Stuck In The Cycle As Slaves To Careers We Spin Our Wheels On The Homefront
He’s hardly ever home. The children are asleep when he leaves for the office, asleep when he returns. He misses most of their activities. On Sundays, if there’s no paperwork to finish, no meetings, no community demands, he’s too tired to be much fun.
His son learned to fish without him. His daughter became a young woman before he realized it. He turned gray, it seemed, overnight. He gave up tennis and soccer and took up spreadsheets. They sold their pop-up camper because it gathered dirt and leaves in the driveway.
I was told this by someone who knows: his wife.
“He has no life,” she says matter-of-factly.
I imagine she meant something more, too: We have no life together, as a family.
I hear and witness these transformations more than I care to, enough that it has become a regular refrain of mine: We work so hard, so long, that there is often nothing left for us and our families by the end of the day, and certainly not by the end of the week.
We think of this as a new phenomenon, a product of downsizing and corporate mergers. Hardly. A friend sent me the words to “My Little One,” an 1890s Yiddish song that resounds with concerns of today: “I have a son, a little son, A boy completely fine.
When I see him it seems to me That all the world is mine.
But seldom, seldom do I see My child awake and bright; I only see him when he sleeps; I’m only home at night.
It’s early when I leave for work; When I return it’s late.
Unknown to me is my own flesh, Unknown is my child’s face …”
A century later, we are stuck in an endless, destructive cycle, simultaneously addicted to and repulsed by our work, at once proud of our long hours and frightened by what they mean. Even as we are compulsive in chasing the next career rung, many of us profess to be burned out.
Are we confused or delusional? I’m not sure. I used to believe that my generation was disillusioned with the demands and the emotional price tag of their fathers’ careers and would change things. But as we approach middle age, when the psychological commitments of child-rearing and family care-taking intensify, work for many has become an end in itself - and a means to get away from our homes and ourselves.
Sure, some work long and hard of necessity. Most of those I know, though, work more to make more money to buy more and bigger things. We want, we want, we want. So we work, we work, we work.
The job comes to do more than define us. It owns us. We live to work, and as a result, the job comes with us wherever we are - by fax at home, by beeper at the ballet recital, by cellular phone in the car. We have become so efficient - we expect ourselves to be so efficient - that work is no longer something we do solely in an office. Those boundaries have been erased.
So we answer client mail between innings at our son’s games. We jot notes for tomorrow’s job presentation while our toddler plays in her sandbox. We organize our briefcase in the pediatrician’s waiting room. I love my job. I love putting together the words, the turn of phrase, that will make a reader savor the sound of language. I wonder, though, after drifting back from columnland into my children’s conversations, if I’m turning over too much of me. Or maybe the question really is: Am I giving up too much of them for my own pleasure and ambition?
Part of the problem stems, I believe, from the way we describe the integration of our work and family lives, with words that imply we can do both well if only we organize, prioritize, set our minds to it. Juggle this. Balance that.
Conspicuously absent in discussions is the admission that much of life turns out to be a series of either-or choices, not merely a matter of better management or improved organization.
We don’t talk so readily of giving up, putting aside - and maybe that’s exactly what we need to do.
Some competing demands can’t be reconciled. Sometimes, we need to surrender some of our ambition. That’s life, or at the least the life we all claim we want to live. Because if we’re not careful, our sons will learn to fish alone and our daughters will grow up before we know it.
xxxx My little one “I have a son, a little son, A boy completely fine. When I see him it seems to me That all the world is mine. But seldom, seldom do I see My child awake and bright; I only see him when he sleeps; I’m only home at night. It’s early when I leave for work; When I return it’s late. Unknown to me is my own flesh, Unknown is my child’s face …” -1890s Yiddish song