Feminine Mystique and the Single Dimension

I began thinking about putting this into words when I came back from visiting Indiana for Christmas. I had spent a good bit of time there without internet, working hard to keep my one-year-old occupied and out of trouble. After my baby turned one in October I had decided to give up my social life. Previously, I had been carting my little one around to book clubs and philosophy meetups, and girls nights out for his first year. Normally he would be cute for 30 minutes, and then sleep and I would be home free, but then locomotion began, and my sweet sleepyhead became a busy wiggly butt. I tried to leave him home, but things began coming up. Todd's schedule was unpredictable, Cory was whiny, and I decided it was better to give up than be disappointed. I was really very happy with that decision for several months, but I coasted along a few months too many before being mindful of the toll my one-dimentional-ness was taking on me. It was on the way home from Christmas that I decided I needed to salvage my social life.

The single dimension is a place a few moms can be and still be very happy with themselves. It can be rewarding when your children are young and really in need of you, making you feel important. The single dimension is what happens when you are one thing. For me it was mother, but if your single dimension leaves you with only being an auto mechanic, I can't imagine that being very satisfying either. We all are saddled with the main thing we are. Whether that be a career, or a relationship. And while many people take great pride in their main vocation, few people are satisfied being defined only one way. Take the group of people I tend to run with. They are mostly women, and a man or two, who have chosen to educate their own kids, so they are with their kids alot of the time, but rarely is "Mom", "Dad", or "Home educator " their only dimension. I have mom friends who are runners, like me, lobbyists, artists, dancers, teachers (in a classroom, I mean), and many other things. They are immensely interesting people.

Since I have become mom to yet another toddler. My "mom" dimension has become somewhat overwhelming. I can no longer have long conversations with the other interesting women at home school groups. I can't take Cory to book club, I can't take him to philosophy meetup, or a movie. I feel chained to wiggly butt. I realized when we were driving back from Indiana how much my brain had suffered from intense immersion with a toddler for just that week. It was a week after the Christmas trip before my brain could function well enough to formulate an interesting thought, let alone string a few solid sentences together to express it to others, and I felt diminished.

Which brings me to the Feminine Mystique. This is one of the key books that spawned the feminist movement in America. It was written in 1963 by Betty Friedan, and while I am rather disconcerted by modern feminism, this original feminist treatise has loads to say about my one-dimensional condition. I won't even get into most of those gems here (so please read it). Some people have said that in this book Friedan tells all women to go out and get a job. Some people have taken this encouragement and run with it, pressuring women to leave their kids and get mundane, unsatisfying jobs they don't care about, and then expecting them to feel fulfilled. That is completely missing the point. Take the quote below:

pg 344 "But a job, any job, is not the answer - in fact, it can be part of the trap. Women who do not look for jobs equal to their actual capacity, who do not let themselves develop the lifetime interests and goals which require serious education and training, who take a job at twenty or forty to 'help our at home' or just to kill extra time, are walking , almost as surely as the ones who stay inside the housewife trap, to a nonexistent future. If a job is to be the way out of the trap for a woman, it must be a job that she can take seriously as part of a life plan, work in which she can grow as part of society."

Friedan doesn't specify which kind of job or how many hours or the pay. We women, and society have put our own pressure on ourselves to be engineers and CEOs. Women should have those opportunities, but we should not have to balance out men in those positions if we choose not to. I personally would hate the life of the CEO. I know my calling is to work with kids in foster care or in the context of adoption. I want kids to get good stable homes, because I think that is vital to societies all over the world. Being a CEO of some fortune 500 company would distract me from what I feel is really important, but doing paper work for my own personal adoption, or volunteering with Guardian Ad Litem, would make me feel closer to the work I find so important. Yes, maybe when my kids are older I will get a masters in social work, and get an actual paying job in such a field, but I never see myself as a full time career person. Honestly, if I felt like I had to punch a clock and put in 40 hours somewhere in order to further the cause of feminism, I would abandon it. I think it is wonderful that women have choice these days. My husband does as well. He knows that if I do work in the future it will very likely never be full time, or normal. I want to be available to my kids, have a flexible schedule, and do unique things with my time that I feel really make a difference. I would even do without material possessions for such an opportunity. My husband is good at making money for us. I am not. It would detract from both of our lives if I insisted that I go out and have a job.

Right now making myself a multidimensional woman is having the chance to put together thoughts that I find interesting and sharing them with others on my blog. It is getting a babysitter and going to the philosophy meetup to talk about interesting things with educated people. It is running more than once a week. It is making sure I always have a book on hand to expand my knowledge of the world around me and then reading it. It is giving Todd the kids and going out with just the girls. It is making sure I know I have plans for the future, and that my toddler will not dominate my life forever. Yes, I do have to make certain sacrifices for the sake of todderhood. He will drag out all of my measuring cups just after I put away all the pots and pans he previously drug out. But his mama is not all that I am. And thanks to teamwork, with a really understanding husband, I am becoming more in touch with all of my dimensions.