{"id":498,"date":"2014-05-13T22:05:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T22:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/05\/parking-a-link-penelope-trunk.html"},"modified":"2014-05-13T22:05:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T22:05:00","slug":"parking-a-link-penelope-trunk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/05\/parking-a-link-penelope-trunk.html","title":{"rendered":"Parking a link: Penelope Trunk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
As linked to by instapundit.com, Penelope Trunk asks<\/a>, \u201cwhat does it mean to be a \u201cfull-time\u201d mother, or to work \u201cfull time\u201d?<\/div>\n

She cites a profile that Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook fame wrote of Beyonce, for the Time \u201c100 most influential people\u201d issue, gushing about her achievements in the music industry. \u00a0Then she says,<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s exactly nothing surprising until Sheryl adds, \u201cBeyonce does all this while being a full-time mother.\u201d \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In that little sentence, Sandberg does something very big. Sandberg declares that you can have a full-time job and be a full-time mother. \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is convenient. Because now Sandberg is a full-time mom who spends some days away from the kids signing autographs. And running Facebook. And Beyonce is a full-time mom who spends some days away from her daughter on billion-dollar concert tours. So basically anyone who gave birth is a full-time mom regardless of how much of their time is spent on kids. Now we can all feel good about ourselves regardless of our choices. \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But does this help anyone? \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No. It\u2019s a way to deny that we make big choices in our lives. Of course you cannot choose to be a full-time mom and have a big career. Full-time mom means your kids are your career. If you redefine full-time mom then you take away the ability for people who stay home with their kids to describe their work as full-time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

. . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know that redefining full-time parenting, as something you can do with a full-time job, only distorts the discussion of the choices women make now. And it is deliberately misleading to women who have to make tough choices in the coming years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I\u2019ve periodically read Penelope Trunk, when some other blogger links to her. \u00a0And, as I read this particular post of hers, and her autobiography on her site, I\u2019m a bit stumped. \u00a0She is a writer, and says she is the primary breadwinner. \u00a0But she also homeschools. \u00a0She links, in this post, to a post about homeschooling, but this hardly seems a typical day. \u00a0Does she do her work at night, when the kids are in bed? \u00a0Or do the kids \u201cschool themselves\u201d so that she can have a lot of time to work? \u00a0(In her \u201cday in the life\u201d she does a lot of her work while driving her children to and from various lessons, via career-coaching phone calls.) \u00a0Does she think of herself as a \u201cfull-time mom\u201d who just happens to be able to support the family with a part-time job?<\/p>\n

In any event, I\u2019ve done plenty of juggling in my 13 years so far as a mother, having worked a 24-hour-a-week schedule for all that time (except for maternity leaves, and some extra time during the busy season, but that generally consisting of logging on at night or, when my youngest was younger, during his naptime). \u00a0I know plenty of stay-at-home moms who either didn\u2019t have much of a career to keep them in the workplace if they didn\u2019t need to stay there, or had a career that didn\u2019t accommodate children well. \u00a0And I know other mothers who work. <\/p>\n

My marker, in the end, has been this: \u00a0the expectation that some families have that mom will be with the kids nearly continuously is unrealistic and ahistorical, and fails to recognize that part of the process of growing up is becoming more independent. \u00a0But at the same time, when my children were younger, one of my metrics was this: \u00a0are my children spending more waking hours with my husband and\/or with me than they are with daycare providers? \u00a0And in our case, it was pretty clearly \u201cyes.\u201d \u00a0Even in families where both parents work full-time, there are often opportunities to minimize the daycare, when dad works early mornings, and mom starts the day later, for instance. \u00a0But families where the children are in daycare from 7 am to 6 pm, 5 days a week, with little waking time before or after, for the youngest children, or all the more so for families with live-in nannies, I\u2019ve never really understood how the child can know that the mom and dad he sees on the weekends are the people who \u201ccount\u201d in his life. <\/p>\n

But Penolope misses the mark with her definition of \u201cfull time,\u201d which she equates to that which is the person\u2019s \u201cprimary concern.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wrong. \u00a0\u201cFull-time worker\u201d is a concept that\u2019s got a specific definition in the working world, based on a given metric of \u201cnumber of hours per week,\u201d whether that\u2019s defined by the government (e.g., for labor statistics) or by the company (\u201cfull-time benefits eligible workers\u201d). \u00a0Alternately, in the academic world, you\u2019re a \u201cfull-time student\u201d based on number of credit hours per semester. <\/p>\n

But the concept of being a \u201cfull time parent\u201d just doesn\u2019t make sense. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t make sense when Sheryl Sandberg calls Beyonce a \u201cfull-time mom.\u201d \u00a0It dosen\u2019t make sense when Penelope Trunk says that only someone who\u2019s sufficiently devoted to her kids is a \u201cfull time mom.\u201d \u00a0It doesn\u2019t have meaning because there is no official Mom\u2019s Association to give it meaning, and no conventional understanding of the term. \u00a0How many hours is one allowed to spend on some other activity, after all, before you\u2019re demoted from \u201cfull-time\u201d to \u201cpart-time\u201d mom status? \u00a0So let\u2019s Just Say No to this term.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As linked to by instapundit.com, Penelope Trunk asks, \u201cwhat does it mean to be a \u201cfull-time\u201d mother, or to work \u201cfull time\u201d? She cites a profile that Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook fame wrote of Beyonce, for the Time \u201c100 most influential people\u201d issue, gushing about her achievements in the music industry. \u00a0Then she says, But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nParking a link: Penelope Trunk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As linked to by instapundit.com, Penelope Trunk asks, "what does it mean to be a "full-time" mother, or to work "full time"?She cites a profile that\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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