I miss having teachers assisting me in civilizing the seven-year-old.
And don’t ducking dare suggest I didn’t appreciate them when I had them. I did. And more than that, I argued that taxes should be higher so that they’d be paid more.
I have the kind of husband feminists dream about—makes dinner, cleans, supports my career in active ways. And I still found out when he’s in charge of managing the 7-y-o, 7 skips brushing their teeth, steals stuff, sneaks into their sib’s room, and he just doesn’t even notice.
I know I’m super lucky to have a husband who’s at least trying (albeit failing) to be a fully equal parent, and I have my extremely supportive Mom next door. But it is like I am totally alone, fully responsible for convincing this small person to be good, kind, and civilized.
And to be totally clear, the seven-year-old is white and assigned-male-at-birth. I am ducking TERRIFIED of messing this up. If I mess up, we have a potential new school shooter or nazi on our hands. I am SO KEENLY AWARE OF THAT. But this kid is so well-behaved and sweet for me…
…and then my husband takes over and the seven-year-old is a total terror. So what can I do? I have to take over and do exactly what women get told causes them to do all the chores—insist my husband isn’t doing it right, so I’ll do it myself.
But this isn’t cleaning the kitchen wrong. This is a question of a little white boy (no, they’re non-binary… but… if they want to grow up & claim white male privilige, they ducking can) either growing into a good person or… well… Trump kinda reminds me of my dad.
So here I am, having landed a trilogy contract for my novel a year ago & I’m 11k words from FINISHING 2 NOVELS IN A YEAR, but I can’t trust my husband to do a decent job watching our 7-y-o & there’s no school, so I’m not just having to balance writing & parenting…
…I am feeling ducking terrible & SO GUILTY for even trying to balance writing & parenting, like it’s somehow my fault my husband doesn’t bother parenting, and I’m realizing every fight we’ve had during this pandemic has come down to this:
He’s not parenting, but thinks he is.
And here’s the thing: it LOOKS like my husband is parenting. He takes the kid out for a bike ride…
Well, that’s a couple hours. Once a month, maybe. And he looks like some kind of ducking hero, expecting praise for doing such a good job.
Whereas, I don’t look like I’m parenting. I sit there playing Diablo or reading or watching some video, but I do it for HOURS & HOURS EVERY DAY, and believe me, I notice instantly when the kid changes posture. Which is why they’ve been hiding all their bad activities from me.
And yeah, I feel really pathetic melting down about this online. But I’ve been trying to get my husband to believe me that he needs to step up his game for months, whole pandemic-long, and I’ve been watching people drag parents online so much this week.
And dude. LAY OFF.