Lipstick Feminism (for Kids!)

“Is daddy going to be mad you didn't ask permission to buy me Twinkle Toes?” my daughter asked as we left the mall, sparkly-flowery-rainbow sneakers on her feet.

She knew her dad was going to hate her new shoes, just like she knows he hates princess stuff. I knew he was going to hate those shoes. I hated those shoes. But her worry that he would be upset with her caught me off-guard. Not to mention… exactly how did we get to this moment in her young life when she thinks I need his approval to buy her sneakers?

Twinkle Toes—for those without a seven-year-old girl—look like a glitter store and a bow factory threw up on perfectly normal sneakers. Plus, they light-up, because why stop there? In other words, they’re as easy to ridicule as anything else little girls love.

I try to let weather be my only objection to how my kids dress. So, why did I hate those shoes so much? It started to feel sexist—my strong reaction to over-the-top girly-ness.

When my daughter was still a baby, wearing a plain brown hoodie over her bald little head, someone said to me, “There’s nothing cuter than a girl who isn’t dressed in pink!” 

I know that some people look at my daughter and other girls, with their pink and purple, sequined, flouncy ensembles, and feel… annoyed. I know because I used to think like that, too—before I had a daughter who loves nothing more than being fancy. Girls who don’t dress that way—what used to be called tomboys—are admired, while girly girls are dismissed.

So, basically, I was doing my feminist duty when I bought my daughter the most girly-girl shoes in the entire mall. When we got home and my husband saw the shoes, I think his jaw dropped.

“Are you mad, daddy?” she asked.

“Daddy’s not mad. He just needs a minute,” I interrupted with a look that said: You. Say. Nothing. “She thought I needed your permission to buy her these sneakers…Which is crazy, isn’t it?” I said slowly, enunciating each word. Translation: “Unless you want our daughter to think you’re the boss of me, you will keep any objections to your.own.damn.self.”

I love the way my daughter dresses—she’s a tiny version of who I’d be if I had never heard the words “supposed to” or “that clashes.” I love that she’s so much more free than me, not just expressive, but confident in her fabulousness. I am extremely boring with clothes. Most days, I choose the least smelly item from the wrinkled rainbow of black, gray and dark gray clothes laying on my bedroom floor.  

The Twinkle Toes really only made it out of the store because wearing ballet flats and slippery boots was impeding her on the playground—she needed sneakers she would actually wear. And then, I thought about shoes I loved as a little girl. I wasn’t especially girly, but both pairs I remember were so very pink—moccasins with beads and fringe, and faux leather lace-up booties with tiny perforated holes all over the sides.

When she put them on and instantly started running laps around the store, I thought: She’s going to remember these shoes. I could see the wiring in her little kid brain changing in front of my eyes, making a permanent memory of this. Once I’m channeling my little girl self, my 40-year-old mom-self doesn’t stand a chance.

Another way to describe Twinkle Toes is that they look like what would happen if someone gave a little girl white sneakers and a bunch of art supplies. Especially if they included a Bedazzler. They are everything my girly-girl could want—rhinestones, sparkle, neon colors…

I realize there’s not a straight line between my daughter’s creativity and what some company decided girls would go for. Except… Except, if I try to rein her in, what message does that send about self-expression? Am I telling her that what she likes is unacceptable, out-of-bounds, ugly? That hyper-girly things are unacceptable, out-of-bounds, ugly?

When she was 2, my daughter was the first one at her preschool to don the inevitable tutu and crown. My daughter—with her black hoodie, blue “D is for Dizzy” (Gillespie) t-shirt, and anything else gray and “gender-neutral” we could find—was the one who wanted the tulle and glitter!

Around that time, I read with concern about a study that purported to show that boys are more active than girls on the playground—until I got to where they explained their methodology. Apparently, researchers counted the number of days that the girls were wearing dresses and assumed that they must not be running and jumping and climbing…in dresses! Because… girls?

Well, she’s not headed for professional sports, but my daughter’s best day playing soccer was when I was so pregnant I didn’t notice she was wearing a tutu when I put her in the car, and couldn’t handle the fight to get her out of it when we arrived. She ran around that day like girly-ness was her superpower.

With gratitude to all of the parents who fought for our daughters’ right to play soccer, maybe it’s time for us to support their right to wear tutus while they do it. Symbolically speaking. It’s not the same now as when my mother was forced to wear only dresses with knee socks to school, even in winter. Girls today can wear whatever they want… but not without condescension.

We never know what our kids are going to turn us into. I bought “boy” clothes and trucks and balls for my little girl, and still… She has turned me into the kind of feminist who needs to learn how to unapologetically allow her to be unapologetically a girl.

The day after we bought the Twinkle Toes, we took a walk, and she literally hopped and jumped and ran the whole way. Just like a little kid should. No limitations. No inhibitions. Nothing to stop her now.

Also, I now know there’s an off-switch, at least for the flashing lights.

What Do You Do All Day?

My power suit. No red tie required. 

A few weeks ago, I went to my state capital, lobbied my elected representatives and gave testimony in a Senate committee hearing. I’ve been overcome by a radical notion that there’s something wrong with a country where toddlers kill more people with guns than terrorists. Where nine women are shot and killed by their husband or intimate partner every week. Where the momentary suicidal thoughts of a teenager are lethal because guns are easier to get than help.

I got a lot of praise from friends and family for doing this important work. Which is nice. There’s not a whole lot of praise to go around for stay-at-home moms. I think that’s the thing I miss most about working—feeling like I’m doing a good job and being told so. Neither of which happen regularly in the parent role.

It struck me as odd, though, and very out-of-proportion with the relative effort involved, that people made such a big deal about it. And it came from everywhere—my parents, other moms, everyone I talked to. My husband even left me a card that said, “Your awesomeness is showing.” Well, that doesn’t exactly happen every day.

I don’t want to say that nothing about the advocacy I (we) did that day was hard, but it certainly wasn’t rocket science. Each little part of it was such a tiny thing—I got up way too early, dressed like a semi-respectable person, drove about an hour, got some signatures and took some photos at a press conference, handed papers to legislative aids (and talked to one adversarial and rather condescending state senator), and then basically sat and waited anxiously for about eight hours for my turn to speak. The testimony I gave was written by someone else, with a little personalization from me, and I’m sure I seemed nervous while I gave it.

Really, anyone could have done it. The truth was that most of my day involved sitting on my bum and waiting for the 90 seconds I was allowed to share my testimony. What was all the fuss about?

All I did was show up. Which reminds me of another thing I show up for every day.

If I was at home, I would have been doing half a dozen things and getting annoyed at myself about the other half dozen things I should have done already. If I sat on my butt for eight minutes, I would bathe myself in guilt the whole time. I would have given myself—and have been given by others—almost zero credit for any of it. Because anyone could do it.

Well, anyone who can handle the crippling lack of positive reinforcement.

In the “90% of life is showing up” category, I’m proud to have taken the time to lobby my representatives. I know it was a big deal because I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the three moms and two dads who juggled my kids so I could be gone all day like someone who has a real voice in the world. I felt really happy to be able to speak and be heard. Especially since so many parents who feel as I do aren’t heard because they can’t get away to spend a day sitting on their butt for eight hours.

I still can’t shake how differently I was treated by everyone, in comparison with a normal day of parenting. Which, more often that not, is a whole lot harder. Although, really, I know the answer.

We all know the answer. (It’s sexism.) But it’s more complicated that that, because—as they say in the movie—“The call is coming from inside the house.”

Part of why what I did was acknowledged as something is because I was doing a “man thing,” something that our male-oriented world values. Something determined to be worthwhile, and not coincidentally, something usually done by men. We were outnumbered that day, two or three times over, by the many men (and two women, one a paid NRA lobbyist) who showed up for the other side.

Politically, I believe that, central to any discussion of gender equality, we have to have a conversation about why we place a lower value on traditionally women’s work (caregiving, teaching, etc.). And that’s when we think it should be paid at all—elder care, childcare, social services…We all know that a stockbroker’s day-to-day work is not 100 times more worthwhile than a kindergarten teacher. This is way beyond an argument for equal pay for equal work, though that figures in, too. It’s about making the work visible in the first place.

But politics aside, on a personal level, deep down in that place that can make it easier or harder to get through a day, I believe in the value of the invisible work women do only when it’s someone else’s work. I can support a friend, but not myself. I know that the other moms around me are doing good, hard work, deserving of recognition. But all I can see is myself doing something one cares about. All of this effort and nothing to show for it. The exhaustion of a long, hard day’s work without the acknowledgement that any work was done. No way to measure it, value it, make it seen.

In fact, it’s when my work is seen that I am most uncomfortable, like I’m walking around naked in public. When I’m with my kids and our day crosses over into the working world that I don’t currently inhabit, I feel a deep discomfort. Like I’m showing something that shouldn’t be seen. Kids—and therefore those who care for them—shouldn’t intersect with the rest of the world as it goes about it’s business. Why are we in this restaurant? In this neighborhood? What are we doing there anyway? Shouldn’t we be invisible, hiding in some sanctioned, approved-for-kids-space? Grocery shopping seems to be allowed.

So, there it is. I feel better about myself when I take a day off to forward my controversial (how is it possible that this is controversial) political agenda of trying to make it harder for kids to be killed and kill themselves with guns. I feel like I’m doing something. Other people acknowledge that I’m doing something.

There’s this idea out there that stay-at-home moms labor under some sort of halo. That supposedly everyone thinks we’re doing this great thing, staying home with little children. Aside from an old lady here or there, who knows it because she lived it, or an old-fashioned man, who thinks I’m doing what I should be doing, I hear no chorus of encouragement and support.

Especially not from my own damn self.

I find it almost impossible to move through each day as just a mother. Because… what else do you do? If there’s nothing else, if it’s just mothering, what exactly do you do all day? Basically, what is being asked it this… Can I think of you as a daycare worker? Is that what you do all day? And for anyone who has worked in a job more valued than caregiving—basically, anything else—it’s uncomfortable to know both how important and undervalued this work is and simultaneously want to be thought of as someone who can do more, who has more value in this world.

I never thought I’d hear myself say that what we need to do to achieve equality for women is to fight to free poor, oppressed straight men. But as a mother, it’s clearer than ever that we really aren’t free until everyone is free. As long as men feel limited to traditionally men’s work and men’s roles in the family, there is nowhere for women to go. As long as being with kids during the day is primarily the domain of women, it won’t be acknowledged. I really don’t see another way of raising up the value of what women do, other than to invite men onto our team.

As they say, if men got their period, menstruation would be a sacrament. Well, if more men knew what it felt like to live your life, day-in-and-day-out, doing something that’s hard and that seems like nothing to everyone (including their own self)… Well, maybe there wouldn’t be a halo, but we maybe we could appreciate each other’s labor in a different way.

Or at least work would seem like work.

Because I can say, “All I did was show up,” about lobbying as a citizen, but it seems like the little tasks of that day add up to something more in a way that parenting doesn’t. All I feel are the little tasks and I don’t dare take credit for anything bigger that it might all add up to at the end of the day. I’d like to at least get to a place where I feel the value of the whole picture more than the exhaustion of the little tasks that make up the day.

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"It Gets Better"

Let me preface this by admitting that I might be in a sweet spot—the baby years behind me and still a safe distance from teenagers. Maybe I’ll look back at this in 6 years (essentially, tomorrow) and laugh at my naïve self.

There’s a story my mom tells about feeling really proud of herself after she’d potty-trained all four of her kids and saying something to her mother-in-law about how she had essentially done her job. My grandmother—mother of 7!—just laughed.

So, maybe it never ends, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be relieved to get past potty-training.

There’s something I want to say to new moms—moms lost in the fog of infancy, in the middle of the sleepless and thankless era, struggling through those first overwhelming months of motherhood. There’s something I need you to know… It gets better.

Have you heard of the It Gets Better Project? In September 2010, the writer Dan Savage and his partner created a video for YouTube in an effort to reach out to LGBT youth after a string of suicides hit the front pages. It’s pure, concentrated Storytelling Saves Lives. Simply saying, “It gets better.” It’s such a big little thing to do.

Well, I’m no Dan Savage. Or President Obama or Ellen or Ke$ha or Sarah Silverman. Or any one of the other heavyweights that have recorded messages for that campaign, but I think we need something like this for moms. Struggling new moms need to hear that it does, really and truly, get better.

And it’s up to moms who have been there to let them know. Maybe we could recruit Jennifer Garner? Beyonce, for sure! And Angelina, of course. Not sure if Gwyneth is quite right for this.

I remember when I was a young new mom, turning to other moms with older kids in a desperate haze with that question, “Does it get better?”  

Most of the time, they didn’t say what I wanted them to say (what I needed them to say). But even as I was told, “No,” by mom after mom, I could tell they were lying.

I was a puddle-y mess of greasy hair and spit-up and tears, and there they were: Standing around as if the world just keeps turning around and around and they are going to live through it.

Seems to me the worst thing you could say to a new mom is, “I never gets any easier.”

My kids are 4 and 7 now, so now I can say from experience what I needed to hear when I was new at this. It. Gets. Better. Anyone who tells you differently is lying. Or probably not lying so much as suffering from amnesia.

I’m not saying that it’s smooth sailing as soon as you exit the baby phase. But that’s not what new moms are asking, and it’s cruel to pretend it is. It’s cruel to pretend that being a parent stays as hard as it is in the beginning.

Like a brand new spring chicken being born, becoming a mom is like cracking through the hard shell of what your world has always been, and suddenly, you are new at everything and everything is upside down. Parenting has the steepest learning curve of anything I’ve ever done. Day one: you know nothing. Day two: no one knows your baby better than you.

When my first baby was born, our pediatrician came to check out our daughter. She was crying when he walked into the room. He walked up confidently, took her from our novice arms and did this magical thing with his finger on the roof of her mouth. Instantly, of course, she stopped crying. We were like, “What just happened? You know everything! We need you to come home with us now!”

He said something like, “I know more about your baby right now because I’ve been doing this for a long time. But if I were to see you 24-hours from now, you would be the expert.” Basically, you are learning something new about your child, yourself as a parent and how to parent your child (three totally different things!) all the time.

It gets better because you get better. Problems may become more complicated, but you become so much smarter all the time. With every passing moment, you are building a foundation—a solid relationship with your child, a strong sense of who you are as a parent, and the confidence that comes only with time.

It’s so intense in the beginning. So all-consuming. So bewildering.

Just think about this one thing—when was the last time you drove in a car with a child screaming and crying for no apparent reason other than they don’t like being in cars? I remember the moment in which I realized that I was no longer bracing myself, every time I drove somewhere, for the possibility of a total meltdown that I couldn’t control and just had to live (and drive!) through.

Or this. When is the last time you went to sleep at night absolutely certain that it would not be morning yet when you were awake again? The fact that you get to sleep through the night after babyhood is reason enough to prove it gets better. Anything is better when you’ve had a full night’s sleep. And not the occasional surprise, but on the regular. Of course, older kids get stomach viruses and need to come home from sleepovers and have nightmares. But most nights, you get to sleep.

And this. Babies can’t talk about it. There is nothing you can say to make it better. They can’t explain themselves. You will never ever know why they wouldn’t stop crying for five hours straight in the middle of that one night you will never forget.

You get to sleep, you can drive un-traumatized, and they understand the words coming out of your mouth. Easier.

And yet moms of teenagers are still trying to tell me the same thing—actually, now, they’ve raised the bar to, “It gets harder.” The stakes are higher, they say. If you mess up with a baby, the consequences are short-lived and not serious. When you mess up with a teenager, there can be life-long impact.

I won’t deny any of it—if only because it’s terrifying and I don’t want to set off some kind of karmic wave that will crash down on me as the clock ticks past 12. But it’s just not the same.  

There is nothing like the early days of parenthood. It’s so intense and anxiety-filled. Like chalk and cheese.

I remember, when I was pregnant, talking to a mom with sleepless babies. I was complaining about being tired, and then suddenly felt like a total jerk! Who was I to complain? At least I could sleep! She must have been more exhausted than me! But instead, she said something surprising, “There’s nothing like the exhaustion of pregnancy.”

Not even babies who wake up multiple times a night. The exhaustion of pregnancy is so complete. New baby tired is real (I remember my arms being so weak from exhaustion that I was afraid I’d drop my baby!). But pregnant tired is a full body experience that you can’t escape, no matter how much you sleep. You cannot leave your body and your body is climbing a mountain even while you are sitting still. You are tired deep down to the bone.

I was grateful to that mom for saying that. And it even made me feel less dread for the coming sleepless nights. I had been thinking that I was going to be going from one kind of total exhaustion to another—and in some ways, that’s true. But it’s not the same.

The hardest part of new parenthood is that same feeling of being unable to escape. But it’s emotional, not physical. And when that adjustment settles, when you realize that this parenting thing is going to be hard for the rest of your life, the burden suddenly somehow becomes lighter. You no longer feel—every moment of every day—like you can’t escape from it. It settles down into who you are and then you’re just doing it. A person cannot function at peak stress level forever. At some point, it normalizes.

I think pregnancy exhaustion prepares you, body and mind, for new baby exhaustion. And I think new motherhood prepares you for what’s to come in the same way—eventually you adjust to the new normal and it’s not impossible anymore. Not easy, but nothing like those early days. I think new moms need to know that, and we need to stop telling them that it’s always just as hard forever.

Remember back to those early days. For the sake of other moms, remember that it gets better. And say so.

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Failing at February

Even a playground looks sad in February.

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November* in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” 
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

It’s raining and cold and it’s a minor miracle that I’m not in bed under heavy blankets, watching TV and eating canned cherry pie filling. 

It must be February. 

When I was in college, my best friend and I had an agreement that you were allowed to do whatever you needed to do to get through February. The big one I remember was: eat ice cream every day. And she was a former ballet dancer, so that’s a pretty good indicator of how awful February is.

Wanna play Tetris instead of writing your paper? Yes, yes, I do. Can’t be bothered to walk across campus for that morning class? Yeah, it’s cold out. I get it. What are you doing with that guy? It’s February! No judgement! 

My parenting equivalent of Ice Cream February is “Say Yes to Everything.” 

Let’s just go to Target and wader the aisles together, okay? I’m sure there’s a toy in it for you. Or at least some chocolate milk. You don’t want the chocolate milk you just opened? Fine, we’ll get the vanilla, too.

Have you seen that Onion headline (http://www.theonion.com/article/kids-love-when-mom-sad-enough-just-order-pizza-50515), “Kids Love When Mom Is Sad Enough to Just Order Pizza”? I’m right there. I can't be bothered to fight with my kids over anything. I’m worn down. Resistance is futile.

“Can I have another Girl Scout Cookie?” Sure, why not. (Those Girl Scouts aren’t fooling around with their February sales strategy!)

“I don’t want to take a bath tonight.” Well, that works out fine, because I don’t want to give you a bath tonight.

“Can I just wear this to bed?” Sure, good night.

“I don’t want to go to school.” How about watching Gilmore Girls reruns in bed with Mama?

“Do I have to get dressed today?” Nope. Do I?

I’m mean, really… What's the worst that could happen? Don’t answer that.

Winter is so isolating. And it’s not just seasonal affective disorder, so don’t try to sell me a mood lamp. It’s more like a conspiracy of everything at once telling you that there’s just no good reason for ambition right now.

Or maybe more charitably, there’s some core biological wiring that makes us feel drawn toward the human version of hibernation. Instead of going to the park, let’s just get out of the cold, stay at home and hunker down.

February isn’t a very charitable month, so it can be hard to just be ok with a slowed down world. And it really is more than that, too. It’s not just a cozy-by-the-fireplace kind of phenomenon. It doesn’t feel good.

But if we’re all out there hunkering down alone, it’s almost like we’re doing it together. You think of me, I’ll think of you, and see you in April? I feel like I can almost see other moms, out there, taking another deep breath, holding it inside and then sighing it out. This day will eventually end. All prior evidence points to the fact that days all finally come to an end. And all Februarys end, even ones with the pesky extra leap year day.

It’s usually about this time of year that I start feeling like I’m behind on everything. The kids always seem to get sick and suck up two weeks of time just like that. And then there’s whatever pathetic amount of snow we get in DC and the corresponding unexpected days off from school. And then I get sick. And we cancel plans because someone else’s kid is always sick, too.

So, everything just piles up, like I imagine actual snow does in other places in winter. And before I know it, flowers are popping up everywhere mocking me for having accomplished nothing since November.

I’m not exactly excelling at motherhood. I don’t do enough with the kids. I don’t engage enough. I’m not patient enough. You’d think with all of the not-accomplishing-anything, I could at least feel like I’m indulging in special time with the kids. It certainly doesn’t feel that way.

Combine extra kids-at-home days with my general lack of motivation and I’m not working enough. I’m not getting enough done. A whole month passed and I can’t point to anything.

Even the regular stuff. I can’t stay on top of the regular stuff.

The laundry. I can’t even think about the laundry. There’s not one corner of the house that feels relaxing, each vantage with its own to-do list taunting me. I don’t do enough around the house. I’m there all the time and still, all the dishes.

I just feel like the days are lost. One after another, they just fall off the calendar while I stare at the naked trees through the window. 

There’s some peculiar characteristic of motherhood that can make a woman feel like she is simultaneously not enough at every single thing she does. I would think that failing in one area would mean that another area is thriving, but it’s not like that. When my energy is low and I’m feeling very self-judge-y, nothing is spared.

And kind of like the beginning of Moby Dick (see below) with wanting to knock the hats off of everyone’s heads, I know when things get like this, there’s just one thing I need to do. And it’s not get to sea.

It’s time to see a friend who understands, get away from the house and the kids and the need to prove anything and go have a coffee or a cocktail with a real live friend. And there’s actually something we need to toast—we’re almost there! Just one more week… 

* All due respect to Melville, but clearly, he means February.

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In the Age of Induction

Check out this piece of mine that was published last week by the wonderful Brain, Child Magazine...

In the Age of Induction

Seven days late

At 41 weeks pregnant, my auto-generated, pregnancy week-by-week email seemed certain this could only mean that I had neglected to click the link declaring my son’s arrival. Had I stayed with the OB practice I started my pregnancy with, there’s a decent chance my baby would have been two days old, having arrived by way of induction sometime conveniently before 5:00 pm last Friday.

But I was a midwife patient. Waiting it out old-school style. With no end in sight.

There’s something embarrassing about going past your due date. Something beyond the unwieldy way you move and the way all clothing looks ridiculous by the end.

My body was supposed to be doing something and it wasn’t and everyone was watching and there was nothing I could do about it. I was humiliated. I wanted to hide.

Friends and family gently inquired, sending notes saying “Just thinking of you,” “Come out, come out wherever you are,” and the insipid, “Any news?” And, of course, “Any talk of induction?”

Eight Days Late

It was 6:00 am and I had been up since 4:40 when I noted the time of the one lonely contraction I had last night. After waiting an hour for anything else to happen, I cried to my husband, “I can’t be pregnant anymore.” He told me we’d talk in the morning and rolled over to sleep. I got up to eat breakfast and tried not to Google “natural labor induction.” Again...

Read more here...

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Talking Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton with My 7-yr-old Daughter

The first time I ever tried to talk politics with my daughter, she was about three and a half. Somehow things went very quickly from talking about the presidential “vote” at her preschool (complete with ballot initiatives—ah, preschool in DC!) to a history of women’s suffrage. I could tell I lost her about halfway into it, but couldn’t figure out how to stop talking. My favorite part was when she asked if her (white, male, land-owning) dad was allowed to vote.

I believe in talking to my kids about politics the way some might about God or the birds and the bees—early and often. But I have no control whatsoever over what they actually hear as the words are coming out of my mouth. It’s always interesting to see what’s retained, what’s lost.

Kind of like with the whole God thing, my husband and I don’t always agree. Which I think is great for them to see. My husband wants them to learn phrases like “evil capitalist” and “workers of the world unite.” I try my best to balance the desire to indoctrinate my kids into my value system with a desire for them to know that reasonable people can disagree.

Yesterday, I was driving four kids in a carpool home from school through the no-chain store main street of our postage-stamp-size downtown in uber-liberal land. Conversations during carpool are never exactly high-minded—usually the words “fart” and “butt” dominate between outbursts of loud laughter. This particular afternoon, they were discussing ways to dispose of Donald Trump.

“Attack him with cement!” seemed to carry the day as the favorite choice. If I was a mafia mama, I might have been proud.

One of the girls was apparently horrified when her parents told her that Donald Trump told another grown-up to shut-up. They all agreed, that was pretty terrible. “Oh, honey, he’s said a lot worse things than that…”

Another little kid I know thinks Trump stole the birdbath from his front yard. All politics is local, right?

Later that evening, my daughter was overflowing with questions about Trump—

Why did his parents let him be so mean? (Well, they probably weren’t very nice people either.)

Why isn’t he in jail if he’s a bad person? (He’s not a criminal, he just has a lot of bad ideas.)

What kind of bad ideas? (People from a whole entire religion shouldn’t be allowed in our country. We should build a wall to keep Mexicans from coming into our country…)

That is bad!

During the last presidential election cycle, when she wasn’t yet four, I tried to teach her about the issues that made me not want to vote for Mitt Romney. I told her things like, “He doesn’t trust women to make their own decisions about whether or not they want to have babies,” and “He doesn’t think that all people deserve to be able to go to a doctor when they’re sick.” All she remembered—and repeated—was, “Mitt Romney doesn’t like women.” I tried to correct her, but nuance isn’t big with the preschool set.

How was she to understand the difference between “like” and “trust” when she was still learning that her parents love her even when they’re upset with her?

This time around, it is a very big deal to me to be able to talk to her about a woman running for president. Huge, to use the parlance of this election cycle. I want a female president for her even more than I want one for myself or for the country.

Much as it made about as much sense to her that her dad wouldn’t be able to vote as that her mom would once not have been able to vote… Much as she thinks it’s just the same that two women could get married as that marriage is somehow meant for different genders only… Much as it will never seem anything but ordinary to her to see a black president… She doesn’t seem to really understand why it’s so significant that Hillary Clinton is as close to winning the presidency as any woman has ever been.

Hope for the future yet, on the one hand. On the other, she needs to know her history. There is too much ugly to risk repeating by letting her believe that things have always been this way.

These days, we tell our girls that they can do anything. I heard it all my life—at least up until my brothers were able to go places I wasn’t allowed alone because it was safer for them than for my teenage girl body. But our daughters, even more than us, have seen women who are astronauts and business owners and pretty much anything else they could ever want to be. Except president.

My parents’ generation grew up believing that not being a racist meant being colorblind. We know now that even babies as young as six-months old notice differences in skin color. And we know that they form ideas about race from what surrounds them, that not talking about race doesn’t lead to equality. We celebrate diversity. We understand the importance of diversity. We tell them different is beautiful.

We wouldn’t think to try to raise our kids in a colorblind world. But when it comes to gender, I feel like we are trying to raise our kids in a gender-blind world. “We’re all the same!” Kids aren’t stupid—and for whatever reason, they begin to divide roughly along gender lines between about three and four. As liberals, we feel panicked when this happens, like we’re failing some feminist parenting test. We’re not.

Girls and boys are different. Of course, any one boy could be as different from “boys” as most “girls” are, and vice versa. We try to make room for that. But while we tell our girls that they can do anything boys can do, we often fail to tell our boys that they can do anything girls can do. We tell girls they can be anything, and then we encourage them to do boy things. Trucks, dinosaurs, astronauts! And so things that girly girls do—wear pink, like princesses, play with dolls, whatever—become less-than. We want all of our children to play the games that little boys play.

Well, I want more for my daughter. And my son. Until we accept that there are gender differences, and stop trying to make everyone fit into the male mold, we won’t know equality. Until boys can do what girls can do, girls who play the boy games are only equal in so far as they play the boy games.

A woman running for president today has to do it like a man. And then get ripped apart for doing it like a man. And then be told that their voice is no different than a man’s voice, so they are not needed. Don’t worry—the boys got this one. Again.

If we can accept that it means something to African-Americans to see a black president—as we should, why is it unacceptable that seeing a female president would mean something to women and to girls? This seems to me the ultimate acceptance that gender-neutral is male. If we want to be equal, we’d better start accepting that a man’s point-of-view is the same as a woman’s? That’s not the kind of equality I believe in.

I believe in a voices-at-the-table kind of equality. I believe that women live different lives than men. I believe we see things and experience things that they just don’t. We can accept that any single person may not fit into the expectations of their chosen or un-chosen gender, but that doesn’t mean we have achieved gender-equality. No matter how good a feminist a man might be, it’s not the same as being a woman. Of course, women can be bad feminists—there’s certainly equality in that. Many of the women who rise to the top of their chosen field have disappointed women—I’m looking at you, Marissa Mayer.

I do not expect perfection in a presidential candidate, or a president. Not from a man or from a woman. A certain sort of person is attracted to such a path in life. They make decisions about things I can’t fathom being responsible for. We should ask a lot of questions of anyone wanting that job.

But I do expect to see a woman president in my lifetime—and to vote for her.

Hillary Clinton is not Margaret Thatcher. She’s not Carly Fiorina or Sarah Palin. She may not be Elizabeth Warren, but I’d like to see what would happen if Warren tried to walk the path that Clinton is walking. Maybe the third woman president will be a frumpy, Jewish, democratic socialist Brooklynite. But I doubt it.

Backwards and in high heels, I’m voting for Ginger Rogers. And I’m going to tell my daughter—and my son—all about it. We'll see what they take from it.

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How Second Kids Humble Their Parents

My first kid was sleeping through the night at two months old. Other new moms weren’t exactly thrilled for me. I tried to be humble, but I confess I was pretty sure I was doing an awesome job.

Until she stopped sleeping through the night five months later. Then I felt like I was doing a shitty job. When she got back on track after a month or two, so did my good-mom-identity. I was good at teaching a baby how to sleep. I was good at being a mom.

Then I had a second child. At eight months, he was still waking up six times a night. Because it turns out that I am not in fact a sleep expert or a perfect parent. I just got lucky the first time around.

My first was so easy (being a mom was hard, but she was easy). I could take her anywhere. She napped in the car. She crawled early. She walked when we expected. She talked up a storm, with actual little sentences by her first birthday.

So, I confess: I was pretty proud. She was a great kid, so obviously I was an all-star mom. 

When other parents—whose babies weren’t doing what they were supposedly supposed to do (sleep or walk or talk or whatever it was) when they were supposedly supposed to be doing it—would ask me how I did it, I actually answered them. It’s cringeworthy looking back at it now. “Well, I talk to her all the time” or “We do a lot of tummy time” or “You just have to put them down in the crib really slowly.” I actually thought I had answers.

Second kids are really, really good at one thing: humbling their parents.

Apparently, I wasn’t a sleep guru, didn’t have anything to do with my daughter crawling and was not at all responsible for her early talking. My son did everything on his own timetable, because kids are not blank slates we get to draw and they are not even tiny copies of ourselves. They are each their own little individual selves, with brains and bodies that have their own ideas. It has nothing to do with us.

My second kid was really great in helping me figure this out. With my first, I had a lot of “I’ll never…” One of which was: I’ll never give my kid a pacifier. Well, baby number two got one on day two. He needed it. That I never gave one to my first may have been more a product of her temperament than my principles.

The other side of this lesson is that the second kid also teaches you that the first one isn’t perfect either. When my son came along, I looked at him and realized he was good at and easy about different things. Which had a way of shining a light on the more challenging things about my daughter. She, like me, can talk incessantly. My son is quieter. Which is nice. He also hardly ever falls—he seems to have a more intuitive sense of where his body is in the world. My daughter sort of floats around and—no exaggeration—can fall down when she’s just standing still or off a chair she’s sitting in.

With two kids, I think we learn that we don’t know what we’d do if we had a different kids. We don’t know what we’d do if we had someone else’s kid. It’s a lot harder to judge someone else’s parenting when you realize how much it’s a combustible mixture of who your kid is and who you are and how you were raised and a million other things.

I don’t know how I would parent anyone else’s kids but my own. Even that’s an ever-evolving experiment. 

Knowing how much I’ve learned from having a second kid, I can only imagine how much parents of three or four kids learn. Though I think I’ll stick to asking them for their wisdom over first-hand, hands-on learning on that one!

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