Parenting and the social (media) contract

While everyone else was having a miserable time in 2016 (and let's face it—parts of that year were rough), I was surreptitiously enjoying the happiest months of my life. At 38 years old, I became a mom for the first time. And so far, parenthood has been wonderful. But I've learned not to admit that too often or too loudly. 

 There were a lot of reasons I put off having kids so long—I was getting my PhD, fumbling around trying to establish some kind of career, pursuing my dreams as a writer and an actor. But mostly, I didn’t want to have kids. I loved my nieces and nephews and my friends’ kids, but parenthood in general seemed bleak, limiting, and unrewarding.   

There is no shortage of sources who will tell you how difficult, how challenging, how gruelling parenting can be. But if I found those refrains ubiquitous and dire enough to put off having kids until my late thirties, I was in for one hell of a surprise when I got pregnant. 

I was at a baby shower for a pregnant friend when I first began to suspect the widespread popularity of the Frighten the Pregnant Woman game that parents like to play. My friend was about to have her first child, and there was, I thought, a palpable malice among the mothers who attended the party. There were, of course, the usual gleeful utterances—“You’ll never sleep again!” “You’ll be lucky if you find time to shower!” “Spend time with your partner now because after the baby comes, there’s no time for romance!”—but there was also a more subtle needling in the gift-giving itself. My friend was puzzled to receive one contraption that looked to me to be a cross between an Elizabethan ruff and a baby pillory. When my friend confessed that she didn’t know what it was, the other women at the party—the mothers, that is—squealed with glee. “It’s a drool bib! You’ll need it soon enough! You’ll see!” Apparently, the unmanageable quantity of drool that this baby was about to produce was a source of profound amusement. There were other gifts like this. The undertone was one of warning: Parenthood sucks. You’ll learn soon enough. You’ll need all this to survive. The phrase “You’ll see!”, especially with reference to imminent parenting, is among the most ominous in the English language. 

When I got pregnant, it wasn’t long before I started responding impatiently to the stream of You’ll never sleep again, You’ll never wear nice clothes again, You’ll never lose the weight, You’ll never have time for fun. My friends, apparently put out that I was annoyed rather than terrified at their warnings about my impending misery, put my snappishness down to pregnancy hormones—a response that didn’t make me any less waspish. 

The truth was, I couldn’t understand then (or now) why people want to terrify pregnant women. Did they not remember that pregnant women are already terrified—terrified of all the things that can go wrong, terrified of giving birth, terrified that they won’t be good parents, terrified that they’ll regret their decision? Where is the value in compounding that terror? Why do parents want to put pregnant women on their heels like that? Is it a way to establish dominance over women who haven't experienced the pain yet? Or asserting their own value by emphasizing all the suffering they've endured? Or is it just a mean-spririted prank to make pregnancy even more unpleasant than it already is by increasing the terror and the worry? 

Now, I’ve gone through the pregnancy and the delivery, and I’m a mom. (That still surprises me sometimes—I’m a mom. Me. I have a kid.) A lot of it has been difficult. Giving birth hurt more than I expected. But being a mom is way better than I thought it would be. I’ll admit right now that I’m lucky. My son is healthy, he’s happy, he’s a good sleeper, and he’s a relatively easy baby all around. I also have a wonderful partner who is an incredibly devoted father. Yes, I have things a lot easier than a lot of moms. I get that. But I’ve also learned that some of the biggest challenges are wonderful, too, in their way. For instance, I never realized that getting up in the night with my baby meant that I would have these incredible, moving, meaningful—albeit exhausting—moments to snuggle and bond with my son. My son who smiles at me in the most heart-floatingly delightful way during 4 a.m. diaper changes. 

And as happy as I am, as much as I love my kid and I love being my mom, I’ve also had my earlier suspicions confirmed: having a kid doesn’t automatically make you complete. At least, it didn’t for me. I can imagine a life where I didn’t have this adorable baby. And it’s not a bleak prospect. Having a kid has turned out to be a wonderful choice. But I can see that it wasn’t the only option that could lead to happiness and fulfillment. 

Now, because I’m home with my baby for at least a year, and because I’m a social media addict in general, I spend a lot of time online. And I’ve learned that there are implicit rules about what parents (or maybe it’s just moms) can and can’t say on social media. And several times, I’ve contravened the unspoken but inviolable social (media) contract about what parents can and cannot say online, incurring the wrath of friends and acquaintances. Unfortunately, I never received a copy of this contract, but so far as I've been able to piece them together--mainly by angering people when I transgress--these are the rules: 

1. When discussing parenting in general, you can only talk about the difficulties and the challenges. Articles that suggest that parenting (in a general sense) can actually be wonderful—articles like this one—are not allowed, under any circumstances.  Further to this point, it is essential to fully educate non-parents and especially soon-to-be-parents on all of the ways in which parenting is demanding, exhausting, and deadening, and to enumerate—especially to pregnant women—all of the luxuries and pleasure that must be given up entirely when you become a parent. 
2. When discussing your own children in particular, you can only describe them in positive terms. It is not acceptable to admit that your children have any negative qualities—only different and challenging textures of multifaceted wonderfulness. 
3. It is never, never, ever acceptable to admit that becoming a parent might have been a mistake. I posted an article like this one  to emphasize that becoming a parent is a choice, and that choosing not to be a parent was an equally valid option. The Moms disgorged their ire at me for suggesting that while not having children and wishing you did was perfectly acceptable, having children and wishing you didn’t was the worst kind of travesty.

While I have no intention of following these rules, it took a good deal of time and intuition to fully understand them. I post them here for anyone who might wish to avoid the censure that I’ve faced, and will continue to face, from the League of Mommies.  

Book Review: On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light - Cordelia Strube

Lucky, lucky me--I got to read an advanced copy of Cordelia Strube's novel On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light (ECW Press, 2016). Friends, pick up a copy of this book. It is dark, funny, crushingly sad, and breathtakingly hopeful.

The novel is written in two parts. The first tells the story of Harriet, an 11-year-old painter and mixed media artist who is utterly neglected by the adults in her world. Her mother and stepfather Gennedy are focused on Harriet's little brother Irwin, whose serious health problems leave little parental attention left over for Harriet. This first half is reminiscent of fiction by Heather O'Neill or Miriam Toews, but  Strube populates Harriet's world with uniquely funny and complex characters. The second part of the novel tells Irwin's story.

The first pages of the novel lack the subtlety that Strube later develops. Harriet is so bleakly neglected that I had to resist the urge to flip forward to find out whether I was in for 400 pages of adults behaving badly and an 11-year-old girl coping as well as she can. The eventual crisis between Harriet and Gennedy does not have the impact it could because Gennedy is pretty static through the first half of the novel. In fact, most of the novel's adults don't undergo the character development that I hoped for. But I stuck with this book, and I'm glad I did. Harriet and Irwin are such beautifully nuanced, memorable, sad, yet surprisingly hopeful characters that the final pages of the novel left me sobbing. And if you have any heart at all, this novel will leave you in tears, too. Go read it already.

GIsHWheS #33

Attention Shaming, or Why I won't invite That Guy to my birthday party

Picture That Guy. You know the one I mean--smart, edgy, intense. The one who knew about Kony before anyone posted the link to that documentary. The one who hosts a fundraiser for the local homeless woman with Lupus. The one you admire, but who always manages to make you feel inadequate. Now imagine you've invited That Guy to your birthday party.

It's a quiet affair--a few friends, a few drinks, a few snacks. Everyone is relaxed, chatting, having a good time when That Guy comes in. He stands grimly in the corner of the room, then as soon as there's a lull in the conversation, he announces that he can't believe that you're all talking about Vikings when Boko Haram is still killing and kidnapping civilians in Nigeria. In the awkward silence that follows, your neighbour clears her throat and mentions that she's been canvassing for the Heart and Stoke foundation. That Guy scoffs and asks her of she knows how many people still die of malaria in Myanmar? Your guests start to feel guilty for having fun when the world is such a tragic place for so many people, so one by one, they murmur a quiet "Happy Birthday" and make for the door. And that's when your old college friend, who's always a few days behind on memes, asks if anyone has seen That Dress--and That Guy flips the f#$k out. He accuses everyone of being self-absorbed and frivolous and not caring about African Americans living in constant fear of police brutality. And right then, you know that he's right, and you are a horrible person, and you had no right to try and have any fun at all when there is so much suffering in the world.

The thing about That Guy, of course, is that you probably wouldn't invite him to your next birthday party because the next day, you wake up and shake off your shame and you realize that, yeah, it's important to know what's going on in the world and to do something to make things better when you can, but you still have the right to have fun every now and then. As much as you admire That Guy, you have to admit that you don't really like him. So you only feel a little bad for culling him from your social circle.

So why do we still let That Guy attention shame us on social media? Because it happens all the time--people who post links to damning articles about how selfish and frivolous we all are, and how insensitive and irresponsible it is to fail to post important, devastating and under-reported news stories.

Here are some of the reasons I've been attention-shamed on social media in the past few months:

• For doing the Ice Bucket Challenge: I was accused of not caring about less popular issues like Michael Brown and the protests in Ferguson
• For sharing a story about the science behind the way we see the colours of The Dress differently while news was happening
• For celebrating the mostly middle-class women in my life in an International Women's Day post

And every time someone attention-shames me, I feel awful. I want to be a good person and a good global citizen. I know that mainstream media fails to report on major issues that don't directly impact the North American economy. I understand that the kind of feminism that is frequently celebrated during events like International Women's Day tends to focus on issues that matter most to white, middle-class women. I also know that social media is incredibly powerful. It has the potential to motivate and inform and unite us. And I can understand why so many of us share the kinds of stories and issues that are important to us on social media--because all of our friends are there, and we hope that they'll see the things that matter to us, and that those things will start to matter to them, too. 

But social media has its limits. We can't make a problem go away just by sharing a post about it. And we're human beings, so our time and attention is limited. Even the most caring, empathetic people can't pay attention to every issue all the time. 

And social media is social. Sometimes, that means being silly and self-centered. Sometimes, we're friends or jokesters or people with our own problems instead of global citizens. Know what, though? I think that's OK. Here's a funny cat video that might help you see my point here. 

So keep sharing news stories that are important to you. I promise I'll do my best to pay attention. I also promise to try to do more than just sharing and posting--I promise to donate money and time to the causes that matter most to me, and to find ways to change the world by changing the way I think and speak and act in my offline life. But I have a favour to ask you: 

Don't tell me what not to pay attention to. Don't tell me that your cause is more important than mine. Don't tell me that I don't have the right to feel sad or angry or hopeful when I see some stories. Don't tell me that I can't care about the world and tell jokes or share cat videos. 

Don't be That Guy. If you're That Guy, I'm not going to invite you to my birthday party. Not this year. 

The World Needs Sheep, Too.

When I heard about the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, I was terrible sad and terribly angry, and frankly, only a little shocked, because yes, we live in a racist world. Predictably, some people are trying to explain why an unarmed teenager deserved to be shot to death by police, claiming that he looked dangerous, or that he behaved in a way that suggested that he was dangerous, or that maybe he had done things that were criminal or threatening. The same gross, icky, stupid logic that racists used to discredit Chief Theresa Spence: that people (especially people of colour) cannot be innocent or credible if they're guilty of anything at all. Maybe Michael Brown was dressed in a way that would make a racist police officer think that he was a criminal. Maybe he got lippy. Maybe he didn't. The thing is, he was a kid. Just a kid. Maybe he was being "good" and the police officer shot him anyway. Or maybe he wasn't being cautious or sensible or respectful, because he's a kid and kids are supposed to push boundaries. Cops are supposed to protect kids, not shoot them. Anyway. I'm angry, and I am sad. And I feel completely helpless, especially when I watch the anger and sadness of his friends and families and members of his community who are expressing their own grief and rage and frustration in Ferguson. And I wish I could do something to help, but I can't.

Not long after Michael Brown's death, I learned that a friend of mine has been diagnosed with ALS. And I felt terribly, terribly sad. And frustrated. And helpless. Because ALS is an awful disease, and I wish that I could do something to help, but I can't. I can offer a hand to her and her husband, and I can donate to www.als.ca, but really, there's nothing that I can do to make her better.

A lot of times, when I read the news, I feel frustrated and helpless. I feel helpless about Somalia and the Boko Haram kidnappings and Ferguson and polluted rivers in Alberta and BC and the ISIS militants and Gaza and Ukraine. I fell helpless when I hear about crimes and illnesses and losses in my own community. And I do my best to help out the people that I know and love, and I donate what I can to charities (though, if we're honest, I could probably give up a lot of luxuries and give more...). But a lot of the time, I really just feel helpless.

A friend and former colleague of mine, El Jones, is really good at getting people to think and act. She organizes rallies, and she uses her poetry to make people see things like racism and violence in a different way. I wish I could be more like El, but that's really not my thing. If I tried to organize a rally, I'd probably end up alone on Barrington Street, getting in the way of perplexed passers-by.

And you know what? I'm okay with that. Because when it comes to activism, I'm a sheep. I pick up other people's great ideas to help raise money and awareness, and I lend my voice on things that matter to me. Because really, the world needs sheep--sheep who care about things, and who may not be organizing the rallies, but who are ready to join and, and stand behind a leaders, and say, "I'm not OK with this either!"

So today, I'm going to donate to ALS Canada. Then I'm going to dump a bucket of water on my head. It's unoriginal, I know. And it doesn't mean that I don't care about Michael Brown or the people of Ferguson. It just means that this is one thing that I CAN do that makes me feel a little less helpless by--I hope--helping out in a small way.

If I like doing it, it must be cheating...

Since February, I've been working at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. While I was a student at Dal and a staff member at SMU, I always thought of the Mount as that other, smaller university. In other words, for eight years, I didn't give this place its due.

I could gush about my new place of employment--I really could. And maybe I'm still in the honeymoon phase. Maybe there are things about the Mount that I won't like after a while. But right now, me and my job, we're twitterpated. I mean, the Mount has a long-standing commitment to the advancement of women. To social justice. To community involvement. And to alternative research methods. And this isn't just a marketing strategy. The values really do shape the way the place operated.

Don't worry. I promised I wouldn't gush about the Mount, and I swear I won't. I just had to work in that bit about alternative research. See, I've been researching research at the Mount--going to thesis defences and research events, talking to profs, students and alumnae, and meeting with the AVP research. And everyone has this crazy idea that you can do research outside of the library and the lab. They do community research, and they do arts-based research.

Arts-based research. It's badass. I met one student, Kwesi Firempong, who wrote a play as part of his Education thesis. A heavily-researched play that was intended to educate and to entertain. And, judging from the exceprt that was read at his defence, it is a beautiful play. I went to this incredible installation at the campus art gallery that was a collaboration between Dr. Marnina Gonick, a prof and researcher, and her brother Noam Gonick, a filmmaker. Incredible.

I'll admit--I'd never heard the term "arts-based research" before. The term may be new--or maybe it isn't; I don't know--but the idea isn't. For instance, I saw some killer documentary theatre at the Edmonton Fringe Festival back in 2004. My gorgeous, amazing friend Heather Fitzsimmons-Frey wrote and directed a lovely play about E. Pauline Johnson.

And guess what--I've done some arts-based research, too. When I was doing my PhD coursework, Dr. Dean Irvine let me write an "essayplay" instead of a regular old essay. Laura Thorton directed a later version of that essay play for Bad Marlowe Theatre in Halifax.

And hey, I am such a hipster that I was doing arts-based research back in high school. My friends Nesta, Kim, Mandy, Amy, and Glen and I created this amazing music/poetry/photography piece for our social studies class. To this day, it's the only poem I've ever written that I think was any good. And I really think it was good. And Glen, Mandy, Amy, Kim, and Nesta wrote a song. A gorgeous frickin SONG.

I remember getting an A+ on that project. Obviously. But then I wound up with a B on my essay in that class. I tried to talk the teacher into weighting the project higher than the essay. I mean, it was just a project, but the essay was an essay. Serious academic work. She turned me down, of course. I never really expected her to go along with it. Because I knew that an essay is more serious, harder, more valuable than artistic project. How did I know? Because the essay was harder. And writing a poem, working on a song, and putting together a sideshow of photos was fun.And if it's fun, it's not serious work.

Here's the truly amazing thing about working at a university--here's why I needed so badly to get back into this environment: working in the Ivory Tower means learning. All the time. It means learning that you're wrong. Challenging your assumptions. Finding new ways to look at things. If I could take what I've learned at the Mount back in time, I wouldn't have taken "no" for an answer from that truly excellent Social Studies teacher. I would have talked to her about arts-based research. I would maybe even have quoted from my own PhD dissertation about the kinds of things that art can do. And I would have smacked myself upside the head for thinking that loving the work you do doesn't make it less valuable. It makes it far, far more important.

Just don't quote me the unemployment rate...

It's January. New year, new job. I hope. I'm job hunting again. This time around, I'm a lot luckier than before: I have some solid experience under my belt, I've finished my PhD, and our household cash flow is decent, so I don't have to grab the first job that comes my way. But the whole experience has me thinking a lot about what jobs are and what they mean today.

I think in a lot of ways, our parents were a lot tougher and more patient than we are. I say this, having left a very good, solid, dependable job because it made me deeply unhappy. I suspect that thirty years ago, that kind of decision would have been unthinkable. I know I made the right decision, but it does have me thinking a lot about what it is that we want from our jobs, and whether we have the right to expect it. Is it reasonable to want to find a job that makes me happy?

And while I look for that elusive job feeding rainbows to unicorns, I ostensibly have the time to do all the things that I haven't been able to do over the last few years, when I've been steadily working 40, sometimes 50 or even 60 hours a week. I used to say I wanted to take a year off to write. Well, I can do that now, but every time I sit down at my keyboard, I immediately end up on CareerBeacon, browsing the jobs there.

Maybe I'm being hard on myself. Maybe I'm being realistic. I'm not really sure. Either way, as scary and frustrating as this experience is, it's making me think hard about some of the assumptions I've always had about life and work, and that's a good thing. So here are some of the things I've been thinking about. I'm going to present them in a bulleted list just because I likes me a good bulleted list.

• Jobs and self-worth: When I was a secretary, I worried a lot about my job title. I imaged that people were judging me for working in an administrative position. And maybe they were. But one of the best takeaways from my prestigious-sounding job that made me very, very unhappy is this lesson: other people's assessment of the worth of my career is deeply unimportant. 
• Job-me and social-me: I've spent a lot of time trying to keep those separate. Trent manages that separation very well, and I admire him for it. But my last job didn't work mainly because it wasn't suited to my personality: it entailed a lot of long hours working alone on the computer. I've come to realize that I need to feel personally fulfilled by my work. I need to be around people. I need to work around people. 
• Bad days and frustrating days: My best friend has an incredibly difficult job working with women in trouble with the law. Many of these women are depressed, desperate, and hopeless. A bad day of work for my friend often includes a tragedy. But she's extraordinarily good at her job, and accounting for the worst days, she finds the position tremendously rewarding. So here's what I need to learn from her: first, there will always be frustrating days at work. Second, a frustrating work day is not the end of the world. And third, no matter how many frustrating work days there are, we all should find a way to feel that on balance, our work matters. 
• A job is never going to make me happy: A lot of people count on finding a romantic partner that will make them happy. That doesn't work. Me, I've been counting on finding a job that will make me happy, and that won't work, either. I need to stop looking outside of myself for happiness and learn to appreciate what I have. It's hard, but I'm working on it. 

I know that job hunting with my particular skill set and education may take a while. I'm working on being patient. And in the meantime, I'm also working on becoming the kind of person who's going to do well at my next job--not only perform well, but also be well, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. I'm working on developing better personal habits: while I'm unemployed, I'm staying away from the television (at least during the day. I'm making a point of leaving the house and interacting with people. This choice means showering daily, which my husband appreciates. I'm exercising, and I'm writing. I may not get a job right away--I'm prepared for that. But I'm refusing to let myself become depressed or anxious about the whole thing. I'm looking for a job, not waiting for my life to begin. I'm already living my life. A job is just one part of it.