I have the world's best boss: she is kind, understanding, wise, and as beautiful as Sarah Michelle Gellar when she was Buffy

it's me. I'm my boss.

One of the oddities of not working outside the home is my daily routine can be disrupted far more frequently than when I worked in an office. Many mommy bloggers of the mid-aughts valiantly broke free of the 1950s ideal* by declaring at-home parenting of young kids monotonous and boring. Which it certainly can be. But what I’ve realized after 12+ years of it is, the challenge is being your own boss. Nobody is telling you what to do, and when, and how.

There’s a strong argument that the resident toddler will happily take up that mantle.

My goddaughter Lucy, who believes in her heart that she is the boss. This dressing down came after I told her she wasn’t the boss of my iPhone.

Dresses for the job he wants.

But again, toddlers only rule the roost if you let them. Or if you give up due to fatigue and hopelessness. So it’s a 50-50 co-management situation.

There are certain realities that must be accepted—young children need naps, for instance, and often at somewhat regular hours of the day, so you have to adjust your plans accordingly. But there’s no law that all or even most of your plans have to be kid-centered. My kids and the many others of friends and family I’ve cared for over the years have spent time alongside me in the garden, or playing on the floor while I sewed, or helped stir ingredients while I baked, or ran around the yard while I built a little deck, etc.

---

*An aside I think is worth including in full text rather than a footnote: Why does it seem that the specter of the 50s-era nuclear family still looms as The Ideal That Makes Us All Feel Bad when almost nobody lives like that anymore if they ever even did? I feel that so many progressives (of which I consider myself one, I guess) set up epic battles against norms that no longer actually exist in the real world en masse.

If anything, I’ve found that my decision to stay at home with my kids and enjoy “traditional” things like gardening and sewing and baking caused more cognitive dissonance at first than any perceived pressure to Have It All Together like a contemporary June Cleaver. Progressives might spend some time meditating on how they judge the choices of people who are on their side¹ but who choose for themselves a life that appears traditional.

In recent years I’ve come to understand why so many “normal people” find the attitude of “liberal elites” distasteful: it’s not necessarily because the “normies” are less well-off than the “elites;” in many ways being a “liberal elite” is more about what you think and say than how much money you have. The distaste for the attitude comes from feeling judged and found wanting, when in fact you have a life you find valuable and meaningful.

This is why so many people proudly wore the “deplorable” badge after Hillary Clinton referred to the “basket of deplorables”—I think a lot of people identified with the “deplorables” because they didn’t identify with her. Which was a big misstep; more people self-defined as “deplorable” out of defiance than I believe she intended when she said it.

---

Back to the main topic: Because my daily life is organized around a non-standard schedule, a few times a year I find myself suddenly wandering about the house wondering what to do. Like today! Last weekend I finished up the intensive Anatomy and Physiology course I took this semester, so now it feels as though I have oodles of free time. The same feeling comes around every August when the bigs go back to school after summer break.

I wouldn’t consider myself self-disciplined—I have a small but potent rebel streak with a motto that Gretchen Rubin describes as “you can’t make me, and neither can I.” I do not like feeling obliged to do things, even when I’m the one trying to form a new, chosen habit for myself.

So I suppose what I’d say has been a gift of at-home parenting is not so much self-discipline as self-awareness, which is useful for adaptability. After each schedule change, I may faff around for a day or two, but I can quickly get myself into a new routine that works for me.

When the pandemic first hit and loads of people were forced to stay home, I saw clearly how challenging that was for so many (granted, this is a specific subset of people working office jobs that could be done remotely). What I wish that particular class of people had taken from that experience, though I doubt it², is increased respect for caregivers and the skills we have honed. It’s not just physical labor, the changing of diapers or preparation of food or supervision or moral guidance/instruction (don’t hit; it’s rude to say “shut up;” yes “shut your trap” is technically different but kind of the same); it’s that we are adept at self-governance, at appreciating mundanity, at meaning-making.

1. Or people who aren’t. Just stop judging, everyone. That’s the homily today: don’t judge.

2. I’m not judging. I’m just discerning who’s acting like a butthole and pointing it out.