Providing and nurturing

I have had a post brewing lately on biology and parenting in humans, and an article I read recently at Salon on Michelle and Barack Obama and work and parenting decisions has brought it to a head for me.

First, my thinking that I wanted to share:

Due to the fact that women tend to carry most of the physiological burden of reproduction, there has been a division of labor in parenting in humans where the mother is nurturant and the father a provider (the provider role does not have to be male, but the nurturant role, at least in the beginning, whether you are having your own kid or IVF or adoption, has to occur with a female). I suppose, in a way, we should be glad that there is even any parenting to share between parents, as paternal care is nonexistent across many of our closest primate relatives.

But what this natural, physiological burden has created is a world where a woman's nurturant role is assumed and devalued. The provider role is one that we consider to be incredibly important, as it runs the machine of capitalism and puts food on the table. Plenty of people have written about how bottlefeeding, baby carriers, nannies, daycare, and cleaning services make it possible for moms to outsource our work and take part in the provider role. But I want to suggest a few other possibilities: the first, a not-new one that changes the nature of the workplace so that physiological nurturers can participate when they want to in other forms of work, and the second, a newer idea that outsources providing, leaving the non-nurturant parent a chance to become more nurturant.

Not-new: I believe that we should be moving towards workplaces that understand that workers are not individuals without other important commitments, including but not limited to parenting (single folks and non-parents also can have important commitments). In addition to not holding work events "after hours," workplaces should strive to create family-friendly work environments that include more flexible daycare opportunities, but also more flexible part-time opportunities. Not all of us are cool with outsourcing large portions of nurturing. As I write this, La Dudarina is waking up from a nap, snuggled in the Ergo against me. I am less productive with her around but the common workplace originated in a time when only men were workers and their role as parents was limited, starved and, I imagine unhappy, as they were mostly enforcers of rules and often did not get to have close relationships with their children. I don't know that we should continue to have a workplace that reflects that history. I don't think that the productivity we are asking of our workers really leads to a better society. Communal environments that allow workers to work and nurture seem, to me, to better reflect human nature and our evolutionary past.

Newer, but still not totally novel: We need to outsource providing and change our expectations of what constitutes a full work week. Labor unions managed to get us the 40 hour work week, and corporations and universities have whittled that away, so that it is not uncommon now to work weekends and nights, to arrive home after the kids are asleep, to spend 50% or more of salary on daycare. I would like to propose two things: a move to a 20-30 hour work week, and more government funding for families.

I can get a lot done in 20-30 hours a week of focused work, and I sometimes think that getting to 40, 50, 60 or more hours a week of work requires a lot of hanging out, socializing, or simply being at work, rather than actually getting work done. Now, labwork is somewhat different: it really takes a lot of hours to get it done. But what if we adjusted our expectations for how long it takes to run an experiment or a study? What if we decided to get work done in a rationale time frame that allowed for us to be healthy, appreciate our humanness, raise our kids, and be allies to people we know who raise kids?

But here's the thing: making a workplace more family friendly is a fight that cannot be one by women alone. Women cannot be the only ones making a ruckus in the workplace and fighting with themselves, their peers and their bosses to effect change. If we make a nurturant woman's workplace more friendly but not her partner's, it means the woman is always being flexible, always ceding her own wishes, because it is more permissive in her workplace.

The reason I bring this up is because my department is pretty family friendly, and TD's is not. Many women in my department have had children, a few of us have young ones right now. Of the tiny number of women in TD's department, none have children, and I believe every single man with a child in his department has a stay at home wife (some with impressive degrees). So my situation is flexible, which is great, but his is not, which means I am always the one who has to be flexible. And let's be serious here: the university has decided that TD's discipline is more valuable than mine, throwing bigger salaries and resources in his direction, while my department quibbles over crumbs. That is the fate of more feminized departments, unless those departments who are not feminized, but do contain dads and other partners who want to be there for their kids, make a decision to push for change.

So yes, to some extent this is a call to TD, but really this is a call to all the men who are half an hour later to get home, and sheepishly think gifts of jewelry or time to take a warm bath will solve the inequity. This is a call to all the people who wish they could spend more time with their families and children and aging parents and loved ones and friends. This is a call to those people who have no interest in having children, but respect and want to support those who do. And yes, this includes a call to those people for whom their job is not just to pay the mortgage or rent, but is work they feel they could not live without.

Give all of us a chance to find jobs that pay the rent, that provide more meaning in our lives, that get us out of the house, that teach us something new. Give all of us a chance to be good, loving, present parents. Give us chances to fill our lives equally with providing and nurturing, however that looks. But don't look just to working moms to do the work to change the workplace, because changing just those places most amenable to change, and those places that are already feminized, will not make it possible for other people to participate in the care of children and other people who need our attention and love.

Talk to your union, faculty senate, student senate, working families committee, department chair, today. Do not wait. Do not hope the new mom down the hall takes care of it before you become a parent. And do not expect that working moms will be satisfied with a situation where they can work more hours and pay someone to watch their kids; we want our partners to be able to raise our kids too.