Are Moms Really That Busy?

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I watched the Dr. Phil show.  No, I haven’t been living in a cave; it seems I’ve always known about Dr. Phil, it’s just that the TV here is, 99% of the time, switched off during the day.  And I like it that way.

But I was compelled to watch yesterday’s show, “Are Moms Really That Busy?” in support of my Champaign-Urbana homie, Amy Hatch, who is half of the awesome duo behind chambanamoms.com.  She made an appearance on Dr. Phil’s panel in order to debate a recent finding by University of Maryland’s Dr. John Robinson that moms have, on average, 30-40 hours of leisure time each week.

It’s an easy thing to get a knee-jerk reaction to – particularly if you are among the aforementioned moms who are spread reeeeeally really thin in order to be the best mom and caregiver and housekeeper and working professional that they can be.  The consensus on the panel as to Dr. Robinson’s findings can be summed up the following way: “Are you freakin KIDDING me?!”.  The panelists and moms in the audience were happy to provide the kind of heartbreaking detail of how patently NON-leisurely their lives really are; and how hard, in fact, they do work, and how very very much is expected of them.  That they should even be put in the position of having to defend themselves on this subject is altogether insulting.  Actually, “adding insult to injury” is a perfect characterization.

Of course moms will be put on the defensive by Dr. Robinson’s findings.  I’m guessing that that, and the publicity surrounding it, was his aim in the first place.  The absurd examples of leisure time cited by Dr. Robinson should be all the evidence we need: waiting for a tow truck (in the car w/o kids), opening business email, sitting in the dentist’s office, and the like.

But what went largely undiscussed on yesterday’s show is exactly how we should address this finding:  What’s getting valued?  Who’s setting the standards here?  And why, for christ’s sake, is no one standing up for the very idea of leisure time?  The very notion that we have leisure time carries a subtext that we’re not working hard enough.

Because if we picture it, the dream of leisure time floats above all of mom’s heads, like a detached, unattainable balloon – where one can exist, enjoying our favorite things without interruption, without guilt; outside of time and responsibility.  and as much as we want and crave and need to be in that balloon, if we’re fortunate enough to have the ability to step in it, we’re afraid that others will judge us as being………..the word which can only be whispered………lazy.

Apparently, with the industrial revolution and the gadgets of the 20th century which allow for tasks to completed in a shorter amount of time, there has been a new cold war: the War on Lazy.  We have become so very time and productivity obsessed that we have come to believe, as a culture, that busy-ness is the natural and right state of being.  Which is counter-intuitive.  One would think that the progress made in the last 200 years would allow for more leisure time, and that it would become a natural and virtuous thing.  But something else happened: the standards were raised.  Wash day work cut down to a few hours?  Better impose a higher standard of cleanliness and sell a lot more clothes.  We’ve increasingly been sold a standard that we can’t, and shouldn’t, live up to.  And as moms reach a breaking point in which they can barely handle the stress of raising a family and being everything to everyone, mostly without compensation, they are made to apologize for the joke of what passes as leisure time.  Shame on us.

Listen to how Brigid Schulte wraps up her fine response in the Washington Post:  “it’s 1:31 in the morning; this story is two days late; the dinner dishes are still in the sink; and there’s a form I need to fill out before my daughter goes to school. For a few fleeting moments earlier this evening, however, as I searched for my son’s bike helmet, I did notice that the moon was uncannily beautiful”.  The saddest of poetry, but as moms, we’ve been there.  Maybe even four times already this week.  So instead of going on the defensive, please join me in the following chant:

“More Leisure Time Now!  Better Leisure Time Now!”

And fellow moms, when you see a television commercial which leads you to to think that your teeth should be as white as your wedding dress, and implies that anything less constitutes something sub-standard, please see this for the trap that it is, and take hold of what’s important in your life.  Having flashy white teeth is not being good to yourself (though corporations would love you to believe it) – having time and a little peace in your life to enjoy yourself IS.