Aadha teetar, aadha batair (half partridge, half quail)

I am so tired of being ticked off about how much more my career is affected by being a mother than my husband's is by being a father. Every few months I start to think that I've finally learned to deal with it, and then something throws me into a tailspin.

Fundamentally, of course, the problem is that I'm not really convinced that I should learn how to deal with it. A big part of me thinks that I should change things so that my husband and I have more evenly distributed responsibilities as parents ("The personal is political," etc.). But I also know that it's not something I can do unilaterally. I'm skeptical about how much people's opinions on these issues change with time, so I'm not too hopeful about my husband coming around to my point of view. And so the pendulum goes back and forth.

I think my ideas about gender roles in the home are pretty progressive (or radical, depending on who you ask), even by American standards. When you live on campus at a progressive liberal arts college, you tend to see somewhat unconventional living situations, e.g. stay at home dads whose wives are the breadwinners because they're both happy with that set up. You also end up meeting many couples who are less obviously unconventional, but have far more egalitarian households than is the norm: they both work, they both share the housework in an evenhanded way, they share childcare in an evenhanded way, and it's taken for granted that, of course, that is how things are done. And it is in the quiet taken-for-granted nature of the sharing of labour in which the departure from the norm lies.

So my experience of American couples was this egalitarian one, generally. There were exceptions, but they stuck out. More importantly, the fact of their existence meant that it was possible. Guys who were not "wusses" could, in fact, have the sense of justice to recognize what was fair, and the 'gumption' to step up to the plate and take on the responsibilities that follow from that recognition.

The knowledge that this is possible, that what I have always known internally, deep down in my gut, to be right and fair, actually exists in the real world, made concrete for me things that I considered non-negotiable in a marriage. I wasn't going to accept anymore the arguments I had always known to be weak: "well, it might be fair, but that's just not how guys are," "aisa to nahin hota," "women ALWAYS have to compromise in marriage".

Fast forward to 2009, and here I am, in a situation that is utterly conventional: my husband works an insane 70-80-hour work week, my career has come to a screeching stutter, and I am surrounded by housework (which I have always, and will always, hate. Make that HATE. There are SO many more interesting and rewarding things one can do with one's time.).

And the reasons for this are not entirely external. I would love to be able to blame it all on the sexism of those around me, but try as I might, I can't escape the voices in my own head, the ones that expect me to live up to my mother. I am assailed by guilt because I don't find being a wife and mother as fulfilling as she did, and because I don't want to be as devoted to the home as she was, and the sneaking suspicion that I would never be as good at it as she was. Are all women doomed to this constant tussle?

"..must I be content with discontent...?"

(Re)entering the discourse

I've been silent on this blog for a long time. I've never really managed to get it to the point of being a regular thing.

That's at least in part because I've been too busy sorting myself out to deal with the things that have been on my mind in a more cerebral (and therefore, in my world, requiring writing down) kind of way. It would appear that I have cleared up some mental RAM, however. So I am now in a position to take stock of some of the more pointy headed kinds of things that are on my mind.

One is my research, upon which I need to build a masters thesis.

Then there's the state of my countries, and the world in general, which by rights, is not one topic, but occupies the same part of my brain. And since this is my blog, I get to declare it one topic.

And of course, there's the issue of domesticity, and within that, gender relations in the home space, different ways of organizing homes, the dynamics of extended families, and just how to get housework done more efficiently, so that it takes up less time.

Today I'm going to stick to the research part. I still haven't been able to identify exactly what it is that I want to find out, and it's kind of difficult to plan your thesis research without knowing what the question is.

I've decided on a situation that interests me: a private all-boys school, with a female principal. In Pakistan, no less. I have anecdotal evidence that this is a relative rarity anywhere in the world. I have to figure out where to get real data on the numbers, but that's mostly to support my assumption that this is an unusual phenomenon.

I'm interested in this one principal, in particular, partly because she's just cool. But also I see her opinions on what kind of men her students should grow up to be as being kind of counter-culture.

Now I need to flesh out my vision of the Pakistani context with evidence from the literature (if it exists). And I need to figure out how to get at the questions that I'm interested in answering. Articulating those questions would be a good beginning, but I'm struggling with that for now.

What I have so far is this: What happens when a liberal feminist becomes the principal of an elite all-boys school in Lahore?

Now I could compare this with how things were when the principal at this same school was a man, although gathering data on that might be kind of difficult, given our tendency to generate massive amounts of paperwork with little or no coherent organization.

Or I could compare it with a different elite boys school in Lahore, or several boys schools.

Or I could track down other female principals of all boys schools, figure out where they stand on feminist issues, and what their vision of the ideal student is.

Or I could see how everyone else's perceptions of this particular principal have evolved over time, or are informed by her being a woman.

What gets me most excited is the degree of variance of her vision of "good men" with/from(?) the yardsticks that society at large, parents, teachers, and the students themselves use to gauge whether someone is a "good man." And how this variance plays itself out in organizational dynamics, in curricular priorities, etc.

But how do you turn that unwieldy mess into a "real" research question?

Why is it that websites about motherhood all assume that you're either American or British? Probably because the authors are based in the US or Britain, I know, but they also seem to reflect no understanding that cultural differences count for a whole lot when it comes to parenting and division of labor between spouses.

Why do I gripe about this? Because there seems to be precious little "out there" to help the poor benighted PakAmeristaniMom. Being the "mixed up product of a conservative upbringing and a liberal education" has its downside. Your brain stops accepting the patterns that you begin to emulate instinctively, so you overthink every little thing. Like whether you're going to sew a button on your husband's shirt, or act as if it would be a betrayal of every feminist nerve in your body. And, no, it doesn't help that I can see the humor in the situation. Remember the whole scene about the blender as a gift from the Steve Martin version of "Father of the Bride"?

More seriously though, with a baby in the picture, the frame shifts dramatically. As all parents know, and keep trying to tell you, even as they accept that you will never truly understand this until you are a parent yourself.

So here I am, surrounded by people telling me, no, taking it for granted, that my career will now take a back seat. And a part of me thinks I should be grateful, because employers here are truly much more understanding of the pressures on new mothers. But the price you pay for that understanding is that your career is taken less seriously. You are automatically out of the running for a lot of things.

I have it relatively easier, simply because of being a teacher. My friend the physicist is agonized because she is struggling in an all male preserve with her first faculty position, in a field where falling behind for a year means you're out of the race. My friend the lawyer no longer practices law, because she's too busy managing her home and husband and kids. Instead, she's started up a business organizing upscale children's birthday parties. How does someone who fought her father tooth and nail on her decision to go to law school just ditch it for kiddie birthday parties? At least the physicist friend relates to my dilemma. Everyone else just seems to assume that the answer is obvious. (Give up your job; stay at home and take care of the kid(s)).

I am getting tired of resenting my situation, even as I am incredibly grateful for the wonder that is my son. It ticks me off no end that men can have a career and a family, no problem, but that women do not enjoy that sheer simplicity.

More on this later. The gripe could be unending...