Playdates are fun

So one of the many things required of a mother is the ability to schedule play-dates. A mother should also be able to supervise these play-dates, and make them fun, exciting and engaging. She should carry a wide portfolio of baking, science and art activities, and she should also be able to make a variety of lovely foods for picky eaters and mediate to avoid conflicts between two or more tantrum-prone parties.
And even though you didn't sign up for it it comes with the job whether you want to or not.

Because the fact is: men very rarely organize the play-dates. They don't have to sit around endless gatherings with the other mommies and talk about pre-school enrollment and baby yoga while the kids throw sand and hit each other with pink shovels in the sand-pit.

My husband had a go at it once. He met another father at a birthday party, the two started talking, Kate was friends with the girl from school, and just like that, they went to the playground after the party and it wasn't a bad date at all. But Kate wanted more, and nagged and nagged for another play-date, until I subtly had to hint (hit him over the head to wake up, more like it) that maybe could he call the girls father for another date?
- Why can't you do it?
- Because it's your thing. I have all the other things.
Big sigh and lot's of huffing.
- But I don't have time to call him.
- Look, I say. It's your play-date, you started it. I do all the dates with the mothers, for once, here's a dad, and you should be the one going on the date. You will have things to talk about.

I can see it will turn in to a thing.
Kate storms off, muttering something about how she'll never get to play with this girl again.
- But I don't have time to call him. Maybe I'll call him tonight.
- That's all good and well, only a play-date is usually during the day, and tonight you'll have missed your window.
- OK. I'll go. But you you just at least call him and set it up.
- No!

The thing is, it's not about my husband being lazy or not wanting his children to have friends. This is just very new territory for him, and he doesn't know what to do. He can do many things, but he can't spontaneously arrange a play-date.
But guess what. Neither could I before I turned a mother. I just had to learn.
That's it. Most of the things about parenthood is just trial and error.

It is like bashing your head against the wall, because these women come out of the woodwork often enough for it to matter

It often seem that for every step forward we take ten thousand steps back. The latest book published in the ever lasting debate between stay-at-home vs working mothers is this step back to the 1950's voice of an american woman named Megan Basham. Her book, Beside every successful man - A woman's guide to having it all, not only argues that 80% of all women want to work fewer hours after their children are born, but that men and women's brains are biologically different in their way of thinking. "Women are collaborators", she said in The Guardian last week. "We have a more communal concept of success, and a lot of that applies to our relationships."

She also states that traditional marriage, ie, the one's where the wife stays at home, are less likely to end in divorce than those where both partners work full-time. In order to fullfill herself and to boost the family's economy a woman should stand beside her man, support him in his carreer-moves, help him write CV's and make sure that he has a nice, realxing home to come back to after a long day at work.
Needless to say, Basham's type of "choice feminism" has met a lot of harsh criticism.

Basham completely ignores the fact that housewifery has very little to do with about choice but is often simply a plain case of throwing in the towel. I am all for personal choice but I resent the statement that our society as a whole would be a better place if women stayed at home - let's just call a spade a spade, and not try and sex this thing up: women stay at home because most families who would like their children to have some kind of parental interaction during otherwise long stressful working weeks have no other choice since there simply are no compromises in terms of flexible working hours and affordable child-care.
After years of hard work in college and universities did we really have no other ambitions than to become our husbands un-paid PA's?
It is insulting to say that this is about biological differences (it is also a very weak argument to keep in those cases where the husband gets bored with his PA at home and starts sleeping around with the secretary at work.)
This is about it being 2009 and women are still being second class citizen's, and dressing it up as anything else is pointless. Let's have a proper debate on how many women actually stay at home through choice, and what we could do to actually to strike up a balance between home and real, paid work

Our home is our own private government

My mother-in-law raised boys to become men. Today, he's more traditionally conservative in-laws look at him and say: He's one of those 'hands-on dads'.
Like, he can change a diaper!!
My mother-in-law didn't do gender stereotypes. As far as she was concerned, in her home, everyone chipped in to get the job done. Her husband, who couldn't even make himself a cup of tea before he married, soon learned not only to cook a Sunday roast, but to do a pretty damn good one too. Shocking, I know.

After posting the questions about equality-definition the other day, I realized that it really doesn't matter much what the government does to help families create balance in the home. If we are not up for changing our attitudes within our own personal sphere it's not gonna work anyway. It has to start in the home, from the beginning, otherwise it's a lost cause. We can get all the paid paternity leave, job-shares, shorter working days and cost-affordable day-cares we want, but if mommy is still doing all the ground-work in the home, it's not gonna change the signals we send our kids anyway.

So you're a woman and your fed up with being stuck in the trap of home-making and being a full-time mother. You'd like to work? Earn yourself a little money? A little independence? Would like to send a positive message to your kids, shake up the gender-rolls a bit?
Good.
But your children won't applaud you for suddenly turning in to a regular Erin Brockovitch, what they will remember is that you came home from a long day at work and still cooked their dinners, washed all their clothes, always made their beds and helped out with the homework, falling a sleep at the table when daddy was surfing on the computer or said goodbye as he left for tennis-practice with the mates.
Guess what your son will be looking for in his future wife? Guess what kind of wife and mother your daughter will become?
Policy change starts at home, in the family.

We need to stand by each other

It's yesterdays news- today's fish-and-chips wrap, but I am still mulling over the french justice minister and her baby. I want to applaud her and at the same time I am stunned. Mostly because I wonder if she can manage to up-hold her perfectly immaculate self so soon after the birth. Does she actually have time to do her hair and make-up in the morning before going in to the office or is it all breast-pumping, Abercrombie comfy's and steeling another five minutes of sleep? Personally, I had no use for any other clothes but my pyjamas for the first three months after my daughter's birth.

Having said that, I shouldn't even blog about this as I think it is important not to turn a woman's personal decision in to a public debate just because the woman in question happen to have espresso and croissants for breakfast with President Sarkozy (I'm sure it's not all just work, work, work even in French high office). I have read some very unfavorable comments - almost all of them made by women - about Ms Dati and her choice, but shouldn't women support each other in our decisions whatever they might be?

So women who wants to go back to work are bad mothers and mother's who don't end up raising Norman Bates but we tend to forget that those of us who do have a choice, whatever it might be, are very lucky, and those who don't, well, they need all the support they can get.