Nath's Thoughts

1. How do you define feminism? Why are you a feminist? When did you become one?
To me, feminism should mean the idea that women have the same ability and opportunity to make choices and should have the same access to the resources they need to make those choices that men have. Am I a feminist? Depends on the definition. I see a lot of angry feminists, and I'm not one of those, and I see a lot of reverse-chauvinism, and I'm not that either. If I go by my own definition, I would say yes, I am. And I guess I've always been one.

2. What has surprised you most about parenthood?
The intensity of it, and the fact that it never turns off. Ever.

3. What skills have you learned or honed as a parent?
I think I'm more patient (a little), more tolerant of other parents, able to do more at a time (though you'll notice that I didn't say anything about doing those things well...). The ability to survive on less sleep. How to be more organized. How to think about more people and how they will be affected by things (other than just me).

4. What work do you feel called to do? (You don't need to limit your answer to one thing).
I don't feel any particular calling, I don't think. I like the work I'm doing now, and I like the fact that it is balancing nicely with the needs of my family.

5. Could you put your identity into a few key words? ie. mother-writer-student. How do you imagine your identity changing in ten years? Or twenty?
I can't put my identity in a few words - I don't think it's fair to try to categorize oneself that much. In ten years, I'll no longer be a mother of small children (weird). In twenty who knows!

6. What is work? What is leisure? Do you have enough time to do the work that you want to do?
That's a toughie. Work is by necessity, leisure is for pleasure, though the two sometimes cross over. I feel like my time is pretty fairly distributed between the two right now.

7. Payment is the most obvious way to assign value to work; are there other ways?
Feeling of personal fulfillment. Impact of one's work on others. Appreciation from others.

8. When people ask: what do you do, how do you reply? How does your reply make you feel?
I say I'm a stay-at-home mom who works part time. I love being a SAHM and I'm really enjoying my outside work role as well, so it makes me feel good.

9. How have your goals for yourself changed since becoming a parent? What help do you need to reach those goals?
My parenting goals were always to stay at home to take care of the kids, so that didn't change. I never really had any firm career goals - I enjoyed the jobs I did before I had kids, and I was good at them, but they were never my main ambition. To me, while work is really the only way to pay for one's lifestyle, I don't think I need it to be the central focus of my life. I guess you could say I'm not very ambitious that way. I think it is important that I like how I spend my time on the whole, and I am currently happy with what I am doing. So my goal is really to keep enjoying my day-to-day existence, and I'm in the very fortunate circumstance that I am able to do that.

10. How has feminism has failed mothers / fathers (if you think it has)? Personally, what do you think feminism has given mothers / fathers? What could it give?
I think feminism has failed mothers in the sense that we're told we can do whatever we want, but if we choose to be stay at home parents, we're seen as feminist failures. I don't think it's fair to give people a choice and then berate them for making a choice we wouldn't make ourselves or don't approve of. I also think that we've conflated 'being able to doing anything' with 'needing to do everything', which just isn't healthy. On the other hand, I think feminism has allowed fathers to be more involved with their children, in a way they couldn't be when I was a child, and certainly in the generation before that. It's a work in progress - I think house tasks, for example, are becoming more evenly distributed. Though I still think in most households, the women do the bulk of running the house. As far as what it could give, I think that the idea of balance would be good, for both men and women. Balance between work and home, family and personal time. I think that would need to be a societal change - embrace the idea that work is not, and shouldn't be the sole worthwhile goal for a person, and that success can be measured by more than money.