Lies Parents Tell Themselves About Why They Work
Few topics are as important--and involve as much self-deception and dishonesty--as finding the proper balance between child-rearing and work
The first time Kristin Garris, 29, dropped off her 10-week-old daughter, Bailey, at the day-care center, she says, "I cried the whole way to work." Garris, a marketer for one of the Big Three car manufacturers in Detroit, no longer weeps in her car but still finds it hard to leave her baby every morning. "I don't want to miss the firsts: the first steps, the first words," she says. "But I know, in my heart of hearts, I have too much education and too much ambition to be a full-time mom and go through an entire week without any adult stimulation. It's not the amount of time I spend with my daughter, but the quality of time. I know she gets attention when she's [at day care]."
"Or," she says, "maybe that's just me rationalizing."
When it comes to the question of how much parents work and why, it is often hard to disentangle rationalization from self-awareness, self-deception from reality. Listen to most men and women discussing work and family and one thing becomes clear: People are lying--to others, or to themselves.
Consider:
Many parents say they both work because they "need" the money--yet better-off Americans are nearly as likely to say they work for "basic necessities" as those who live near the poverty line.
Most parents say they believe their own child's day care is good--yet studies show that in most cases they're wrong.
Most of us say we would spend more time with our families if only our employers were more flexible--yet family-friendly policies now in place are usually ignored, and in the new book The Time Bind, sociologist Arlie Hochschild details how working parents increasingly flee chaos at home for comfort and order at the office.
Few issues seem so fundamental to how Americans live yet are so laden with confusion and, yes, dishonesty. In an effort to profess evenhandedness, many men say they would be happy to stay home if only their wives earned enough money; in reality, few men ever seriously contemplate such a thing. Consequently, when men (especially male politicians) talk about "working parents" they really mean "working women." Working women, meanwhile, fear that if they admit they don't have to work--or that their day care is low quality--they will be labeled "bad mothers" for nonetheless having made the choice to work. Even if no one says it outright, women figure others must be thinking it because they themselves are fully aware of the strain on their families and they wonder if maybe--maybe--they have indeed made the wrong choice.
Yet it's not unreasonable for women to fear that an attempt at "honest" discussion is really an effort to take away personal independence and power. That certainly was the message last month when a Baptist church in Arkansas shut down its day-care facility, stating that working mothers "neglect their children, damage their marriages, and set a bad example." Individual women's fears about the vulnerability of their position are reinforced by a tendency of the political system to distort information into unrecognizable forms. A recent study on day care, which discussed both its strengths and its drawbacks, was said by the conservative Washington Times to send a "Cautionary Note to Mothers," while the liberal Washington Post stated that "Day Care Study Offers Reassurance to Working Parents." Same data; differing worldviews.
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