Earlier this week I attended a retirement reception for a colleague. I don't know the woman well, but the reception was right across the hall from my office, there was food, and I forgot to pack my lunch. It was a good time chatting with people that I don't see that often.
It was all fine and good until she started giving her speech. She's retiring because her daughter is expecting her first grandchild and she wants to spend time with the baby. Groan. Ok. Whatever. Good for her. I wish her the best, I honestly do. I thought I was a few years out from dealing with granzillas, so the irony is not lost on me. But hey, at least she's retiring, so I won't have to be around the baby talk.
But the retirement reception just provided the setting for the part I want to write about. I want to write about is what happened as people were mingling. I found out that a colleague is leaving in May. I knew that, while she loved her job, she also longed to be closer to family, and apparently she's found a position that will allow her to do something she's excited about and be closer to family. She and her husband also have two kids under three, and I know that was part of the reason for the move too. While I will miss her, I understand wanting to move closer to your support system.
But that brings me to a conversation with a different colleague who felt the need to tell me (twice) that raising young children is a really difficult phase of life. I know it wasn't meant to be condescending, but it was. I don't have kids, that's no secret, but I am a reasonably intelligent person who can look at a situation and understand the difficulty in it. Not on a personal experience level, but still. I've never climbed Mt. Everest either, and I'm quite confident that it's pretty darn difficult too. I'm not going to lie, it hurt a little bit. It sort of felt like I was in that all to familiar position of "less than."
The person who said it gets a bit of a pass. She's normally quite sensitive and someone who I can count on to be an ally. But it still hurt, and it's ok for me to acknowledge that. Next time I hope I'm not caught off guard and can come up with a witty response.
It gets less hard as time passes, but there will always be curveballs.
Thi just sucks for so many reasons. Even if it wasn't intended to hurt, people were being careless. And what gives with potential grandma retiring because there's a baby on the way? This one I've seen a couple of times and it just leaves me shaking my head as usually that story doesn't end well.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry you walked into a landmind of a situation.
Careless is it. And I'm not sure that most people even realize it.
DeleteAnd the whole thing where the grandparents want to help raise the kids, I just don't get it.
Aaaaaaargh. Sometimes I get told, "you know people aren't intentionally being hurtful, right?" and to that I feel like, yeah, sure, but you can still think about how your words come across and attempt sensitivity, or realize in your conversation that maybe you're not being the most sensitive. You can think about how it might sound to remind someone just how hard it is to have small children as if someone without them can't possibly fathom that. I feel like there's this cult of the mom that exists, where it's like no one can truly understand unless you are part of it. And I LOVE your Everest response, even if it wasn't verbalized at the time. So hard to get those things out when you're in it. This is definitely a curveball. And I'm sorry, because I feel like that condescending piece is all too common. (For me it's like when my colleagues in parent conferences start things with "as a parent" --- when we're talking about 8th graders and they have 4 year olds. Like somehow they have more insight than me because they are moms and I'm not, even though I have lots of experience with 8th graders in this setting. Sigh.)
ReplyDeleteJust because it isn't intentional doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt! I HATE that response! '
DeleteI think that education is a landmine for people like us. I'm honestly thankful that I went through infertility after I was a teacher. I'm so sorry you have to experience that regularly.
Ugh, the need to constantly point out how hard parenting is. I had plenty of experience with this for the many years I was struggling but it got about 1,000x worse during pregnancy and I was just baffled. I actually spent time in therapy trying to root out why people needed to engage in this banter: like, if it's so hard and miserable, why have kids? I decided that it's a lot of self-validation. That said, I don't find being home with babies "harder" than teaching, just very different. Despite all the insanity about "You'll never shower again!" I think the isolation (coming from a social profession where I was engaging hundreds of people a day) and monotony are the hardest parts, but surely not measuring up to the parenting histrionics I had to field on the daily.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Parenting is hard, and I'm sure some days or even phases are super difficult, but the human race would have died off long ago if it were as hard as some would like to make you believe it is.
DeleteCondescension is one of my biggest irritations, quickly followed by the inability of a lot of people to talk about anything other than their children (especially once their children are grown). And honestly? Raising young children is not THAT hard. It's not a competition, but I highly doubt that raising children is as hard as losing them.
ReplyDeleteOne of my remaining triggers is people acting as if retirement, or their post-work life, is only really worth living because they have grandchildren. I'll never forget my own aunt talking about spending more time with her grandkids "because what else is there at my time of life?". Grandparents can definitely have a way of making you feel uneasy about your future. But people do these things all the time in lots of subtle little ways that they don't even dream would affect you. My sister was talking about her best friend who was trying to pin her down for their annual socialising session (they live in the same town but rarely meet 'cos of family commitments). My sis had something social on with her daughter (who's still at home) on the day in question and said to me "...So I'm going to go to the gig with the Daughter, she's far more important, X is just a friend". God knows why that lingered with me all day, but I just thought, can't you see your best friend just that once, since you see your daughter every day? I suppose I always put myself in the shoes of those people on the outside. As for raising children being so hard, I always want to say: didn't you hear the rumours before you had your kids? And don't assume that no one else has it as hard. I have friends who'll practically laugh in my face if I suggest them coming to visit me rather than the other way round, because their life is so much more complicated and difficult than mine. I'm a bit jealous of people with support systems. I hear more and more as people get into their late 30s and 40s that they want to move to be nearer to ageing parents, and I do wish I had a sense that I had that somewhere: it must give you roots and an idea that you belong somewhere. I don't know where the hell I'm supposed to be, and it comes from having neither kids nor parents, I think. It's weird.
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