Interesting reading for just mothers out there:
The part that hit home for me:
...Hirshman is right about a lot of things. Yes, domestic work--even caring for cherubic children--is often boring, repetitive, demeaning, unfulfilling, isolating. Yes, my financial future has become unquestionably less secure, my future employment prospects dimmer, than if I had always worked full time. And, perhaps worst of all, I find I am now the primary caretaker of the butter."Never figure out where the butter is," Hirshman warns--her metaphor for "never take primary responsibility for managing the household." It's based on a passage by writer Nora Ephron in which a man opens the fridge and asks his wife where the butter is, while looking directly at it.
"'Where's the butter?' actually means butter my toast, buy the butter, remember when we're out of butter," Hirshman writes, paraphrasing Ephron. "Next thing you know you're quitting your job at the law firm because you're so busy managing the butter."
Staying home with my children required me to morph into a reluctant household manager, responsible for most of the quotidian details of family life: shopping for birthday presents and school supplies, arranging to get the dishwasher fixed and the taxes prepared, making school lunches and remembering which kid won't eat ham and which won't eat turkey, keeping track of appointments and playdates and Little League games and the never-ending flow of school papers … countless tasks, tiny and thankless and so nearly invisible that the only time they even enter my husband's consciousness is when I forget to do them.
ooohhh....quotidian details....that phrase makes me tingly.
Posted by Jen at November 12, 2006 9:39 AMFrom the magazine Brain, Child that I doscovered only a few days ago. It's an incredibly intelligent parenting magazine. Nicole, it's right up our alley. You should check it out!
Posted by: Jen Rodis at November 12, 2006 9:41 AMOh...sorry...supposed to be JUST Mothers only. No, i have no comment umm-ummmm, nope. Not being a mother I have no insight. I, uh, did hear the part about "quotidian details" ... too bad it's not as erotic as it sounds.
http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/1999/09/07.html
quotidian \kwoh-TID-ee-uhn\, adjective:
1. Occurring or returning daily;
2. Of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace.
And this usage doesn't make quotidian momhood sound appealing:
"She also had a sense of fun that was often drummed out under the dull, quotidian beats of suburban life."
But what if "mother" was substituted for "lawyer" here:
Erasmus thought More's career as a lawyer was a waste of a fine mind, but it was precisely the human insights More derived from his life in the quotidian world that gave him a moral depth Erasmus lacked.
-- "More man than saint", Irish Times, April 4, 1998 (Maybe "More Woman Than Saint"?)
-- Meg Wolitzer, Surrender, Dorothy
Yes, that's stupid, I shouldn't have said anything. Leaving now.
John, I already knew what the word meant, it just sounds sexy, like "voluminous" or "chaise."
Posted by: Jen Rodis at November 13, 2006 10:20 AMAnd the reading wasn't "just for mothers" it was for "just mothers", as in "Jen? Oh, she's just a stay-at-home mom."
It's like how these sentences all mean different things:
Just I love you.
I just love you.
I love just you.
But I guess you knew that.
Posted by: Jen Rodis at November 13, 2006 10:27 AMI knew you knew what it meant. I thought it sounded sexy too and I was just putting in the definition to lead up to the comment that I was NOT making - because the post was for just mothers and i am not now nor have I ever been a mother OR just a mother.
I'm just an accountant.
Oh, and, I didn't know you were going public with the fact that you love me.. but, uh, thanks.
It was a secret to everyone, John. Including me. :)
Posted by: Jen Rodis at November 13, 2006 11:29 AMAt any rate, Dim now knows how to initiate a romantic evening: he offers you to sit on your chaise and massage your nubuck while he murmurs to you in sursurration of voluminous quotidian details.
Posted by: John at November 13, 2006 1:59 PMBreak it up you two - it's getting steamy in here while I'm just reading these comments! Whew - my life must be a little too quotidian!
Anyway, I will check out the magazine, Jen, Thanks!
It's Brain Child, right?