Drawing on Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, we have talked about how the unreasonable expectations for the "ideal worker" and the "ideal mother" contribute to our sense of overwhelm. Fortunately, Schulte offers some solutions to help ameliorate this all too widespread condition.
Let's begin with the context for the "ideal mother." While things have certainly improved, women still perform most household tasks and the bulk of duties related to children. Many mothers who work outside the home work a second shift at home, undeniably contributing to a sense of overwhelm. The "ideal mother" subversively promotes the second shift by demanding that we do everything, preferably perfectly. This leads to "gatekeeping," not letting anyone else do the whatever because they won't do it right.
We need to let go of our perfectionism, and we need to let others help – and ask for help. Honestly, it is truly unrealistic to expect that one could work a full-time job and bear the majority of the responsibilities for the household and children. We prove nothing to anyone when we try to do it all; all we prove is that when we try to, we become overextended, don't get enough sleep, and get stressed and often resentful. Those conditions serve no one well, neither ourselves, our spouses, or our children (nor our work selves). One of the appealing aspects of Schulte's book is that it is a personal journey out of overwhelm as much as it is a well-researched study of the topic. She is so obsessively tidy that her husband accused her of still doing dishes while the house was burning down. She had to work hard to allow pots to soak, as long as they actually got washed the next day. In my favorite example, she forgot to make baked goods for a school concert reception. She asked her husband to get cupcakes from the grocery store bakery, but, much to her horror, he bought Twinkies instead. He responded to her protests saying, "Are you kidding me? It's middle school. They'll sell out in a heartbeat." Of course, he was right. She admitted that she had to let her inner Martha Stewart go. (170)
We can break away from the tyranny of the "ideal mother" -- which oppresses both working and stay-at-home mothers, but it takes work. We have to be willing to buck convention and the powers that tie our worthiness to this concept. Jessica DeGroot, a Wharton MBA, advocates for a "third path for couples who want to share their work and home lives as full partners, each one with time for work, love, and play."(156) DeGroot believes that we don't recognize the "invisible forces" wielded by the "ideal mother," the "ideal worker" and the "provider father," the forces that actually cause our stress.(158) These ideals exert a very powerful (and often invisible) hold, a hold that makes acknowledging and then challenging them very hard. However, change can only happen when we do just that. As DeGroot observes, we easily "get stuck" in gender-defined patterns of behavior, patterns informed by the ideals and cemented by busyness so intense that it prevents imagining alternatives or by the financial demands of a lifestyle or of burdensome debt levels that make change feel impossible. But if we want a real partnership characterized by mutually agreed upon goals and a path to reach those goals, we have to be willing to fight DeGroot's "good fight."
Ideally, the "good fight" begins around the birth of a first child, the point at which we are most likely to drift into gender-defined roles. As mothers bond with their children during maternity leave or as stay-at-home moms, we become attuned to our babies and they to us, making it easier for us to anticipate and attend to their wants and needs. Meanwhile fathers, who rarely take true paternity leave, can feel left out and inadequate.
However, even if we missed that opportunity, we can still fight the "good fight"; it will just be harder. The idea is not to play roles simply by default and to recognize, too, that there are ways in which dads lose out in this gender-defined system. For example, just as mothers may at times feel resentful that they handle the majority of childcare, fathers may feel bad that they haven't developed the same bond with their babies that their partners have.
Schulte points to several ways we can help ourselves reduce the overwhelm and find more balance in our lives. First, we can seek help from the likes of Jessica DeGroot; she has a website for her Third Path Institute full of resources. Second, build a network of like-minded people ready to challenge the ideals with us. Schulte finds groups of women doing all kinds of things. For example, "Mice at Play" helps women inject play into their lives by organizing adult playdates in New York City.
Just as children benefit from play, so do adults. However, throughout history, women have played very little. We generally don't feel comfortable taking time to have fun. Indeed, Schulte notes that scholars "say women taking time for themselves, deliberately choosing leisure without children or family, is nothing less than a courageous – subversive, almost – act of resistance." (237) But we should play: it promotes creativity and problem solving; it makes us happy. When we try new things, we stretch ourselves, building confidence and making us more interesting. When we play together as a family, we build a collection of shared, memorable experiences that bind us closer together. Making time for play, with our children, our spouse, and without them, makes us healthier and happier; we should make it a priority.
Also, in New York, the WoMoBiJos (Working Mothers with Big Jobs), support each other as they live fulfilling lives that include rewarding work, loving families, and time for fun. Admittedly, these women have reached a professional level that affords them considerable flexibility, but they also "automate, delegate, or drop everything else – shopping for groceries on line, hiring help, or not caring if the house is less than perfect of if their husbands all make sandwiches for dinner." They feel comfortable in following this course because, according to Schulte, they are not ambivalent. They are "ruthlessly clear" about their priorities and they avoid succumbing to the "ideal mother" and the "ideal worker" standards. (260-1) Lack of ambivalence should rise to the top of our goals as we seek to tame our overwhelm. Lack of ambivalence comes, in turn, from a sense of self-efficacy.
Harvard MBA and GW professor Kathy Korman Frey, known as the "Confidence Guardian" has committed herself to developing women's self-efficacy. She runs something called the Hot Mommas Project, the world's largest database of stories about how women entrepreneurs run their businesses and their home lives. She believes that women's failure to negotiate competitive compensation and benefits packages; the reason we feel like imposters and why we lean out instead of in all result from a lack of self-efficacy, a quality we start to lose as teenagers. I would add that it's also why we don't advocate for ourselves at home. We can learn self-efficacy, however. Here's how:
- "Have 'mastery experiences.' The more you do some things well, the more you'll build the confidence to do other things well."
- "Find role models and seek out mentors."
- "Listen to and believe the positive and encouraging words people have for you."
- "'Get a grip.' Recognize that perceptions are what shape experience. And when it comes to negative and self-defeating patterns of thought, she advises, as Cher did in Moonstruck, 'Snap out of it!'" (262)
Frey recognizes we're in crisis. However, although it's not easy, she says we have to believe in ourselves; "it's like you're wearing the ruby slippers. You have the power. You've had it all along."
As you might have gathered, I really liked this book. However, at times I wondered whether Schulte was falling into a classic American trap of individualism. In short, the issues we face are ours and by dint of willpower and some tough conversations, we create a better way, a third path, if you will. I have great faith in the power of individuals and I do believe in the viability of everything I've outlined above. However, I want to emphasize that we shouldn't have to be doing this alone; moreover, it will be hard if not impossible to do so. We have to get our partner on board which, as Schulte herself discovered, is not always easy. He may not see a problem. We will also be able to sustain our challenge to those powerful invisible forces, the ideals, far better if we enlist allies in our cause. Plus, we can't stop here; we must together work for more family friendly policies and programs like affordable, good quality childcare and paid parental leave. For an organization doing great work in this area, check out MomsRising. Next week: the "ideal worker."