A Mama-friend and I got together yesterday for a playdate at the Ontario Early Years Centre. As evidence of the place's popularity, we were put in overflow room #2 even though we were there within the first half hour of it opening. Baby Girl was fixated on trying to climb the stairs, my friend's daughter looked less than enchanted with the screaming demon children and it appeared to me as though everyone had raging cases of pink eye. So we decided to try to find a park.
Usually finding a park in this city is easy. But when you are trying to juggle hot coffee, diaper bags, snacks and a couple of yelling tots -- well sometimes it's just easier to find a bench somewhere and let the kiddies eat leaves.
And so we sat there wrestling with fussy tots, taking little half sips of coffee before it got too cold, and trying to chat while ensuring 1) no-one ran onto Yonge Street and 2) no dog poo was consumed. We were the poster children for birth control -- perhaps the government can send us on road trips to high schools throughout the province. As we struggled our way back to our vehicles, we agreed that it would be a lot easier for us to stop trying to plan outings and simply go hang out at one of our houses.
There are just no good facilities out there for Mamas on the Verge to hang out, grab a cup of coffee and relax knowing the kiddies are happy fighting to the death for each other's toys. The Ontario Early Year Centres are fantastic but the demand far exceeds the supply - you literally have to line up the day program sign-up is available. The hours and locations are very limited for the City run programs and, frankly, taking a baby to the swimming pool is hardly what I call fun and relaxing. I have had bad experiences with the malls which, although setting themselves up as family friendly quasi-town squares, often house baby unfriendly retailers (Baby Mum Mum, Teatro Verde - enough said). There are a number of great private programs for baby but they average $15 for a one hour session which makes it an expensive way to spend your day. Ditto for the indoor playgrounds which charge $8 to get in (and do not usually give refunds when baby extreme vomits and then melts down in the first five minutes). The Children's Own Museum (www.childrensownmuseum.org) used to be a great place (OK, I'm a little biased since I ran it for a while) for mothers to hang out in the winter months but it closed its doors because of a lack of funding.
And so, back into our homes we go for the sake of our comfort, convenience and sanity. So all over the city in the cold winter months when the parks are empty, little groups of three or four of us (maybe 10 or 15 if you have a piazza in Rosedale or Forest Hill) drink tea in each other's houses and try to conduct adult conversations while the tots challenge the host's childproofing skills.
And while this is a perfectly pleasant way to while away the afternoon and keep thoughts of infanticide at bay, it makes me angry that mothers are being marginalized in this way. Hidden away in our homes, we are invisible. Suddenly our problems are seen as simply that - our problems. Childcare, once it is solely within the domestic sphere, is a personal issue not a political one. Need emergency childcare? Ask a friend. Need to get your kid to the doctor? Since the TTC is inaccesible, taxis do not have to provide carseats and a friend cannot give you a lift unless they have a spare carseat, well a good walk would help you get rid of the baby weight -- especially if you have to scale slush montains left behind by the ploughs! Have trouble breastfeeding? Ask a friend or hire a lactation consultant or schlep on down to the hopital and wait in line. Post-partum depression? Get your mom to help or hire a night nurse for $1500 a week or let the good folks at Pfizer help you out (hope you have a good drug plan lady!).
Mothers have a lot of needs and if those needs are quietly taken care of within the home, within the family - well then there is no need for systemic change. With government, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. With all sorts of special interest groups lobbying for corporate and government funds, what hope is there for mothers tucked away in their homes?
I'm not sure how to effect change. My work within the not-for-profit world taught me that certain elements attract public and private funds - children, sick children, poor children. Mothers have tapped into this in the past. At the ARM Conference, Patrice DiQuinzio of Muhlenberg College spoke about this type of Maternalist Politics - Mothers Against Drunk Driving, mothers building a new playground, mothers wanting a clean environment. But the underlying theme is that this is being done "for the children". This is effective but it strips away the power of mothers. We can only act as agents on behalf of our children. And so we ask for things we need (better play centres) under the guise that it will help our kids when the truth is, kids are resiliant - we are the ones who are cracking up.
Marsha Marotta of Westfield State College gave a talk at the ARM conference about the importance of Utopian thinking. Men have done this for years - think Star Trek and other works of science fiction (usually the women in these Utopias were extremely large breasted. Now we have implants - theory can become reality!). We, as mothers, first need to envision an ideal climate for mothering, so that we can ask for demand help in achieving it.
In my Utopia, mothering is a job, with a SIC code and everything. And as a job, it is expected that training and tools will be required. I mean, you would be very shocked if two hours after drifting off to a much needed sleep you were jerked awake and told that you are now a lawyer and are expected in court in 10 minutes.
"But I don't know anything about the law and I'm bleeding and cannot even go to the bathroom", you would cry.
"Sorry, you are a lawyer now. You'll just need to figure it out" would be the response.
Now you wouldn't expect mothers to be treated worse than lawyers would you (I apologize to all my lawyer friends!)
At present, if you are unemployed and receive EI, you get access to an employment centre which is a nice cozy place with desks, phones, faxes, internet access, reference books, training programs -- all the tools you need to find a job are in one place. They even have a staff of counselors to help you in your search and to keep your morale high. You see, when it is not being wasted buying overpriced advertising and lunch with Dash Domi, our taxes can be used to provide all sorts of nifty things.
What if in each community there was a warm space opened 24 hours, 7 days a week. There could be a baby-safe playroom with Gymboree-type equipment, and a comfy pillow filled breastfeeding areas with a lactation consultant on hand. There would be a doctor there on certain days to do well-baby visits and give injections. Mamas who cook could make and sell meals and snacks to eat there and to take home for dinner. Mama run businesses could sell their services and wares. There could be mama run programming and a co-op daycare so that you coudl drop off baby on occassion. As pointed out by Marotta and in The Mommy Myth, the US government used to run places exactly like this so women could work in the factories during the war. There is no reason why these spaces could not work now. Skydome just sold for a mere $25 million - it could have been made into one hell of an indoor playground.
Except this is not war time (not in this country at least). Governments do not care who looks after the kiddies because mothers are not needed to build bombs. Mothers are not receiving EI or welfare so there is no need for the government to provide us skills. From an economic perspective, it is really quite convenient to keep us hidden away in our homes, far from trouble, close to the internet and television to fuel our demand to buy more crap. And every year all they have to do to have a child-freindly platform is to spend some money, not on the much needed infrastructure, but on some programming for children which is a quick fix and, more importantly, easy to cut if the budget is too strained.
I do not know how to effect change. Perhaps mamas could stage sit-ins avec bebe at government offices. My guess is ten minutes of my Baby Girl repeating "Wha Dat" while pointing at the picture of the pickle in her Very Hungry Caterpillar book would drive the average MPP to the breaking point. "DAT IS A PICKLE. A &^#$# PICKLE!!"
Something needs to be done. I will continue to think about how to drive change. But right now I need to do some laundry and try to grab a nap before baby wakes up. And therein lies the problem.
