It's a Book Tour!

As I mentioned last week, I'm thrilled to be one of the stops on Andi Buchanan's Book Tour for It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons.

I dove into the book over the weekend, eager to read about mothering sons as I am three months into doing just that.  And, although I have yet to finish all of the essays (I am not longer the reader I once was), already I've had a lot of what Oprah would call "lightbulb moments."

To be honest, I was apprehensive when I was first told that my second child would be a boy.  I knew nothing about raising boys.  I have no brothers and, for me, boys have always been a loud, active, (slightly stinky) mystery.  And I feared that because my Baby Girl is not a girly girl -- she loves playing with dirt and cars and can tell the difference between a BMW and a Ferrari -- I might never have a child I could take to the ballet or on a three hour visit to ABC Carpet and Home.  I was hoping that the book would provide me with some comfort that I am not alone in my apprehension. 

So I was thrilled to read Judy Mace's You've Got Male, in which she descibes her initial reaction to the news she was having a boy: "I was getting something unknown.  It was as if the ultrasound technician had said, "Congratulations, Mrs. Mace, you're having a space alien.""

She nervously thought of the children in her daughter's preschool:

This was a typical story from a [four year old] girl:

"The little star was high up in the sky.  At dark the little star was happy and he made friends.  Then they played.  The little star was having fun.  They played tag.  The little star had lots of friends.  Then all of his friends and the little star went to school.  They ate marshmallows."

Whereas the boys' stories were generally like this one:

"The monster tore down their house.  And then he tore down their head.  And then the monster was sleeping in the bed.  And then he broke the fountain.  And then he cut off their legs..." 

It's exactly what I have been noticing at Baby Girl's preschool this week -- the girls dancing in a circle and establishing the social pecking order.  The boys crashing trucks into each other and bumping their heads.  It's just plays into all of the old sterotypes and I'm glad I'm not the only one to find the whole business unsettling.

But the book goes beyond "misery loves company" to challenge one's perceptions of gender.  Here, there are boys who carry trucks around like babies.  Boys who think with their emotions.  Boys who adore pink.  And there are also boys who love running and jumping and hitting things and monsters and snakes -- but who are wonderful, not just in spite of those qualities, but indeed because of those qualities. 

Beyond the whole "boys are different" issue, I was worried that gender would impact the practice of mothering in some negative way.  After all, it took me a while to figure out (as much as we ever really figure it out) how to mother my daughter .  And I feared that throwing a different gender into the already complicated mix would make mothering my son that much more difficult.  But the book demonstrates how we love the child rather than her "girlness" or his "boyness" and that, a child's individual characteristics rather than gender, ultimately dictate how we mother him or her.  And in that, I can also take comfort.

My reading also sparked a couple of questions for its editor Andi Buchanan that she answered during her virtual visit to T.O.: 

Jen: I had never been a fan of the essay until I had children, prefering to dive into a thick novel.  Now, I adore reading essays as I can tackle of couple of them during naptime or while waiting for something to cook in the microwave, and am thankful that a number of mother writers have chosen to use the essay form.  Do you think that being a mother has impacted not only the subject of your writing, but also its form?

Andi: Being a mother certainly helped me find this form. I've had a soft spot for essays, and for anthologies, since I first encountered the book that reassured me there was more to preparing for motherhood than advice manuals: the excellent "Child of Mine." It was the first book I read while I was pregnant with my daughter Emily in early 1999 that really spoke to me -- it was about messy things, heartbreaking things, secret things, incredible things, and I was so relieved to find writing about the experience of motherhood that really got to the heart of it. Once my daughter was born, I enjoyed essay collections for the reasons you cite -- essays were easily digestible in the scant time I had to do something other than cope with a newborn. But essays are deceiving. They are not simple, just because they are shorter than a novel. The best essays are profound in ways sometimes a longer work cannot sustain.

Jen: Was there anything that you read while compiling the It's a Boy and It's a Girl anthologies that surprised you, and perhaps even changed the way you parent (or plan to parent) your daughter and your son?    

Andi: Not really -- though I was pleasantly surprised by the willingness of the writers I worked with to write so honestly and passionately about some very personal, and in some cases controversial, subjects. Mostly what I gained from reading all of the submissions -- and not only the ones I ultimately chose for the book -- was a wonderful feeling of comraderie. Not that everyone is parenting the same way I am, or even that they should; but rather, reading everyone's stories reminded me that everyone has her own story, and as parents our stories unfold as much due to our own experience as to our children's. It was fascinating reading how people parent their sons, what worries they had, what they have learned thus far. The surprise of everyone's individual experience.

Jen: In your introduction, you talk about the "big secret" -- the "truth we're witholding about the divided life of women" from our daughters.  Do you think that the current discussion of mothering (and I'm thinking in particular about the press the Judith Warner book garnered and the discussion of the Opt-Out Revolution), the fact that there are anthologies like this one being published, the fact that a topic like Post Partum Depression hit the front pages thanks to our friend Mr. Cruise, will, in fact, bring the big secret out into the open?  Do you think that will have an impact on the way we raise our daughters and our sons? 

Andi: I'm not sure. I still think these things are subjects we talk about with other mothers, and not with our children. It's hard to parse out -- if my daughter hears me talking about the difficulty of balancing my work against taking care of her, will she identify with the issue of mothers and work, or will she feel guilty/responsible for making me unhappy? It's very hard not to take personally. And we don't want our children to feel resented. This "divided life of mothers" is something we talk about even now only just barely with each other -- I'm happy to see more of an ongoing public discussion of issues surrounding motherhood taking place, but often it's still something seen as only relevant to mothers. When we can talk about this in mixed company -- with men, with fathers, with men and women who don't have children -- then it really might change things down the road for our children.

Jen: You are a mother of two, editor, writer and -- I've met you -- you seem to find time to style your hair and clothe yourself.  I know that you mentioned in your interview with Dawn that you write when your children are in school for 2-3 hours each morning, but -- really -- how do you get it all done?  Do you do a lot of the writing/creating "in your head" and then just burn through it when you have the time.  Do you have The Wiggles's private phone number and can call them up to entertain your children if you are hit with a burst of writing energy?  As a mother of a 2 year old and a 3 month old, I'm looking for some tips.

Andi: (Well, you met me at a conference, and I had to look decent -- I think that was the first time I'd worn a shirt with actual BUTTONS in months!) The answer to how I get it all done used to be caffeine. But I was forced to quit for health reasons, and it's been a rough transition figuring out how to get things done without that chemical motivation. The joke answer I give is that I "get it all done" by doing everything half-assed. Now I know that's not really true -- but the pre-kid me (who was a rigid perfectionist clean-freak) is horrified by the things left undone, the laundry pile that never diminishes, the dishes in the sink (and on the counter), the junk on the carpet, the things never in their places, the tiny bits of time that do not lend themselves to finishing anything worth starting. It's been a learning process trying to let go of that judgment and instead accept things as they are -- which right now means perpetually unfinished, a little messy, and held together by the luck of everything going moderately okay. As for the writing/creating stuff, I do try to work the way you suggest -- letting things simmer in my head when I'm not able to write, and then writing like crazy when I have the chance. It's very hard to sustain that creative impulse, though, and that's been another learning curve -- training myself to feel as enthusiastic about an idea three days later as I was when it first popped into my mind, and not talk myself out of it in the meantime. That's very hard for me to do.

As for the Wiggles, if I had their private phone number, I'd be calling to tell them, please, for the love of god, JUST. STOP.

I'm looking forward to finishing this book and the companion book It's A Girl, which will be published next year.  If you'd like to find out more, Andi has the book's introduction and some questions and answers posted on her website www.andibuchanan.com

Comments

[Running2Ks]

Fantastic interview.

"It's been a learning process trying to let go of that judgment and instead accept things as they are -- which right now means perpetually unfinished, a little messy, and held together by the luck of everything going moderately okay"

That is so resonating to me.

And the thing about the Wiggles.

Also, I have noticed that my girls, while seemingly girly, still play "monster" and "mystery hunting" while dressed like princesses. Just goes to show, gender can be more neutral than the toy commercials say.

[Marla]

This was/is great Jen. I wish I'd had an intelligent question, but you've asked all I could hope for.