Last week, I was at a theology conference, hosted by Moreau Seminary at the University of Notre Dame (yes, I brought my baby, while Philosophy PhD Husband and my three year old went to a family gathering). This was one of those lovely conferences where the papers are good, but sitting around the table at dinner (or while sipping an after-dinner wine) is equally as good, if not better.
One of the topics of conversation around the dinner table one night was children and having parents that work out of the home. We all agreed that the idea that a woman should stay at home and raise the kids was largely a product of the nineteenth century and that in previous centuries, both parents had worked "at home" and raised the children in more complex patterns than our modern world allows.
Then we turned to the topic of raising children. Several of my interlocutors were pressing the point that even if women are working outside the home, one of the spouses should be staying at home taking care of the children and that this has generally been the way people have raised kids through the centuries. It is only now that we are seriously screwing up our children. But kids, they maintained, are only really loved by their parents and it is the parents who need to be there full time.
My initial response is that something in that history seems a bit off to me - I'm thinking not only of an upperclass world of governesses, nannies, nurses, and boarding schools, but of middle and lower class apprenticeships or being sent away to work in service. I think there were few times and places that children were actually being raised directly by their parents every single day.
Of course I have a bone to pick here: I am paying for the modern equivalent of nurses and nannies as I drop off my kids at the on-campus daycare. I drop in 2-3 times a day to nurse the baby and check in on the three year old; my day becomes a patchwork of nursing and day care drop off, two hours grading, nursing, two hours writing, nursing, two hours doing more writing, day care pick up, coming home and cooking, playing with the kids, doing the bedtime routine, and then at the end of it all, another 2-4 hours of writing or other work.
As I watch other people respond to and help raise my kids, I see them often teaching them good things that I would never have thought about, and I see them giving hugs, kisses, pats on the head. This doesn't diminish the fact that when I come to the day care, I too, will be called on for hugs. But it isn't an exclusive thing or a limiting thing in my view: I'm not the only one who cares for and loves my daughters. They do too. I recognize that it's different, and that for all sorts of good reasons, I'm the one who stays home with a sick child or who takes them to the doctor.
All that said, the conversation at that dinner table got to me in later reflections, because I think they're (perhaps unknowingly) alluding to something else very important about raising children - something that has only cropped up in the past couple centuries - and that is the way children's lives are being engulfed in industrialized patterns.
Day care of the kind that I send my kids to is possible only in a world that conceives that it is reasonable to group children into classrooms by single ages - showcasing a desire for efficiency. After all, changing a baby's diapers isn't a very efficient enterprise when I, at home with the three year old haranguing me to do puzzles, discover that the diapers haven't yet been washed so I scramble to find something, anything to cover the baby's bum. But diaper changing is very efficient when, in a class of twelve babies, three teachers take turns in whipping down the paper diaper from the appropriate cubicle.
The work day, too, is institutionalized in an 8-5 time frame (a far better cry from the early factory days, of course, but still institutionalized). So it is interesting, too, to reflect on the ways in which office space arbitrarily demands my time during those hours and not others; of course, there are plenty of jobs in our late modern culture that demand more (to what end, I always ask?). (I hasten to say here - one of my reasons for going in to academia is precisely that it does not cater to those same time frames - there are good things about the fact that academia is largely based in medieval institutions.)
And I could take it further still to all of life: eating is industrialized, so is elder care, so is clothes shopping, or anything else we would want to buy. Nearly everything we have is predicated on sleek efficient machines having brought our stuff to us.
At what point does it end? At what point would I say, "Now I am really responsible for the care of my children" and this industrialized world has been staved off? It doesn't happen. Even if one of us stayed home and homeschooled, and we grew all the vegetables and raised the goats and the sheep and the chickens (I have actually long had this kind of dream and maybe someday I will buy just such a house in the San Luis Valley in Colorado), at some point there would still be points of complicity in modern culture. The people I know who try this still have hard decisions to make - and still end up participating at some level.
I think it is highly legitimate to ask where the point is that we want to try to over turn that industrialization or at least stave it off. I think my friends sitting around the dinner table make some really good points. Maybe they're right and I'm too defeatist about it - maybe the way to get around the industrialization of children (and ourselves) is to opt out in just these ways. Wendell Berry fans unite.
But in the end I'm not sure how far that goes because I'm not convinced that we can stand apart from that culture. Would it be better, instead, to try to find evidence of God's handiwork here even in spite of ourselves, in the chinks of this life? Like, for instance, the day care worker I saw the other day - she did not know I was there, just outside the door, watching as she hoisted up my baby with a look of joy, and my baby laughed too. I loved seeing two people laugh - it was good salve in the rather depressing times we live in. And, laughter, thankfully, does not operate on a scale of scarcity. For when I opened the door, they both turned to me, and I got "that look" too - and we all shared in some joy and laughter.
Showing posts with label baby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baby. Show all posts
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Names
I'm in the midst of writing this book on theology and the internet, and so I have precious little time to post these days. I'm typically found hunkered down in my office, typing furiously, except when I take little breaks to walk over to the day care and nurse Baby G. It's summer - so I don't see a lot of people, and that's a good thing as far as work goes - less good for me and my stress level.
But I had a mini-opportunity to think about other things today. I ran into a couple students on campus that I haven't seen in a year or more- both calling out, "Dr. Bennett!"
The title "doctor" always makes me blush a bit. After all, I am no "doctor" wearing a white lab coat. And I still have a bit of first-year-out-of-grad-school feelings about being a "doctor of theology": really? I mean, really? (As with the "Master of Divinity" how can anyone really claim to be a "doctor" of theology?)
Nonetheless, there it is, and that's my name here, at least among my students. After the first round of blushing, I remember, "Oh yeah - I'm an adult - and a professor." It makes me feel different, respond differently to people. I remember to treat myself with a bit more respect because they treat me that way. I've had to grow into that name a bit, and still, I am learning how to be 'Dr. Bennett'. Crazy how that works.
Not coincidentally, the use of this name makes me reflect on other names - particularly the fact that I am currently trying (in vain, I know, I know!) to get my six month old daughter to say Mama. "Mama - you can say it!" All I get is a raspberry - she's getting quite good at those, actually.
"Mama" is another name I've had to grow into. Despite the fact that my three year old is now at the age where she says "mama, mama, mama" constantly - Mama, look what I can do! Mama, I'm hungry! - I still feel a bit weird thinking of myself as a "mama". Oh yeah - I'm an adult, and a mama. I'd better act like it.
Some would argue that the only actions that have real meaning are the ones that we "mean" to do. But I don't think that's it at all - I think I'm constantly learning how to live the words I speak and the words that name who I am. Love - that's another word that I'm not quite comfortable wearing yet, though I say it and try to live it all the time.
But I had a mini-opportunity to think about other things today. I ran into a couple students on campus that I haven't seen in a year or more- both calling out, "Dr. Bennett!"
The title "doctor" always makes me blush a bit. After all, I am no "doctor" wearing a white lab coat. And I still have a bit of first-year-out-of-grad-school feelings about being a "doctor of theology": really? I mean, really? (As with the "Master of Divinity" how can anyone really claim to be a "doctor" of theology?)
Nonetheless, there it is, and that's my name here, at least among my students. After the first round of blushing, I remember, "Oh yeah - I'm an adult - and a professor." It makes me feel different, respond differently to people. I remember to treat myself with a bit more respect because they treat me that way. I've had to grow into that name a bit, and still, I am learning how to be 'Dr. Bennett'. Crazy how that works.
Not coincidentally, the use of this name makes me reflect on other names - particularly the fact that I am currently trying (in vain, I know, I know!) to get my six month old daughter to say Mama. "Mama - you can say it!" All I get is a raspberry - she's getting quite good at those, actually.
"Mama" is another name I've had to grow into. Despite the fact that my three year old is now at the age where she says "mama, mama, mama" constantly - Mama, look what I can do! Mama, I'm hungry! - I still feel a bit weird thinking of myself as a "mama". Oh yeah - I'm an adult, and a mama. I'd better act like it.
Some would argue that the only actions that have real meaning are the ones that we "mean" to do. But I don't think that's it at all - I think I'm constantly learning how to live the words I speak and the words that name who I am. Love - that's another word that I'm not quite comfortable wearing yet, though I say it and try to live it all the time.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Babies: A Movie Review
Here's another movie review that continues in the "grand" tradition of this blog - reviewing movies that are really not that new. Babies is a documentary film that came out in 2010 and is about four babies' lives from "first breath to first step", one from Namibia, one from Mongolia, one from Japan, and one from the USA. I remember seeing reviews of this movie and thinking, "Really?" It didn't strike me at the time that it'd be such a great concept. I mean, I'm a mother - I watch my baby do stuff all day, and while I occasionally find it fascinating, more often than not I find it, well, normal and therefore rather boring.
This must be one of the reasons why the director had to push this idea to several people before finding someone else willing to work with it. It must also be one of the reasons why the videographer would travel to these places and spend days there, only to return with one "good" short worth putting in the film. (Though of course, this isn't unlike the process of writing - I aim to write a couple pages a day, but much of it is definitely not staying in the book...)
I was all set to view the documentary as some kind of social commentary: you know, Western industrialized nations versus less industrialized nations and how babies do, comparatively. Or, people with "stuff" versus people without "stuff". Or, time spent versus lack of time spent. The Japanese and American mothers do very similar things, for instance: song and dance classes for their young babies; day care situations, et cetera.
About ten minutes into it, I stopped thinking in this way and just started enjoying the process of watching these babies. The director creatively pairs film shorts together and it makes a satisfying collage of love and care for the smallest members of our human clan. (Or, should I even say, it makes an interesting board book movie? My 3 month-old "watched" parts of this film and was fascinated.)
The US family is a "green" ecologically-minded family; the Japanese family lives in one of the busiest sectors of Tokyo; the Mongolian family is a relatively well-off herding family, and the Namibian family seems mostly to consists of mothers and children - the men are off herding and farming. It's an eclectic group; you wouldn't expect to find much in common necessarily, except that these babies are loved and cared for with very obvious joy.
Viewers who have always been curious about breastfeeding will see fantastic images of babies nursing, including the Namibian mother tandem nursing. And, I was curious about how people who don't use diapers manage - very well, as it happens.
This is also a funny film - as one might imagine with babies, there are plenty of moments that made me want to laugh. One is when the American baby is eating a banana and very painstakingly picks off each bit of the peel before eating it. Then she bites into the wrong end and finds herself chewing on that bad-tasting end bit of bananas, and spits that out. Another is the moment when the Monogolian baby, swaddled and lying on a bed, all of a sudden finds himself surrounded by a rooster that is at least twice his size. The rooster just dances around the bed. Still another is when the Namibian baby has learned to walk and starts balancing something (the end of a plastic jug, I think?) on her head - I was highly impressed by her walking and balancing skills.
Ultimately, the theme of the movie seems to be one that contributes an argument to the Western "mommy wars" problem. (So okay, I am going to find a point here - but not the one I was originally looking for...) Here was an array of parents and cultures and parenting styles, and they all work. The Namibian mother was the one who was most obviously with her baby all the time, in a very relaxed way - more relaxed than I think sometimes the pressure of being a "stay at home mom" feels in Western culture. But her husband and sons were often gone many days out of the month. "Work out of the home" moms were represented by the Western mothers. The Japanese mother worked out of the home and so we saw a day care scene but we also see her and her husband taking care of the baby at home. The American parents tried to work as a team, and it seemed that they did more trading off of parental duties, around their office work, than the others.
And a different way of running the family shows up in the the Mongolian family. They, too, tried to pair up their parenting, probably by necessity. Both the mother and father were doing work with the herding animals and so would intersperse child care with animal care. That meant the baby was left alone fairly often - and we see him crawling around outside, enjoying the weather, and investigating the broad world while the parents are off at some distance.
Maybe the point was: you do what you have to do to make a living and care for the kids. None of these represents an "ideal" for parenthood except for the common thread of desiring to care for the babies so that they are healthy, have some freedom to learn to crawl and walk and talk, and that there is something joyful about nurturing a baby.
The movie is not really about the parents, though, but the babies themselves and that is ultimately what makes one become mesmerized: their extraordinary growth, their wonder, their joy.
One final funny moment, for me anyway: at one point, the American father takes his daughter to a song time, where they sing 'The Earth is our Mother." The chant threw me off at first because it starts before you see that we're in the US and I thought, "Huh, this must be in one of the non-American countries - maybe they do chant there." And then I was laughing at myself because I saw the American father, AND I remembered singing this song probably when I was three years old myself. I think of it as a very, very "hippy" song. But what made it even funnier is that the baby stands up, walks out of the singing circle and tries to open the door. "Let me out, please!" Exactly what I'd be doing anyway, if I found myself having to sing that song again. (Hey, I like being ecologically friendly but I'm not sure that's what this song is really about....)
Anyway, if you haven't had the chance to see Babies, I highly recommend finding a copy somewhere. It will give you hope - a good thing to have these days.
This must be one of the reasons why the director had to push this idea to several people before finding someone else willing to work with it. It must also be one of the reasons why the videographer would travel to these places and spend days there, only to return with one "good" short worth putting in the film. (Though of course, this isn't unlike the process of writing - I aim to write a couple pages a day, but much of it is definitely not staying in the book...)
I was all set to view the documentary as some kind of social commentary: you know, Western industrialized nations versus less industrialized nations and how babies do, comparatively. Or, people with "stuff" versus people without "stuff". Or, time spent versus lack of time spent. The Japanese and American mothers do very similar things, for instance: song and dance classes for their young babies; day care situations, et cetera.
About ten minutes into it, I stopped thinking in this way and just started enjoying the process of watching these babies. The director creatively pairs film shorts together and it makes a satisfying collage of love and care for the smallest members of our human clan. (Or, should I even say, it makes an interesting board book movie? My 3 month-old "watched" parts of this film and was fascinated.)
The US family is a "green" ecologically-minded family; the Japanese family lives in one of the busiest sectors of Tokyo; the Mongolian family is a relatively well-off herding family, and the Namibian family seems mostly to consists of mothers and children - the men are off herding and farming. It's an eclectic group; you wouldn't expect to find much in common necessarily, except that these babies are loved and cared for with very obvious joy.
Viewers who have always been curious about breastfeeding will see fantastic images of babies nursing, including the Namibian mother tandem nursing. And, I was curious about how people who don't use diapers manage - very well, as it happens.
This is also a funny film - as one might imagine with babies, there are plenty of moments that made me want to laugh. One is when the American baby is eating a banana and very painstakingly picks off each bit of the peel before eating it. Then she bites into the wrong end and finds herself chewing on that bad-tasting end bit of bananas, and spits that out. Another is the moment when the Monogolian baby, swaddled and lying on a bed, all of a sudden finds himself surrounded by a rooster that is at least twice his size. The rooster just dances around the bed. Still another is when the Namibian baby has learned to walk and starts balancing something (the end of a plastic jug, I think?) on her head - I was highly impressed by her walking and balancing skills.
Ultimately, the theme of the movie seems to be one that contributes an argument to the Western "mommy wars" problem. (So okay, I am going to find a point here - but not the one I was originally looking for...) Here was an array of parents and cultures and parenting styles, and they all work. The Namibian mother was the one who was most obviously with her baby all the time, in a very relaxed way - more relaxed than I think sometimes the pressure of being a "stay at home mom" feels in Western culture. But her husband and sons were often gone many days out of the month. "Work out of the home" moms were represented by the Western mothers. The Japanese mother worked out of the home and so we saw a day care scene but we also see her and her husband taking care of the baby at home. The American parents tried to work as a team, and it seemed that they did more trading off of parental duties, around their office work, than the others.
And a different way of running the family shows up in the the Mongolian family. They, too, tried to pair up their parenting, probably by necessity. Both the mother and father were doing work with the herding animals and so would intersperse child care with animal care. That meant the baby was left alone fairly often - and we see him crawling around outside, enjoying the weather, and investigating the broad world while the parents are off at some distance.
Maybe the point was: you do what you have to do to make a living and care for the kids. None of these represents an "ideal" for parenthood except for the common thread of desiring to care for the babies so that they are healthy, have some freedom to learn to crawl and walk and talk, and that there is something joyful about nurturing a baby.
The movie is not really about the parents, though, but the babies themselves and that is ultimately what makes one become mesmerized: their extraordinary growth, their wonder, their joy.
One final funny moment, for me anyway: at one point, the American father takes his daughter to a song time, where they sing 'The Earth is our Mother." The chant threw me off at first because it starts before you see that we're in the US and I thought, "Huh, this must be in one of the non-American countries - maybe they do chant there." And then I was laughing at myself because I saw the American father, AND I remembered singing this song probably when I was three years old myself. I think of it as a very, very "hippy" song. But what made it even funnier is that the baby stands up, walks out of the singing circle and tries to open the door. "Let me out, please!" Exactly what I'd be doing anyway, if I found myself having to sing that song again. (Hey, I like being ecologically friendly but I'm not sure that's what this song is really about....)
Anyway, if you haven't had the chance to see Babies, I highly recommend finding a copy somewhere. It will give you hope - a good thing to have these days.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Baby Days of Spring Semester
My grandmother talks about "the dog days of summer" - those days where it's so hot nothing seems to get done.
Well, I'm having the "baby days of spring semester." Baby G. is getting more active by the minute, and I even think she's at the beginning of doing some teething (!), so that it's more difficult to get writing done. I do still have that book manuscript due: I think I'll have to start moonlighting to get drafts done. Typing one-handed was hard enough, but typing with a squirmy baby is much tougher. My maternity leave also ended on Tuesday, so I'm back at work doing administrative tasks. Most of these are being done at home, though I do get into the office for a brief meeting here and there (and bring the baby, of course). Hard to do that during these "baby days" as well.
It isn't just that Baby G. is more active that makes things harder to do, of course. The day care center called last week and said, "We have a spot for your baby in May." "I'd rather wait till August." "In August, she'd be too old to enter with the incoming baby class and therefore you wouldn't have a spot till she's two."
Hmmm. For those of you fortunate enough not to deal with day care, let me translate. The day care center tries to keep a balance of younger and older babies. They have twelve spots in the younger baby room (6 weeks to 12 months) and twelve spots in the older baby room (12 months to 24 months). The babies rotate in groups at the appropriate time (they move in May, August and January) so that there's always an incoming class of younger babies, and always a like-numbered group moving up to the older baby room. Since the total number of spots available for babies stays the same, the only way to get a spot if you don't rotate in early is for someone else to drop out. Guess how often THAT mythical experience happens? So that's why in May, Baby G. is good to go at five months, but in August at eight months would be unable to go.****
I didn't know all this initially and so was quite taken aback. I want to stay home with Baby G. till August, and I can do so because I'm on contract till May 15th (I'm presuming I'll be offered another contract that starts again in August ;-)): she'll be more independent of me then because she'll likely have started solids and by that time, I'll be screaming ready to get out of the house and teach some college students. That's how it was with L. anyway. I stayed home with her for nine months and was glad to spend the time but equally glad to get back to work.
I thought briefly about other options - I know of a couple other day care places that could probably take Baby G in August. But the upsides of this day care are that it is on my work campus, L's preschool is there, and it's a close walk or drive from my house. All good. Other day cares are 20 minutes' drive one way in the opposite direction. I had that experience the first year I went back to work - the 1.5 hour commute to get L to day care was not conducive to much family life at all. You can probably imagine yourselves how much better our lives have been as a family once we could cut that drive out of the equation.
I feel somehow like I'm robbing Baby G. of some time if I send her to day care in May - she'll still be nursing pretty much full time even if she's on solids. And I'm not sure I'll quite be ready to let her go.
I know, it's the conundrum every mom faces anyway, and I'm very fortunate not to have to face it as soon as most moms in the US. The likely thing we'll do is pay for May but hold off on actually putting her in day care till late June.
Still, the fact that time is swiftly running away from us makes me want to hold on to these baby days all the more.
****This is roughly the way I understand it. The director told me about all the quid pro quos too, which seemed to amount to: "SOME older babies will get in in August, but not yours." So the upshot is, it's all way complicated, involving waiting lists and other sundry info and it doesn't really work the neat way I described above. Ah well. This is why I am not a director of a day care center (God bless her) and I'm quite sure I'd have a hard time dealing with parents exactly like me ;-)
Well, I'm having the "baby days of spring semester." Baby G. is getting more active by the minute, and I even think she's at the beginning of doing some teething (!), so that it's more difficult to get writing done. I do still have that book manuscript due: I think I'll have to start moonlighting to get drafts done. Typing one-handed was hard enough, but typing with a squirmy baby is much tougher. My maternity leave also ended on Tuesday, so I'm back at work doing administrative tasks. Most of these are being done at home, though I do get into the office for a brief meeting here and there (and bring the baby, of course). Hard to do that during these "baby days" as well.
It isn't just that Baby G. is more active that makes things harder to do, of course. The day care center called last week and said, "We have a spot for your baby in May." "I'd rather wait till August." "In August, she'd be too old to enter with the incoming baby class and therefore you wouldn't have a spot till she's two."
Hmmm. For those of you fortunate enough not to deal with day care, let me translate. The day care center tries to keep a balance of younger and older babies. They have twelve spots in the younger baby room (6 weeks to 12 months) and twelve spots in the older baby room (12 months to 24 months). The babies rotate in groups at the appropriate time (they move in May, August and January) so that there's always an incoming class of younger babies, and always a like-numbered group moving up to the older baby room. Since the total number of spots available for babies stays the same, the only way to get a spot if you don't rotate in early is for someone else to drop out. Guess how often THAT mythical experience happens? So that's why in May, Baby G. is good to go at five months, but in August at eight months would be unable to go.****
I didn't know all this initially and so was quite taken aback. I want to stay home with Baby G. till August, and I can do so because I'm on contract till May 15th (I'm presuming I'll be offered another contract that starts again in August ;-)): she'll be more independent of me then because she'll likely have started solids and by that time, I'll be screaming ready to get out of the house and teach some college students. That's how it was with L. anyway. I stayed home with her for nine months and was glad to spend the time but equally glad to get back to work.
I thought briefly about other options - I know of a couple other day care places that could probably take Baby G in August. But the upsides of this day care are that it is on my work campus, L's preschool is there, and it's a close walk or drive from my house. All good. Other day cares are 20 minutes' drive one way in the opposite direction. I had that experience the first year I went back to work - the 1.5 hour commute to get L to day care was not conducive to much family life at all. You can probably imagine yourselves how much better our lives have been as a family once we could cut that drive out of the equation.
I feel somehow like I'm robbing Baby G. of some time if I send her to day care in May - she'll still be nursing pretty much full time even if she's on solids. And I'm not sure I'll quite be ready to let her go.
I know, it's the conundrum every mom faces anyway, and I'm very fortunate not to have to face it as soon as most moms in the US. The likely thing we'll do is pay for May but hold off on actually putting her in day care till late June.
Still, the fact that time is swiftly running away from us makes me want to hold on to these baby days all the more.
****This is roughly the way I understand it. The director told me about all the quid pro quos too, which seemed to amount to: "SOME older babies will get in in August, but not yours." So the upshot is, it's all way complicated, involving waiting lists and other sundry info and it doesn't really work the neat way I described above. Ah well. This is why I am not a director of a day care center (God bless her) and I'm quite sure I'd have a hard time dealing with parents exactly like me ;-)
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
A Baby's Forehead Ashes...
Baby G. received ashes at today's Ash Wednesday service. I didn't request it; the person imposing them just started right in with her, after giving me my black cross: "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel!" he proclaimed
The thing of it was that as soon as he started imposing the ashes, Baby G. gave him a humongous, beatific smile even while he was saying "turn away from sin." The smile was so contagious, HE smiled. And I returned to my own seat repressing giggles. She was laughing at him, at the very idea of "turn away from sin"
I am certainly not the first person to be confronted with the apparent contradiction of 'original' sin and a baby who has not really had time to sin in the way we theologians refer to sin (as something we intend to do, as something we understand as wrong, et cetera). How can a baby sin? And, after all, what does baptizing an infant mean if our theology of baptism is that it saves us from sins?
And yet, there is the stark Ash Wednesday phrase: "remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."
It reminds me as I hold my three-month-old that unfortunately for her, she has been born to human parents. And unfortunately, the way of human life is that we are caught up in worlds that we have half been formed by and half made ourselves. In a world where there are protests, and people who have no jobs, and where slavery still exists, and the longest US war rages on, and taxes are due, and sick people can't get the care they need, and the globe seems certain to go to hell in a handbasket (at least if what counts for hell is rising waters and raging droughts) - if all that and more, it surely makes sense too that all too often I am short on patience, long on holding grudges, suspicious of trusting in God or anyone else for that matter (especially for how the proverbial "they" might be spending "my" money), and angry at very small provocations. Every day we rise and spend the waking time trying to prevent bad things from happening to us, or at least do damage control. We can control these things; we can make our lives better, we think - if only we vote for the right person or send money to the right cause or try to get more people to agree with my views on parenting, what kind of house to buy and how best to spend one's money, to say nothing of my views on war, money, health care, abortion, homosexuality and stem cell research.
And I am helpless dust - too helpless to prevent her from becoming a human who imbibes too much of her mother's sensibilities. "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return" becomes my most deeply felt prayer today for it reminds me that whatever sense of control we think we have over anything is, at best, a fleeting dream.
Of course she smiled. I have no more control over her churchly behavior than I do over my three year old's. ("Shhh." "We DON'T take our socks and shoes off in church." "Don't bang on the back of the pew, sweetie, that man's trying to pray." "Oh, honey, you can't draw all over the offering envelopes. That wastes paper." "Keep your hands to yourself." "SHHHH." "SHHHHHHHHHHHHH.")
In remembering that I am dust, that Baby G. is dust, that the priest is dust, that even the President of the United States and Congress and the College of Cardinals and the Pope are all dust, I think of other reasons why we are baptized and why we baptize babies who cannot, after all, give reasoned consent to what we parents and godparents are doing on their behalf.
In this sea of an uncontrollable world that we think and believe with all our might that we can control, baptism expresses a Christian's hope in an "otherwise." Baptism is something outside our control and is therefore the antidote to what ails us. We cannot confer the grace received and in any case, what human would have come up with the idea that water and some words would be salvific?. The scales fall from our eyes; we see ourselves and others for what we are, nothing but dust.
But dust that has a hope of being redeemed. We come to see in that liturgical act that original sin does exist: this world we grow into and think we can control becomes an "otherwise" in baptism. It becomes a recognition that the truest, most beautiful, most godlike things, like a baby's smile, cannot be coerced or bought or sold. Like a plant, these godly things can only be planted, watered, and encouraged to root and bloom.
What is baptism but a hope that roots will form in that dust and that something beautiful, something that is God's, will witness to the world what it means to be saved.
The thing of it was that as soon as he started imposing the ashes, Baby G. gave him a humongous, beatific smile even while he was saying "turn away from sin." The smile was so contagious, HE smiled. And I returned to my own seat repressing giggles. She was laughing at him, at the very idea of "turn away from sin"
I am certainly not the first person to be confronted with the apparent contradiction of 'original' sin and a baby who has not really had time to sin in the way we theologians refer to sin (as something we intend to do, as something we understand as wrong, et cetera). How can a baby sin? And, after all, what does baptizing an infant mean if our theology of baptism is that it saves us from sins?
And yet, there is the stark Ash Wednesday phrase: "remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."
It reminds me as I hold my three-month-old that unfortunately for her, she has been born to human parents. And unfortunately, the way of human life is that we are caught up in worlds that we have half been formed by and half made ourselves. In a world where there are protests, and people who have no jobs, and where slavery still exists, and the longest US war rages on, and taxes are due, and sick people can't get the care they need, and the globe seems certain to go to hell in a handbasket (at least if what counts for hell is rising waters and raging droughts) - if all that and more, it surely makes sense too that all too often I am short on patience, long on holding grudges, suspicious of trusting in God or anyone else for that matter (especially for how the proverbial "they" might be spending "my" money), and angry at very small provocations. Every day we rise and spend the waking time trying to prevent bad things from happening to us, or at least do damage control. We can control these things; we can make our lives better, we think - if only we vote for the right person or send money to the right cause or try to get more people to agree with my views on parenting, what kind of house to buy and how best to spend one's money, to say nothing of my views on war, money, health care, abortion, homosexuality and stem cell research.
And I am helpless dust - too helpless to prevent her from becoming a human who imbibes too much of her mother's sensibilities. "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return" becomes my most deeply felt prayer today for it reminds me that whatever sense of control we think we have over anything is, at best, a fleeting dream.
Of course she smiled. I have no more control over her churchly behavior than I do over my three year old's. ("Shhh." "We DON'T take our socks and shoes off in church." "Don't bang on the back of the pew, sweetie, that man's trying to pray." "Oh, honey, you can't draw all over the offering envelopes. That wastes paper." "Keep your hands to yourself." "SHHHH." "SHHHHHHHHHHHHH.")
In remembering that I am dust, that Baby G. is dust, that the priest is dust, that even the President of the United States and Congress and the College of Cardinals and the Pope are all dust, I think of other reasons why we are baptized and why we baptize babies who cannot, after all, give reasoned consent to what we parents and godparents are doing on their behalf.
In this sea of an uncontrollable world that we think and believe with all our might that we can control, baptism expresses a Christian's hope in an "otherwise." Baptism is something outside our control and is therefore the antidote to what ails us. We cannot confer the grace received and in any case, what human would have come up with the idea that water and some words would be salvific?. The scales fall from our eyes; we see ourselves and others for what we are, nothing but dust.
But dust that has a hope of being redeemed. We come to see in that liturgical act that original sin does exist: this world we grow into and think we can control becomes an "otherwise" in baptism. It becomes a recognition that the truest, most beautiful, most godlike things, like a baby's smile, cannot be coerced or bought or sold. Like a plant, these godly things can only be planted, watered, and encouraged to root and bloom.
What is baptism but a hope that roots will form in that dust and that something beautiful, something that is God's, will witness to the world what it means to be saved.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Being Truthful about Being Human: or, "Having it All" Revisited
I apologize for the blog break. Last Saturday, I attended a symposium with other theologians, and I spent last week writing the paper for that symposium. It went well, by the way, and I really enjoyed it. It also makes me think, once again, about the whole concept of working mothers "having it all."
I took the whole family with me to the town where the symposium was - actually, THAT fact was more Philosophy PhD's choice, since he 1) wanted to make sure that I made the 3 hour trip okay by myself (which meant him coming with me); 2) wanted to get out of town; 3) was maybe ever so slightly worried about being alone with L. for a whole day (?). I'm guessing here. In any case, they all came with me.
Baby G. actually went with me to the symposium, too. Most of the time, that's a big "no-no" in academia, especially if you're presenting. At least, I haven't generally felt welcome to do that. But when I was asked to present a paper, I was already 7 months pregnant, and knew that in February there WOULD, God willing, be a baby to show for it all. I also knew that I wanted to nurse the baby and therefore knew that my being away from her for a full night plus a whole day would likely not work. (She does take a bottle here and there, convenient for quick meetings and such...but a whole day and night? Philosophy PhD responsible for the feeding and care of a 3 year old plus an infant? I'm sure he would have balked.) Frankly, I'm not sure if even she were solely a bottle-taking baby, I would have left her for that long at 2 months old. I suppose that's one of those "your mileage may vary" things, highly dependent on the parent and the baby. At 7 months pregnant, you have no idea what kind of baby you'll have nor how you'll feel. And, given that the baby could conceivably have come at any point up to January 11, when they would have induced for post-term pregnancy, the symposium could have been only a month after the baby was born. All those caveats. Despite it all, they kept their invitation open and I decided, why not? It sounded like a fun symposium, and this is one of the several reasons I went into academia - to think about topics with other theologians!
The symposium planners and people were fantastic! They welcomed the baby; one of the participants walked my baby around while I gave my paper (he totally didn't have to do that) and generally it went well, at least from my point of view. (I don't know about theirs....) But the fact is, I wouldn't have gone at all if I couldn't have brought her. It was my sine qua non.
But I want to add still further to the reflection on all this. I was one of only two women in the room, and the only woman with young children. Actually, that's rather common both in my field and in academia in general. There are a few fields that have more women than men, but for the most part, that's not the case. The men there were all family guys themselves, so quite understanding about issues with kids - but still, there's a gender thing there. I'm the only one who has breasts, to put it bluntly. Whatever my brand of feminism at other times and places (I tend to favor post-modern feminism), in situations like this, I seem most like a cultural feminist, because there IS something to their idea that women have undervalued attributes like breasts.
This is especially so in the workplace. It's one of the reasons why I am angry about this country's maternity leave policies, because the underlying view seems to be that, "Oh, OKAY. We'll hire a woman, but after she's hired, she has to pretend that she doesn't have a uterus, breasts, children to pick up from school, or anything else that leaks 'family'." (And let's not make this a those-Europeans versus these-Americans thing, since that seems to devolve into cross-ocean name-calling and discussions of who is most/least responsible when it comes to the national budget. For example, I was speaking to a friend in Uganda last week, where the national policy is three months...)
The standard of pretending one doesn't have a family belongs to a time when men could pretend that they could arrive at work and appear unconnected to family life precisely because they didn't have bodies that betray otherwise. Well, I think partly because women have been in the workplace for a while, that attitude has been changing/changed for a while too. Lots of men now proclaim themselves as family men and leave meetings to pick up kids early. Our maternity leave policy is SO nineteenth-century - and while we're at it, the lack of a paternity leave policy is SO twentieth-century.
So let's be truthful about ourselves. We are a people who work and who have families, even if we're not married with children. That doesn't mean "having it all." That's a statement about the way humans exist - and have existed for a long time. Let's break away from the false ideals from the mid- to late- nineteenth century and post-World War II about women and men and families. People have long been merchants with families, farmers with families, restaurateurs with families, etc. Work wasn't always imagined as cordoned off from one's family life. I think it is largely because we started to imagine a space called "the office" that family got pushed to the wayside - but that's too straitjacketed a way to live.
Having such a hugely separate place called "work" or "the office" is too great a luxury for us, I think. I know my detractors will say, "But children are too distracting," and actually, I agree with them. I'm a big fan of well-paid child care, but I also think there are many times when we are too quick to say that children don't belong. Like, for instance, at academic meetings where for many participants, the main things aren't the papers but getting together over beers to discuss their field. I do, in fact, judge academic meetings by how welcoming they are to children. Society of Christian Ethics: excellent. Other rarefied societies of which I am/have been a part? Not so much.
Overall, we need better work policies in terms of hours, flexibility and the like. We need to be able to be fully human, fully with families and also fully participants in the economy. To pretend that we are machines or just individual objects in space, unconnected to each other, isn't realistic or good.
Just as a related aside: while I was on partial bedrest during pregnancy, I watched the entire series of "House, M.D." (Never seen it before.) Anyone else ever notice that ALL of the characters on the show have failed marriages, no children, no spouse, even no significant other (unless married to each other)? There's an interesting underplot about work becoming family if you make it to high enough/rare enough ranks. And obviously, the "best" doctors can't be ordinary, or mingle with the ordinary - that is to say, people with families. It's kind of life marriages in Hollywood: can't associate with the plebs, because it "just won't work."
I took the whole family with me to the town where the symposium was - actually, THAT fact was more Philosophy PhD's choice, since he 1) wanted to make sure that I made the 3 hour trip okay by myself (which meant him coming with me); 2) wanted to get out of town; 3) was maybe ever so slightly worried about being alone with L. for a whole day (?). I'm guessing here. In any case, they all came with me.
Baby G. actually went with me to the symposium, too. Most of the time, that's a big "no-no" in academia, especially if you're presenting. At least, I haven't generally felt welcome to do that. But when I was asked to present a paper, I was already 7 months pregnant, and knew that in February there WOULD, God willing, be a baby to show for it all. I also knew that I wanted to nurse the baby and therefore knew that my being away from her for a full night plus a whole day would likely not work. (She does take a bottle here and there, convenient for quick meetings and such...but a whole day and night? Philosophy PhD responsible for the feeding and care of a 3 year old plus an infant? I'm sure he would have balked.) Frankly, I'm not sure if even she were solely a bottle-taking baby, I would have left her for that long at 2 months old. I suppose that's one of those "your mileage may vary" things, highly dependent on the parent and the baby. At 7 months pregnant, you have no idea what kind of baby you'll have nor how you'll feel. And, given that the baby could conceivably have come at any point up to January 11, when they would have induced for post-term pregnancy, the symposium could have been only a month after the baby was born. All those caveats. Despite it all, they kept their invitation open and I decided, why not? It sounded like a fun symposium, and this is one of the several reasons I went into academia - to think about topics with other theologians!
The symposium planners and people were fantastic! They welcomed the baby; one of the participants walked my baby around while I gave my paper (he totally didn't have to do that) and generally it went well, at least from my point of view. (I don't know about theirs....) But the fact is, I wouldn't have gone at all if I couldn't have brought her. It was my sine qua non.
But I want to add still further to the reflection on all this. I was one of only two women in the room, and the only woman with young children. Actually, that's rather common both in my field and in academia in general. There are a few fields that have more women than men, but for the most part, that's not the case. The men there were all family guys themselves, so quite understanding about issues with kids - but still, there's a gender thing there. I'm the only one who has breasts, to put it bluntly. Whatever my brand of feminism at other times and places (I tend to favor post-modern feminism), in situations like this, I seem most like a cultural feminist, because there IS something to their idea that women have undervalued attributes like breasts.
This is especially so in the workplace. It's one of the reasons why I am angry about this country's maternity leave policies, because the underlying view seems to be that, "Oh, OKAY. We'll hire a woman, but after she's hired, she has to pretend that she doesn't have a uterus, breasts, children to pick up from school, or anything else that leaks 'family'." (And let's not make this a those-Europeans versus these-Americans thing, since that seems to devolve into cross-ocean name-calling and discussions of who is most/least responsible when it comes to the national budget. For example, I was speaking to a friend in Uganda last week, where the national policy is three months...)
The standard of pretending one doesn't have a family belongs to a time when men could pretend that they could arrive at work and appear unconnected to family life precisely because they didn't have bodies that betray otherwise. Well, I think partly because women have been in the workplace for a while, that attitude has been changing/changed for a while too. Lots of men now proclaim themselves as family men and leave meetings to pick up kids early. Our maternity leave policy is SO nineteenth-century - and while we're at it, the lack of a paternity leave policy is SO twentieth-century.
So let's be truthful about ourselves. We are a people who work and who have families, even if we're not married with children. That doesn't mean "having it all." That's a statement about the way humans exist - and have existed for a long time. Let's break away from the false ideals from the mid- to late- nineteenth century and post-World War II about women and men and families. People have long been merchants with families, farmers with families, restaurateurs with families, etc. Work wasn't always imagined as cordoned off from one's family life. I think it is largely because we started to imagine a space called "the office" that family got pushed to the wayside - but that's too straitjacketed a way to live.
Having such a hugely separate place called "work" or "the office" is too great a luxury for us, I think. I know my detractors will say, "But children are too distracting," and actually, I agree with them. I'm a big fan of well-paid child care, but I also think there are many times when we are too quick to say that children don't belong. Like, for instance, at academic meetings where for many participants, the main things aren't the papers but getting together over beers to discuss their field. I do, in fact, judge academic meetings by how welcoming they are to children. Society of Christian Ethics: excellent. Other rarefied societies of which I am/have been a part? Not so much.
Overall, we need better work policies in terms of hours, flexibility and the like. We need to be able to be fully human, fully with families and also fully participants in the economy. To pretend that we are machines or just individual objects in space, unconnected to each other, isn't realistic or good.
Just as a related aside: while I was on partial bedrest during pregnancy, I watched the entire series of "House, M.D." (Never seen it before.) Anyone else ever notice that ALL of the characters on the show have failed marriages, no children, no spouse, even no significant other (unless married to each other)? There's an interesting underplot about work becoming family if you make it to high enough/rare enough ranks. And obviously, the "best" doctors can't be ordinary, or mingle with the ordinary - that is to say, people with families. It's kind of life marriages in Hollywood: can't associate with the plebs, because it "just won't work."
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Ah.... maternity leave
Daughter at (new) preschool.
Husband at office.
Relatives returned home.
Today is my first real day of maternity leave, just me and the baby, at home by ourselves. I've started this blog in honor of the occasion, partly because I am a little bit unsure what I am going to DO with myself for the next couple months.
I'm really grateful that I am at an institution that sees itself as family-friendly, and has policies that accordingly match (for the most part - perhaps I'll blog about that one day). I think that babies do best with a lot of concentrated time with their parents early on, and I am breastfeeding and doing lots of attachment parenting type things that require time. I am among those who wish the US had maternity leave policies that are longer than 6 weeks (and even then only for companies with more than 50 employees, blah blah blah). For all our talk about wanting to build a family-friendly nation, we have really unfriendly child and family policies.
On the other hand, what's a full-time academic used to days of teaching, writing and committee work to do all day with - well - a non-college aged, non-talking, mostly-pooping 3 week old? I haven't been trained for this!
Careful observers will, of course, note that I have another daughter, now in preschool, and may well ask what's different this time around? Truthfully, it's the fact that I HAVE done this before that scares me. I remember having days of feeling quite empty and purposeless last time around, too. One friend of mine tried to get me on the Doman (teach your baby to read at 6 months!) method of working with babies, on the faulty assumption that this would somehow occupy my time with my first. But making and reading handmade red letter cards with large words on them were not going to fill up the vacuum that had previously been filled by interesting colleagues, chats in the lounge, and students who ask off-the-wall questions.
Being a stay at home mom, even temporarily, is really, really tough I found. So I'm a little scared this time around, but still think it's important to be here.
So, I have two months of maternity leave (that's all the short term disability I have accrued at my current institution). When I "go back" in March I'll be doing modified duties so that I can get paid at my current level (i.e. no teaching, because one can't really begin teaching in mid-semester, but a lot of research and service). I'll also be bringing my baby when I go back in March because the modified duties are supposed to be such that I won't need to be at the office much. Heh heh. We'll see how that goes, then.
Until then, you may well wonder whether I REALLY am on maternity leave, because I have the following things I need to work on:
1. Edited paper I presented at a conference last March, due mid to late January for the journal publishing the proceedings of the conference.
2. Mini regional conference in mid February, where I am an invited lecturer. Guess how much I have actually written of that paper?
3. The Book. 7 chapters due by October 1st of this year (eek). Guess how much of the book I have actually written? (Fear for me a little less on this one than on #2 - I have actually written a couple of chapters...)
I guess let's jump into things, and see how far I can get nursing while typing one-handed ;-)
Husband at office.
Relatives returned home.
Today is my first real day of maternity leave, just me and the baby, at home by ourselves. I've started this blog in honor of the occasion, partly because I am a little bit unsure what I am going to DO with myself for the next couple months.
I'm really grateful that I am at an institution that sees itself as family-friendly, and has policies that accordingly match (for the most part - perhaps I'll blog about that one day). I think that babies do best with a lot of concentrated time with their parents early on, and I am breastfeeding and doing lots of attachment parenting type things that require time. I am among those who wish the US had maternity leave policies that are longer than 6 weeks (and even then only for companies with more than 50 employees, blah blah blah). For all our talk about wanting to build a family-friendly nation, we have really unfriendly child and family policies.
On the other hand, what's a full-time academic used to days of teaching, writing and committee work to do all day with - well - a non-college aged, non-talking, mostly-pooping 3 week old? I haven't been trained for this!
Careful observers will, of course, note that I have another daughter, now in preschool, and may well ask what's different this time around? Truthfully, it's the fact that I HAVE done this before that scares me. I remember having days of feeling quite empty and purposeless last time around, too. One friend of mine tried to get me on the Doman (teach your baby to read at 6 months!) method of working with babies, on the faulty assumption that this would somehow occupy my time with my first. But making and reading handmade red letter cards with large words on them were not going to fill up the vacuum that had previously been filled by interesting colleagues, chats in the lounge, and students who ask off-the-wall questions.
Being a stay at home mom, even temporarily, is really, really tough I found. So I'm a little scared this time around, but still think it's important to be here.
So, I have two months of maternity leave (that's all the short term disability I have accrued at my current institution). When I "go back" in March I'll be doing modified duties so that I can get paid at my current level (i.e. no teaching, because one can't really begin teaching in mid-semester, but a lot of research and service). I'll also be bringing my baby when I go back in March because the modified duties are supposed to be such that I won't need to be at the office much. Heh heh. We'll see how that goes, then.
Until then, you may well wonder whether I REALLY am on maternity leave, because I have the following things I need to work on:
1. Edited paper I presented at a conference last March, due mid to late January for the journal publishing the proceedings of the conference.
2. Mini regional conference in mid February, where I am an invited lecturer. Guess how much I have actually written of that paper?
3. The Book. 7 chapters due by October 1st of this year (eek). Guess how much of the book I have actually written? (Fear for me a little less on this one than on #2 - I have actually written a couple of chapters...)
I guess let's jump into things, and see how far I can get nursing while typing one-handed ;-)
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