Ode to outsourcing domestic duties

As my family and friends know, my path to motherhood was unconventional. Over half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned, so there was nothing so unusual in the fact that Rosie's conception was a..."surprise!" But pregnancy came on the heels of having moved in with Agapito and Lucero just weeks before. Around Lucero's 3rd birthday, in the summer of 2006, Agapito and I agreed to go for a lifelong commitment; it was time to transition from "Jess as daddy's girlfriend" to "Jess as mommy figure who wasn't ever leaving".

As any step-mom knows, the transition takes a while. And in the event that a child's birth mother is not present, and the child is very young, the transition is to a real parent. Deep and wonderful! And then I got pregnant. In some ways the pregnancy was the best thing for our budding family, because it linked us all by blood. Even though I wasn't Lucero's mother by blood, I carried her soon-to-be blood sister. We three were linked forever. We three were going to have a baby. I think the pregnancy accelerated my bond with Lucero, maybe because I was flooded with mommy hormones, or maybe it would have been that way in any case. Who knows? But Rosie's gestation also served as a sort of gestation for my relationship with Lucero. A double blessing, and a double transition.

The tremendous transformation that is entailed from going from a child-less woman to a mother has been discussed widely. There may now be as many publications on its challenges to a woman's identity in modern America as there are publications on its wonders. The physical and emotional demands are rigorous, and they can take a hefty toll on your sense of self and your relationship to your partner, if you have one.

My struggles are familiar to my friends and family--the all-nighters I spent when Rosie was 4 months old doing Inferential Statistics homework while pumping at 4 in the morning so that Rosie would have enough mother's milk for daycare. Trying to keep on a happy face for my professors so they wouldn't give up on me and think I didn't deserve funding. Writing 30-page grant applications, my dissertation proposal, and trying to prepare home-cooked meals for Lucero, Agapito and myself. It was rough. I spent the following year considering quitting school and staying home with the girls. I thought it would be the best, if not ideal, solution.

If only someone had told me to hire someone to clean the house!!!

My breaking point came when Rosie was about 18 months and Lucero was 5 and half. I'd been at a linguistics conference in San Francisco, sans familia, presenting on a project I'd worked on with my friend and professor, Lars. It was a hit, and I was high on my academic success and career prospects. The Monday morning after I'd returned, I realized we didn't have any clean laundry. Agapito had had the girls solo for the previous 4 days. Despite the intensity of those four days, he'd still managed to do several loads of laundry. He just hadn't been able to fold it. He'd put it at the foot of the bed for us to get to it. And I'm a neat freak with anxiety and a dash of OCD. Fun!

So, the girls were at school/daycare, Agapito had gone to work. It was his first year at a patent law firm, and needless to say it was demanding. Even though he managed to be home by 5:30 most nights, as soon as the girls were in bed, he'd haul out his computer and work for another few hours. Meanwhile, I was researching and writing a dissertation--- which has got to be the most nebulous and ill-defined task ever! My work was clearly more flexible than Agapito's, especially given that he was the main bread-winner and student loans don't pay themselves.

Sitting on the bed, eyeing the enormous mountain of laundry before me, I concluded that I needed to choose between the laundry and housekeeping and the mental stability it would entail and making progress on a dissertation that may or might not help me in my ambition to become a linguistics professor-- an ambition that seemed increasingly outrageous and unattainable.

And I broke. I won't detail it here. My sister saw it. She came over and maybe because I had a witness I just broke. Thank God for Amanda! She let me lose it for about 15 minutes and then prompted me to call someone.

That was a year and half ago, but it seems like 5 years ago. A lot has changed since then. I can honestly say that I am reasonably happy with my life and a balance has been achieved among the needs of the four people in my family. I'm in love with my husband, my daughters are my joy, and I look forward to working on the chapters of my dissertation and manuscripts for publication. I feel good about pursuing my career AND being a mom AND engaging with Agapito AND going to see Eclipse with my girlfriends.

I can cite three measures that effected the tremendous transformation I've enjoyed over the last year. First, I got the right help for my own mental and emotional health. Two, I stopped feeling guilty about availing myself of daycare or trying to prove to my version of "everyone" that my home and family are a well-oiled machine. Three...and this is the main point of this entry....we hired a woman to clean our house every other week.

Women of the world unite! Hire someone to clean your house at least twice a month!

If you are like I was for several years, you wouldn't dream of hiring someone to clean your house. The reasons I always I cite, and the reasons most women I talk to point out, are that 1) they can't afford it, and 2) they're too proud to make someone clean up after their family.

Number 1 is not a good reason. You can have someone clean your house for $60-- vacuum, bathroom, kitchen, floors, dusting, light tidying. Yeah, $60 is a lot of money and requires for many that you reallocate your budget. Do it. If you have to, take money out of date night...'cuz lord knows that removing housework from conjugal squabbles will do a hell of a lot more for your relationship than date night. Or, ask that gifts for X-mas and b-days be certificates for house-cleaning. It's the best gift you can give yourself. Beg, borrow, or steal.

Number 2 is an even less good reason. For those of us who come from lower-middle class or working class backgrounds, getting a housekeeper reeks of bourgeois privilege and goes against liberal, cooperative sensibilities. Well, for those of you heterosexual (or just heternormative) women who have managed to overturn centuries of enculturation, and you've gotten everyone on board to do equal shares of domestic labor, and struck the balance with your spouse's job, and you're okay with the amount of time this takes out of your lives, rah rah rah! Awesome. And please start a course or write a book for the rest of us (seriously).

Otherwise, hiring someone to clean your house, provided you pay a fair wage, provides jobs in our sad economy, and is an especially important option for undocumented workers. I've done it. My friends have done it. There's no shame in it. It is what it is. Furthermore, why do middle-class American moms think it's okay that housecleaning should fall entirely on their shoulders and not their spouses, but that there is something anti-egalitarian about actually paying someone to do the labor? As my friend Doug points out, most of us are fine with paying for milk instead of milking the cow.

Some of you might think, as I did, that in the interest of women's equality, it is our responsibility to demand that our husbands (or bread-winning wives in same-sex marriages) learn to tow the domestic line. Well, two things. One, often times the husband has the less flexible schedule and simply can't do it. Two, when do you want to have that argument? Between putting the kid(s) to bed and trying to catch 30 minutes of downtime with your mate before you fall asleep? Just as cleaning your husband's hair out of the tub does little to pique your amorous feelings, being badgered about how he/she is failing you personally and politically does little towards getting you a back rub.

I have friends who are stay-at-home moms who feel like they don't have any business paying someone else, since they are the domestic manager. Tell me, stay-at-home moms, do you feel like you have too much time on your hands? That you don't have enough to do with the cooking, errand-running, rearing of children (e.g., educating, entertaining, and generally making sure they don't die or grow up to be sociopaths), and all the other managerial duties? So you're rambunctious toddler has finally decided to take a nap. After you selfishly sit on the toilet and take a shower, it really is irresponsible of you to not use the remaining 30 minutes (if you're lucky) to clean soap scum off the tub...What do you mean your too tired to have sex tonight?!

Agapito and I don't fight about chores anymore. He does the dishes and his and Rosalía's laundry. I tidy (the girls' room, our room, the living room) and maintain cleanliness, and do Lucero's and my laundry. The woman we hired cleans the bathroom, mops the floors, dusts, gives the kitchen a good scrub, tidies. My break wasn't uncommon. Most of my girlfriends have undergone some level of disillusionment after becoming mothers, whether they worked as stay-at-home moms, or worked full-time or part-time outside of the home. I cite the negotiation of domestic duties as being one of the most pivotal factors in my happiness and adjustment to motherhood.

Most of our partners work their asses off, but the division of labor, the workforce, women's biology, and centuries of culture conspire so that the lion's share of domestic responsibility lies on moms. The current situation is that for many working moms and opt-out moms there is a constant low-level resentment about their responsibilities paradoxically coupled with a reluctance to relinquish them (after all, what if we're judged for not being good moms?). The changes in women's lives in the last 50 years are unprecedented and we are in the throes of an awkward adolescence. In the mean-time, we need to find practical solutions.