equal rights | Unmotherly Insights

I glimpsed an awesome scene in my future this morning. We were late for school, as usual, and I suddenly remembered that the gas gauge was so close to empty our arrival anywhere beyond the neighborhood Circle K was improbable. I detoured towards the gas station and pulled up alongside a pump.

My ten year old son, Levi, immediately unbuckled and leapt out of the car. “I’ve got it, mom,” he announced. “Your credit card, please.”

At first I was stunned. Sure he’d reluctantly helped me fill up the gas tank in the past. But on all of those occasions, his willingness to even unscrew the gas cap came with a heavy sigh and insolent eye roll. Today he was actually eager to fuel the tank.

I handed him my credit card and watched with awe and admiration as he swiped it, entered our zip code and selected my usual gas grade. After filling the tank and returning my card, he hopped back in the car and buckled up, ready to hit the road and head off to school.

It was then that I had my vision. In just a few more years, I will never have to fill up my gas tank again. I have two strapping young boys whose father extols the virtues of gentlemanliness and chivalry. They always want to help me carry in the groceries. They fight over who gets to wash my car. They wouldn’t think of allowing me to walk through a door I had opened all by myself. And suddenly it hit me. This is great!

After all those years of waiting on them hand and foot, feeding them, bathing them, carting around an overflowing amount of parent paraphernalia and stocking my purse with a virtual grocery store of healthy snacks and drinks, I was going to be free — and soon. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was only a matter of time before I would take my place as rightful Queen of this family. Never again will I have to carry my own luggage on family vacations! No more lugging in backpacks and awkwardly arranged school shadow boxes at the end of the day. No. I was finally going to be treated like a lady, not a work horse.

I shared my epiphany with my husband this afternoon. He grunted something judgmental about feminism and Betty Friedan. “I’m a post-modern feminist,” I quipped. “I believe that chivalry and feminism can peacefully co-exist. Besides, I’ve never advocated that women should have equal rights. Rather, it’s always been my belief that we are entitled to special rights.” And then I smiled coquetishly and waltzed away humming a noted feminist tune from that good ol’ Rogers and Hammerstein musical treatise on equal rights, “Flower Drum Song.”

“I’m strictly a female female
And my future I hope will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy having a girl… like… me.”

If anyone tells you it’s men who keep women down, don’t believe them.

I have now been told by three FEMALE academics at my kids’ school that any/all of the behavior problems manifested by either/both of my sons can likely be attributed to my working outside the home.

Um…hello? What year is this? I’m responsible for every ill that befalls my children because I have a career? Whatever happened to “I am woman, hear me roar?”

“Maybe if you spent more time with them…,” “I don’t want to judge, but his accidents started right around the time you went into rehearsals for your new play…,” “Well, maybe the problem has something to do with your work schedule…”

Look, I genuinely love the teachers and specialists at my boys’ school. They are talented professionals who treat my kids with love, compassion and respect. But these kinds of comments are hurtful, and way more damaging than any construction workers’ cat calls or chauvinistic boss’ demands that a female VP fetch him a cup of java in the middle of an executive meeting.

I shouldn’t have to defend my choice to work outside the home to anyone. Btw, I did notice that not one teacher has ever suggested that either of my kids’ (infrequent) less than stellar behavior has anything to do with my husband’s workaholic tendencies. No, of course not. Because it’s okay for the man to work, to have a career, to be devoted to his profession.

If all these smart, thoughtful women immediately leap to the conclusion that every issue that surfaces in the classroom is the fault of a working mother, what hope do we have of ever achieving real equality? I work hard. But I work even harder taking care of my kids, loving them, being with them, listening to them. But I don’t get credit for all of their successes and positive characteristics. I want credit for their kindness, their compassion, their off-the-charts intelligence, their creativity, humor, good grades, verbal acuity, etc…

I could go on and on. But I wont. I’ll suffice to say that it is 2010 in America and all of that mumbo jumbo we grew up with about us women having it all and not having to choose between family and career, I actually believed that. I’ve built my life around the premise that you can in fact have professional fulfillment and still be a caring, devoted mother.

Maybe you can’t have it all. But you can sure have a lot. Isn’t it time to dispense with the 1950’s June Cleaver mentality and support each other whether we choose to work outside the home or mother full time?