Some Assembly (and Possibly Some Revision) Required

First published at http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/10/25/october-18-2012/ on October 18, 2012. 

In Annie Lamott’s SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED (with Sam Lamott, Riverhead Books, 2012), the author writes, “To have mothered this young father fills me with visceral feelings of awe, joy and dread.” This statement sums up my own feelings about parenthood. I’m regularly awed when I consider the growth of my children over the years. Sure, you don’t notice each day specifically, that quarter inch of height or the reduction of the curved belly of toddlerhood into the taught stomach of adolescence. Yet, when you stop and consider your child, at whatever stage or point of development, both physical and otherwise, you can’t help except be awed at the utter strangeness of it all, even as it is mundane and expected. It’s like watching a sunrise or sunset, really. I mean, sure the sun is going to rise and set, yet when we take the time to see it, that, too, can be visceral and awesome.

This “visceral” nature of parenting is what I believe is at the heart of this past summer’s “having it all” hoopla. Arguing against brain chemistry having much to do with male and female response to what is perceived as “danger” for their children, I believe it is social conditioning. Men take “flight” and go to work (and remain there) in response to the needs of their children. Women, in contrast, are socialized to “fight” and to remain at home (or at their children’s school or hospital bedside) and to leave work behind.

So, what is feminism supposed to make of both the male and female visceral feeling of parenthood? I think feminism needs to lead the discussion to our social and cultural mores and normalize the different responses to parenting exhibited by individuals. We cannot see fathers who work as supporting families and mothers who work as abandoning them. Maybe as we watch Marissa Meyer take the helm of a major corporation even as she becomes a mother to another child, we don’t judge her or say she’s setting us all up. Maybe her response, though culturally and socially outside the norm for women, is to charge headlong into work upon delivering, in the same way we would laud a man for doing. At the same time, we need to make room for more men to join the ranks of the stay-at-home parents, who remain in place with their young children, rather than go off to work.

In order to accept and commend both roles, a sea change the likes of which all this debate of “having it all” has been about is required. That sea change, though, is not just business and government enacting policy. The sea change is Lamott’s visceral feeling. We must open our hearts and minds to these differences in individuals, and not claim they’re mandated by gender. We need to revise our thinking about the value of unpaid work in this world. We need to value the care a home requires, and the care required by children. This way, we don’t give everyone the “right” to work, while still demeaning the caregiving role.