Pulled in different directions

Originally from a small town in B.C., Lynn has worked and lived in four other countries before moving to Winnipeg from Toronto in 1999. Lynn contributes to the economy by raising two children, supporting her husband/partner who is in a medical residency program, sitting on the board of her children's daycare, and as a member of the steering committee of the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba. Lynn is also a freelance consultant and a research associate with the Winnipeg Inner-City Research Alliance. Lynn was forced to quit graduate school because of family demands; she has recently started working on her thesis again.

Lynn says:

I was always a feminist, but I became much more radicalized as a result of having children. I think part of it was getting in touch with, at a visceral level, all the structural arrangements in society that keep women stuck. I can remember having this utopian idea, before my children were born, that my partner and I would actually share 'parental' leave. Well forget that. He was in a paid position with his graduate studies. I wasn't. When he makes ten times more money than you do and you don't have any income at all, well who's going to take the leave?

My partner did a Master's degree in clinical epidemiology while we were in Toronto and I was working on my Master's in Adult Education. His was funded and it was structured and he had mentors and guides through the whole thing. Me, I had to figure it out on my own as I went along. I tried many times to get support, and although people were kind, there just aren't policies in place in graduate school that support women with infants. I just kept falling through the cracks. So it was that kind of structural support that kept him going and he finished his M.Sc. I still haven't finished my Master's degree. We both had two children at the same time, we lived in the same household, but of course he wasn't breastfeeding around the clock and as sleep deprived as I was. Yeah, some of it can be attributed to personality but the truth of the matter is, there were so many other structural things that got in the way.

For years I used the word 'partner,' but in the last couple of years I've shifted back to the term 'husband.' Part of this has been because of the forced arrangement of our life. He's had to redo his residency training because he is an immigrant to Canada, so I've had to take on a much greater share of the household management than I was willing to. And I have to say I went into this relationship negotiating every step of the way that we would share this kind of stuff 50-50. You don't get in life what you deserve, you get what you negotiate, and I feel that if I want equality at home I have to make sure I value that and I make sure that it's metÄ. But anyway all of that changed with so many other larger forces impinging on our family and our activities, our work and our leisure, and finally I thought to myself he's not a partner - he's a husband. He'll do whatever I ask him but he doesn't think for himself about what needs attention in maintaining the household, and it doesn't occur to him to worry about if there's enough milk for cereal in the morning.

There's this sort of psychological dimension of the economy, being female. I'm part of it too in that I live in a bi-cultural relationship because my partner's Mexican, and I've spent many years in Mexico. In Mexican culture, which is much more collectivistic than Canada is (we're much more individualistic), the notion of 'me and my goals' and my needs for professional and academic development, are understood as self-centred. There's a constant pull between that and caring for the family and nurturing the children. I struggle often with the psychology piece of it because culturally 'me and my goals' is such an individualistic notion. Often my values as a cultural relativist and my values as a feminist come into conflict.

Then I look at my partner's family and the women in his family. My mother-in-law had eight children and the last two were twins. Women there don't ever talk about their goals. I know plenty of professional women in Mexico, they don't talk about themselves the way we do. It must seem so incredibly selfish the way I carry on about being pulled in many directions and that sort of thing. I often struggle with that level of it too.

Being female, my experience of the economy is that I'm second-place. Now that I've had children I feel very marginalized. It's the opportunity cost - on one hand, of nurturing the next generation, something invisibilized and undervalued by our society, even though I am supplying the economy and the labour force with two future participants - and on the other hand, the de-skilling - or at least failure to be staying current or moving forward in my profession, because while I am mothering there is only so much energy to go around. And my mothering job is now for life. Consequently, I get the 'remains of the day.' The remains of energy, time and resources that are left over, I get to devote to my career and my individual advancement and my contributions to the economy from a 'mainstream' economic point of view.

It's a vulnerable place to be. For most of my life I've been pretty much of a free and adventurous spirit, and thrived on living by my wits, and following my interests. But now I have two children, whose lives and futures depend on me. I have often said to my husband: "Now I know why they have kept women cloistered and locked up for centuries - so they wouldn't know what they're missing!!!" I miss that big wide world out there, I mourn the loss of my freedom, and sometimes I rage at all of the constraints and restrictions. I need to tell it like it is for me, if not for any reason, than to actively RESIST the societal norm that motherhood is this glorious bed of roses and what every woman 'should' want in life.

Other people may look at this very differently than me. I love my children very much, more than life itself, they've absolutely been a gift beyond my imagination but it was a huge, huge adjustment for me, when I had children.