“I Don’t Know How She Does It,” just out in theaters and starring Sarah Jessica Parker, explores how a certain class of women are able to pull off double lives as both 1) wage earners and 2) boo-boo kissers/class bake sale contributors/laundresses/short-order cooks/nanny wranglers/personal chauffeurs/homework tutors. In other words, it’s a movie about being a working mother.
Allison Pearson’s novel was a best-seller that touched the proverbial nerve with women everywhere by laying bare the life of Kate Reddy, a fictional yet authentically sleep-deprived, snappish, and frequently tearful heroine who is part ambitious financial executive and part wife and mother trying to hold it together without falling apart while “having it all.”
Pearson was honest in her assessment of the frustrating trade-offs that characterize a life split between the boardroom and the sandbox. And one thing she brought home best of all was the charged nature of the relationship between working mothers and the nannies who care for their children. Sure, fathers have nannies, but it’s not the same. “I see you took Ben to get a haircut,” Kate says to the babysitter after returning from a business trip, her voice quavering. “Yes,” the nanny shrugs. “That was his first haircut,” our protagonist observes meaningfully, about to dissolve into a puddle of tears. The nanny shrugs again dismissively. It is a wonderful and honest moment that makes you ask, “Who really has the power here?” The educated working woman who pays the nanny, or the nanny who gets the kid his first haircut with impunity, without even asking first, and upon whom the mother depends utterly? Men are used to missing out on the big and little details of their children’s lives, and as a society we give them a pass when they go an entire school year without once doing drop off, or miss the Spring Sing because they have to work late. Women, not so much.
“I Don’t Know How She Does It” provides an opportunity to consider just how working women and working families make it work—and who takes the fall when it works imperfectly. Unfortunately, our national discourse about working mothers is largely about how to contain the damage they allegedly do. There have been numerous studies about whether daycare is bad for children, and if so, just how bad. There has been an insulting and distracting focus on the so-called “mommy wars” between working moms and stay-at-home moms who supposedly hate and envy one another (the media loves a catfight, and will go so far as to fabricate one to boost ratings). And then there have been the exposés and tell-alls like “The Nanny Diaries” about self-obsessed, idle, privileged mothers in big cities who ignore their children, shop all day, and treat their nannies like dirt.
Are you kidding me?
It’s time for our national conversation about working mothers to catch up with reality. In expensive metropolitan centers like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, where you can barely get by with both parents working full-time and everyday life feels a lot like a hamster wheel, nannies are not a status symbol. Sitters are a necessity for even the lower-middle and working class. Indeed, as the recession deepens, families all over the country are increasingly bearing the brunt of the paradox of the two income home: can’t live without it, but can’t do it before the kids are old enough to be in school full time. The biggest crisis we face as a nation may not be our failing economy, our broken educational system or the risk of terrorism but a childcare crunch that leaves families hurting economically and puts children at risk in every sense.
The old solutions no longer work. Many of us live far from family, or have parents who are either declining, incapacitated, or busy working themselves and so unable to pitch in with childrearing as extended family has historically. Add to this the paucity and poor quality of government-subsidized childcare (low compensation for daycare workers leading to high turnover rates, plus high child to caregiver ratios which research demonstrates are less than optimal for kids), and it becomes clear why even families who can barely afford it may feel they have no choice but to hire a sitter or nanny. And while many nannies are wonderful caregivers, hiring one is currently a crapshoot. There is no government regulation, no standard of care or experience, and no oversight. Unless you count as “oversight” an often cursory background check by a nanny agency (which charges a fee that is prohibitive for most families in the first place, and, in addition, has a financial interest in placing the nanny) and a nanny cam tucked into a teddy bear in the family’s home. Don’t children and parents alike deserve better?
From our laughable maternal leave policies (and our frequently non-existent paternal ones) to our failure to make high quality, regulated and subsidized daycare an urgent national priority, well might we wonder how the hell not just she but entire families do it. The question and the crisis will not go away. Nations that fail to provide children with the basic building blocks of physical and psychological well-being—including healthy attachments to caregivers who really care—shortchange an entire generation and create an uncertain future.
