work.

Technorati Tags: parenting, sahm, sahp, social justice, stay at home mom, stay at home parent, toddler, working mom, working parent

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

Comments

[niqaeli]

God, I don't even have kids and sing it. Housekeeping alone is enough of an unpaid job to do, much less child-rearing.

Now and then I've baby-sat for a friend's three kids (well, it wasn't always three but anyway, yeah). It's not without its rewards; a shining smile or that look of enlightenment at something explained for the first time, those are wonderful rewards. But it damn well is work and damn if I do it for free. (Unpaid is different than for free. It's a favour. But it's acknowledged as one, and not just something that I do for the pure and joyous delight of being around her children. Mind you, I'm planning to offer to take the eldest to a museum if he's interested in the exhibit in question because he's a cool kid and I'd like to spend some time with him and share a cool experience. But it's still work, because he is a child and not yet an adult. Work I may choose, but work nonetheless.)

But relationships in general, even, are unpaid work that is so rarely recognised as work. Oh, and who usually gets to bear the brunt of maintaining and improving relationships in Western culture? Right. *sigh*

[brigid]

You make a good and interesting point about the difference between unpaid and free. :)

Sometimes, sharing a cool experience is all the payment you want/need. But it's still work!

[cleverthylacine]

I always wonder about people who think stay at home parents are sitting around eating chocolate.

Like, have they ever actually seen any children?

[brigid]

My husband is 7, 13, and 14 years older than his siblings and did a LOT of child care for them, as older siblings often do. But he still continually underestimates what all is involved with taking care of a toddler. He gets worn out after a day of being on-call as primary caregiver and is all "I don't know how you do it" but then a week later... he's already forgotten. And that's with me providing lots of supplemental services like "making food for them both to eat" and "finding things that are lost." Not trying to say my husband's a bad dad or lazy or anything just... people somehow dismiss from their minds the enormity that is Small Children.