Marriage and Babies: How Things Can Go So Very, Very Wrong
I had this whole post that I got half way through writing about a book I read yesterday, but enough stuff has happened in between yesterday and today that it seemed less important to finish it and just start a new one. Suffice to say that it was a fairly decent book, and that sometimes the back of a book is so absolutely misleading that the person who wrote it should be shot in the foot (for those not in the know: the author NEVER gets to write the back description...or choose the cover/font/etc...it's sort of amazing how little power and control they get over something they've written and created).
Not sure how often I've mentioned it here that it needs little introduction, but on the off chance that I haven't written it out, and on the assumption that in re-reading this post in years to come I'll need the backstory, let me start at the beginning:
Around almost 3 years ago now, about the same amount of time that Brian and I have been together (April 8th was our 3rd Year Anniversary), my older sister Miki got involved with (her now husband) Randy. He was going through a separation and divorce with his ex-wife at the time that they met and started dating. She was 32, and he's about a year or so older, so it's one of those relationships that seems to happens a lot more commonly these days as marriage values shift. They sort of broke up once, then got back together, fairly early in the relationship.
Part of the trouble was that despite the fact that neither Randy nor his ex-wife Crystalle (she's French, btw) wanted to ever get back together again, they were both dragging their feet getting divorced (which I can sort of understand, after watching so many divorces--it's a messy, expensive, shaming affair). Miki was the one who helped finally pushed that through. During this whole thing, Randy proposed to her. Then, and here's the moment all of us keep looking at as THE GIANT RED FLAG, after the final paperwork went through and he was actually no longer legally married to anyone, he said, "I'm not sure I'm ready to get married again."
When I heard this, now more than a year ago, all I could think was, "Oh god. Run. Get out and find someone else, quick." It said to me that he just realized after the final paperwork was done that he was no longer someone's husband--he was just himself again. His daughter was a bit older, (5-years-old at the time) and he wasn't needed all the time as full-service Dad. He could be Weekend Dad, and he was okay with that. That kind of person could not be ready for a new "permanent" relationship, let alone the child that Miki wanted.
But, Miki decided to stick it through, and when she got pregnant, she was elated. I have maintained from the beginning of the pregnancy that she made her choice: she knew she was running out of time to have a baby, and decided to choose The Baby over The Perfect Mate. My guess is that a part of her convinced herself that Randy could be the man she needed, and would become a wonderful family with her once the baby was born and they were married. Yet, in fact, she was obviously feeling insecure about it, because days before the baby was born, she pressured Randy to get married, because she felt like the anxiety over it was holding her back from labor.
Now, here they are, 4 months into the birth of the baby (as of the 10th of this month), and things are falling apart so fast it's frightening. Throughout my exploration of pregnancy in our social context I've found that a lot of women fear labor and birth, but so few fear the pregnancy itself or what comes after the baby is born. Personally, labor/birth holds a few of those fears that every woman gets ("Will I die? Will the baby die? Will we all get through it okay...or will be those few statistical anomalies who don't do okay? SOMEONE has to be that 1 person in 10,000"), but I know that the chances of any of those fears coming to pass are very small. And to be fair to myself, I'm still much more afraid of getting into a car accident (or Brian getting into one) than dying in childbirth, since I am much more likely to die by car than by birth. This is, oddly, a rare logical conclusion most women come to.
However, it's not just postpartum depression that needs to be talked about--even though it, too, is still dreadfully misunderstood in our culture (like a vast majority of any mental health concerns). A lot of people, and not just "stupid MTV teenagers," believe that babies bring couples together. They don't. They drive couples apart. In fact, the scars left from the early months after childbirth are often the seeds for a later divorce. The problem isn't the child itself, it's the parents who didn't know what they were getting into (so, really, even though the baby's birth eventually lead to the divorce, it still isn't actually his or her FAULT that his or her parents chose their mates wrong).
There were serious gaps and problems in Miki and Randy's relationship before the baby, including Randy's lack of enthusiasm for another child. Not to mention his lack of ambition in life, or willingness to put himself into whatever needs to be done to provide a path to happiness for his wife and children (they both come with very large debt, both from school and life problems like Miki's mother who died of Alzheimer's, and Randy must pay alimony and child support). But, even non-baby related issues like his lack of ability to manage a household on his own has created problems that should have sent up huge red flags for Miki; he relied on his ex-wife to manage the state of the household, as well as the child, and never learned how to do these things on his own (the fact that his marriage ended in divorce does not shock me). Miki must tell him to do everything; he never offers or does it on his own. To compound this problem, Miki moved into his apartment when they decided to live together. And that dynamic of feeling like it's His Space that she cannot interfere with has persisted the entire time they've lived together, even now (though it's never been said--it's just the feeling you get).
To know that now that here they stand, hardly speaking to each other, practically acting as if they're just roommates who happen to have a baby together, is a sobering reality for so many men and women having children. Randy doesn't care enough about the baby, and doesn't realize that by not just faking enough enthusiasm and love for the person that Miki adores above and beyond all others in the universe, he is driving a huge wedge between them. He doesn't understand that his unwillingness to help figure out how to juggle their financial problems is causing serious strain in their marriage, or that trying to force Miki to go back to work before she's ready to leave the baby is actually cruel to her vulnerable state of mind.
I cannot stress enough how different my relationship with Brian is from Miki and Randy's. In fact, in some ways, we have absolutely nothing in common with them except that we also conceived. However, despite the fact that I do not expect Brian to have a single thing in common with Randy, I fear it. Because I know what could be waiting at the end of the tunnel of pregnancy and birth: a world of strain, miscommunication, and frustration.
Unlike Miki, I started preparing my mate for what I would need out of him years before we got pregnant--he had to learn how to take care of the household. It took a lot of patience to watch him do everything slower and less well and not interfere, but the end result is that I don't have to tell him to take out the trash or do the laundry or clean the kitchen, let alone HOW. He can make dinner, even 5 nights a week if he has to, and with little to no input from me. There are still three things he doesn't do if I don't, and he has three months to figure out how to resign himself to doing them if I don't and they need doing: the toilet cleaning (and rest of bathroom, but toilet is important), vacuuming (with our Dyson, he doesn't have the excuse of irritating his dust allergies anymore), and decluttering rooms (side table, living room, kitten toys, etc).
But, we've been working on these things, and part of that has been to make a better effort to communicate intentions, such as: "This weekend, I plan to clean the apartment of clutter," or "I'll clean the toilet tomorrow." This prevents the possibility of me telling him to do these things after he's decided to do them, because then he loses the credit for doing it since I "had to tell him" to do it. I had 3 years to figure out these things out for myself when I lived on my own, and it's only fair that he be given around the same amount of time to do it as well. Plus, we're both hoping that it won't fall entirely on him, and that I'll be able to keep up my end, but we're just not sure how much taking care of the baby's feeding will take out of me in regards to the state of the apartment. We're willing to prepare the bomb shelter and take the risk that it'll be unused rather than die in a nuclear incident, so to speak.
I've spent the time having conversations prepping him for what's coming--sharing my knowledge of everything I've learned from how to change a diaper and avoid being peed on to how to create a schedule for baby sleep to how to handle me when I'm at my wits end. I've explained that I have a short, short temper when I'm sleep deprived and have to put all my mind to doing a difficult task--he's already seen some of it when my hormones have prevented me from keeping a social filter on my feelings. I've become very good at apologizing for these things, and can admit when I've handled something badly (and oh did this take years to get to and *real* effort on my part, by the way), but I still do the thing that I need to apologize for later and that's what counts. Even an apology cannot take away the sting of a situation poorly handled.
We've talked about the need for me to not be The Baby's Caretaker at all hours, and that even if he feels like he's spent all day working and I've "just been at home," that I've also been working all day, and I didn't get a 30 minute lunch break either. We've discussed our expectations of our baby, and what we'll do to manage if the baby doesn't come out quite right, or if I don't end up with an awesome birth. Yet, at the end of every conversation, I inevitably end with something like, "But, you know, no matter how much we talk about this, the only way we'll ever really know is after it's happened." Not only do we need to prepare for what we can, but we also need to be ready to adapt to what is presented to us. "Expect the unexpected" sort of mentality.
I may not have ever been a mom before, but I've seen women go from Women to Mom, and I know how tough it is. I know how much more difficult men who don't know how to also be Mom make it. And I stress this idea of men being "moms" because I feel like our culture's definition of Father is still too slow to keep up with the demands that modern women need to be able to make on a man. We don't need just a money machine, or a parent once the kid is 5-years-old and upwards (and an actual person who can communicate with WORDS). We need another Mom with us. We need someone to be there at all hours, ready to parent, and care give. We need someone who can share in the experience, and prevent the burden from overwhelming us. My mom is incredible with adjusting and adapting, and she burnt out at around 6 months after birth. After that point, it was like she was a zombie who just went on day after day because there didn't seem any other choice. I am not going to accept that as my fate.
As I've mentioned before, Brian will be taking pretty much the max amount of time off for Father's Leave at his work. Randy took one week off, and the entire benefit of it was spent while Miki was still in the hospital (she spent 5 days there between her bad tear and the baby developing jaundice). He didn't take additional time off after that. Just figured that since Miki wasn't "working" that she could and would handle the whole baby thing. He comes home and he plays and interacts with his older kid, and often leaves Miki to handle the baby all day long with no relief at any point. On the weekends, she still is the primary care giver.
I've explained to Brian that if he does this to me, not only will I be a crazy woman by month 6, but that I will not have another child with him, and I will leave him. I am young enough that I could have enough time to rally again, even though it'll be so much more difficult dating with a young child, and there's even a chance that I won't be able to have a second child, let alone the three I still hope to someday have. But, that's the luxury I have here at 25--that I could still try, and maybe even succeed. It'd be so much harder, but I could still get what I hope to have.
Miki is 35. That 10 year difference is what takes her situation from sad to terrifying. Trying to date again with a child that young, at that age, is like dating suicide. My mom's neighbor and best friend Kathy's daughter has been trying since she divorced her husband months after her baby was born, and it's been 5 years of struggle. She's now 40. Can she do it? Absolutely--after all, my own mother did. Granted, she still had 5 years on Miki (and Kristen), which meant that by the time she was 40, her youngest child was 10. When Miki is 40, he boy will only be 5--exactly like Kathy's daughter Kristen and her daughter Ava. And Kristen comes in with the advantage of making something insane like $200,000 a year; she still cannot find someone to even date for a long term, let alone a potential lifetime husband. Her time is spent up between work and her child, and dating is a huge effort. It's much easier to date with slightly older children than those who still need to be raised up from young childhood--and even then, every decision you make is partly dictated by your child(ren), and not just whether or not you like the guy.
But, maybe this is how it should have been in the first place, the basing your choice of husband on what will be best for your children if you want them. Part of why I wanted to get pets with Brian was to see what I could of his parenting style. Granted, people don't always raise their pets the same way they do children, but you can see their temperment a little better at the least dealing with creatures that aren't verbal and don't always obey commands (there is so much similarity between a domesticated wild animal and a pre-verbal child it's almost hilarious).
I accepted Brian as a mate only after extensive conversations about Child Raising philosophies, and observation at how he was in adapting to me needing more or less from him. Like I said, in some ways, my extreme illness for my first trimester was remarkably beneficial for us. It showed us where we're still weak (Brian couldn't handle taking care of all three pets, me, and the apartment, so things got messy and disorganized), and where we're strong (he never made me feel guilty for not being able to do "my part," and made sure he put the living creatures first before taking care of the inanimate objects).
Maybe if Miki had gone through the same, she would have seen how unfit Randy was to become her partner and mate, and decided to risk putting herself out on the dating track again. But, with that biological time limit approaching, I'm still not sure she would have chosen The Perfect Man in the end no matter what. I think a part of her would have still wanted that baby more than a lifetime mate. Now that she's made this choice, she'll have to stick with it long enough. Even if she eventually decides to divorce, it'll take time. Single parenting is really tough. But, she cannot be unhappy forever, either. Let this be a small warning for those who are waiting to accomplish all of their lifetime goals before children and marriage--that just as you could end up sacrificing these wonderful things by having children/marriage now, you could end up sacrificing either children or perfect marriage later on by waiting too long. It's a choice to make, and once you make it, accept the consequences.
The end result is that I feel really sad for Miki. She's going through the nightmare I fear the most of post-birth (fear--not expect, mind you). It's something I wish more women (and men) were aware of, because Miki is not only not alone, she's the majority. Behind the veil of motherhood is a festering wound of feeling abandoned to the baby and cultural stereotypes: men choosing their careers over their children and wives, even if they say it's "for" them; women being forced to feel guilty for doing the same, or for expecting a more equal share of the work between her and the man; the plight of the woman to be Super Woman and manage the house, be a Wife, and be a Mother, and give up all sense she ever had of who she was before these things. All of this is compounded by a huge zipper over our mouths to not say anything, because if we do, we risk being labeled The Bad Mother who doesn't love her children enough to give up everything for them, or The Bad Wife who just sits and nags all the time, even though she doesn't "have to work."
The feminist in me cannot help but notice how so many of these problems link right back to the deep gender divisions of our culture. How long will we continue to let these destroy our lives? How long will we allow our society to tell us how to raise our children to follow in these same footsteps, to make these same mistakes, to dig these same graves? When are we going to look around and say that This Isn't Right?
When we can finally teach our women not to accept these things as our lot in life--from enforced weight control to obsession over appearance of youth to household cleanliness to food preparation to child rearing--and we teach men that women do not owe them anything, whether that is sex or obedience, we can move beyond these days when we have to teach our men and women to prepare and even fear what will come from children. Until we do, there will be more Miki and Randys. There will be more Lisa and EJs. There will be more of Eve and Horaces. And they will all end in divorce, suicide, or extreme depression.
And until that day, I will have to continue to prepare and hope that I can do enough to prevent it from happening to us.
Not sure how often I've mentioned it here that it needs little introduction, but on the off chance that I haven't written it out, and on the assumption that in re-reading this post in years to come I'll need the backstory, let me start at the beginning:
Around almost 3 years ago now, about the same amount of time that Brian and I have been together (April 8th was our 3rd Year Anniversary), my older sister Miki got involved with (her now husband) Randy. He was going through a separation and divorce with his ex-wife at the time that they met and started dating. She was 32, and he's about a year or so older, so it's one of those relationships that seems to happens a lot more commonly these days as marriage values shift. They sort of broke up once, then got back together, fairly early in the relationship.
Part of the trouble was that despite the fact that neither Randy nor his ex-wife Crystalle (she's French, btw) wanted to ever get back together again, they were both dragging their feet getting divorced (which I can sort of understand, after watching so many divorces--it's a messy, expensive, shaming affair). Miki was the one who helped finally pushed that through. During this whole thing, Randy proposed to her. Then, and here's the moment all of us keep looking at as THE GIANT RED FLAG, after the final paperwork went through and he was actually no longer legally married to anyone, he said, "I'm not sure I'm ready to get married again."
When I heard this, now more than a year ago, all I could think was, "Oh god. Run. Get out and find someone else, quick." It said to me that he just realized after the final paperwork was done that he was no longer someone's husband--he was just himself again. His daughter was a bit older, (5-years-old at the time) and he wasn't needed all the time as full-service Dad. He could be Weekend Dad, and he was okay with that. That kind of person could not be ready for a new "permanent" relationship, let alone the child that Miki wanted.
But, Miki decided to stick it through, and when she got pregnant, she was elated. I have maintained from the beginning of the pregnancy that she made her choice: she knew she was running out of time to have a baby, and decided to choose The Baby over The Perfect Mate. My guess is that a part of her convinced herself that Randy could be the man she needed, and would become a wonderful family with her once the baby was born and they were married. Yet, in fact, she was obviously feeling insecure about it, because days before the baby was born, she pressured Randy to get married, because she felt like the anxiety over it was holding her back from labor.
Now, here they are, 4 months into the birth of the baby (as of the 10th of this month), and things are falling apart so fast it's frightening. Throughout my exploration of pregnancy in our social context I've found that a lot of women fear labor and birth, but so few fear the pregnancy itself or what comes after the baby is born. Personally, labor/birth holds a few of those fears that every woman gets ("Will I die? Will the baby die? Will we all get through it okay...or will be those few statistical anomalies who don't do okay? SOMEONE has to be that 1 person in 10,000"), but I know that the chances of any of those fears coming to pass are very small. And to be fair to myself, I'm still much more afraid of getting into a car accident (or Brian getting into one) than dying in childbirth, since I am much more likely to die by car than by birth. This is, oddly, a rare logical conclusion most women come to.
However, it's not just postpartum depression that needs to be talked about--even though it, too, is still dreadfully misunderstood in our culture (like a vast majority of any mental health concerns). A lot of people, and not just "stupid MTV teenagers," believe that babies bring couples together. They don't. They drive couples apart. In fact, the scars left from the early months after childbirth are often the seeds for a later divorce. The problem isn't the child itself, it's the parents who didn't know what they were getting into (so, really, even though the baby's birth eventually lead to the divorce, it still isn't actually his or her FAULT that his or her parents chose their mates wrong).
There were serious gaps and problems in Miki and Randy's relationship before the baby, including Randy's lack of enthusiasm for another child. Not to mention his lack of ambition in life, or willingness to put himself into whatever needs to be done to provide a path to happiness for his wife and children (they both come with very large debt, both from school and life problems like Miki's mother who died of Alzheimer's, and Randy must pay alimony and child support). But, even non-baby related issues like his lack of ability to manage a household on his own has created problems that should have sent up huge red flags for Miki; he relied on his ex-wife to manage the state of the household, as well as the child, and never learned how to do these things on his own (the fact that his marriage ended in divorce does not shock me). Miki must tell him to do everything; he never offers or does it on his own. To compound this problem, Miki moved into his apartment when they decided to live together. And that dynamic of feeling like it's His Space that she cannot interfere with has persisted the entire time they've lived together, even now (though it's never been said--it's just the feeling you get).
To know that now that here they stand, hardly speaking to each other, practically acting as if they're just roommates who happen to have a baby together, is a sobering reality for so many men and women having children. Randy doesn't care enough about the baby, and doesn't realize that by not just faking enough enthusiasm and love for the person that Miki adores above and beyond all others in the universe, he is driving a huge wedge between them. He doesn't understand that his unwillingness to help figure out how to juggle their financial problems is causing serious strain in their marriage, or that trying to force Miki to go back to work before she's ready to leave the baby is actually cruel to her vulnerable state of mind.
I cannot stress enough how different my relationship with Brian is from Miki and Randy's. In fact, in some ways, we have absolutely nothing in common with them except that we also conceived. However, despite the fact that I do not expect Brian to have a single thing in common with Randy, I fear it. Because I know what could be waiting at the end of the tunnel of pregnancy and birth: a world of strain, miscommunication, and frustration.
Unlike Miki, I started preparing my mate for what I would need out of him years before we got pregnant--he had to learn how to take care of the household. It took a lot of patience to watch him do everything slower and less well and not interfere, but the end result is that I don't have to tell him to take out the trash or do the laundry or clean the kitchen, let alone HOW. He can make dinner, even 5 nights a week if he has to, and with little to no input from me. There are still three things he doesn't do if I don't, and he has three months to figure out how to resign himself to doing them if I don't and they need doing: the toilet cleaning (and rest of bathroom, but toilet is important), vacuuming (with our Dyson, he doesn't have the excuse of irritating his dust allergies anymore), and decluttering rooms (side table, living room, kitten toys, etc).
But, we've been working on these things, and part of that has been to make a better effort to communicate intentions, such as: "This weekend, I plan to clean the apartment of clutter," or "I'll clean the toilet tomorrow." This prevents the possibility of me telling him to do these things after he's decided to do them, because then he loses the credit for doing it since I "had to tell him" to do it. I had 3 years to figure out these things out for myself when I lived on my own, and it's only fair that he be given around the same amount of time to do it as well. Plus, we're both hoping that it won't fall entirely on him, and that I'll be able to keep up my end, but we're just not sure how much taking care of the baby's feeding will take out of me in regards to the state of the apartment. We're willing to prepare the bomb shelter and take the risk that it'll be unused rather than die in a nuclear incident, so to speak.
I've spent the time having conversations prepping him for what's coming--sharing my knowledge of everything I've learned from how to change a diaper and avoid being peed on to how to create a schedule for baby sleep to how to handle me when I'm at my wits end. I've explained that I have a short, short temper when I'm sleep deprived and have to put all my mind to doing a difficult task--he's already seen some of it when my hormones have prevented me from keeping a social filter on my feelings. I've become very good at apologizing for these things, and can admit when I've handled something badly (and oh did this take years to get to and *real* effort on my part, by the way), but I still do the thing that I need to apologize for later and that's what counts. Even an apology cannot take away the sting of a situation poorly handled.
We've talked about the need for me to not be The Baby's Caretaker at all hours, and that even if he feels like he's spent all day working and I've "just been at home," that I've also been working all day, and I didn't get a 30 minute lunch break either. We've discussed our expectations of our baby, and what we'll do to manage if the baby doesn't come out quite right, or if I don't end up with an awesome birth. Yet, at the end of every conversation, I inevitably end with something like, "But, you know, no matter how much we talk about this, the only way we'll ever really know is after it's happened." Not only do we need to prepare for what we can, but we also need to be ready to adapt to what is presented to us. "Expect the unexpected" sort of mentality.
I may not have ever been a mom before, but I've seen women go from Women to Mom, and I know how tough it is. I know how much more difficult men who don't know how to also be Mom make it. And I stress this idea of men being "moms" because I feel like our culture's definition of Father is still too slow to keep up with the demands that modern women need to be able to make on a man. We don't need just a money machine, or a parent once the kid is 5-years-old and upwards (and an actual person who can communicate with WORDS). We need another Mom with us. We need someone to be there at all hours, ready to parent, and care give. We need someone who can share in the experience, and prevent the burden from overwhelming us. My mom is incredible with adjusting and adapting, and she burnt out at around 6 months after birth. After that point, it was like she was a zombie who just went on day after day because there didn't seem any other choice. I am not going to accept that as my fate.
As I've mentioned before, Brian will be taking pretty much the max amount of time off for Father's Leave at his work. Randy took one week off, and the entire benefit of it was spent while Miki was still in the hospital (she spent 5 days there between her bad tear and the baby developing jaundice). He didn't take additional time off after that. Just figured that since Miki wasn't "working" that she could and would handle the whole baby thing. He comes home and he plays and interacts with his older kid, and often leaves Miki to handle the baby all day long with no relief at any point. On the weekends, she still is the primary care giver.
I've explained to Brian that if he does this to me, not only will I be a crazy woman by month 6, but that I will not have another child with him, and I will leave him. I am young enough that I could have enough time to rally again, even though it'll be so much more difficult dating with a young child, and there's even a chance that I won't be able to have a second child, let alone the three I still hope to someday have. But, that's the luxury I have here at 25--that I could still try, and maybe even succeed. It'd be so much harder, but I could still get what I hope to have.
Miki is 35. That 10 year difference is what takes her situation from sad to terrifying. Trying to date again with a child that young, at that age, is like dating suicide. My mom's neighbor and best friend Kathy's daughter has been trying since she divorced her husband months after her baby was born, and it's been 5 years of struggle. She's now 40. Can she do it? Absolutely--after all, my own mother did. Granted, she still had 5 years on Miki (and Kristen), which meant that by the time she was 40, her youngest child was 10. When Miki is 40, he boy will only be 5--exactly like Kathy's daughter Kristen and her daughter Ava. And Kristen comes in with the advantage of making something insane like $200,000 a year; she still cannot find someone to even date for a long term, let alone a potential lifetime husband. Her time is spent up between work and her child, and dating is a huge effort. It's much easier to date with slightly older children than those who still need to be raised up from young childhood--and even then, every decision you make is partly dictated by your child(ren), and not just whether or not you like the guy.
But, maybe this is how it should have been in the first place, the basing your choice of husband on what will be best for your children if you want them. Part of why I wanted to get pets with Brian was to see what I could of his parenting style. Granted, people don't always raise their pets the same way they do children, but you can see their temperment a little better at the least dealing with creatures that aren't verbal and don't always obey commands (there is so much similarity between a domesticated wild animal and a pre-verbal child it's almost hilarious).
I accepted Brian as a mate only after extensive conversations about Child Raising philosophies, and observation at how he was in adapting to me needing more or less from him. Like I said, in some ways, my extreme illness for my first trimester was remarkably beneficial for us. It showed us where we're still weak (Brian couldn't handle taking care of all three pets, me, and the apartment, so things got messy and disorganized), and where we're strong (he never made me feel guilty for not being able to do "my part," and made sure he put the living creatures first before taking care of the inanimate objects).
Maybe if Miki had gone through the same, she would have seen how unfit Randy was to become her partner and mate, and decided to risk putting herself out on the dating track again. But, with that biological time limit approaching, I'm still not sure she would have chosen The Perfect Man in the end no matter what. I think a part of her would have still wanted that baby more than a lifetime mate. Now that she's made this choice, she'll have to stick with it long enough. Even if she eventually decides to divorce, it'll take time. Single parenting is really tough. But, she cannot be unhappy forever, either. Let this be a small warning for those who are waiting to accomplish all of their lifetime goals before children and marriage--that just as you could end up sacrificing these wonderful things by having children/marriage now, you could end up sacrificing either children or perfect marriage later on by waiting too long. It's a choice to make, and once you make it, accept the consequences.
The end result is that I feel really sad for Miki. She's going through the nightmare I fear the most of post-birth (fear--not expect, mind you). It's something I wish more women (and men) were aware of, because Miki is not only not alone, she's the majority. Behind the veil of motherhood is a festering wound of feeling abandoned to the baby and cultural stereotypes: men choosing their careers over their children and wives, even if they say it's "for" them; women being forced to feel guilty for doing the same, or for expecting a more equal share of the work between her and the man; the plight of the woman to be Super Woman and manage the house, be a Wife, and be a Mother, and give up all sense she ever had of who she was before these things. All of this is compounded by a huge zipper over our mouths to not say anything, because if we do, we risk being labeled The Bad Mother who doesn't love her children enough to give up everything for them, or The Bad Wife who just sits and nags all the time, even though she doesn't "have to work."
The feminist in me cannot help but notice how so many of these problems link right back to the deep gender divisions of our culture. How long will we continue to let these destroy our lives? How long will we allow our society to tell us how to raise our children to follow in these same footsteps, to make these same mistakes, to dig these same graves? When are we going to look around and say that This Isn't Right?
When we can finally teach our women not to accept these things as our lot in life--from enforced weight control to obsession over appearance of youth to household cleanliness to food preparation to child rearing--and we teach men that women do not owe them anything, whether that is sex or obedience, we can move beyond these days when we have to teach our men and women to prepare and even fear what will come from children. Until we do, there will be more Miki and Randys. There will be more Lisa and EJs. There will be more of Eve and Horaces. And they will all end in divorce, suicide, or extreme depression.
And until that day, I will have to continue to prepare and hope that I can do enough to prevent it from happening to us.