Tales of The Part Time Working Mom

This seems like the ideal set up. In a lot of ways it is. Part time working moms get the best of both worlds. We get a fist full of life outside the home and a baby and kid to coo over all afternoon when work is finished. We can wipe clean our workday and see our kids with fresh eyes and perspective as they enter into the wider world beyond our home cocoon. 

More income is coming into the household, not a lot of income in my case but something to help with the daily round. My kids get to see me more then they would if I worked full time. I actually miss them in a day verses being so overloaded with parenting I am ready to ditch as soon as my co-parent arrives home.  I have time to pick them up from school or day care, hear about the day and go home to some play, dinner prep, down time and nursing. I get to role model for my girls a confident mama in the world taking on big projects with her family alongside her. Recently Sweetpea told me she wanted to work at the Botanic garden when she grew up. I have a reason to get dressed up in the morning, wash my nice clothes and throw a huge spit rag over it all in hopes I won't be blurped on before I get to work.

Our minds are filled with the details of our jobs as well as the details that make the engine of a family running steady. My partner shares the parenting load more. Home life and work life are split up and we both play an integral role in each place. A level of respect and harmony floats around us when I have a moment to notice it. 

I have others looking after my young ones who love, respect and care for them. I use the mantra it takes a village to raise a child and trust my babies are taken care of and its good for them to experience life and culture with more then just me and daddy. There is energy in the part time working mamas home. An energy of accomplishment, being present and a little bit of chaos. Two non-profit jobs cannot hire a cleaning person so we settle for a bit of dirt and clutter that gets scurried away when we have a party or friends over for dinner. 

Part time work has a lot of pros but like most life choices it is also not as dreamy as it seems.  The part time worker is not paid as well. We get no benefits except the benefit of more time with our family. We forgo a lot of self-time for work time. Creativity is an after thought that lives burning in my heart and only get touched upon occasionally. As a women and mother I often put the needs of my family or job first and suffer from not being authentic to the creative well within. Exercise only sometimes happens and usually involves taking an unwilling kid along. As a part time worker my experience is so unique. So many other part time workers have such a varied experience. Some work from home, or have to take the office with them everywhere. Some are on call, some have their own business. It’s a hard way to relate to others experience when the experience can look so vastly different. We are all united on having kids and making some money at the work we do but the similarities often stop there.

 There is no handy acronym for the part time working mom, not SAHM or working mom, you are kind of a hybrid. Finding good, affordable childcare that caters to working parents as well as SAHM is rough too. Full time day cares are too expensive and not what I want but part time day cares like mothers day out only sort of work and are full of SAHM so you feel a little isolated as a worker in their midst. 

Going from SAHM to working mom was a huge shift as well. I constantly compare my experience with my first to my second and try to measure up to what I did the first time around. I cannot be there for everything with Little Pickle and it is heart breaking. At the same time it is relieving to have more income and knowing she is being well taken care of by others so I can also do important work in the world.

As a part time working mom you feel the urge and pressure to do everything a SAHM does but half the time to do it. You want to take on the PTA and volunteer projects at the school, you want to make muffins and have long kid directed play times after school. You have the expectation that you can get all the housework done and dinner ready every evening. But there is just not enough time for it all. So it happens in chunks. Chunks of self-care used for writing dates and calling up dear friends to talk. Going to interesting events around town. Time to snuggle up with your husband and watch a show in the 2 hours between when the kids fall asleep and when it’s your time to turn in. Chunks of time and patience are key to well being. 

I salute you fellow PTWM! You are kicking butt on so many levels, now stop and give your self a much needed bath and book date.          

The Politics of Domesticity

 
Being a stay at home parent is political. We do all the work that keeps a family unit functioning and don't see a dime for all the effort that takes. We hold the emotional and physical stability of a house and a child. The role of a stay at home mom specifically is wrought with sexism and feelings of inadequacy. I recently heard another stay at home mom talk about how she said to her husband, "I want to feel like I am contributing to society. I don't get paid to do housework and take care of our kids." He replied, "honey you get paid in makeovers and pedicures." This is one extreme example of sexism but there are plenty of micro aggressions that happen in the political nature of the stay at home mom.

My child is freshly 2. The "plan" was to have the baby and have me go back to work when she was 6 months old and our money ran out. When I graduated from college and had Sweetpea we were and still are in the middle of a huge economic downturn. The amount of jobs and the amount of people wanting them is way out of whack. When Sweetpea turned 6 months we moved to Austin. We thought Austin would be an easier place to get jobs, turns out being an artist in a very creative and young town makes the competition fierce for anything art related. Daddy was able to get employed quickly with the city in his field, health, education, and advocacy. I on the other hand have been struggling to find good work for a year and half, experiencing multiple interviews and letdowns. This is not just the economy, I am not willing to settle for whatever job and pay the high fees of childcare to be able to do it. It has put stress on our family and depleted any idea that we had about not going into debt. It has also been a great success in making do and being there to experience what really matters.  

Then there is classism. Stay at home moms are looking for community with other parents who are choosing to be full time with their young people. What is one of many things that gets in our way of being connected? The big C of classism. I came into the role of being a stay at home parent because of necessity. Some moms plan it all out and choose that they will be the stay at home parent. The folks that choose this I notice seem to have a good financial cushion. These mostly middle and upper class moms who have personal trainers after giving birth to get there body back. They have their own car to take the little one places, they always have money for museum admissions, date nights with their partners, hired babysitters and infant music classes. I am sure these stay at home moms also battle with the same inner demons of inadequacy, isolation and the stress of holding together the family unit.  It seems that our society at this point largely holds this kind of mom to be what is expected if you are a stay at home mom. I know this is not always the case, just my experience as a nanny and now working class mom.


I see all stay at home parents struggling with this. The stay at home dads I hang out with don't have the added bonus of sexism to deal with but definitely get hurt around their manhood for choosing to be domestic and be with their kids full time. The pressure of keeping the working people in the house happy and getting some time to yourself once in a blue moon is something all stay at home parents have to deal with.

I like that I am getting the chance to be with Sweetpea this much, I like that she sees me prioritize her and gets to learn from my wisdom. I like watching her grow and being there for the big happenings in her development. I wish that it were easier. I wish I had more of a support network, that I didn't feel obligated to do a huge share of the housework because I am home the most. That doing house work didn't feel so degrading because there are centuries of women behind me scrubbing the kitchen floor, attending to their young people and worrying about how to make ends meet.

I start a substitute-teaching job next week. I will be teaching art in after school programs with a really awesome organization called “Creative Action.” I do not know how we will be able to get the childcare we need yet but I am rolling with it and believing the right answers will show up.  This job is a crack in the door of arts education, a field I want to break into. I am excited to see what opportunities come up after I start. I hope to hit a balance with my stay at home mom status by bringing in some much needed extra cash and giving myself a break. I am still figuring out what is fair and how I want house work to go in my home. I will keep you posted. What have you figured out?

Artist Mama

This spring has been crazy busy. In March we moved in with our new housemates. In April and May I got to work making the trailer for my documentary film “Czechxan.” I was story boarding, finding crew, shooting, editing, getting regular childcare and writing a grant. Talk about super mom! It was all made possible by the burning fire I have for my work, the blessing of another mom who could do weekly 5 hour trades, my awesome husband who took over the second he got home from work and occasional sitting from my housemate and a teen I hired for the month of May. Also the amazing support I got from having a weekly goal check in with my mother in law called our “artist hour.”

I have not had time to write this blog and I have missed it. I have been facing the question a lot of artist moms face, "who does she think she is?" BTW, This is also the name of a great documentary made recently about artist mothers. According to our capitalist society, I am choosing to live in poverty, neglecting my child, selfish, can't have it all and need to grow up. If you are not being a successful artist aka making money, there seems to be no reason to continue on other than at a hobbyist level. I am here today to share with you the reality of being an artist mother.

1. I actually have more attention for my art and my child by being both an artist and mother at the same time. I know it sounds wild, but there is a very small window of time in my day I get to work so I use it! The second she goes down I am at my computer or notebook working till she wakes up. In the evening the second she goes down I go to work at my desk for a 3-4 hour chunk and know I have to stop at 10:30pm otherwise I won't be able to face the next morning with her. I get work done, am able to be with my daughter and get mostly enough sleep, shocking!

Because of these intensive spurts of creativity I am able to put it away when she wakes up and get my mind going in a different direction, food, diaper change, play dough or park usually do the trick. I think my artist mind needs the break of being able to be on toddler time, engaged in her growth and development and not thinking to hard about my work. I would even say my work is enriched by the play/out doors time I have with her.

When I was solely focused on my art I spent a lot of wasted time in guilt spirals for not doing enough, lack of accountability and getting lost in silly activity’s. I think parenting is a great focusing tool, helping me to decide what is doable and what is the most important. I still spend a lot of time on facebook and having tv/movie time with daddy, but it feels balanced and a welcome break from always having to be on.

2. Because I am deciding to make my art and parent my young one full time I can have my passionate adult time so I don't feel like my whole life is my daughter. This also gives Sweetpea a chance to have relationships with other loving adults and socialize with other kids. She gets a lot of close time with her dad and she still gets to have a lot of me, in some ways, it is a win win situation.

3. It is f*&^ing hard to really pull off and a constant negotiation. As a co-parent I am not the only one being affected by my life choices. My amazing husband would love it if we were not strapped for cash every month. We also have different ideas about day care and me getting a "real" job. For me, I see having this time with sweetpea when she is young as invaluable and also great that she gets to have a lot of one on one time and not have to join the pack of kids and rules that come with day care. She socializes every week with her friends and her housemates. She is rarely sick and she knows her caregivers have attention for big feelings so her sense of security is strong.

I was not a day care kid, my husband was and he says it was a good experience for him. We have often tried to negotiate ways for her to go to half time care and me to work at least half time for pay. After trying to get lots of different jobs our first year here I realized, the job market is hard and overloaded right now and it was time to start listening to myself and what I really wanted to be doing here in Austin

It is not easy but I have never felt so alive and though we are broke, our quality of life is really good. We have a great time in our city doing free or cheap activities. We live simply and get to have a lot of time together. We miss out on regular big, fancy dinners, far away vacations, gym memberships and new goods and clothes, but it seems like a good trade off, for now.

I am running an online funding campaign to make my film “Czechxan.” It will run till July 18^th. Please check out the trailer and share the link.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1210194179/czechxan-the-film