Who gets a piece of the cake? How do we know?

I think this is a first in at least a two year series where I take what I’m learning in my Master of Public Policy program and using the concepts to develop my blogging — and more than that, develop my empathy and my activism. For my State and Local Policy Analysis course, we read four chapters out of Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making by Deborah Stone. Each chapter outlined a dimension of policy analysis — i.e. how we know if a policy is good or bad — and how these claims are political and relative. Equity, efficiency, liberty, and security are all goals of public policy, justifications for government action (or inaction), as well as criteria to judge policy.

The first chapter we read was about Equity. I actually have mentioned equity before, in my talk on chores, but in policy we talk about equity because equality isn’t always fair, but equity is an attempt to make a division that is fair, even if it isn’t always equal.

So, what is equitable? Equity is, of course, a political claim. It’s a discussion about who gets what, when, where, and how (which is the classical definition of politics I learned in high school). Or, in the case of chores, who has to do what, when, where, and how. But what might seem straight forward is actually fraught with questions.

How do we define the recipients of a good, or the participants in a policy? A lot of politics has to do with how you define the “in” group versus the “out” group. Since I started with the chores example, I might as well follow through. The current participants in the running of our household are myself and Tim. You might argue that my mom also participates in the running of my household as she sometimes pitches in and does a lot of child care. But I choose to define the household participants as my nuclear family. My mom is in the “out” group; she shouldn’t be assigned any chores. However, Tim and I need to be part of the household management.

What is it, exactly, that is being distributed? When I talk about household management, I am talking about chores that keep our household running; I’m holding parenting as a completely seperate list of tasks. If I were to define household management as inclusive of parenting, it would make sense to add my mom into the participants pool — but because of the way I’m defining the tasks (dishes, laundry, vaccuuming, etc, instead of diaper changes and naps), the participant pool is narrowed.

What is the process by which the good or resource is distributed? I described the process that I used to distribute chores in my marriage already. Part of the reason that process worked was that it was transparent at every step. When I wrote the list, I checked with Tim. When I distributed the chores, I did it with Tim. But other processes might have been seen as fair — like a random number generator. Or a lottery. But it seemed fair to us that we could pick chores that we liked and were good at.

Equity, in some ways, is the most straightforward of these four policy yardsticks, but as you can see — it’s all relative, even as we’re trying to be fair. Different political philosophies might come into this; how you define the “in” group and the “out” group all depends on your philosophy, but these are the basics.

I wrote this as a way to have a framework for my blog, and future discussions. Do you think this is helpful?

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I posted a link to a book review to my Facebook wall, because I was really interested in the underlying thesis of the book, as explained by the reviewer. I haven’t really the book, but I’ve atleast read the review – and the argument was about what the author calls “neoliberal risk culture,” or the conflation of actual risk and social risk. Unfortunately, the example that was used by the author to illustrate her point was one of the most contentious of motherhood debates: bottle versus breast.

The actual risk of feeding your child formula, or the risk of not breastfeeding, is quite small. According to the review, the risk of not breastfeeding is a few upset stomachs. However, the social risk of not breastfeeding (at least amongst middle class women) is high — because of all the propaganda surrounding breast feeding, the decision of bottle feeding without trying to breastfeed is the social equivalent of saying that you’re not doing everything you can to make your baby smarter… and everything else that breastfeeding claims.

Bottle feeding does not carry real risk — rare is the baby in danger because they are bottle fed. That baby would have to have some severe allergies. But in an age of New Momism, the social risk is immense. So immense that women are pressured into trying breastfeeding when it might be better for them to bottle feed — and women who want to breastfeed feel guilty when medication, mental health, etc., prevent them from continuing.

The conflation of small actual risk into large social risk does a huge disservice to mothers, especially, and also society as a whole.

Another example for mothers is bedsharing versus co-sleeping versus nurseries. Bedsharing is considered the most risky, co-sleeping a nice middle ground (if you must have your child close), and a nursery the most safe. However, a close reading of the studies shows that the rates of SIDS is probably equal, and the cost benefits extremely personal, much like breast versus bottle.

I am a bedsharer. There, I said it. Socially, the sleeping arrangement that allows my family to get the most sleep, it’s the most risky. Common perception suggests that I am willingly risking my baby’s life for convenience, even though it was a decision I researched before making. Trust me, I do not lazily risk my daughter’s life.

I’m trying to think of a non parenting example — something where there is a small risk, but a large social backlash. Smoking is probably one, considering how much government propaganda surrounds not smoking. My occasional fast food eating is something I don’t like to admit, so I’d consider that an example of over blown social risk for something with minimal actual risk. I think that multiple sexual partners probably falls into this same category — as long as you practice safe sex, both physically and emotionally, it probably isn’t as risky as our society makes it out to be.

Life is risk, and yes, some risk is more risky than other risks. But, in the end, some things may be more about what works for you.

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A friend asked that I write more about the process of choosing which chores are important, and which ones can be overlooked. She also asked about how to negotiate the standards of cleanliness and the sharing of chores so that in partnership, particularly marriage, they might be fair.

Tall order, dear friend.

I think that it’s obvious and perhaps over stated (at least on this blog, I have mentioned it at least two times before) that men and women are socialized to different awarenesses of the work involved in housework, and if men have had the opportunity to care for themselves, different standards for what might be considered clean. The same might be said for what makes up a healthy diet, among other things I associate with adulthood.

I would not attempt these steps unless you have a partner who believes in equality, and is open to dividing the work that goes into the home equitably. (This means hours of paid and unpaid labor should be treated equally.) If you don’t have a such a partner, you have other work to do.

Step One: Shine a bright light on the work that needs to be done to keep your household moving. I found the housework equality scale from EquallySharedParenting.com invaluable for this — it lists chores that happen less often, like post office visits and taxes, so you don’t forget anything.

Tim and I actually looked at this scale twice over about a period of a year and a half. The first time was really tense — Tim didn’t seem to think that a lot of stuff on the list happened in our home. Truth was, I did it, and he didn’t notice. Even though it was a tense conversation, it was important because it opened his eyes. A year later, he was very aware of the work that needed doing, and who was doing it. Since I am currently a stay-at-home wife and mother, the split was about 70% me, 30% him. I asked him if he thought this was fair, and to his credit, he did not think so. Which lead to…

Step Two: Figure out what chores are actually getting done in your home. Chores are done in my house for three reasons, as far as I can see: for our safety, like washing cutting boards and knives with hot and soapy water to prevent food-borne illness; for our sanity, like clearing off flat surfaces of clutter; and for our vanity, like my husband’s recent desire to wash marks off the wall. This list has the benefit of showing you what’s really important to you, and thus the “standards” already exist. I made a list of chores that needed to be done on a daily, weekly, monthly, and basis — focusing on safety and sanity, and telling vanity to take a hike.

Vanity is beating myself up for not scrubbing the bathroom once a week, whether or not anyone besides ourselves sees it. But if the bathroom is done once a month, the germs are kept at bay (Safety!), and I have the satisfaction of knowing exactly how clean it is. And knowing how clean it is, I can figure out if I need to clean real quick before guests come over.

Step Three: Present the list of chores that must get done to your partner and ask what they think. Ask them if they think that any chore is missing; ask them if they think any of the chores can be taken off the list.

Tim wanted to add vacuuming and dusting to the list. Me? I could care less that things are dusted, and I hate vacuuming. Tim doesn’t necessarily see the need to fold clothes.

Step Four: Divide and Conquer. Once you have a list of the chores that you need to do to keep your household moving, chores that are for your safety and sanity (and not necessarily your vanity), and both partners have weighed in on what chores should be on the list, take turns claiming chores. If there are certain chores that only you can do, or that you’re an expert at, or you really like to do, claim those first — it wasn’t on the list, but since only I can breast feed our daughter, I would have claimed that first. I did claim making dinner first, because after a day of childcare, making dinner makes me feel human again.

Dusting and vacuuming got added to the “monthly chore” list, which Tim is in charge of. I picked up folding laundry. But more on that next.

Step Five: Make a schedule. Schedules make sure that there are time to do all the chores. I suggest spacing the chores through the week so you’re not doing more than half an hour of chores each night. The nice thing about a schedule is that even if none of the chores get done one week, you can do it the next week and start to come out from under a lack-of-chore pile. At least theoretically.

So far, all the chores are getting done in our home, because Tim and I both feel ownership of our tasks — and we do them. They don’t always get done right on time; laundry folding happened on Saturday instead of Tuesday, but at least it happened.

Step Six: If it’s not your chore, it’s not your standard. There are downsides to sharing household responsibilities. Because your partner is an adult who has hopefully lived on their own for a time before coming to live with you, chances are, your partner has some idea how to do the tasks that they named, agreed to, and claimed as their own. (Look how much consensus we built up until this point!) If your partner asks for input on how to do the task, feel free to give it. Otherwise, let them get on with it — you have your own chores to do.

Tim is the one that cleans the kitchen and the bathroom. He also does the laundry. He checks in with me sometimes, but the majority of the time he applies his own standards to the task. And for me, that’s fine — but it’s a serious ego muncher for some women.  Remember, equality is about sharing power. If you claim all the power and responsibility of the household standards, you’re only hurting yourself.

Step Seven: Rinse, Repeat. The same chore list isn’t going to always work for you. Be flexible, and keep the lines of communication that you’ve created here open over time!

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I wasn’t always comfortable with the idea of my mom being my daycare provider. Sylvie is familiar with my mom and comfortable with her. And I have had plenty of chances to observe the two of them together. Those two things are not something you can sneeze at; everything I have read about vetting facilities says those are things you want.

Not only that, but I was able to broach the idea of making “Nanny Notes” and sharing them with my mom — that way my mom knows exactly how I would like my daughter to be cared for (i.e. I am clear about my expectations) and she knows exactly how to spoil my daughter (i.e. I expect my mom to still be a grandparent and do what she wants occasionally).

Nothing I found on the internet about preparing your child for daycare really approached the subject the way I have in my own preparations, so I thought I would share my list.

What I want from a Non-parental Caregiver:

1. Someone who will love her, bond with her; someone who will build trust with her. I subscribe more or less to the Attachment Parenting philosophy espoused by Dr. Sears, and I believe that attachment is key in Sylvie’s development — particularly the psychosocial development task of infancy: learning to trust. This means that when Sylvie cries, my ideal caregiver will respond, because crying is a way of communicating need. Which brings us to…

2. Someone to fulfill her needs. Her needs, as I see them currently, are: eating, sleeping, clean diapers, play, and love. Since Sylvia is breastfed, this means that I will be providing her grandmother with expressed breast milk. Sylvia is not too keen on her bottle, so we may be switching to more of a sippy cup soon. She will start solids at six months, so those kinds of equipment will be needed as well. Sylvie will need a couple of swaddle blankets and a pacifier for her grandma’s house. I gave my mom a set of cloth diapers already. We’ll need to make sure there are good toys at both home and at grandma’s. And I know my mom loves Sylvia.

3. Someone to keep her safe and secure; provide limits. This means that my mom and I will work together to make sure that my mom’s house is appropriately child-proofed, but it also means that we will have to work jointly on discipline issues. Right now, discipline isn’t too much of an issue — after all, she is only an infant. But by the time I graduate, which is when I foresee this arrangement ending, Sylvie will be old enough to be willfully disobeying.  We don’t want to give her mixed messages about what is and is not appropriate, which will require communication. Also, I want Sylvie to be disciplined with positive methods, which will also require communication, so that my mom knows what I mean when I say this.

4. Someone to play with her, and to be her partner in learning. I believe that play is the key to learning, and so I think it’s very important that Sylvia plays. Of course, she can and does play on her own, but play with an adult is important too, because it provides Sylvie and opportunity to stretch her skills with a technique called scaffolding. The play should be directed by Sylvie, if at all possible, to give her a sense of efficacy. Reading is play too!

5. Someone who respects our boundaries as her parents. I am the momma, and with my husband we are ultimately responsible for Sylvia’s care and upbringing. How we want things done matters. However, this means we are also responsible for communicating those boundaries. A major way we’re going to do this is through “memo” type of correspondence; I like to have things in writing.

The thing about this list is that it’s basically what I expect from myself as a parent. I think that’s as it should be — the care for my daughter by non-parental caregivers should be as close to what her parents provide as possible.

We both ordered our usual from the Starbucks in the downtown we loitered in as high school students, a downtown we dated in during high school. After we had our drinks, I said, “Let’s walk to the fountain in the park!” So we did, holding hands.

When we got to the fountain, we followed the sidewalk around the fountain, and then started walking away from it. I said, “But I thought we were walking to the fountain!”

“We were walking to the fountain,” said Tim. “Now we’re walking somewhere else.”

“Where?” I asked, sipping my mocha.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll decide where we turn next. And then you can decide the next turn.” And so our walk turned into a collaborative adventure, where we negociated rules and took turns. We played a game of our own making, like kids on a playground. It was social, therapeutic play – taking turns at inconsequential decisions, but deciding together our destinations.

I want our marriage to be defined by moments like that, where we play, where we lovingly hold hands and wander old stomping grounds.

But in hopes of accomplishing this, I am going after some SMARTER goals to prep myself and my family for this transition.

The first goal is to make chores and family obligations explicit and a habit by the time school starts.

I’m going to start by consulting the website on equally shared parenting. I’m going to download their equality scales and have Tim and I take them seperately. We may disagree about how equally we are sharing parenting, housework, etc., so it will be important to use my interpersonal communication skills to talk through the lists and the expectations with Tim.

Then, I will do a walk through of our home, thinking about the chores that need to be done on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I will use my judgement and critical thinking skills to come up with this list. The list will reflect my values of meaningful work because the list will be about the work I do for my family, which also reflects my value of relationship, because my family is important to me.

I will then talk through the list with Tim. I anticipate that the list may seem overwhelming. I will keep an open mind as we talk through the list with Tim to prioritize what is truly important, and so we can work together to get these things done in partnership. Together we will turn each chore into a reasonable list of steps.

After that, I will make us a chore chart. We will then use the chore chart to build our daily and weekly routines and habits around taking care of our home. Sometimes things will be forgotten because of circumstances or for no reason. In those cases we will learn from our mistakes and learn to schedule in chore time, or we will forgive ourselves and try again the next day,  week, or month.

The most important thing to remember is how good it will feel to have our chores explicit. It will make keeping our house clean an easy thing to talk about, hopefully minimalizing fights and frustrations over expecting something to be done a certain way, or expecting someone else to do something.

It will feel good to work together with Tim, being fair in our relationship. It will feel good for our home to be a sanctuary, and when it gets dirty, have an easy plan to fix it.

What is my purpose, you ask?

My purpose on a daily basis has been to be a mother to baby Rocketship, and a partner to my husband, taking on the majority of the homemaking tasks.

This of course isn’t my only purpose — I would not be starting graduate school in the fall if this were the case — and it is a purpose I can say that I chose freely and with an open heart. However, being a mother, being a wife and a homemaker did not used to bring me happiness.

I fought those purposes tooth and nail, and it brought me a lot of angst. They were, after all, life paths that my feminist forebearers had slogged without much joy, and had worked tirelessly to lampoon and deconstruct. They worked hard to give me options, option which included not marrying, and not bearing children — but it seems that our feminist discussion labels those who choose marriage and to bear children as less than feminist, thus limiting options.

I am writing from a place of privilege. My socioeconomic class is populated by males who have not been incarcerated at alarming rates; they have college educations and jobs, both which bode well for a sound marriage. For many, marriage is not a viable option, and marriage may even limit their access to essential services like Medicare and Medicaid. I have access to birth control, and in the case of accidental conception, I have a choice between an abortion funded by employer-provided health care and prenatal care to carry the fetus to term. I can afford non-familial child care. For many women, reproductive justice like this simply does not exist.

But, because I am privileged, I have a real and true choice to marry, and to have children. The result of this real and true choice? I chose yes. But in choosing yes, I have felt like less than a feminist for perhaps the last half decade (I can’t believe I am old enough to write that). I have resisted the roles that I have taken on, and been unhappy for it.

I am happy to be a mom and partner, and a homemaker this summer. I am happy to have them as my only roles as I try to become more emotionally stable before school begins. There is nothing wrong with being happy, nothing wrong with a choice fully chosen. After all, there is a certain simplicity and triumph of achievement in a sleeping baby and a dinner on the table at the end of the day. But, importantly, they are not my only roles.

There is still justice to seek — both economic and social, as well as reproductive. Seeking those justices is my other purpose, one that I am willing to sacrifice much for.

The first several weeks before baby Rocketship began responding to my flirting were the hardest. I found myself doing inane things, like shaking a rattle in her face, hoping she would follow it with her eyes. I ended up tweeting this, and days later getting this response:

I went and investigated this guy –I have a stalker, and so I was afraid that he had found me, for all that I don’t do much to disguise my identity on the internet. It appears that he’s just an asshole who decided to look at the #momtweets hash tag and make fun of women, and that for some reason, he aimed his ire particularly at me, and only me.

I tweeted the discovery of my daughter tracking her eyes simply because I realized how ridiculous it was to spend so much time shaking a rattle for her. It was making fun of myself. But this mysterious stranger clearly hated women — and he seemed to hate me i for being in on what he seemed to think was his private joke.

I reported him to Twitter for spam, but otherwise did not respond.

Have you been harassed on the internet? How did you deal with it?

Image of Lot's Wife by chrisjohnbeckett via Flickr

I am a Christian. I believe that following Jesus is about kindness, compassion, for meeting people where they are, for practicing empathy. I think the Bible contains metaphorical truth, historical truth, and that it’s a record of human struggle with faith and the human story of encounters with the divine.

As a feminist, I am afraid to admit that I am a Christian, because I’m afraid you won’t take me seriously anymore. That you’ll think that I live my life and govern my relationships with legalism (i.e., using the Bible to make “rules”). Sometimes, those who are also struggling to follow Jesus as a path to following God act in ways that are intolerant, uncompassionate, and inhospitable. These fellow believers make people uncomfortable, claiming to speak for God, claiming to know when another person is sinning, claiming the Bible as incontrovertible truth with a capital T. They use this belief to say that love between two people of the same sex is a sin, to reduce women to objects and servants, and to consume the Earth’s resources.

These people, my brothers and sisters in Christ, are using God’s name in vain. They are speaking for Him without the humility to admit that they may be wrong. I have recently been made aware that silence on the issue of faith and belief may also be using God’s name in vain, because I am part of God’s voice in this world. Silence implies shame.

Here’s what I want to make the liberal, feminist blogosphere aware of — the Bible is open to interpretation, and when it is being used as a tool of bigotry, literacy is the only way to educate those whose minds are open, those who are not using God’s name in vain.

Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis chapter 19, verses 1 through 19, narrates the story of Lot inviting two strangers, angels, into his home in the city of Sodom. The bigoted citizens of the city, who already do not like Lot, because he is also a foreigner, demand him to hand over his guests. Most translations I’ve read demand that the guests be turned over to the mob so that they can “have sex” with them. Lot pleads with them not to do this wicked thing, and offers his virgin daughters to the mob instead. Before this can happen, the angels strike the mob blind, and ultimately, as a result, the city of Sodom is destroyed.

This passage is the source of the word sodomy, which is less judgementally known as anal sex. Those who believe that homosexuality is a sin cite this passage as a proof that God hates sodomites – i.e. those who have anal sex, i.e. gay men.

But, feminist readers, does this not also sound like attempted gang rape?  Complete with rape apologist language of “have sex”? Could this passage be a story about how rape is not to be tolerated? Instead of teaching how a certain kind of sex is wicked, could the passage be teaching that a lack of consent, that force in a sex act is wicked?

As feminists, it is easy to get up in arms and distracted with the way that Lot offered his daughters to be raped to protect his guests. It is not nice to think about, but in the historical context, women were objects — and we must acknowledge this. To apply our current values on historical circumstance is futile — we will always be disappointed. The knowledge that women’s value used to be different can be a source of strength, too. How far women have come, and yet how far we have to go. Just as life is now, the Bible is a mixed bag. There are both wins and losses, victories and defeats.

What I take heart in is that God did not allow Lot’s daughters to be raped either (at this juncture of the story, at least. The ultimate fate of Lot’s daughters is a different story). God through his angels intervened, and did not allow anyone to be raped that day; the city was destroyed for that attempted act of violence.

At least, that’s how I read the passage as a feminist.

The Church is still a human institution, I get it.  Sometimes the acts of Christians are incredibly hard to defend. The Bible is a human work. Not all passages are easy to explain in a way that makes us feel good.  Sometimes humans use God’s name to legitimize their bigotry and privilege. Sometimes people who believe in justice, in tearing down privilege, and are Christians forget to invoke God. Both are wrong.

My mission here is to record my activism. Sometimes that activism occurs in the context of Church. I shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it.

The TARDIS is blue!

One Monday morning, I drove Tim into work, so that I could pick him up after work and we would go somewhere together as a family. (To play Bridge like little old people, but that’s besides the point.) He asked me if I wanted to bring Sylvie in to be shown off to his coworkers. Since I have a couple of friends among them, I said sure.

Sylvie was wearing her blue footie outfit, and I did not bring the sling for this supposed-to-be-quick errand.

First, I visit my friend Matt. (Hi, Matt!) He knows that Baby Rocketship turned out to be female, and I jokingly point out that Sylvie is wearing blue. “Oh noes!” he said sarcastically. “She’ll grow up and be… butch or something, I don’t know.” He rolled his eyes and made it clear that he thought that the color my daughter wore had very little bearing on much of anything. When another acquaintance of mine walked up and we began talking Doctor Who spoilers, Matt stuck his fingers in his ears and ran away saying “La la la!”

Then, another coworker walked by. He was carrying two dinners to the kitchen, one of which was intended for us, and the other for the other new baby in the office. We chatted for a while and he asked the typical polite new parent questions (how are you sleeping? etc.), and then asked, “What’s his name again?”

“Her, actually,” I said, flustered. “We got tired of all the pink, so my friend sent us this blue outfit. I rather like it. Sylvia, by the way, is her name. I mean, it shouldn’t matter.  I mean, I wear blue all the time.”

“Yeah, but you have long hair,” said this coworker. “She doesn’t have long hair yet, that’s why I got confused!”

That’s a simplified version of the conversation. In reality, we talked over each other a bit as each of us navigated our own defensiveness and tried to justify our positions. But that’s what it came down to –  he wanted symbols to tell him how to identify the gender of our daughter, we resisted the ultimate arbitrariness of those symbols, and he was mistaken. He was defensive as a result.

I wish I had handled this situation differently. I wish I had had something to say that taught a lesson about identity politics, how it’s important not to label people, how it is important to let people self identify. But it’s hard, at least in part, because I don’t have much of a stake in this. It isn’t personal — it’s a thought experiment.

But in other ways, this is practice for letting Sylvie make her own decisions. I’m the one making the decisions that take her against the norm, but I’m navigating them for her — and I’ll be sheltering her in the future from some (though not all) of the consequences of her decisions. I want to let her express herself and her identity however she would like, and to grow confident in it, before others tell her that she’s ruining their categories. If she chooses to wear plaid and polka dots together, I’ll be the one that cheers her on and then tells anyone who gives her the stink eye that she’s a visionary.

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