But if I'm being completely honest, I realized recently I don't understand. What do I do all day? Why do I feel like I'm always busy? Busy with what? And why is there so little to show for it? No paycheck, certainly, but no visible, measurable proof that I labored at all? And if there is none of that, why do I like what I do and NOT want to trade jobs with women in "the work place"?
So I decided it was high time I do the math. My math. Not trying to represent by my figures the labors of any other mother. And as I both qualified and quantified one woman's work (namely myself), I made some important discoveries that I feel are worth noting. So here is the breakdown by task, how I defined the task, and in parenthesis the time I spent on the task.
Cooking (1 hr 20 min/day) is all the food prep, and also includes menu planning, grocery putting-away, list making, fielding questions about what is for dinner, and putting up with all the complaining when your people don't like the answer. It includes re-working a life-style when someone says they don't think we should eat cereal. Or bread. (Good-bye easy breakfasts and lunches.) Yes, I make breakfast, lunch, and dinner - not every day, but on any given day I AM preparing two out of 3 meals. (And we could count the number of times we eat cereal and have sandwiches in a month on one hand.) The kicker is I don't especially like to cook. But I do love my health-nut husband. I love that we are intentional about what we eat. And I love growing the bodies of my children with nutritious food. So I do what it takes.
Cleaning (1.5 hrs/day). I have myself down for 1.5 hours, which seemed high until I observed my house last time I was incapacitated. A TOTAL disaster. Because no one was carrying things upstairs to put away when they went up, carrying things down when they went down, returning shoes and jackets to their spots so there isn't a panic when they are needed, trashing all the papers everyone came home from church with, gathering all the dishes from the upstairs when her water glass needed refilled, putting the throw cushions back on the couch instead of letting people trip over them, etc. etc. etc. I might only spend 5 minutes straightening an area at a time. But I do that about 5 times a day. AND I spend about 3 hours in deeper clean/week. Do I have kids? YES! And trust me, they help. If they didn't, I might be able to get it done in LESS time. But the goal isn't just an orderly home, but well-trained kids, right?
Laundry (15 min/day) is washing, sorting, folding, putting away, rotating, matching, spotting, mending, and mentally noting what is needed by whom.
Shopping (25 min/day) is never ACTUALLY done in 25 minutes. I average about 1.5 trips to the grocery store/week, if I've made good lists. But clothes shopping usually takes longer, especially if I'm trying not to spend a fortune. And there are all sorts of things I buy or search for online - small appliances, curriculum, supplements, gifts - that take a bit of research, and that is all time spent shopping.
Academic Support (1.5 hr/day) in my home is the time I spend teaching my kids - reading to them, hearing them read, correcting their errors, practicing Chinese, etc.. My guess is that if you DON'T homeschool, you may think this figure surprisingly small, because it is probably what you are spending on homework, parent/teacher conferences, mentoring your child through a big project, etc, when you DO send your kids to school. We just get more say over what we learn, and less institutional expectation, by learning at home.
Talent/Interest/Opportunity Support (30 min/day) is the time I spend taking kids to and from lessons, but also finding out about, registering for, communicating with providers about, researching activities and fitting them into our lives. It's time at dance recitals, concerts, and swim meets. It's time spent to ensure my kids are well-rounded, whole, thriving.
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| Making time for a Corn Maze... because it's TRADITION! |
Finances (10 min/day). Honestly, this is the one that is more of a goal. This is keeping up with what lessons need to be paid for, tracking expenses, transferring money when my kids earn it, communicating with my husband about what was spent and why. Currently, I'm probably at 2-3 minutes/day. And consequently, we are probably not making the most informed financial decisions. I need to do better here.
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| From a distance, it looks pretty good! |
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| Squeezing in a family dinner while my oldest is in town. |
Community Connection, (30 min/day) for us, is largely church. But is also service at This Is the Place, or attending the Community Meal, or taking treats to the neighbors, or picking up trash at the park. It is the time I make sure we spend to strengthen our place in the community, and make sure we are relating to it.
Emotional and Spiritual Counseling (30 min/day) is family prayer, it's breaking up fights, it's a long phone call with my son across the country to hear all the nitty-gritty about his day. It is studying the scriptures, and meditating, and listening. And breaking up more fights. (Lest you be impressed, if my kids would just stop fighting with each other, it would save me a good 10-15 minutes per day!)
And Nursing (10 min/day) is taking care of the physical bodies of my family - hair cuts, rubbing feet, rubbing backs, making sure the little guy DID shower AND got all the dirt off, clipping toenails, and telling my girl to go back and clean behind her ears.
As it turns out, I DO have a full time job, as I always suspected. MY total was 7 hrs and 30 minutes/day. Obviously, I don't do ALL these things every day. So I took the total time spent per week (or per month) and then divided that number by 5. Yes, I know there are 7 days in a week, but most jobs (at least the ones we aspire to) are 40 hrs/Mon-Fri jobs. While being a mom IS around-the-clock work, no one can truly work all the time and maintain health and sanity for long. If we only expect everyone else to put in a good 40 hours, perhaps we should understand being on call ALL THE TIME does not mean a mom needs to be active and productive in that role ALL THE TIME.
This list, while one may be tempted to shrug it off as "just living life," only represents the tasks related to ensuring OTHERS live life, and live it more abundantly. It doesn't include time for eating or sleeping. Nor does it include time for SELF care - time used to have lunch with girl friends, or take a relaxing bath, or read a good book just because the mom finds it interesting. Sure, I get to eat the food I fix for my kids, as one example, but if I was cooking just for me, it would take a LOT LESS time and effort (as evidenced by my "Bran Flakes" cereal diet in high school). And if someone was going to cook FOR me, that labor would be THEIR job, for which he or she would be compensated. Same for party planning, or tutoring, etc. It is part of life. But it IS work.
And we might be tempted to dicker or bicker about what time is "worth it." For example, do I really need to spend 1.5 hours every day CLEANING? What a waste, right? As those throw pillows are just going to land on the floor AGAIN. We usually agree that at some point, the toilet needs to be cleaned, but do the insides of the cupboards need a wipe down on a semi-annual basis? Well, if you are asking me about YOUR house, I would say that's up to YOU. The times listed above are what those tasks take me to reach BOTH acceptability and satisfaction.
Which brings me to my next point. Acceptability and Satisfaction. Those are two important words. Here is a picture to illustrate:
I took this picture after arriving home one day, and my husband proudly announcing he and the kids had "cleaned the kitchen." This IS the AFTER picture. AFTER their cleaning.
Now, to be fair, I'm sure if there was a before shot, it probably consisted of more dirty dishes - probably a sink full to overflowing. Maybe more trash on the island. Maybe the trash which is not pictured got emptied. You can't see it from here, but the sink is full of larger, rinsed items, probably waiting for the dishwasher when it's current load, which they started, is done. So the kitchen is more clean. It may have been moved from unacceptable levels to more acceptable or tolerable ones. There was likely unfinished food on the island that was thrown away. And now, at least, the dirty dishes are rinsed, instead of hardening with old food.
If acceptable was the ONLY standard at play, this may meet it on some level. No rotting food. Yay. But this is not satisfactory, at least to ME. Not at all. So while the kitchen may be less gross, the efforts of my husband and children did not equal a job that needs no further attention. To experience the satisfaction of a job well done, clearly more work is needed. Because a clean kitchen looks more like this:
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| Well, probably not EXACTLY like this. The bar stools wouldn't be perfectly lined up. There would still be papers stuck to the fridge. But you get the idea... |
Now, it's no use pretending that they are the same. AND there is no use pretending that we should all be OK with jobs that are merely acceptable. Sure, people often have to settle for acceptable to preserve sanity. But when we do, there is no true peace that comes from having a task completed to satisfaction. Things will feel "undone" - whether it's a kitchen that needs more work, or a crying child that needs more attention, or that nagging feeling that we need to be doing something more for someone we love. Leave enough things undone, or unsatisfactory, and guilt and unhappiness begin to build. And THAT tears through peace, focus, and contentment.
But what if you ARE satisfied with an acceptable kitchen? OR you have an insanely high standard for satisfaction when it comes to throwing an amazing birthday party for each child, EVERY YEAR? There is nothing wrong with that! No matter how we divvy it up, we all have the same amount of time, and each care-giver spends hers according to the needs of her children and her own values. (I, for example, do NOT value Birthday parties AT ALL. Much to the disappointment of my children. They'll get over it!)
However, while we all have the same amount of time, we are NOT wired to be in production mode for the same amount of time. To expect the output of all women to be equal would be like expecting the income of all professions to be equal. We marry school teachers and attorneys. The spouse of a school teacher isn't frustrated when the teaching salary isn't an attorney's income. Some women are wired to be power-house CEO's and when they unleash that energy in their own home and with their families, they wow us with multi-faceted accomplishment. If you are not the Steve Jobs of your home, neither are most of the rest of us. There isn't a wrong way to do any of this work. Just wrong-headed expectations that your approach and my approach will look the same. Every parent is different - different strengths, needs, and energies, parenting different children with their varying strengths, needs, and energies.
I should add too that this post has been awfully unfair to care- and support-giving dads. In many households much of this work is accomplished by both parents or more exclusively by a father. When both parents work (or even if one or both parents don't), kids may take on the responsibilities I've outlined below. My guess is that there is a restructuring that occurs - that the tasks are still being done by someone, taking more or less time, and that the time saved or not spent is used in some other way that serves the family. And there is nothing wrong with that. I think my point is that caring for a family TAKES TIME. However it is accomplished, whomever it is accomplished by, it is a task. A whole host of tasks. Big tasks.
We (my hubby and I) sometimes speak of a restructuring - of him doing more, of expecting more from the kids, and of me doing less in favor of doing something DIFFERENT (that makes heaps of money, ideally). And I'm not opposed to any of those ideas. But the truth is: I love my job. I love THIS job. I do it because I think it is important, and anything important is worth doing yourself.
I can, and have, and do occasionally outsource all sorts of this work. I want my kids to grow by participating meaningfully in caring for our home and our family members. I like the perspective my hubby brings into emotionally supporting our kids. I don't want or intend to hog all of this to myself. (And frankly I need the additional support more often than not.) But back to satisfaction, caring for my family in these ways is deeply satisfying to MY soul. I feel in tune or in sync with my kids, with their needs, and I can adjust (mostly) seamlessly to do more or less of what is needed at the moment the need arises.
And the work DOES change. Nursing moms may have less time for academic support. Empty-nesting moms may have fewer kid-created messes to clean. That IS the beauty of this job too, and what makes it so hard to define. Not only is it different person to person and day to day, it also varies year to year, season to season. But it is ALWAYS holding the world together, making the world go round, BEING the world to someone you love dearly and needs you to do "it all," whatever that "all" happens to be. I'm so blessed this is MY work! I love it and never want to retire! Here's to 40 more years!
