Back-To-School: Kindergarten Anxiety and the Mommy Wars

 Work Wednesday

I spent last week in paradise. Not the big "P"  Paradise, but a paradise of sorts - on Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains.

We had a wonderful late summer family vacation. We swam, kayaked, hiked, and camped - within the limits of two kids under six and their aging and exercise-deprived parents. I watched my daughter jump off the diving board into the deep lake without her life preserver and swim to shore. And I hiked alongside my son to our campsite in the woods and fell asleep holding his hand in our tent. I was completely relaxed. I rarely checked my Blackberry (a real feat given my confessed proclivity toward Blackberry abuse). I ignored the mental list of "to-dos" that I had planned to accomplish remotely in my pre-vacation frenzy. (Forgetting the charger for our Netbook helped.)

There was one intrusion, though, on our summer idyll. 

Kindergarten anxiety.

Mine.

I'm not, of course, entering kindergarten. (My school debut dates from the release of Let It Be, the enfranchisement of 18-year-olds, and the first Earth Day.)

My daughter is. On Monday. She's fine, I'm a wreck.

Well, wreck may exaggerate my emotional condition. But I am apprehensive about this change in our lives.

I'm not concerned about the usual stuff that a lot of other moms are chatting and blogging about.  Separation anxiety. Length of school day. Kindergarten readiness. Lunch box contents. After all, my daughter has been in child care since she was seven months old, and we're used to spending most of most workdays apart.  She's incredibly friendly and beyond ready for school: she's been reading up a storm all summer and displaying a curiosity and eagerness to learn about virtually everything in her world -from insects to stars. I know, of course, that the accelerated structure of our local school's kindergarten will be a big change from the unstructured environment of her Reggio-Emilia-inspired preschool.  Nonetheless, I have confidence in my daughter's capacity to adapt and thrive. Still, I will  shed some tears on Monday morning. (Actually, I'm hoping to hold off on the convulsing sobs until I leave the school grounds.)

The root of my jitters is the other parents. The mothers. Specifically, the stay-at-home moms. Not, individually, of course. (My best - and most encouraging and supportive - friend is a former lawyer turned stay-at-home mom.) It's the SAHMs as a group. (But not the stay-at-home-dads. Maybe my subconscious is gender stereotyping? Or maybe there aren't enough of them to form a cabal in my mind?) 

I realize now that I've been in a cocoon for the first six years of my daughter's life.  Most of my interactions with other moms - apart from longtime close friends who are a mix of SAHMS, WAHMS, and WOHMS -  have been with other working moms from my children's child care and preschool programs. Women, who juggle kids, work, marriage, and the rest of life, and understand all the scheduling and organizational challenges of the double shift.  There haven't been any SAHMs in my (or my daughter's) preschool life. 

But now, with kindergarten looming, I have irrational thoughts that "they" are the midlife version of the "popular" girls in high school while I'm the newspaper editor and the Model United Nations delegate. (I know it sounds geeky. It was.  But it was fun and now I get paid to write position papers and sit behind the U.S. flag at real international conferences.)  That "they" know about things I don't. That "they" will judge me and exclude me - or even worse, my daughter - from their circle. And so on. The other night I even had a failure-to-bake-cupcakes dream.  These are not feelings that mesh with my more usual grownup, confident, self. 

That's why I eagerly read Wendy Sachs' blog post in Saturday's Huffington Post about the end of the Mommy Wars. According to Sachs, the author of How She Really Does It: Secrets of Successful Stay-at-Work Moms, the recession has killed off the Mommy Wars. Sachs writes:  "The relations, at least anecdotally, between SAHM and WOHM have definitely thawed. The heated discussions these days have more to do with DH (dear husband) than other moms." (Coincidentally, I blogged recently about the anger-at-the-husbands phenomenon.)

I like Sachs' perspective on many issues but I'm not so sure I buy Sachs' theory here.  Setting aside whether the Mommy Wars were ever real or just a "media-induced catfight," I haven't seen any diminution in the "criticism and judgment" that Sachs diagnoses as the essence of modern mommyhood.  Just last week, The Mama Bee blogged about the "Judgement of the Moms," with examples of current snarkiness.  And I think Sachs' view that the "Warring Moms have taken a time out" because of shared economic anxiety ignores the fact that many SAHMs were at home, even before the recession, because they couldn't afford to work and pay for child care.  And that many WOHMS were at work not only for the money but other reasons too - like intellectual fulfillment, self-esteem, and the desire to make a difference. Plus, Sachs seems to shoot down her own thesis at the end of her post by declaring that "in a time of cash for clunkers, TARP, Ponzi schemes and 'Recessionistas,' the luxury of choosing not to work, seems, well, unseemly if not downright irresponsible." Sounds a little bit like a shot across the bow at SAHMS, doesn't it?

Still, I'll take Sachs' declaration of a cease-fire over the alternative and leave my kindergarten anxiety behind. I'll fill my mind with mental pictures of our Adirondack interlude and take a few deep breaths. Either that or my daughter will have to take care of me on the first day of school!

Comments

[Lyn]

I deal with this sort of thing to a very small extent with a local "moms group" I'm loosely-affiliated with. They're a mix of SAH and WOH and for months I couldn't make it to a single in-person activity because they're all scheduled during the day. But we have a little online forum that everyone can participate in and lately a few things have been scheduled on the weekends.

Anyway, point is, I end up both jealous (of all the fun stuff SAHMs can do with their kids) and flabbergasted (childcare 24x7? COULD NOT COPE).

I think K wrote at one point about the possibility of trimming back work (or quitting entirely) when the kids were of school-age rather than when they're little. I have to say I can see the appeal of that, although I doubt it will ever make sense financially for us.

As for any judge-y comments? Haven't really run into any yet, but I do have a couple of tart responses saved up just in case. Something along the lines of wanting my son to grow up understanding that women are not there to simply hang around and meet his every need. Ahem. But that's firepower only to be used in extreme circumstances. ;-)

[MRJ]

I honestly feel that working moms are perhaps too tough on themselves, setting these impossible standards. As a SAHM with a child that just finished kindergarten, I have not been able to tell who was working and who worked. Actually, the best cupcakes were brought in by a working mom who stayed up until 3:00AM decorating the most INCREDIBLE cupcakes the night before she had an important presentation to make.
After hearing her story, appreciating how hard she had worked, I asked myself WHY? Why is she killing herself? Is it really for the child? Or, is she trying to prove to everyone else that she can do it all and do it exceeding it well. I know that this friend of mine can do everything she sets her mind to very well. But, at what cost?
When bring up a child, what really matters? The question is, what are the critical things that really make a difference?
As a grown child of a working mom, I think a loving, caring, and nurturing environment are the key. And, this can be provided regardless of working status. Growing up, I was happiest when my mom was working because she was happier working!

[Ellen]

As usual, you have expressed my thoughts and concerns as my son's first day of kindergarten approaches next week and tomorrow night is parent orientation...will be interesting to see if our shared concerns are reality-based or self-created.

[Jamie]

I have felt the tension with my son's age 2-3 preschool. Most of the moms of the kids are stay at home or have seriously part-time schedules, except for the one kid whose nanny dropped him off every day. And I went to work late and left early to go to preschool functions so I would be a part of this school experience. I know the only reason I was able to do that was because I have my own firm and my work load was not insane. At the same time, we have an unconventional structure in that my spouse (another woman) is that working-part-time/stay-at-home mom. That, however, did not alleviate all my guilt or anxiety when I could do all of the things the other moms did, although it helped. Where does this guilt come from? I think it's that love for our children that makes us want to be there for them even when they're perfectly fine without us. I am coming to believe that you can't be a perfect mom and work-insane-hours professional, and that attempting to do either is insane and both is impossible.

[Bradi]

Funny, my daughter is entering first grade this school year and remembering what I felt like last year at this time is a vague memory. I'm sure I felt some emotional anxiety as my youngest entered public school but I think the joy of not having to pay for pre-school balanced out my emotional state. She did fine. Better than fine. She did great and SO will you!

[Lisa]

A bit off topic, but I have to add a cupcake baking story. My son asked for homemade cupcakes for his birthday party this year. I'm a SAHM, but still didn't bake. I agreed to do so this year, and to even make tons of crazy colored icing so the kids could decorate the cupcakes themselves. I made 60 cupcakes the day before the party. The day of the party, I woke up with a horrible stomach bug, and threw every one of those cupcakes away, thinking that I might pass on my bug to the kids. So much for baking at home!