Rather muddled choices

Baby considers opening statement on her mother's seminar plan

Another week, another article about stay-at-home mothers. The one I’m thinking of is positive, which is great, but borders on a worrying sanctification of motherhood that some people admire but I don’t really buy into. It all comes down to what works best for the parents and the family. 

There are aspects of being at home that I absolutely love - there are other bits that make me want to run away to whatever university seminar I can find and just talk like a grown-up for as long as they’ll let me. Just as there are elements of working in a university that drive me spare. Nothing is absolutely perfect and what works one year might be problematic the next. Every family is different and circumstances constantly change, so I’m not that interested in debating the relative merits of how you parent, but the thing I find irritating in the endless cycle of these debates is the word “choice,” followed closely with the word “need.” 

“Choice” as in working parents choose to go back to work. Or stay-at-home parents are making a choice for their family. There is also an implication in many articles that for mothers financial need is the primary reason behind these choices, rather than a desire to further their careers or do what they love. In other words, all mothers would stay home if they could but many need to return to work for the money. Then there's the other side of the debate that tends towards the belief that the only way to be a fully functioning member of society is to choose to be in paid employment.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can only think of a few clear cut choices in my life, and even those are complicated by other parameters. I may have chosen to go to university and pursue graduate studies, but I had to be accepted first. Other people ultimately determined my choice. I chose to take certain programmes at school, but those choices consequently limited other choices I could have made. Similarly, I chose to study music seriously as a teenager, but even that choice was predicated on my ability and my parents’ choice to support me financially and with their time.

I obviously chose to get married, and fortunately my husband also made the same decision. But as I get to my main point, many people intend to have marriage as part of their life plan and life doesn’t always work out that way.  

My husband and I definitely chose to move to Canada last year with our family. That was a clear choice, but one we could only make because of the chance of birth and citizenship. It would be far more difficult to choose to move to, say, Norway, be that on a whim or a long-held dream of the Nordic life.

And what about the big choice about children and the way you parent? Well, I’m a bit skeptical about the control most of us have in such choices.

We certainly intended to have children, but I didn’t choose to get pregnant a few weeks before my PhD viva, just as people don’t choose to take five years to get pregnant; many of us choose to try, but you get pregnant when you get pregnant. I didn’t even really choose to move back to New Zealand to have our daughter. British visa law made that the only sensible option for us, and I made the best of the situation presented. 

I certainly didn’t choose to not be eligible for any paid maternity leave. I was a student in one country when I got pregnant and had the baby in another country. There was no one to cover maternity leave. It simply wasn’t an option.

I also didn’t choose to be a predominantly stay-at-home mother: I arrived back in New Zealand pregnant, with a very advanced qualification, but no job. In late 2008. Oddly enough I didn’t choose to coincide parenting with a global financial crisis, and any general intention of wanting to be home while the kids were little was conveniently helped along by that being pretty much the only option on the table. 

I did choose to get straight back into the academic world on arrival home, but as anyone who knows how university departments work can tell you, you can choose a career in the academe all you like, and the academe will laugh. Consequently, I took whatever part time contract teaching was available and we muddled through.

But again, my decision to teach two afternoons a week when my daughter was four months old was only made possible by the support of enthusiastic grandparents - the work I loved doing didn’t really cover the childcare. I didn’t make the same choice when my son was that age, because of the timing of semesters and teaching vacancies. I had to wait until he was nearly 1.

    

I am definitely choosing to look for academic employment at the moment, but whether I go back to work part time, full time, or at all, depends on what I am offered. We are also choosing to stretch ourselves financially to make that possible by putting my now nearly 3-year-old son in part time daycare. It’s not a financial choice we should be making right now, but psychologically it’s great for me to get some research time - though, there’s nothing that psychologically fulfilling about job hunting.

  

It’s also very useful that my son loves his preschool. It makes that choice much easier, but I’m very aware that for some parents their children’s health, temperament or learning abilities ultimately control the choices they can make about work. Just as some people’s jobs are very compatible with flexitime and others’ are anything but.  

As for leaning in? Well that’s great if you happen to be in a position to lean at the same time as you happen to have children. To repeat myself, I leaned in pretty hard, pregnant with a newly minted PhD from a prestigious university in hand, and I had to make do with opportunities presented to me.  

There will always be individuals fortunate enough in their goals, hard work and luck (always remember the luck) to fully negotiate the terms of their work/parenting life - to make an active choice - but most of us do the best with what we’ve got and hopefully feel we’re doing ok in the process.  

That old Christmas chestnut of children's gifts.

Christmas is upon us and it’s time for advertorials thinly disguised as social commentary, like a recent offering from The Guardian: “Are you a Pank - Professional, Aunt, No Kids?” Essentially, your Christmas purpose is to keep the economy thriving by indulging your siblings’ offspring with stuff. Whether my sister is spending US$387 per annum on each of our children largely depends on how often they sting her for a trip to the cafe, but while this figure seems outrageous, it isn’t terribly difficult to drop $400 on a child in a given calendar year. If it was difficult, I wouldn’t have my childlike adoration of Christmas shattered by the annual realisation of how damnably expensive it all is, and I wouldn’t be so bewildered by how my kids have so much stuff.

Now our families and friends are mostly restrained when it comes to birthdays and Christmas, and we’re most certainly of the “mean parent” variety, so our two cherubs have noticeably fewer toys than many of their peers. I applaud you, sensible family members and dear friends of ours. That all said, the children have still received more toys in their short lives than I did in my entire eighteen years of official childhood.

And kids these days get a lot of collective grief about all their possessions, like somehow they’re to blame. Oooh, look at those ungrateful brats with their 76 teddy bears; they just don’t know the value of things.

Well, guess what? Chances are the four-year-old didn’t buy those teddy bears, and my money is on the parents absolutely loathing them, but out of a sense of obligation to be a grateful receiver of well-meaning gifts, can’t just throw them all away come January 6th.

So in its deliberate attempt to sell stuff, the article on PANKS (far better than Wealthy Aunt, No Kids, I suppose) first fails to address the fact that adults without children shouldn’t feel any compulsion to buy things for other people’s kids, but secondly, it ignores the very real problem faced by parents with insufficient toy storage capacity or indeed a desire to have all that stuff in their houses: Toys cost far less now than they did 30 years ago, and there are significantly more adults with disposable income buying presents for fewer children than perhaps ever before. Consequently, middle-class western children have significantly more stuff than they need.

You only need to consider the some rough unverified economics. When I was a kid, soft toys were fiendishly expensive. I can’t recall exactly what my Care Bear Cousin or Cabbage Patch Kid cost - because I didn’t purchase them - but I'm pretty sure the Cabbage Patch Kid was well over NZ$50 and may have been bordering on $75. I didn’t concern myself at the time with how Santa afforded it, but I did know that I could only get the Care Bear as a very special, really extraordinary treat. Care Bears were imported and expensive, and would have been more in dollar value than their equivalents today - you can easily pick one up for NZ$30. When you consider inflation since the late 1980s, this put our childhood toys into a category of almost luxury goods.

But while the price of milk has steadily risen, the price of toys has dropped substantially, and they are available in consumer locations and quantities that would have seemed laughably excessive in the laughably excessive 1980s. Consequently, without any effort, you can spend very little on a child’s birthday present and still have it take up considerable cupboard/floor space in a child’s bedroom.

And parents are really at a loss as to how to deal with all this stuff. You can give blanket bans on presents, but such requests are typically ignored or actively resented. Furthermore, most of the gifts are not in themselves excessive, it’s just the cumulative effect.

Let’s go back to the people buying the presents. Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, and family friends without children. There have always been people who have some claim on a child and have always had the tendency to buy slightly lavish gifts. And that’s cool. You’re meant to get awesome presents from your “rich” Uncle overseas.

But there’s just an awful lot of them now. When I was a child, most of my parents’ friends had children, and certainly weren’t making a habit of buying presents for me. My parents’ friends without children tended not to have the income to throw gifts around, but they also had nieces and nephews of their own who got first dibs on their largesse. My uncles and aunts with one exception had children, and I was lucky to get some socks or a funny knickknack on Christmas Day. Or the greatest Xmas prize - the family sampler biscuit box.

My kids, however, are the only grandchildren on both sides, so counting grandparents and uncle and aunts, right off the bat they have 7 adults with disposable incomes who have no other immediately related children to buy for; 9 if you count my sisters-in-law; 11 if you count me and my husband. But really, we don’t count, because we’re parents and have no disposable income!

Furthermore, many of my friend who aren't parents don’t even have nieces and nephews, and some of my parents’ friends don’t have grandchildren. Now if you want to know a group of solvent individuals who really want to buy presents for children, it’s retirees without grandchildren. Their numbers are growing, but they still feel deprived and will acquire quasi-grandkids whether anyone involved likes it or not!

So as much as easy consumerism needs a good talking to, I don’t want to lay any blame today in this social commentary, but offer a solution for all people, parents or sane adults alike, when it comes to children’s presents; a couple of simple question to ask yourself before you drop $24.99 on a glitter and bead craft that looks kind of fun, but which you probably wouldn’t want in your house.

What is my relationship to this child?

Did the equivalent person in my life ever buy presents for me?

If the answer is no, then probably no one will notice if you don’t give a present.

And if you still feel you ought to buy a present or just really want to, step away from the stuffed animals and buy a book. Or some $4.99 felt-tip pens.

You can never go wrong with a book, and kids always love pens. 

P.S. And if you really do have $387 to spend on a child each year, perhaps offer to help out with the fees for ballet lessons or similar. Chances are the parents will fall at your feet in eternal praise.

The tragic ballad of the singing mother

The New Zealand Youth Choir and Toronto Children's Chorus rehearsing together in Toronto (27 November 2013)

The New Zealand Youth Choir was in town last week on their whistle stop tour through the USA and Canada. Naturally I spent the day with them in Toronto, hanging out with my big sister (vocal consultant to the choir), catching up with old friends on staff, and seeing singers who were small children when I sang in the choir - kids I used to babysit and even conduct in a children’s choir - all grown up and singing in my choir. Once you’ve been a part of the musical brilliance that is the NZYC, it will always be your choir, and that day in Toronto was something of a homecoming.

Unfortunately, I was also coming down with something, so over the course of the day I lost my voice and couldn’t even join in with the post-concert pub sing-along. (Unless you count my attempts at singing the tenor parts, which we won’t). This really was a shame, because I’m not doing much singing at the moment, and haven’t even joined a choir since we moved to Toronto.

Let me rephrase that. I auditioned for a fantastic choir over the summer, but thanks to moving halfway around the world, getting pneumonia, and generally being out of practice, my singing was appalling and I didn’t get in. Furthermore, I can’t quite bring myself to devote the time required to just join a community choir to get my voice back in action. Because Youth Choir and all the chamber and cathedral choirs I have sung with in New Zealand and Scotland have spoilt me for amateur choral singing. To use a sports analogy, I almost made the pro-leagues and it’s just hard to reconcile myself to the Saturday social clubs.

Many singers face this at various points in their careers: some do heaps of performing to a high level at school and then never sing after the age of 18; some people I know from my Youth Choir days no longer sing either. They made it into one of the world’s very best youth choirs and after the age of 25 ne’er a note breaks forth from their larynx; some singers then find it very hard to combine a professional life outside of music with the demands of rehearsal schedules (predominantly unpaid), concert demands (again, unpaid for most choral singers), and the general obligations of adult life.

In many ways I fall into that last category. I made a decision back in 2001 to not take my place in the MMus programme at the University of Auckland, and take a gamble on postgrad English Literature courses overseas. Had I continued on the path of musical scholarship, I probably would have a career today in music. Musicologist, music teacher, arts administrator, who knows? Whatever I had become, it is likely that choral singing would have been an easy and natural facet of my professional music life. Or at least easier to combine.

My time studying English at the University of Edinburgh also involved lots of singing, and it was looking for a while like I had nailed this English scholar by day, choral singer by evening and weekend life. But then something put a spanner in those works. I had a child.

Again, I could do this. Sure the hormones of pregnancy and breastfeeding can mess with your voice, but you’ve just got to keep singing. Between a non-singing husband and a very musically supportive family, I kept up as much cathedral singing as possible, and even got into the 32-voice pool for Voices NZ, the country’s semi-professional chamber choir. There I was with a baby daughter, doing some part-time teaching at Auckland University, and still managing to get to rehearsals, services, and the occasional big concert. Yay me.

But my research was slipping. My research. The thing you need if you ever want a real job at a university.

Then I had another child who would not sleep and something had to give. And that something was singing. Actually, that first year with my son, I managed to present one paper at a conference. No teaching. No sleeping for that matter, and maybe one Christmas service just to feel like a human again. I think. I don’t remember much from that year.

People would say, “but at least your husband isn’t singing, so he can watch the kids.” Well, that’s true to a point, but non-singing husbands also have jobs and other commitments too. We also like to see each other occasionally.

However, I was still in New Zealand and an accepted member of the singing establishment. I may have been a bit out of practice, but the conductors knew me, knew my voice at its best, and knew they could rely on my musicianship. I could still sing without the pesky issue of auditions.

Things are a bit different here in Canada. I’m still fortunate enough to know a couple of big players in the Toronto choral scene, but that doesn’t make up for a voice that’s out of practice and some breath control ruined by pneumonia. I may look good on paper, but right now the goods don’t live up to the CV.

And I’m not alone. For my singing peers who are also mothers, it just seems to be extraordinarily difficult to maintain family life, a work life, and a singing life. Priorities change yes, but with all the best will in the world, it’s often finances that rule the day. If I’m not being paid for choir, and I have to figure out babysitting, it is just prohibitively expensive to manage a rehearsal week leading up to a big performance, let alone deal with a tour.

You can forget about singing lessons too, especially if you’re a young family on one income. At the standard rate of $60 or more per lesson, and then factoring in potential babysitting costs, it falls into the financially too-hard basket.

Another depressing point is that it’s not the same for the Dads. Sure they have very similar commitments to juggle, but the choirs bend over backwards to keep them singing. Because you can always find another soprano or alto, but basses and particularly tenors are in short supply.

I don’t have any solutions to offer, but I just want it on the record why so many of us struggle to keep singing once we’re grown-ups who can no longer rely on school and university holidays, or flexible timetables. Once we’ve got children who need to be ferried around to their own activities, rehearsals and concerts. And those activities cost. They cost so much.

I’m very glad I didn’t stay in Auckland to do my MMus. Going to Edinburgh and eventually getting my PhD was unquestionably the best thing I could have done, but most choices in life have an alternative option that could have been just as fulfilling in a different way.

So when I left the pub the other night, as the strains of cheesy operatic and choral numbers sung by drunk tenors and basses rang out through the clamour of the Toronto night, it was an extraordinarily bittersweet leaving of a world that had so very nearly been in my grasp.

Hopefully time, circumstances and practice will allow me to once again be more than a passing visitor.

P.S. I think things would be different if I was still in the UK. The advantage of a large population in a relatively small place means there are many more choirs to sing with. There is also a strong tradition of cathedral singing, so even if you can’t commit fully to a choir’s schedule, you can always be a regular deputy, and even make a bit of money on the side in the process. Ah, depping. I love depping. Limited rehearsals. Jolly good Sunday morning sing!

Reconsidering Amy March

WARNING: If you are a student who has stumbled across this blog, I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings, but please remember that this is an unsubstantiated opinion piece, and not something to quote from. If you are searching for a reference, I recommend that you look for a proper peer-reviewed academic article. Try, for instance, a keyword search at Literature Online. And remember kids, if you can find this with Google, so can your profs. They’re better at research and the internet than you!

Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888

The other week I reread Little Women for the first time in ages, for academic purposes. No really, enjoyable though the process was, it was actually for academic purposes. But from a very non-academic perspective, I was struck by how my reception of Louisa May Alcott’s novel has changed over the years.

When I was 16, like when lots of little women are 16 or 12, 19 or whenever they first read it, it’s all about Jo and Laurie, and the tragedy of Beth. Many a tear has been shed for Beth, and many a frustrated reader has puzzled not only at Jo rejecting Laurie, but Laurie then going off and marrying Amy. It's not that I didn't understand why Jo and Laurie weren't suited to each other, but Amy? Not to mention the uncomfortable reaction to Jo marrying Friedrich Bhaer. I mean, I kind of got that being a poor academic is cool in theory, but he must be 40 if he’s a day!

This is hardly an original response, as evident from a quick Google search, as well as a 2011 book called Little Women and Me. Written by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, it’s about a 14-year-old girl who finds herself transported back to the 1860s March household and goes about trying to right literary “wrongs” - namely Amy ending up with Laurie, and Beth dying. No, I haven’t read it, because I don’t really go in for that sort of put-yourself-in-a-classic-novel thing. Also, it suggests a reading of the book far too influenced by the 1994 film adaptation starring Winona Ryder, Christian Bale, and Claire Danes. I enjoyed the movie, but it’s very much Jo with supporting player sisters, and although it does a great job with the young Amy, the screenplay denies her any agency as an adult. She’s an ornament without depth, so with the inevitable movie plot truncation her marriage to Laurie is not only sudden, but really rather perplexing. Another issue I have with the movie, which I will elaborate in another blog post is how they’ve conflated Josephine March the character with Louisa May Alcott the historical figure by making Jo the author of a book called “Little Women.” Isn’t in the novel. Didn’t happen. Stop changing the story.

Anyway, now that I am much closer to 40 than 16, a lot of those things that I didn’t like about the novel just seem so very right now.

For one thing, Meg and her marital-maternal muddles are significantly more interesting. First time round I barely paid her any attention. Meg - BORING! Drank some champagne at a party, got a bit flirty, married Laurie’s teacher, and then had twins. -Ah, young Erin, you bad proto-critic, that’s pretty much the film plot. Clearly I was skipping bits as I read and ignored the chapters where she’s a stressed out young mother and not especially doting wife for a year after the twins were born. - DIDN’T CARE!

These days I’m decidedly more sympathetic to the pragmatic homeliness of the novel, and quite approve of Marmie’s advice to get someone else to watch the kids and go out with your husband.

However, the most surprising thing was how invested I was in Amy and Laurie, not to mention how completely bleeding obvious their marriage is from the very beginning of the book. I mean, 16-year-old Laurie doesn’t fancy 12-year-old Amy, or anything like that, but Alcott makes it quite clear that Amy is the March girl for him. And vice versa. It’s not just that Laurie saves Amy when she falls through the ice, but he does that wonderful thing many of us wanted from slightly older boys when we were 12 or 13: He teases Amy, protects her, AND pays proper attention to her. He essentially treats her like a grown-up and takes her concerns seriously, which is more than can be said of her sisters. Laurie takes the trouble to visit Amy when she’s in exile/quarantine at Aunt March’s house, and signs her laughably earnest will. Furthermore, when he lets slip about things not looking good for Beth, he doesn’t then dismiss it, but straightforwardly answers her questions.

And how did I possibly miss that it is Laurie whom Amy clings to just as she heads off to Europe? Just as she realises that “a whole ocean was soon to roll between her and those who loved her best...”

“[...] and if anything happens, I’ll come and comfort you,” whispered Laurie, little dreaming how soon he would be called upon to keep his word.”

But Laurie is being big brother Laurie here, and in my Jo/Beth focussed reading, I could only see the dread of Beth’s eventual death in this chapter. Laurie loves Jo after all, and surely this will follow the standard L.M. Montgomery-type plot where the heroine thinks she’s just pals with the hero until she suddenly realises that such jolly friendship is actually love.

Alcott more or less invented the “girls” novel, so she didn’t have to follow any such plot patterns. Jo is quite resolute that she doesn’t see her boy Teddy in that way, and why should she? She’s his friend, she knows they’d make each other miserable, and more to the point, she doesn’t love him that way. Alcott is stridently warning against the tendency to force a romance out of a good friendship. Tis better to be alone than to settle for love.

I’m digressing somewhat (incidentally, if you’re at all concerned, this is not the style of my academic writing).

So where was I? Laurie. He’s a very well constructed character and no mere dreamy teen love interest. In particular, he struggles with the slowly dawning realisation that he loves Amy. He really has to reconcile himself to the notion that the two sisters are swapping places in his affection. It’s not just a matter of showing up one day in Nice, seeing Amy, and thinking, “Oh well, Jo won’t have me, this March girl will do.” Alcott also lets Amy figure out a few quandaries of her own before admitting that it was Laurie all along. And that’s the thing, it’s all along for both of them.

More importantly, the surprise for me as an adult reader was my sudden interest in Amy as a character. I had totally written her off as the slightly bitchy, kind-of accomplished one. All style, no substance. Perhaps a bit Samantha Mathis working with an sparse script. But let me tell you, Amy has substance. Sure, she likes to dress well and knows that she can easily play the ornament of society, but Amy is still a March girl, and heir to her mother’s principles. She sorts Laurie’s indolence out as no one else can, and lectures him admirably on living up to the opportunities you have been given: “But I did really well at Harvard! Wah!” - “You’re a rich boy from Concord, Massachusetts, anything less would have been appalling, so snap out of it.” (I paraphrase of course.)

More importantly, Amy is an artist, and a proper one to boot. Somehow that slipped me by. Arguably a better painter than Jo is a writer. She’s in Europe not to dabble, but to learn art, and she doesn’t give it up to get married; she realises that no amount of talent and energy will create genius: “I want to be great or nothing. I won’t be a common-place dauber [...].” Laurie recognises the same thing with his music.

There are so many interesting discussions to be made about the domestic trajectory of Little Women. Why did Jo have to marry at all? Alcott never married, but it was 1869 and guess what lovies, we still want our heroines to settle down in 2013. There is also a sense of resignation in the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence returning from artistic Europe to sensible hard-working American life in Massachusetts. Much has been made, for instance, of the narrative implication that they will only have one child: young Bess who may be as sickly as her Aunt Beth. You can perhaps imagine the academic ponderings about this great marriage of beauty, talent, and wealth resulting in some sterility and decay. Jo and Friedrich after all go on to run their school and have two fine healthy boys of their own. Robust American Transcendentalism for the win!

Or maybe Alcott just didn’t want to give Amy everything. Because life doesn’t give you everything. Or maybe it’s a story and sentimental plots need some contrived balance.

Now this domesticity doesn’t mean that Laurie and Amy stop their music and art altogether. In fact, we last see Amy perfecting sculpture so she can be certain of a physical reminder of her infant daughter - God, that choked me up so much. I actually had to excuse myself from the living room while reading and run to double check what happens to Bess. [Plot spoiler: she’s still alive in Jo’s Boys. Phew. Struggle in vain to stop tears over fictional potential for fictional character.]

To paraphrase Hugh Haweis, a 19th-century music writer, we take from art that which we are capable of receiving. At 16, Jo was the character most like me, lack of musicianship notwithstanding - and I had no intention of being like Beth! I notice Meg now, because I too am managing children and husband and life. And perhaps I care about Amy this time around because I have found myself with a blond, artistic daughter who worries about her curls and may one day be dreadfully concerned about the shape of her nose. And I know those superficial foibles have little bearing on her talents, her firm sense of self and her place in this world.

I’m also at a point with my music where I’m not satisfied by amateurism, but I know my abilities have slipped. I might be scribbling here, but I can’t force genius from my choral squawkings.

Most importantly, my biases and wants as a reader shape my analysis, but they can’t change a plot. For my part as a critic, I argue that we have to accept the Transcendentalist philosophy of the novel: Jo is no sentimental heroine to be married off to the good American boy, despite all of Laurie’s wild Italian roots. Instead, Alcott has created in Bhaer the solid-hearted, plain-living, and intellectual Romantic-with-a-capital-R hero worthy of her Jo.

If you don’t like that, then I strongly suggest you reconsider Amy.