Just a Dairy Queen

Last week our financial planner, who is also a friend, came over for our six month check-up. At every meeting he updates our stats. Under my profession he wrote "Home Maker." I found it disconcerting. Unlike my erstwhile colleagues, equipped with MBAs and degrees in practical things like finance and for whom being an Asset Manager was a point of honor, I was always a bit ashamed that I had a job in the financial world. (I had envisioned myself more as Mila Cohen, Renaissance Woman: actor, director, writer, musician, art historian, double agent, something with panache frowned upon by the American masses as Bohemian and impractical. Alas, I didn't have a trust fund and lacked the stamina and the ambition to live below the poverty line for longer than a few weeks to see if I actually had the talent for any of the above, so I copped out and got myself a "real job" while dabbling on the side.) It was still troubling to see such a loaded title emblazoned over the palimpsest of a decade plus of what our culture deems respectable work. Home Maker, Housewife, these are disparaging terms, job titles I really never thought would apply to me.

I had our friend cross out Home Maker and write Dairy Queen. I was joking on one level, since it is idiotic how our culture equates job title with identity, but then again, I wasn't. From a purely Marxist perspective, I am exceedingly productive. Each feeding I produce up to six ounces of milk, multiply that by the number of feedings in a day and I am a prize milchkow. Most days in the office, in between playing solitaire showdown with Kenny and surfing the 'net, I produced a spreadsheet or two -- abstract representations of possible scenarios projecting future returns, hypothetical profits realized some day by The Man. Now I am generating precious bodily fluids with both use value and exchange value, well exchange value assuming someone else out there besides Yelena wants my milk. Moo.

Gloria Steinem proposed that "women's work" is drastically undervalued and that it should be given monetary equivalents. Given the moolah shelled out for day care in this town, multiplied by 4.2, I would be rolling in it and once again have value in the eyes of the work bigots.

People ask if I am returning to work. I tell them I am working, just with a huge pay cut. One person asked if Eli were the sole supporter of our family; I answered that he is the sole financial supporter, but I am certainly supporting our family in other vital ways. When hearing that I am not planning on returning to slaving away for The Man, I typically get one of two reactions: either a disapproving / surprised look that I am giving up a career (especially one where only 10% of the workforce is female) or a comment about how it is really best when a child has a mother around all the time. People who react either way can kiss my feminist ass.

Both responses indicate the questioner's assumptions of a woman's place. From reactions in the former category, I get the feeling that I am either letting down the sisters or they think, because I have chosen what they see as a traditional route, that I am caving into patriarchal expectation or, moreover, that I am boring. A few female friends -- with and without children -- have asked, "Don't you think you'll get bored staying home all day?" As if their lives in an office are constantly scintillating. (At work, my co-workers were pretty much the same every day, talking about the same sports teams and making the same stupid jokes. My co-worker now changes every day and it will be a long time before she tries to talk to me about American football, if ever.) Obviously, people in the latter category are all Christian Coalitiony and think all women should stay home and raise their children, with which I also don't agree. Yes, someone actually said to me, when I revealed my indefinite maternity leave, "But I thought you were a feminist." Yo! Feminism is about choices. I have made mine, you have made yours, and kindly sod off if you don't approve.