I Don't Know How She Does It

I loved Allison Pearson’s book I Don’t Know How She Does It. I discovered it when I was pregnant for the first time, and was wondering how on earth I was going to balance a demanding job with the realities of parenthood. Over the years and the two children that followed, I re-read it countless times, reaching for the book when I felt overwhelmed and in danger of dropping every last one of my Working Mum juggling balls, and dipping into it when I needed comfort that someone else knew what I was going through. The book spoke to me; it was as though Allison Pearson had read my innermost thoughts and used them to create Kate Reddy.

The recent movie of the same name, starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Kate Reddy, claims to have been based on Pearson’s book. To be honest, so many details have been changed, so many characters eliminated or merged together, so much left out, that it is really only the essential spirit of Kate Reddy that remains from the book.

I walked in determined to hate the movie; ready to pick it, brutally, to pieces. And yet, in spite of myself, I enjoyed it – a lot.

I won’t turn this into a spoiler. I will say this much - the movie ends differently from the book, and your first reaction might be to walk away in an indignant huff.

On reflection, though, I do think the movie was ultimately true to Pearson’s Kate Reddy and her battle cries:

1. Being a working mother is like holding the pieces of a big jigsaw puzzle in your head. The number of pieces and even the picture you’re trying to create change constantly, and often beyond your control. Some people (read: spouse) watch you trying to do it but don't help you nearly as much as you wish they would (and tend to get all sulky and difficult when you suggest they help more). Other people do help you with bits of it. Sometimes you or they fumble, and a whole section of the puzzle falls apart. Sometimes, unasked, they jump in and finish your bits of the puzzle, and while you know you should feel grateful, instead you feel a horrible pang of "That was my job; I could have handled that (couldn’t I?)" or, worse, "I wanted to do that myself, even though I also had 50 other things to do."

2. Being a working mother (whether your work is in an office or at home with your baby) is Hard.Work. It is even harder if you have the kind of office job that requires you to work long, unpredictable hours and keep one eye on your Blackberry at all times of the day and night. It is frustrating beyond belief not having control over your own schedule, and not knowing from day to day whether your work will call you away at a moment’s notice, forcing you to endlessly re-neg on even the most tentative evening/weekend/holiday plans with spouse and children, and meaning that you can never confidently promise your children that you will be there for them at any given time. That kind of job means avoiding ever saying, reassuringly, that Mummy will be home by bedtime, or Mummy will make a snowman with you tomorrow; it is more than likely you will end up disappointing your poor kids, who will find it harder and harder to forgive you. Your spouse, meanwhile, is probably already so beaten down with accumulated disappointment that he doesn’t know what to say any more, and has resigned himself to the fact that this is the way things are.

3. If you work in a high-powered, highly competitive environment, there is always someone else at the office ready to jump in and do your job at a moment’s notice – to take your credit, steal your thunder, and make you, ultimately, redundant (literally and metaphorically). If you are determined to stay in the game, you basically have to take the crap that the job deals out, otherwise you will be sidelined. The very rare exception is if you are a person who has already worked her arse off and has achieved results so stellar that she has proved herself indispensable, or at least worth keeping happy enough that she will not jump ship to a competitor. Even such people, though, cannot rest on their laurels. They may have earned the right to demand that others cut them a teeny bit of slack. They may be finally able to orchestrate the work-related crap somewhat, so that it ruins the rest of life a little less. However, they still have to keep achieving stellar results, and in order to do that it’s still necessary to work long and hard and make frequent sacrifices on the home front. Some jobs are just like that and there is no way around it.  

4. If you are going to do a job like Kate Reddy’s, you had better love what you do with a passion so great that it consumes you. Otherwise, you will not have the heart to stick with it, or you will stick with it but end up so bitter and jaded that you would have been better off quitting.

There were parts of the movie that got me right in the heart.

The scene where Kate has just come back from a business trip, and has to leave almost immediately for another one. She says a heartfelt goodbye to her children, leaves the house, and starts walking down the road, tiredly dragging her carry-on luggage behind her. Her shoulders start to shake and she bursts into incontrollable sobs, distraught and at that moment not caring who sees her.

The scene where Kate is at dinner with her boss Jack, and something reminds her of a game her family always plays. Without thinking, she starts telling Jack about it, artlessly and with her whole face lit up. Suddenly she stops and catches herself in the act, and shuts herself down, with an anguished look on her face that says, “I can’t let him see how much I miss my family.”

The scene where Kate and her boss are working late (again), and Kate excuses herself to use the restroom. We see her on her cellphone in the lobby, singing a bedtime song softly and sweetly into the phone; oblivious to all around her; lovingly, completely connected to her little ones (“I love you, a bushel and a peck...”) It broke me up completely. As the movie went on I kept remembering that scene and breaking up all over again. I remember sneaking out to make that phone call so many times myself... Knowing I wouldn’t make it home by bedtime, phoning my replacement as a mother our nanny just so I could hear my older girl’s little voice on the phone, singing softly into the phone, missing her and her baby sister so desperately that my heart hurt, wanting just to be there all snuggled up with my sweet little people. At times like that, I vividly remember thinking, What on earth am I doing here? Sometimes a meeting would run so late that I would miss that Bedtime Window. I would get back to my office to find a voicemail message from my tiny big girl, saying goodnight to her absent Mummy. I have several of those messages saved. I can’t bring myself to listen to them.

This movie brought back a lot of difficult memories and made me recall many moments of personal anguish. At the same time, it also made me feel happy and relieved, as it confirmed something I’ve been suspecting for a while now - that although there were things I loved about my job and that nowadays I miss, there is much, much more about that world and that life that I absolutely don’t miss. It is a world that some people - even some working mothers - thrive on. I now know for sure that I am not one of those women (at least, not right now).

I want to have the time and space to treat my husband as my best friend, not just my partner in panicked daily logistics and the person I end up bullying for help with my jigsaw. I want to have time to be alone with my own thoughts sometimes. But most of all, I want and need time with my children that is not just snatched moments and fleeting bedtime kisses. Although they drive me crazy sometimes, I really, really love them. A bushel and a peck. 

Alex P. Keaton and the death of my teaching career

Until I was 12 years old, my number one career goal was to become a teacher. This was hardly surprising. My primary school teachers were legendary, and I still hold them in the highest esteem (Miss Nuttall, Mrs Catchpole, Mr Holmes, Mrs Kenny—I’m thinking of you).

Teaching is also ingrained in my gene pool—my mother and two of my grandparents were teachers, and my brother and sister carried on the tradition.

I am the odd one out; the one who became a lawyer instead.

I can remember the exact moment that I started questioning my long-held teaching ambitions. I was 12, and our Year 7 class was having one of those “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up” discussions. I announced proudly that I was going to be a teacher.

Later, I was waylaid by the class upstart. For the purposes of this story, I will call him Alex, because at the time he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Alex P. Keaton character from Family Ties (the one played by a young Michael J. Fox) – sleek hairdo, smart talker, entrepreneurial tendencies already clearly in evidence. Alex demanded, quite seriously, “You are the smartest kid in this class. Why do you want to be a teacher? You can do better than that.”

It was the first time I’d heard anyone suggest that teaching was not the highest calling; the be-all-and-end-all of brilliant jobs. Alex explained to me that other professions could earn me more money, and that the smartest people never became teachers because there were much better jobs out there.*

I know now that Alex was talking out of his arse, or at the very least was just repeating something he’d heard from some misguided, money-grubbing adult. Shame on me for listening to him.

Although I abandoned my own teaching career before it even began, I have never stopped being a fan of great teachers. As a parent, I have started to grasp the enormity of how hard it is to be an educator. Explaining something in clear and simple terms is a skill that is grossly underrated. Being consistently patient, kind but fair, level-headed, intelligent, calm and reasonable, is even more difficult, in my opinion—and most days I am only dealing with two children at a time. Imagine the challenge of being a primary school teacher—exercising all the skills I listed above, but in addition having to adjust your approach at will to suit the vast range of ability levels, moods, temperaments and tiredness levels that you might encounter at any time in a group of twenty 6-year-olds. Someone who can pull that off is nothing short of a genius.

Why is it, then, that teachers are so grossly under-appreciated in so many countries? I don’t doubt that many people look back and remember, with fondness and appreciation, their favourite/best teachers. Teachers’ paychecks, however, do not reflect this at all (on this one point, Alex was right on the money). As a first-year lawyer, with the ink still drying on my law school diploma, I got a job at a U.S. law firm in Tokyo. My annual compensation was literally three times that of my highly-experienced-Australian-high-school-teacher mother’s (and let me point out that my mother worked in the private system, so her salary was probably higher than that of the average Australian teacher of her age and experience). It was embarrassing. It was wrong. It surprised no one.

My 6-year-old started preschool this year—the first level of compulsory education in Finland. I love her teachers. They are highly experienced. They have Masters’ degrees in education. They speak fluent English. They are lovely, kind-but-will-take-bullshit-from-no-one people. When my daughter first started preschool, I went around telling anyone who would listen how lucky we were to have found such a great school.

It wasn’t long before Finns started informing me, gently but firmly, that probably our school and its teachers are not the lucky find I thought they were--not because they aren't fantastic, but because the teaching profession in Finland is full of similarly fantastic people. Finland boasts high standards for the admission of graduates to the teaching profession (including a Masters'-level university degree). Teachers are highly educated and highly respected. No one here would dare say that teaching is the kind of profession you choose because you are incapable of doing anything else.

In my early 20s, when I lived in Japan (before I went back and finished my initially-abandoned law degree and got a “better job”) I walked into a part-time teaching job armed with my Bachelor of Arts in Japanese and a diploma in Speech and Drama. Had I studied theory of education? Did I have extensive practical teaching skills? Did I have specialist pedagogical knowledge? Um, nope, none of the above! No one cared. No one even asked. Here in Finland, none of the fancy letters after my name would get me anywhere near a teaching job. By law, I would be required to undertake further study and get practical experience before being allowed to get a paid teaching position. In my opinion, this is exactly as it should be, and this is the perhaps the biggest reason that Finland scores consistently stellar results in the OECD’s PISA testing of 15 year olds’ ability in reading, science and mathematics. In 2009, Finnish students’ scores were 3^rd, 2^nd and 6^th in the world in those respective areas. Australian students’ scores were 9^th, 10^th and 15^th in the world. American students’ were 16^th, 22^nd and 35^th.

(if you’re interested, see http://stats.oecd.org/PISA2009Profiles/# for complete results).

Cheered at this rosy picture of wonderful Finnish educators and the strong results being achieved by their students, I went looking for data about Finnish teacher’s salaries, fairly sure the higher status of and greater respect for teachers here was reflected in much better salaries than in other countries. I was absolutely shocked to find out that (according to 2005 figures I found here) Finnish teachers are in fact paid less—significantly less—than their counterparts in America, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. They do earn more than teachers in Italy, Eastern Europe, Thailand and South America. Oh, what a relief [cough].

How is it that, while we want our children to have a high-quality, unparalleled education, we as a society aren’t prepared to pay more than bargain basement prices for that privilege? Maybe we are, in idealistic theory, but when push comes to shove, no one wants to put their hard-earned money into an investment whose returns, though vitally important to society in the long run, are unlikely to come back to the original investor in monetary form.

Lawyers and money-market dealers earn big money because that’s what the market is willing to pay for their services; a market with deep pockets that are kept full thanks to the work of said lawyers and money-market dealers.  Teachers, on the other hand, do nothing but take on and fulfill the responsibility of educating our children in every aspect of the school curriculum and in countless other aspects of life—ethics, social skills, physical fitness, psychology, you name it.

I mean, really. Why would we waste our money on something like that?

*************

* Irrelevant but interesting: Alex went on to an expensive private secondary school, got a high enough score to get into law school, and abandoned the profession after a very short time. Now, in his mid-30s, he is a long-haired, would-be rock star who hasn’t quite made it. True story.

Even more interestingly, another boy in our class, with whom I shared the honour of being dux of our primary school, is now a university lecturer—a teacher.

The essential nature of oxygen

The single most ethically-charged subject I studied at law school was Family Law. It was fascinating and heartbreaking. The law is just not equipped to deal with the emotionally-difficult and fraught human issues that end up before the Family Court.

As our lecturer commented, in the hardest cases the judge makes the best decision he or she can, and hopes that no one dies. Professor P. wasn’t just being dramatic. In Australia, at least one Family Court judge has been killed by a distraught litigant who had hoped for a different decision. Yikes.

At that time, the law stated that in decisions regarding shared parenting, a judge’s paramount consideration was “the best interests of the child”. My classmates and I spent lots of time learning how that phrase had been interpreted by legislatures and judges, and whether or not we agreed. Does “the best interests of the child” mean giving primary custody to the parent with the most stable income, the parent who has spent the most time with the child, or the parent who is the more responsible and dependable? Should we always aim to split custody 50:50, on the assumption that children need both Mum and Dad? Should we try to determine whether an estranged Mum and Dad are in fact being sincere about their respective pleas for custody of their children, or whether (intentionally or not) each is just trying to score points? If a judge’s decision is likely to anger one or both parents, what kind of collateral damage might their children later face?

We were then asked to consider an awkward scenario: what if Mum (primary caregiver) wants to relocate to pursue a positive new job opportunity in a city where she has close family and friends, and wants to take the kids with her; what if this potential destination is hundreds or thousands of kilometres interstate or overseas; what if the children’s father can’t or won’t similarly relocate and insists that his ex-wife stay put? If the issue went to court, should a judge let Mum go ahead and make the move, or command her to stay?  

You can see why Family Court judges (and in fact all those who work in Family Law) have my wholehearted admiration, as well as my heartfelt sympathy.

At the time, my loyalty swung backwards and forwards between that fictional mum and her ex-husband. I read lots of articles, trying doggedly to find the elusive out-of-the-box solution that would be “in the best interests of the child” and still wouldn’t make anyone miserable (I never did find that solution; probably it didn’t exist).

One article I read stayed with me. It drew a compelling analogy between a parent and an airline passenger experiencing a drop in cabin pressure.

Airline safety demonstrations always advise us to ensure our own mask is secured before helping others. The logic behind this is unimpeachable – how can we help our children or others around us if we ourselves run out of oxygen and pass out?

The article argued that securing the best interests of a child meant securing the best interests of his or her primary caregiver – whether those interests are a decent job and financial security, a strong support network of family and friends, remarriage, or other elements that would likely bring happiness and stability (both in concrete terms and emotionally). The article was strongly in favour of making sure the child’s primary caregiver had a fully-functioning oxygen mask in place, and was in the best possible position to care for his or her child. The writer was clearly a supporter of that fictional mum's relocation plans.

I don’t remember whose side I came down on in the end (especially given that our lecturer was a well-known proponent of dads’ rights, and I was not one to let emotion ruin my GPA). However, I found myself thinking of that oxygen-mask article again lately.

How many parents really do stop to consider – daily, weekly, or even at all - whether their own metaphorical “oxygen mask” is in place?  When I became a parent for the first time, I found myself completely absorbed in my baby and lovingly (if annoyingly) anxious about everything that concerned her. At that time, the idea that I might have not just a right, but also a responsibility to continue to act in my own interests was literally beyond my comprehension. I remember noticing articles in parenting books and on blogs that urged me to secure “Me time” and to take care of myself and my own individual needs. Privately, I couldn’t help thinking it was all a load of selfish B.S.

Looking back with wiser eyes, I hereby extend a humble apology for all those slurs I mentally let fly against people who (I now realize) knew better than I did. I now see that I spent much of the first 6 years of my life as a parent over-extended, rapidly burning out, and growing more bitter, jaded and unhappy by the day. It is a saintly person indeed who can focus all his or her time and energy selflessly on other people, especially pint-sized ones – a paragon who can work and cook and mop up puke, patiently feed and soothe a crying baby for hours at a time instead of sleeping, brightly endure entire days with a toddler in the throes of the Terrible Twos, and voluntarily replace all previous leisure activities with trips to the park, Wiggles songs, and Fisher Price toys - and all without feeling exhausted, fraught, or plagued by a tiny inner voice demanding, in a rising crescendo, “What about me?”

In the unlikely case that there was any doubt in your mind, let me confirm that I am not one of those saintly people, and I extend a heartfelt sorry to my kids and my husband for having to live with me at my burnt-out worst. 

My own oxygen mask is still in prototype form and doesn’t always work properly. Persistent user error and residual “I’m FINE, ok?”-type stubbornness hasn’t helped. However, at least I have finally admitted that I need that mask and its reviving oxygen. If you don’t own your own mask, or aren’t using it properly, do something about it. This is not just about your rights as a person; this is about your responsibility to those who depend on you – you need enough oxygen not only to stay alive and conscious, but also to have the physical and emotional energy to stay on top of your parental responsibilities, and even (hopefully) to be the kind of person you’d like to see your own children become.

It isn’t easy to find that source of oxygen if you’ve been doing without it for a long time – you might feel as though you don’t have the time, money or resources to be changing direction career-wise, getting help with home duties/childcare, reading books, exercising, sleeping more, or doing whatever big or small thing is that will revive and energize you – but finding a way to get that personal O₂ is a necessity, not an extravagance.

You can’t be the best parent you can be if your own life is suffocating you.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, before I pick up my children I am going to enjoy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake – the cake that will be eaten by my kids and my husband as well, but that secretly I made for myself, because it’s my favourite.