HowlRound Theatre Commons: On a very cold night at the end of January, I attended an event called Moms + Moods: Opening the Conversation on Post-Partum Rage. And I wasn’t sure why I was there. Only that someone I knew and liked a lot had organized it and moments after reading her email invitation I immediately bought a ticket before checking if my husband was working that night. I didn't think of myself as someone full of rage. But then I rarely thought of myself in the fifteen months since our son was born.
4 comments:
Being a mother is hard, and being a working mother is even harder. When you are juggling a newborn, a job, and your own needs, life can quickly become overwhelming. Working in theatre, a field that is incredibly time intensive, makes for little free time anyway. Rachel Bonds, the author, is borderline Superwoman for making her situation work as best she can. She says she thought about stopping her industry jobs to make her life as a parent easier. This thought is so sad to me - that women in any area of work consider sacrificing their passions and adult independence after having children to “make things work.” I am appreciative that Bonds talks about ways to keep living life while being a mother, especially the ones that involve increasing communication. Talking to your boss about workplace childcare and accommodations can make all the difference in life as a parent. Talking to your spouse to work out schedules can make being a working parent much simpler.
Being a theatre person is hard, being a theatre person and a mother at the same time has never been an option for most of us. While our generation seems to have collectively chosen not to have kids, just get higher degrees, explore the planet, and join the workforce those who chose to have families tend to struggle twice as hard. Even more if you are a female, the industry’s structure is not designed for people who chose a motherhood path, it seems like you can either be a successful professional, or be successful as a mom, but never both. I agree with the author, while we are moving forward with diversity and inclusion in our industry, and feminism is making long strides, we are forgetting working moms. I like how she divided her suggestions into “practical” and “conceptual”, and although the practical ones might take a bit to get in place, mainly because of money, as a community we can work to include mothers by modifying our language and finding other ways to support them.
I agree with Char that being a theater person is hard. Career path in theater requires 200% full attention and does not allow splitting attention to any other matter. Like the author said, it is because as an industry, we are not good at being inclusive. Borrowing her words, “It’s scary to suddenly be deemed unavailable or distracted. To have your ambition questioned. To suddenly have a whole new set of physical and financial needs, and to feel like your career is at stake if you ask for these needs to be met.” You don’t have to have a baby to resonate with this. When you are a primary caregiver of any sort, or if you need any kind of accommodation, you are immediately in the hot seat because you are not ‘normal’. Also another part that really infuriated me was how the author’s husband said “You need to figure out how to work differently.” He probably didn’t mean this--just as the privileged usually doesn’t mean anything bad, but to me that implied that she needed to change while he didn’t. I hope he brought the newborn baby to his gig next time.
I love this article! As someone who has always loved kids, I’ve often wondered if I would have children in the future, but most of the time I conclude it's practically impossible to be a working, traveling artist and raise a kid (or three). I found the author's struggles with parenting on the road to be extremely descriptive of what I fear in my future. Contrastingly, it also gave me hope. She was able to recognize the issues she was facing and put together direct, clear and feasible suggestions to make parenting as an artist a little easier. As an issue that can affect anyone it seems a little weird that some of these accommodations are not standardized. Conceptually I struggle with the concept of a family and work balance. How do you effectively devote enough time to your family and still thrive as an individual working professional? I hope in the future I can answer this question, and although I don’t know if I will ever have children I hope for all other parents out there that the authors suggestions become reality.
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