Entries from October 2007 ↓

by Tracee Sioux

For Blogher’s Postpartum Depression Mother’s Act Day, I want to write about a deep inner conflict I faced. And inner war which might help explain some of the increase in PPD we’re seeing today.

During the first three months after birth I was faced with two completely unacceptable choices.

Was I to give up my profession as a journalist and stay home with this no longer hypothetical human?

Or was I going to leave her with strangers at least 55 hours per week? Missing all her firsts and resigning myself to being a “bad mother?”

For the 12 weeks the Family Medical Leave Act protected my job, I labored with my two terrible choices until I became paralyzed by the fact that I loathed both with a valid and legitimate passion.

If you disagree with another person or a social norm, but hold true to yourself, you’ll probably avoid depression, anxiety and various forms of mental illness. But, if your conflict is within and the war between two negative choices rages within, it will likely result in depression, anxiety and mental illness.

Behind my inner conflict was the influence and pressure of all previous generations of mothers telling me only bad mothers left their children to pursue personal ambition. Mine were particularly loud due to the Mormon upbringing I had in which a woman’s only role was to mother. Pitted against the present-day pressure and influence of my husband, who didn’t want to make the financial sacrifices it would require for me to stay home. Not to mention the deep gratification I got from my professional life, which I didn’t want to abandon. The trouble was I believed they were both right.

Of course, I tried to create a third option for myself. Having read all the media hype about telecommuting and realizing my duties were all performed over the phone or on the Internet I felt working from home was a reasonable request. I had a plan that included going in for meetings and fulfilling all my obligations. I took it to my employer.

No. Though we had one male staff reporter telecommuting from San Fransisco, I was denied.

PPD exasperated. Choice between my need for professional validation and financial security or the bonding and development of mother and child.

My hypothesis is that we’ll see fewer cases of Postpartum Depression when we see better employment policy for families. When there is real flexibility, versus media hype about flexibility, that allows women to pursue both mothering and professional ambition without sacrificing one or the other I believe the prevalence of PPD will drop.

It’s something worth working towards even if it wasn’t in time for me. The motivation is to create a more flexible and supportive professional environment for our daughters.

More reading about other factors of my Postpartum Depression:

Becoming Mommy – PPD or Identity Crisis

Addiction Off

Readers please go to Congress.org and ask the representatives working for you to pass the MOTHERS Act. What is the MOTHERS Act? The Moms Opportunity to Access Help, Education, Research and Support for Postpartum Depression Act, or MOTHERS Act (S. 3529), will ensure that new mothers and their families are educated about postpartum depression, screened for symptoms and provided with essential services. In addition, it will increase research into the causes, diagnoses and treatments for postpartum depression.

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by Tracee Sioux

I am math retarded, I heard myself say in the car with my three-year-old daughter and my husband.

We were quarreling about my refusal to participate in our family finances.

When kids are born they don’t really understand so you can get away with shouting the F word or hissing a satisfying little damn it. It’s not till they start talking that you clean up the toilet talk.

Same thing with putting myself down about my appearance and my ability to do math. I read this little book called Growing a Girl: Seven Strategies for Raising a Strong, Spirited Daughter and realized the consequences of saying that I, her mother and her feminine role model, was math retard was going to effectively shut her out of math. If I shut her out of math then I shut her out of technology. If I shut her out of technology then I shut her out of possibilities for high paying science related jobs.

That’s a big consequence for a seemingly minor comment about my loathing of math.

I realized I had always felt shut out of math myself. I realized the entire time I had to take math in school it was taught to me by men to whom math came easily. These men didn’t feel much like waiting around for me to catch up. And when I would ask question like, Why should I know algebra? How is this ever going to be applicable to me? They would site my need to convert a recipe. Since I had already resolved not to spend my life cooking and cleaning I felt math was something I could do without. Not once did I challenge myself numbers- or science-wise. In fact in college I made the argument that I should not be required to attend math classes as they only confused me further. I hired a tutor to help me pass College Algebra 101. I took a 6 week crash course for Algebra 105 and baked the teacher cookies for my C-.

I was single and managed my own finances relatively well for 10 years, but the second I got married I felt relieved of the responsibility of financial matters. Why shouldn’t he do it?

Finally, I could just go back to hating math and all things related to it.

Unfortunately he didn’t care for math as a subject either. We had too much in common. Surely it would have been better had one of us been a numbers-lover.

For my daughter, more than my husband, I decided to stop loudly declaring that I was math retarded. Turns out that though math doesn’t come as easily to me as it might to some, I can get pretty passionate about it. By reading Dave Ramsey’s book Financial Peace Revisited I realized how math really applies to me. Reading Suze Orman’s Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny showed me how to value and protect my own financial interests, and The Millionaire Next Door gave me insight into how other people have so much more stuff than I do, even though we have similar incomes.

How do I define myself now? I am extremely competent in areas of math. Which means my daughter will be too.

Did anyone see that crazy woman on Oprah who sabotaged her whole family by having the appetite of a billionaire rock star when her income was upper-middle class? Now that woman is math retarded.

I mean retarded in the literal context: my development in the area of math was slowed, hindered or stunted. I do not mean retarded in the context of slamming those with mental disabilities.

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By Tracee Sioux

I took my kids and my Grandma to see Hairspray (Full-Screen Edition) at the $1 movie. What a great family flick. Well, I’m not sure my grandma appreciated the subject matter (she’s still not completely sure integration is going to work out.)

There’s the obvious message about race and integration. But, beneath that there is an equally good message about size and gender.

The heroine, Tracy Turnblad, is a . . . what am I allowed to say without pissing anyone off. . . NOT a size Zero (not that here’s anything wrong with being naturally thin).

Tracy is depicted as the hippest and most insightful and fashionable of the girls. Other girls start to cut and color their hair like hers. They imitate her dance moves and vote her Ms. Hairspray. She gets a modeling contract for a dress store. She even scores the leading man, Link Larkin (Zac Efron of High School Musical).

Edna Turnblad (John Travolta in a fat suit and a dress), turns out, hasn’t left the house in 10 years due to embarrassment about her size. It brings to light that women weren’t allowed to have a ton of dreams or ambition – she shares that she dreamed of owning a coin-opperated laundry mat, but gave that up. Nor did housewives “stay home and not work” which is how our Norman Rockwell memory likes to paint the wife of the 1960s, rather they took in other people’s laundry to make ends meet. Tracy made her mom her manager and asked her to negotiate her contract. Such a new thing for any woman, let alone one who felt her appearance wasn’t even good enough to be seen in public.

I’ll teach you how to do it mom, Tracy tells her mother. We’ve been teaching our mothers how to think in new ways and challenge the status quo for a couple of generations now. I can’t wait for the lessons my daughter teaches me.

The bottom line is that this is a movie with powerful female characters who reject their “proper place” in society. Tracy not only thought up and led an integration march, she risked her boyfriend, to do it.

Change isn’t just going to happen for people who are different. We’re going to have to DO something to make it happen, she tells her father.

This kind of feminine power is important for girls to see.

Plus, it came with the added perk of Zac Effron. He’s Ainsley’s first movie star crush and she told me she was dreaming about last night. I have to admit, he’s totally crush-worthy.

(p.s. I’m perfectly aware that this movie review comes out only in time for the Hairspray (Full-Screen Edition). But, I respect my budget and that’s what I can afford. Not to mention no one cares if my 18-month-old runs up and down the aisles at the dollar movie.)

My recommendation: remove a princess movie and replace it with Hairspray which has great and empowering messages for girls.

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by Tracee Sioux

Ten years ago I had the privilege of living in Lithuania for half a year. I was teaching English at a teacher’s college. They were a very young democracy having attained their status only after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One day I saw an image of a dead bloody pregnant woman on television news and the cover of the newspapers. The image was graphic and offensive to me.

I asked my students why they had such graphic images on their news programs and in the newspaper. After some discussion it was apparent that freedom of speech was such a new experience for them that they hadn’t developed any boundaries about it.

Americans would not put up with witnessing the gory details of that kind of violence I told them. It’s not appropriate for children to see such horrific murders in graphic detail. We expect our news stations and newspapers to censor with good judgement.

I was wrong. Well, I think it was true at the time, but in the last 10 years it seems the news is not adhering to what I would call “self-censorship with good judgement.”

At the risk of betraying my profession as a journalist, I’m encouraging parents to institute a news ban. The news is unfit for human consumption.

We grew up in a culture where you could and should watch the news. But, the news now has such graphic details, I consider it more harmful to people’s mental health than a rated R movie.

Where 10 years ago you might have heard of a child abduction case, now you hear every detail of all of the torture the poor child went through.

Why?

Do such details make us safer?

Does it bring us a sense of power and well-being?

On what planet should your 5 year old be subjected to the graphic details of a sociopath’s actions?

If you’re feeling more afraid now than ever, I propose it’s because you’re watching too much news and you’re inundated with too many graphic details. That is not good for your mental health.

Crime is down - fear is up. Reduce fear by banning the news.

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By Tracee Sioux

My two favorite family television shows just revved up again on TLC Mondays with Jon & Kate plus 8 and Little People, Big World.

Little People, Big World is about Amy and Matt Roloff. They are little people or dwarfs. They have three average height children and one dwarf child.

Jon & Kate Gosselin were a normal couple with some fertility issues. They scored some twins with their first pregnancy and Kate convinced Jon they should have “one more.” They got six. Oh and this poor mother is a compulsive cleaner with 6 toddlers.

Most reality television doesn’t have any relationship at all to reality. These two families are REAL. They deal how I deal – with a tone. It’s the arguing and bickering and real-life family interactions that keep me rolling in my seat the whole time.

When Kate gets all bossy with Jon in the toy store and then he tells her Stop talking to me like I’m a dog I laugh my head off. They took 8 small children to a toy store and that’s the worst thing that happened. Ha! I see people with one whinny brat come out of the toy store worse off than that. Or they try to get sextuplets dressed to go somewhere and and finally Jon snaps Yes! I only told you 17 freaking times! and I’m just so proud of them for actually leaving the house.

When the Roloffs take their family on a road trip in a motor home, to see where Matt proposed to Amy, and they fight the whole time. Finally Amy goes on a rant:

Look at me! I do not want to leave trash in the fire pit! This will be enough to piss me off do you know that? I don’t know why I even came. My God, you people argue about everything!

As someone who is trying to get a grip on her tone to improve her own slightly less than perfect family life these two shows are like pure love and joy to watch.

We may not talk to each other so nicely sometimes, but we’re still here pulling for the same cause and that’s evidence that we love each other, explains Kate. Here, Here Kate.

Kate and Amy are my modern-day mother heroes. I nominate them both for Mother of the Year.

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