The Gender Divide in Mind-Numbing Parenting
Last week on Salon, Aaron Traister admitted that a steady diet of stay-at-home parenting had turned him a bit dull. He writes:
I would love nothing more than to write an insightful article about healthcare reform, but I'm dumb now. Anything I write relating to healthcare would end up as a screed about why my children have to take a back seat on getting their flu shots to a bunch of kids with “respiratory disorders.” Why are kids who can't breathe right so much more important than my own kids? My kids love to breathe, and they're good at it, and they should be rewarded for their aptitude in breathing. But I digress.
Traister should be commended for managing to pen a quite intelligent essay about how stupid he has become. But after generations of women have sacrificed their private intellectual lives for the purpose of child-rearing, why has it taken a stay-at-home-dad to articulate this?
Traister touches on that point in the opening of his essay:
I don't know if parenting makes you chronically stupid or just temporarily slow, but after nearly four years of child rearing, most of them spent as a stay-at-home dad, my intellect has been dulled to a nub. Women have known this for generations. Maybe that's why the "stay at home vs. get out and work" debate is so contentious. Of course, I've never heard anyone talk about it. But maybe I just wasn't paying attention until now. All I know is, while my wit may never have cut with the precision of a Ginsu blade, my mind was a bit sharper than the rusty pair of kindergarten safety scissors I'm working with these days.
I wonder why Traister has never heard and/or paid attention to anyone talk about this before? I imagine that when women have written and spoken about this, it's been considered a "women's issue," and therefore not something that would necessarily emerge on Traister's radar. There's a reason that Traister's story is considered a more general-interest piece: A woman's intellectual talents just aren't publicly valued in the same way a man's are. Who cares if you're losing your mind if there wasn't much value there to begin with?
Nowadays, most people don't have a problem accepting women as intelligent. Career women are certainly celebrated for their braininess in their chosen fields. But when it comes to baby-making, a woman's intellectual contributions have got competition—they must be weighed against her perceived innate talent for child-rearing. When a woman chooses to abandon her career in order to raise kids, the loss to the world of ideas is balanced against the valuable nurturing she'll provide to future generations. (Women who have always been on the mommy track, of course, are never assumed to have any brains to lose).
Not so for men, whose intellectual lives are assumed to outweigh their worth as readers of monosyllabic storybooks and preventer of babies swallowing small toys. Stay-at-home-dads are still seen as the exception rather than the rule. (Of course, our refusal to see men as nurturers isn't fair, either).
Were Traister's piece written by a woman, I imagine the following would be different:
a) She would have to work harder to prove that she had a valuable intellectual life in the first place;
b) She would be required to insert the appropriate number of caveats about how much she really, truly loves her children, even though they are making her dumb, and wouldn't trade her full-time mom job for anything;
c) A portion of the backlash would be centered on her failure as a woman.
As it stands, Traister's article has gotten its share of negative responses—but none that I can see which single out Traister's failure as a man (just as a parent and writer). But it's also received dozens of grateful letters from SAHMs (that's Stay-At-Home-Moms) who are happy to see another parent write frankly about his newfound inability to think normal adult-person thoughts. Obviously, Traister is exaggerating a bit—his life as a stay-at-home-dad hasn't made him too dumb to write a coherent essay about his discomfort with parenting's brain rot. But the question remains—why are more women expected to fight the slow atrophy of their intellect than men are?
1:51 pm
Amanda: I like this article; but are you really saying there IS an "intellect atrophy" for the stay-at-home parent?
2:02 pm
My mom got her doctorate while pregnant with me (her third out of four), and she went on to teach classes whenever circumstances permitted. She never had much patience for people who failed to develop their minds while attempting to help their children develop theirs.
2:29 pm
@Kelly I haven't held court with kids for more than a couple of hours in my lifetime, so I don't have any personal experience with this. Based on Traister's comments, a lot of stay-at-home parents agree with him. Obviously, Traister is not just sitting around with the kids (he's also writing essays for Salon while sitting around with the kids), but he's also devoting most of his mental energies to the kids, and he find that that detracts from his other intellectual activities. But I'd be interesting to hear from other stay-at-home parents who think the activity of child-rearing helps their brains.
7:27 pm
"But I’d be interesting to hear from other stay-at-home parents who think the activity of child-rearing helps their brains."
OK. Here's one person, at least. Child-rearing has involved every resource I have - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - and many I didn't know I had. It has also grown me as a person. I care more - about the planet, about people I meet and other children, about myself - than I did before I had children. I have learned new things and re-learned things I'd thought I'd forgotten or thought I no longer cared about. I have improved myself and I've learned the value of hard work and the necessary qualities of humor and humility.
Child-rearing has also involved it's share of many, many hours washing diapers and cooking food and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and folding laundry and occasionally sitting around crying in frustration.
I think it is interesting in the world I'm in the intellect is so often praised above work of the body. Or intellect is only recognized if it's being monetized or bringing fame. Caring for kids is like a lot of other kinds of work I've had - it's WORK, that means it takes time from other things and can distract us from work or play we used to do. How someone handles that work - how much they engage their mind or body or personal sense of integrity and "help their brain" as you put it - is up to them and their circumstances.
As for the question I think you're posing - and please correct me if I'm wrong - of whether, essentially, people care MORE if a dude complains about "intellect atrophy" than when females have done it, I absolutely think that's the case - at least in our culture.
As a chemical engineer I won an award in 2000 for a project I did. Since taking up the work of keeping a home and caring for and homeschooling kids, I haven't won an award or career acclaim - because I haven't had a career. So I have no outward award to hang on my "intellect" but that doesn't mean it's gone.
It would be cool to read articles discussing gender and sex unfairness vis-a-vis caring for children where the author is very, very careful not to further the culturally-held belief that those who choose to care for children are, necessarily, engaging in a less-than or not-very-intellectual activity. Unless that's what you really and truly believe.
I hope you wanted a big, long-winded post because that's what you got! BTW, I absolutely have been eating this blog up since I found it a few days ago - thanks.
10:17 pm
I've been thinking about this post for a day now. Amanda, I'm with you in the third paragraph when you suggest, “[W]hen women have written and spoken about this, it’s been considered a 'women’s issue,' and therefore not something that would necessarily emerge on Traister’s radar.”
But I get off the train before your conclusion that Traister’s perspective has "broken through" because women's intellectual talents aren't as widely valued as men's. (Beyond the question of whether separate 'talents' actually exist, I'd also put at issue how salient beliefs of their existence really are.)
If we're looking for explanations as to why Traister’s article is noteworthy, maybe a more sound conclusion stops at the anterior issue: Men don't participate in the discourse of stay-at-home moms. Even stay-at-home dads have trouble accessing this body of discourse; often, they report feeling unwelcome in the conversation – whether in media, or, in the playground, literally.
Looked at another way, it's not Traister’s perspective of "Dumbed-Down Professional-Turned-Parent" that has broken into the mainstream; the noteworthy breakthrough is that a man has broken into a stereotypically female-dominated body of discourse – and, knowingly or not, appropriated it for his own voice.
11:40 pm
Amanda asks: "why are more women expected to fight the slow atrophy of their intellect than men are?"
Good question. Ask the broads who insist that they be the one that gets to stay home and take care of the children, while guys are stuck going to their crappy office jobs every day.
I'd love to be a stay-at-home dad. You think any woman attractive enough to be able to give me to have an erection is going to want to give me that cushy deal?
Here's a link to a New York Times article which surveyed female students at Yale. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=yale female students&st=cse&scp=1. A full 30 percent planned to stop working when they had children. Because that's what the woman want to do.
I have a solution. I call on Congress to pass a federal statute making it illegal for people to get or remain married if the guy earns more than the woman. If such a law is enacted, I'm sure fewer woman will be have to worry about brain rot from child-rearing.
Finally, since we now acknowledge the reality of the brain rot caused by years of raising children at home, we can all agree that its ridiculous and counterproductive to expect companies to hire women, or guys, for important jobs requiring intellectual dexterity after years primarily spent doing things such as driving their children to soccer practice.