Mom Watch from Insanity House:
Stories from the frontlines of single parent mothering

By Tere McDowell and Insanity House

The Mom Watch

This year I’ve found myself spending a great deal of time watching moms. They are everywhere, from businesses, colleges, local merchants to malls. I look at them. I look to see if they are like me. I am now in my forties. My son left for college two years ago and informed me this last spring that he was not coming home for the summer, that Vermont was now his home. I was not ready for this to happen so quickly. I called often, wanting to hear how his semester was going. He, in his kindest tone informed me that I was sounding like a lonely old woman and that he had only been gone three weeks since his return from Christmas break. “Three weeks, impossible!” I thought. I looked on the calendar and sure enough, it had only been three weeks. So how could it feel like six months? My two other daughters are early in their teens. They are at a very silly age, and I wish I could see more of them. I watch them, amazed, from underneath the piles of laundry that accumulate on a daily basis; often saying, “hey I just washed this.” And the girlies responding; “I wore that yesterday.” Sure, I thought, for about 30 minutes.

Like most mothers today I work long hours, and I am back in school working on yet another degree. I keep telling myself that if I can only get yet another degree, I will feel as if I have some economic value in this country. I have found in the last ten years that this is a feeling shared by so many women. More education will grant me that higher position with better pay and better benefits. Everyone says so. After degrees are earned, and employment is won, you begin to learn about the pay equity situation. How is it that he gets more money than me? I have a higher level of education than he does. I piss and moan. It does little for my relationship with my current employer. It took me years to learn that it was not my place to point these little inequities out to my bosses. As a result, my resume continues to grow--as does my frustration.

I seem to have a lot of things growing in my life at this time, college credits, student loan debt, hairs on my chin, my bottom and the growing relationship between my thighs is better than any relationship I have ever had in my life. My children are growing up and like it or not, I am growing older. I have heard from many that it will be harder for me to find a professional career as I grow older. There are literally thousands of brilliant creative young people that will be vying for the positions I want. I am also told that they will have a better chance of getting better pay. I ponder this carefully. How many of you remember a time when women did not even enter the work force until their children were almost raised? They worked for years in the home, no compensation, no benefits. Their labor was considered a contribution to the family. Today, the majority of women have to pay someone to attend to their children, clean the house. How is it that one woman’s “contribution” easily becomes another woman’s income? When we pay strangers to manage our children and to clean our house, are we saying that because economic exchange takes place that these strangers are more invested? And while “droves” of women are leaving the work force because they have determined that the care of their children is ultimately more important, one must ask: what are they giving up to do this very important work that has no economic value unless it is provided by strangers?

I observe as, under the welfare reform act of 1996 and “welfare to work” programs, the government sends hundreds of thousands of women off to low paying, minimum wage jobs that could not even cover their child care fees, yet they subsidized strangers to care for these women’s children. I watch as households headed by single parent women have the highest rates of poverty of all family systems in America. Where less than 24% of the child-support that is owed is ever paid. I speak to people, organizations about the issues regarding single parent women and am always so amazed as to how pervasive the myth of single parent women goes. And my heart breaks as the domestic abuse rate in this country continues to rise. Some days, I feel as if I am at war.

So I look at other moms. I look to see if they have the same look of exhaustion and contemplative concern on their faces that appear to have become etched into mine. I listen to see if they are discussing women’s issues with their women friends or their children or their partners. I watch and wait as laws continue to be passed that hurt not only us, but our children as well. Every day I look at other moms. I am looking for my battle partners, I am looking for my fox hole buddies, I am looking for other women to join into the efforts to bring sanity, equality and justice back into our lives and the lives of our children.

So I look, I wait, I watch. I am ready.

mmo : April 2004

Tere McDowell is Psychic Surgeon of Insanityhouse, Inc. and Partner Suitable of RaiseTheNation.org.