Author: Sheila Quirke

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Part-time vs. Full-time: Game On

I met a new gal recently who, when she learned I worked part-time, said, “Oh, isn’t that cute?”  What the what?  Oh no she didn’t.  Oh yes, she did.  Words rarely fail me, but in that moment, they did.  My recollection is that I smiled on the outside and seethed on the inside.  I’ve been seething ever since.

You see, it’s not cute that I work part-time.  It’s a choice.  One I am forever grateful to have the opportunity to make.  It’s a choice that works for me and doesn’t affect the gal who made the comment or anyone else other than my family.  So back off, with your dimunitive comments.  Working part-time doesn’t mean I am less able, less serious, less committed to my work.  It means I am able, serious and committed for fewer hours.  Period. 

And I get that I can’t have it all.  I learned that a few years ago when I scaled back to help care for my Mom.  I harbor no illusions that I can do it all, have it all.  Some gals can, but not me.  Nope.  I suck at it.  I know my limitations and I respect them. 

I also know that those limitations come with some conseqences.  Part-time workers are less likely to be perceived as serious or valuable to the employer.  I won’t be fast tracked, despite the fact that I can work rings around most of the working mothers I know.  That is what it is.  With choice comes responsibility and accountability.  More time with my family now means less time with my career, and less time with my career means less opportunities.  I get it.  I’m okay with it. 

Part-time moms are in a bit of a no-moms land, if you will — we’re not SAHMs and we’re not full-time working moms, obviously.  For me, it is perfection, as I have a little from column A and a little from column B.  I love that.  I love that on Monday evening, just as Mary Tyler Son is starting to work on my last nerve, I switch gears a bit and anticipate my work self and her needs for a few days.  On Thursday evenings, I sigh and stretch, and look gratefully to a quiet Friday morning of pancakes and Wiggleworms with my boy.  Yep, perfection. 

My Dad, my Archie Bunker dad, God love him, said it best when I switched to a part-time schedule after my daughter was born, “You’re away from her just enough to appreciate her more when you’re with her.”  So if my cranky, old-fashioned, 78 year old father can get it, why is it so hard for other mothers to get it? 

 

Hey, if you liked this, you can like me on the facebook. 

 

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Jack Layton is my new hero.

I had never heard of Jack Layton before this morning.  Turns out, he was kind of a big deal.  And certainly the real deal.  Jack Layton was a Canadian pol and leader of the Official Opposition and the New Democratic Party.  But this is not a civics lesson, folks. 

This morning, after his death had been confirmed, his surviving family released a letter he had written to the Canadian public just two days ago.  It’s beautiful and well, he says it best.  Aside from the fact that he is clearly a civil human being, one I wish our own politicians would emulate, the letter spoke to me as a mom. 

His love letter to Canada ends with this:

“My friends, love is better than anger.  Hope is better than fear.  Optimism is better than despair.  So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.  And we’ll change the world.”

If that is not a call to arms of motherhood, one I wish I had written myself, I don’t know what is.  Swap out “my friends” for “moms” and be inspired. 

When we were going through cancer treatment with our daughter, I started clinging to the phrase, “Choose hope.”  It was a conscious choice, every day, to hope and imagine that our dear girl could outlast the beast that was having its way with her.  Later, when we knew Donna surviving her cancer was no longer a hope we could hope for, we hoped for other things:  to not be bitter, to not burden Mary Tyler Son with our grief, to parent more children.  Hope had become a way of life. 

And I know it sounds pie in the sky, head in the sand, but it’s not.  To have hope, I learned, is the only way I can wake up every day.  Hope is better than fear.  Trust me on this one.  Love is better than anger.  Our kids know this.  And we know this too, even when we’re seeing red after they do something so completely stupid or frustrating or asinine that we’re ready to ship them to boarding school (And yes, there is a boarding school for toddlers, two in fact:  PBS Sprout and Nick Jr.).  And finally, optimism is better than despair.  Duh. 

Mr. Layton’s Ode to Canada was just the pep talk I needed.  Mary Tyler Son is embracing being two.  He can be tiresome and tiring.  My dear girl is still dead.  Every day.  Some days, it is harder to choose hope than others.  Today, reading Mr. Layton’s words, it was easy.  So I will say to you what Mr. Layton, may he rest in peace, said to all of Canada this morning:

Moms, love is better than anger.  Hope is better than fear.  Optimism is better than despair.  So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.  And we’ll change the world. 

And we can.  Seriously.  We can.

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Can Jon Stewart do better?

Let me preface my rant with this disclaimer:  Jon Stewart is the bomb.  For reals.  I love and respect what he does and think what he produces is genius.  That said, his broadcast on 8.11.2011 with his rant on Megyn Kelly’s maternity leave could have been better.  Here is a link to the clip, “Lactate Intolerance”:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-11-2011/lactate-intolerance?xrs=share_fb

Fox News “host” “anchor” – – what are those folks calling themselves these days? – – Megyn Kelly has recently returned from her first maternity leave.  This is significant because upon her return she grilled a radio host who referred to maternity leave as “a racket” that women take advantage of.  In what looked to be good fun, Mama Kelly poked at this guy who took her ribbing in stride.  When he questioned the length of time she was gone post delivery and that men are not afforded the same benefits, Ms. Kelly trotted out FMLA — our government’s unpaid Family Medical Leave Act, a required “benefit” of all employers with 50+ employees. 

Jon Stewart, referring to her as a “mama grizzly,” then played a series of clips showing Megyn over the past couple years bitching and moaning about socialized this and government that.  Basically, she embraces the Fox party line about government regulations and labor laws and herself questions why men would ever require paternity leave – – “It is called MA-ternity leave,” she says in one clip. 

So Jon Stewart played “gotcha” and won.  I mean he has built an entire empire on showing us how hypocritical the arseholes who represent us in Washington can be.  His moonlighting gig of showing us how hypocritical his colleagues in the media are pays even more of his bills.  As he has said time and time again, what he does is easy.  The folks he pokes at make it so.  The streaming content they deliver on a daily basis is ripe for the picking.  Megyn Kelly is low hanging fruit.

As a mom who has used FMLA twice – – once for my first child’s birth and the second time just after her cancer diagnosis – – the more interesting and relevant feature would have been a discussion with Ms. Kelly.  Call her on that shit.  She’s gotta know that she said one thing before having a kid and another thing after having a kid.  I get that.  If you don’t have kids, it’s easy to not entirely understand the significance of maternity leave.  It’s easy for her to do what she did, which is discredit mothers for caring for their children and asking for employer and government support to do so.

What I wanted to see after watching this was a dialogue with Ms. Kelly.  Not a he pokes, she pokes, which is where all maternity leaves start anyway, but a real discussion between Father Stewart and Mother Kelly about how transformative parenting is.  I want to know more about how she feels about the things she has said over the years disparaging family leaves.  I want confirmation that she has evolved and doesn’t mind getting poked about that evolution from the King of Poke himself, Jon Stewart.  That would have been interesting to watch. 

And given that I’m suggesting how an aforementioned genius could do his job better, total missed opportunity that he didn’t have some fun with the spelling of her name, I mean Me-GYN?  Really?  Given the topic, that would have been comedy gold.