So, here’s a quick quiz: What does the United States have in common with Swaziland, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea?

I’ll wait. And no, it’s not because those nations’ governments have just named pizza a vegetable, as the U.S. Congress just has.

Got an answer? If you were thinking that the U.S.’s maternity leave policy (which is to say, lack of a cohesive, mandated one) is the answer, you win.  We’re are in fine company with those three countries for offering working mothers no mandated paid maternity leave.

This, despite the fact that we talk a very good game about family values. Goodness, but do I distrust that phrase. What sort of family values are at play when a wage earner has the choice between hobbling back to work after six weeks’ “recovery” from childbirth in order to feed herself and her family — or quit her job altogether and risk either a temporary or permanent dip below the poverty line?

I rant about this today because I just read this piece on AOL Jobs, by Claire Gordon. The article starts with what’s supposed to be “good” news, that according to the latest Census Bureau data, a smidgen more than half of first-time mothers who worked would receive some sort of paid leave. (That “smidgen more” adds up to 51%). Then, of course, one has to take into account the fact that without mandated paid leave, these moms (I was among them, when I had my first son back in 2002) are at the mercy of their companies’ policies and precedents, and are statistically — big surprise here — more likely to get paid leave if they are professional women. Younger, less educated, and lower-paid workers are the least likely to have any sort of paid cushion, post birth. As the article notes:

Eighty-two percent of employed new mothers without a high school degree did not get paid leave, according to the census. These women are less likely to have jobs with good benefits, and they’re more likely to be very young. The lack of any mandated paid maternity leave also exacts a much greater cost on the single mothers who raise a quarter of this country’s children.

This is meant to be good news, right? The fact that the number ticked up from 42% at the last survey to that whopping 51% now? I’m not impressed.

To me, mandated paid leave would be one sure way of getting behind true family values. It would define family values, in a literal way, because if you value families, you help them get by as a family, right? But — again, as the piece points out — America is nothing if not conflicted over its definition of family values. In light of these kind of stats (that are supposed to be “good news” but instead mask the same-old bad news), it becomes clearer than ever that, in this nation, family values and working mothers are mutually exclusive. Enemies. Opposites. Two magnetic poles that repel each other. Overstating? I don’t think so.

I’ve been a working mother from the start. I’d have loved more paid leave, or more leave full stop, but I didn’t get it, and that’s a shame. For the record, I took 12 weeks off from a full-time job after the birth of my first son, four weeks on full pay, 8 weeks unpaid. After baby #2, I went freelance and “gave” myself a whopping 2 weeks “off.” Of course, women like me with professional careers can, at least in theory, dip in and out work, swap full- for part-time, ratchet back and then ramp up. We have that luxury. Other women have no such luxury.  But to me this is far more than a class issue (though I agree that the class issue is often ignored or brushed aside).

To me it always comes down to this dichotomy between family values as broadly defined in this country, and the reality on the ground. Why shouldn’t my effort to keep my career humming — and to support my family  — be the very definition of family values? Why, instead, should I feel guilty (I don’t, by the way; as I’ve said before, I think I was born without that gene, and thank goodness) in order to be a “good” mom? Why should I have to keep my mouth shut when others (on TV, in the media, casually all over the place) define moms who aren’t working outside the home “full time mothers.” News flash: Once that child is in your life, you are a full time mother, with “time” defined as “the rest of your life,” not 9 to 5, Monday to Friday.

No matter what we mothers do, we’re wrong, let’s face it (we hover too much, or not enough; we’re soccer moms or harpies in shoulder pads, etcetera and ad nauseum, through the ages). But working mothers are the majority of the workforce — when are attitudes going to catch up with reality? I’m not conflicted one bit about my role: I am a mother, and I work.

Those, my friends, are my family values. What are your thoughts?

Feel like this sometimes? You're not alone!

At the end of this post, you’ll see a link to a new TV show’s website. It’s called Lifechangers, and it’s with Dr. Drew Pinsky, and I’m writing this post because I was asked, by the show’s producers, to help them find a mom willing to come on the show and talk — honestly — about any regret they may feel about having children. What got me was not the “regret” part, but the “honesty” part. When it comes to parenting, both are hard to admit to.

I’ve been pretty stubborn, in my eight-and-three-quarters-years of being a parent, about being honest about the lows of motherhood. Seems to me there’s no shortage of people out there to trumpet the long list of what’s wonderful about being a mother, from the people who write the copy for Mother’s Day cards, to, well, just about anyone who’s ever had and fallen in love with their child.

But I like to champion the underdog positions, the flip side of the rainbows-and-unicorns part, as I did in this essay for American Baby that I wrote when my first son was a baby. Some moms, like me, have a hard time with infanthood’s endless and unrewarded demands; others tear their hair out over terrible twos/threes/fours; others will tell you that the schoolage years, or the tweens or teens, are the most challenging years — the times that the word “regret” might sneak, unbidden, into your consciousness.

The fact is that motherhood is hard as well as rewarding — I’m not covering any new ground by saying that, so feel free to let a big fat “duh!” out. But I do still maintain that true, unfiltered honesty about how that makes you feel remains in short supply. Take the newborn period, for example: we will, as moms, talk ruefully or ironically or with humor (and wine) about the crusty cereal bowls we find lurking near the couch, the unwashed-for-four-days hair, the shirts stained with breastmilk. Ruefulness, irony, humor: all these are helpful tactics. But when we’re laughing with friends, are we really being honest about how we feel — how we may sometimes have the idea, as I wrote in that essay, in the midst of sleep deprivation, of popping the screaming kid out onto the fire escape?

And when they’re older, when they’re tearing around the house or defying your every effort to civilize them or socialize them or just brush their dang teeth and get out of the house, are we really ever honest about the times we fantasize about putting them on the curb with a sign that reads: “Free to a Good Home”? Honest, I mean, about how those fantasies — which we know we’ll never, ever do — can co-exist with the times we look a them and our hearts are so full of love we can barely stand it?

Regret is a big word — and it’s scary. But be honest: did you ever regret having kids? Even momentarily?

So, as I wrote at the outset, Lifechangers is looking for a mom who’s at her wits’ end to come on the show and, by sharing her honest feelings of being overwhelmed by parenting, help others — and in turn get help herself from Dr. Pinsky.

If you are interested — or know someone who is (and we all do), contact the show through the link below — I’ll let the Lifechangers folks explain what they are looking for, here:

Do you love your kids but secretly regret having them? Have you turned into “momzilla” because your patience has run out? Do people tell you that your way of discipline is inappropriate? Are you scared that one day you might snap? Would you rather be out with the girls than at home with your kids? If so, tell us your story.

If you do end up filling out the online form, will you let me know, here in the comments section? Or even if you don’t, let’s talk, honestly: what was your worst, “I regret this…” moment as a mom?

So just today I got involved in an online discussion about a snippet — seriously, just a snippet — of an essay, presumably written by a writer-mom, in which the mom breezily admits that she wishes the singing-and-clapping of a typical mother-child music-and-movement class was done without her participation. She’d rather, she wrote, be sitting in the corner sipping coffee with fellow moms while her child did the clap-and-sing routine with someone else.

Oh, no. It was that “someone else” thing that got some commenters into a twist. Maybe, maybe you can admit (if you make it clear that you’re mostly joking, hahaha) that you don’t much care for singing, clapping, or shaking maracas. Maybe, maybe you can say that Gymboree gives you the heebies. But you cannot say that you’d rather someone else took care of that aspect of parenting (and I’m just leaving to one side the whole notion that singing and clapping and maracas of any kind should be considered an aspect of parenting at all).

Because if you admit you’re happy for someone else to do something with or for your child that you should be doing (and hopefully enjoying, but at the very least grinning through the pain), you are a terrible mother. Which few people actually say, but many people — sometimes innocently, sometimes with complete self-consciousness (if not self-righteousness) — firmly believe.

Why?

Why is doing the stuff you truly don’t enjoy, the stuff you’re actually crappy at, more virtuous than not doing it? And why is admitting that not only do you not like these certain somethings, but going on to say that you’d be much happier if you could let your child do that thing with someone else, so much worse?

It ends up not being a terribly large leap from someone sniffing at your parenting skills if you admit you hate Mommy & Me, and turning the eye of judgment on you for working, not because you have to (that’s okay), but because you also want to (inviting “why did you have children?” insinuations).

I freely (and frequently) point out that I am not a crafty person. I pretty much suck at that stuff, to be honest (and I prefer to be honest). I can’t tell you how happy I was to get all those scrapbook pages and poster-paint handprints and frames with glued-on shells while my boys were in daycare. Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it. Nor was I going to apologize for not wanting to do it. Any more than I apologize for the daycare I relied on when starting my freelance career (wouldn’t it have been more virtuous, more good-mommy of me, to juggle madly with my baby and toddler at home with me?).

Nor should my neighbor, a woman who drops her toddler off at a daycare center for a good chunk of every day, apologize or justify her reasoning, even though — as another neighbor (in shock!) pointed out — she doesn’t work outside her home. Well, I said to this other neighbor when she tried to enlist me in her “how could she?!” outrage, not every mother can stay home with her kids all day long. OK, it came out harsher than I intended, but I  meant it.

There’s no virtue, none, for any mother, in pretending she can be and do the things she perceives she must, lest she be judged. It’s very, very easy to judge, and it quickly becomes a vicious circle, an evil feedback loop, hence my too-strident reply to my neighbor. It’s easy for all of us to perch a chip on our already overburdened shoulders and go forth, justifying on the one hand, and judging on the other.

I’m tired of it. As a friend pointed out today, there are way worse things some parents do to their kids than the so-called horror of admitting they’d prefer a cappuccino in the corner (complete with ironic commentary on the bubbly enthusiasm of the mommy & me goings-on) over actually diving in and doing the Chicken Dance with their little ones. And way worse things (abuse and neglect come to mind) than admitting that you’d rather hand over the silly-shaking duties to someone else, like that nice lady in the library.

Not only is my lack of participation in such activities not a measure of my love for my sons (or my suitability for being their parent), I believe my honesty about not enjoying this or that aspect of parenting is a better barometer of my love for them. Because it’s real. I’m showing them me. This is the mom you get, the mom who doesn’t do Play-Doh, the mom who brings the New Yorker to soccer practice, the mom who hides the good snacks until her kids go to bed.

And anyway, aren’t we all just doing the best we can?

Sigh. Facebook is at it again. well, not Facebook itself, but the community of FBers. As I type, with a day and a half until Mother’s Day descends upon us again, one of those “copy and paste this and put it in your status line if you’re a Mom!” thingies is virusing its way around. (And yes, I just made virus into a gerund, sue me). Here’s the version I saw:

Mothers’ Day Declaration ~ I wanted you before you were born. I loved you when you were born. I saw your face and I knew that I was in love. Before you were an hour old, I knew I would die for you. To this day, I still will. This is the miracle of life. ~Put this on your status if you have children you love more than life, itself

Riiiiight. Like I’m going to join that particular party. Here’s what I detest about these status-line “declarations.”

1. I like to conjure my own sentiments, not borrow them from someone else. Okay, that might just be me, and it might be (no, wait, it is) the reason I mostly buy blank greeting cards.
2. I don’t like the not-so-subtle pressure to post this on your status, which comes with an implied, because if you don’t, it means you don’t love your child as insanely as I do.
3. And here’s the big reason: I don’t agree. Even if I took it and rewrote it so it didn’t stink of Hallmark flowers, I would still disagree.

Am I the only one?

Am I the only mom out there who didn’t fall in love with my baby the very minute he emerged into the world? (I wrote about this, my admission that it took weeks for me to fall in love with my firstborn, and my theory as to why we don’t tell each other this dirty little secret when it happens, but instead prefer to perpetuate the myth, in American Baby, years ago.)

So I created my own Mother’s Day Declaration, which I want to post on Facebook, but FB is telling me it’s too many characters:

I barely saw you when you were born. To be honest, at that point, after two days of labor and surgery, I felt like shit and you looked a little weird. Oh, I fell in love with you, sure, but it took like 6 weeks, and it wasn’t a miracle, it just was. I guess I’d die for you, but frankly that’s not something I think about every day; I’m just busy keeping our heads above water and packing your f-ing lunches every day. Love ya, kid!

Everyone who knows me knows I love my children. I’m a writer, and even I can’t manage to come up with the words that express those feelings. But I tell you, Mother’s Day or not, I refuse to rely on someone else’s words, on words that only graze the surface, or on words that — most dangerous of all — turn mother love into something false and a little bent out of shape. Mother love isn’t flowers in a field; it’s messy and angry and crazy (like me!).

There was another of these “declarations” going around a few weeks back, this time sending the (icky) message that we were supposed to be proud of the fact that we gave up on ourselves (from decent haircuts and jeans that fit, to showers and eyeliner) in order to give all to our kids. My friend and writer Meagan Francis wrote an excellent post on that topic on her blog, The Happiest Mom, and since she more or less took the words out of my mouth but used them better, I’ll leave her response as the record on that score.

I’ll just add this: Give up good haircuts? Why? I would give those up if I couldn’t afford them, not because wearing my hair in a gray-streaked greasy ponytail makes me a better mom. If I don’t shower all day, it’s because I have work to do, not because I’m too busy teaching my five-year-old his times tables.

And if I admit that I don’t like pushing the kid on the swings, or playing with Play-Doh (which I loved as a kid but hate now, because let’s face it, it gets everywhere), or if I admit that I like Monday mornings because they mean the kids are back at school, or dread school holidays for the opposite reason, then I’m not a bad mom. I’m just an honest one.

This is all I ask, folks. This Mother’s Day, for once, can we tell the truth?

I keep trying to think of a clever start to this post, and all I can come up with is this:

Tomorrow, I’m off on a cruise, without my husband or the boys, I will be gone a total of four days, and I don’t feel guilty.

Sailing away, sans kids.

At least, I don’t feel guilty any more.

The trip was organized by a writer’s community I belong to — it was decided that in a down economy, trying to pull together an honest-to-God conference with speakers and editors (you know, the kind of business trip you don’t feel guilty at all about, because it’s bound to boost your bottom line, and it’s tax deductible — it’s work) seemed like too much. So a cruise plan was hatched, and if you’ve checked cruise prices lately, you know that a three-day trip to a sunny locale can be cheaper than taking a family of four to Yankee stadium for a game. Seriously.

When the cruise came up as a possibility, my first reaction was, no way can I go! My husband had just started his new job, the one that rescued us, in the nick of time, from scary scenarios like choosing between cashing out our retirement savings and losing our home. But I did the math, and since as I mentioned the trip is almost insanely inexpensive, and because it is going to involve at least a little conference-y work (and so will be at least in part a tax deduction on my business), and because I’d be paying it in small installments over the several months before the actual cruise, I could actually swing it.

So here I am, less than 24 hours to go until I get on a plane to Miami to meet the ship, and I’m guilt free. (I’m also not packed yet, but that’s another story.)

When I was struggling with guilt over this, it was not because I felt bad leaving my boys with their dad for four days. It was that whole, “does Mama deserve this” thing. And hells yeah, she does. I’ve been running on every available cylinder for … um, let’s see … seven years? Since I became a mom? Even moreso in the last year and a half, when my husband was out of work and my up-today, down-tomorrow freelance business supported us. I freely acknowledge that I’m a mess inside. I need that sun, that lounge chair, that endless ocean view, and the nurturing company of like-minded friends and fellow writers. My batteries are long past needing to be recharged.

And frankly, my children need a break from me. I know, in my mean-mother-heart-of-hearts, that this is good for them. I can envision my super-sensitive Daniel’s giant eyes filling up with tears now and then while I’m gone, wondering when I’m coming home (as easily as I can imagine James shrugging off my absence from his narrow little shoulders). But even a few moments of mommy-missing is going to be good for them. They don’t get nearly enough of it.

I’ve always said I suck at taking care of myself. (I am bad at pampering, I hate massages and dread pedicures and only like the end result of getting my hair colored and cut, not the “oh, just relax” salon vibe before that.)

But my sons actually need me to take care of myself better. And I’m determined to do just that.

So here’s my postcard from almost the edge:

[I plan to be ] having a great time! Wish you were here…

P.S.: With cruise prices this good? Oh, yeah, I’m doing this again. With the whole family. I hear they have unlimited pizza and ice cream!

[photo credit: Everystockphoto.com]