A few days ago I attended Ethan’s 1st grade parent orientation meeting, and it played out as it usually does.
Other Parent: I saw Ethan and your husband at Resturant X this weekend.
Me: Interesting. I’m not married.
OP: Oh. Ha.
Me: Anyway.
Awhile back I gave up feeling weird about others’ inquiries into my non-marital relationship and took on a MYOFB and/or Rock the Shocker tack. It’s the more salient class issues that still get to me — and both issues are more difficult to tease out for me than one might think. A person’s inquiries into my personal life based on artifice are more more telling of them than of me. Nevertheless, E’s father and I have spoken on many occasions about how our situation makes us feel like outsiders in Yuppie Elementary School (YES), where money is free-flowing and stay-at-home parents in paper house neighborhoods are aplenty. We do our best to operate on the fringe.
This is a tired subject, I know. I write about it every year. Several times a year. But then, every year we are told to ensure we can take days off of work or school to chaperone, volunteer, and attend plays and convocations (all of which are scheduled during the school day, i.e. during work hours), and every year I’m tempted to raise, not a protest, but a middle finger, and raise it high on behalf of all of us who would love the privilege of that level of involvement with our children but can’t afford the time.
No, really. As in can’t afford the time. As in can’t afford to take a sick day or a personal day because we don’t get them, as in might get fired if I ask for time off. As in, can’t work overtime so I can’t make up the hours. As in, if I leave work to volunteer for the kids I might not be able to keep the gas on for another month.
Last year I emerged from university a wide-eyed defender of education — after all, I’m trained as a teacher — but increasingly I find myself appalled at the amount of privilege assumed of families in YES by both the school administration and my parental peers. If you know anything about public schools, you know that some schools are more equal than others, and Ethan’s school essentially functions as a prep school for the university next door available to anyone that can afford to live within the district. There are low-income families within this district, but not many, and this school corp far surpasses any of its neighbors in the area in test scores and college placement. We’re lucky to be here. Ethan’s educational experience has been and will be phenomenal.
The rub: Through various circumstances — not the least of which was poor planning on my part, damn you, 20/20 hindsight — I found myself unable to secure a salaried teaching position after graduation, and was forced to choose between full time work out of my field at significantly lesser pay, or part time work within my field making even less. I chose wage slavery, disappointed that my degree was not actually the key to stability and success like I so believed. I endured many lectures from my dear mother about how all I needed to do was put out three resumes a day and I would find the job of my dreams — but since I’m not in engineering, pharmacy, business, or academia, the fields that are actually hiring at a living wage in my town, my mother’s advice was proven untrue. I find myself in a low-paying service job that does have good benefits, if I can ever get access to those benefits, with growth potential that is strong enough that should I stick around I’ll find myself tethered to this company for the rest of my goddamned life. Potential, yes. Happy, no. I’m still not sure that the gas will be on next month. Don’t talk to me about winter. My finances were far more secure when I lived on financial aid.
So when Ethan’s teacher, an otherwise awesome and creative person, suggests it should be a priority to attend these school functions, I am pulled in two directions. The mother me begins to wonder whether I can take a day off without a black mark in my new employee file so I can see my son in his element, while the pragmatist figures how much taking a few hours will cut into an already meager paycheck. Then the mother me defects for awhile to feel guilty for a few hours until I rerealize that guilt is the most useless of a parent’s emotions.
Yesterday, I read this during some down time at work.
The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.
As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”
Until the last year, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by the rising value of benefits, especially health insurance, which caused overall compensation for most Americans to continue increasing. Since last summer, however, the value of workers’ benefits has also failed to keep pace with inflation, according to government data.
At the very top of the income spectrum, many workers have continued to receive raises that outpace inflation, and the gains have been large enough to keep average income and consumer spending rising.
I could have cried. All the time I sunk into the job search, all the interviews where I was told I was underqualified, overqualified, not a good fit for the job, and even the labor jobs where I was turned away for probably appearing too girly (ha). All the time I was down on myself for believing I was unable to get my shit together. Feeling like a failure for so heavily depending on my folks, without whom, as mentioned in an earlier post, Ethan and I would be homeless.
Not all me. It’s the economy, stupid.
Economists offer various reasons for the stagnation of wages. Although the economy continues to add jobs, global trade, immigration, layoffs and technology — as well as the insecurity caused by them — appear to have eroded workers’ bargaining power.
Trade unions are much weaker than they once were, while the buying power of the minimum wage is at a 50-year low.
Tell me about it.
I watched the PBS special, “Waging a Living,” last night with Chef. This may have been a bad idea. Where I opted for college, Chef went with work experience, with bragging rights of eight years management experience, most of it corporate, in addition to his culinary experience. Neither of us are bringing in enough to cover our separate expenses. We listened to the stories from the four individuals profiled and wondered whether we would be as successful as our parents, who, incidentally, are helping to support the both of us now.
I went out to dinner with a friend a few weeks ago, a friend who graduated a year ahead of me with a management degree. She has a very secure, very well-paying job at the university, essentially acting as the CFO for multiple schools on the campus, supporting her daughter and stay-at-home husband very comfortably on one paycheck. We grew up together. I remember the two of us as irresponsible, pot-addled teenagers, fucking shit up at church camp. We made different choices, yes, but her career is worlds away from mine. I let her pay for dinner again without too much protest.
Anyway, I don’t know where to go from here. I miss school.
I can very much sympathize. I have a Master’s in management and am A.B.D. right now. The problem is that I don’t WANT to teach college, but I’ve taken out so much in college loan debt that I don’t dare not finish the damn PhD. It’s just hanging out there like some dead end. In the meantime, you’d think having a lot of interesting job experiences and educational credentials would count for something, but you’d be utterly wrong. I’ve been unemployed for 3 months and have been reduced to applying for part-time work while living off my student loans. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have children as well.
It just wasn’t supposed to be like this.
When I was 33 I left a career that had carried me for 8 years, and I had been hired even without a degree. I left it because I didbn’t want to travel (three kids.) I discovered as I was looking for a new career that even doing tech support most companies demand a degree, and wouldn’t even look at my resume until I had a degree.
So, yes, it sucks to have a degree and not be able to work in your field. But it does pay in the long run better than not having one at all. I am starting over in a different industry at 45 and am now in the position again where I can’t take the time I need to go to my kid’s school functions which are scheduled during the day.
Have patience. It will work out.
A similar boat. My liberal arts education made me a good thinker, a resonable, well-rounded person. It made me extremely desirable in a number of positions, none of which pay jack. We scrape by, me working the traditionalish 8-4 with insurance, the Spouse being Stay At Home Dad with his own business going nights and weekends and interstices.
Here’s a pisser: our state recently initiated a tax-free weekend, a giant boon to folks purchasing back-to-school stuff. It’s at the beginning of August. Before any fall clothes are in stores. Before schools actually determine class assignments, and thus, before the specific teacher’s list of class needs is available.
Thanks.
Oh, I hear you on the whole YES thing. Even back in pre-school I was talking to some other moms, and one of them dropped her voice and expressed concern about what might happen to the school once our kids went on to kindergarten because many of the remaining moms there were single moms. You should have seen the look on her face when I piped up with, “I’m a single mom!”
I struggle so much with not just guilt about not being able to attend many of his school functions or volunteer, but also with simply being so very different from all the other parents at his school.
Oh dear. That sounds very much like my kids’ school (they are 17 and 21 now).
Ethan will grow up JUST FINE whether you spend a day in his classroom or not. He knows you love him.
There are waaay too many people who don’t realize how privileged they are, who are too willing to look down their noses at someone who has less than they do.
My kids turned out just fine; and both have a very clear appreciation of money and how to use it responsibly (a skill few of their friends acquired).
Wow. I know where you’re coming from—I spent almost an entire year unemployed (October 2004-September 2005), and am only just now getting back on my feet. My daughter’s school serves mostly working class and working poor people, so they don’t ask for much daytime appointments—-but it still felt like a pound of flesh having to come in just for the couple of parent-teacher conferences and the special Reading Recovery conference. And I didn’t want to say anything—but yeah, I sometimes mention it–my on-again, off-again employment, just so the teachers will know. I mean, I rapid-fire through all my observations and suggestions at these meetings, not to steamroll them or be the “big boss”, but just to get my point across quickly so I can get back to work, because I don’t have the luxury of time off. Each hour spent away from work puts you closer to the top of the layoff list, y’know?
I always feel like I have to walk a fine line at those damn meetings, anyway. I have to speak a different language; express myself with a different style, if I am to be heard or understood. It was a similar dynamic in the NICU—get loaded for bear in my off-time, so I could use the same lingo they did, and thus get more attention, more information, and more respect. But afterwards, I wonder how much good it did.
I sure hope you find a teaching job. The schools need teachers like you.
I swear I’ve read this post about three times today. It’s been a distracting teething day, so I’ve had trouble with it until now, after bedtime.
Anyway, it’s made me think about my schooling. As I mentioned this summer, I went to library school, where they convince you that any second now there’s going to be a massive wave of retirement and all us new breed librarians will march in and take over. Turns out they’ve been saying that for fifteen years now. Dammit! I should have done better googling before starting school.
Trying to scramble to get a job, any job, after graduation in ‘04 has been rough. I’ve pretty much given up for now. On one hand it’s nice to read the “it’s the economy, stupid” stuff, and on the other hand it’s more disheartening, because you start to feel like it’s lottery-like odds that you’ll actually make it. We’re lucky. Finally, this year, almost two years after graduation, my bf hit the lottery and got a contractor position that can take care of all of us, and we’re working out the Beaver Cleaver thing for a while, even though I am still an unmarried slattern.
And I say lucky, but he could still be fired at any moment on a whim, and we are paying out of pocket for health insurance. Life is different now, for us. I know it’s affecting a lot of people of all ages, but sometimes I run into Boomers who are like, “you just need to work harder, and put yourself out there more.” No one’s putting thirty years in with a company anymore.
Lauren: if you have any mercy at all, you will immediately delete this post if I’ve screwed up the coding for making paragraph breaks. (Please? Darn, I wish there was a preview function.)
I’m definitely NOT one of those Boomers. And you’re right: life is very different for the younger ones now, in terms of work, jobs, career prospects, etc. It’s not dissimilar to how so many people still consider 1950s middle class family life as “normal” - each family with its own house, lawn mower, washer/dryer, and car; working dads, stay-at-home moms; re-decorating every few years; every day in every way, things getting better and better, blah blah blah.
But the 1950s and 60s were an aberration, and it’s our ignorance of social history that causes us to use that as baseline. Well, ignorance and the vested interest of the top 10% in having everyone else continue to believe that it’s just a matter of us trying harder. Why aren’t we all way more vocal and obviously worried about the erosion of the middle class? I think in large part it’s because none of us wants to admit that we’re stuck in an increasingly stratified system.
Jeez. That reminds me of a friend of mine, “Marianne”, who’s married and has three children. They’re a poor family living in a relatively affluent area (she and her husband were both born in the area), and they have some serious issues to deal with. Marianne’s husband had to quit his middle-management banking job for psychiatric reasons, and now works as a custodian. One son has been diagnosed with Aspberger’s, another with bipolar illness. Marianne works part-time in retail.
They scrape by on a strict budget, county and state financial assistance, and the fact that they share a house with Marianne’s mother (they pay rent). Her mom is kind of weird, very religious and quirky. Several years ago, during whichever presidential campaign it was when Jesse Jackson was considering running, Marianne and her mother were watching the news. She idly asked her mom if she’d ever consider voting for Jesse Jackson, and her mom was horrified. “No!” she exclaimed. “Jesse Jackson wants to give away all the money to the poor!” Marianne just gaped at her and blurted out, “Mom, we are the poor!”
Nobody wants to admit that the game is so rigged. Clinging to the idea that we just have to try harder enables us to continue to imagine that we can get there, too. It’s the same mechanism that allows us to blame the poor, ’cause if it isn’t their fault, then there we are again, face to face with circumstances way out of our control.
I don’t have children, I’m not married, I dropped out of college - basically, I did everything I wasn’t meant to do. I’m not poor-poor (re your earlier post), but I’ve got no net and few prospects. Lauren, I so wish I could help you. We all need to think in terms of unusual alliances. If Ethan was going on a field trip, and I wasn’t scheduled for a cleaning gig, or dog-sitting, or whatever, I’d totally go as your stand-in. I can’t be his mom, but I could at least help alleviate some of the pressure you face as a single mom who can’t be as involved as the other YES parents would like. Or I could take him to the dentist so you don’t have to use sick time. You know? Just little things that might reduce the teeth-grinding stress.
So tomorrow, as usual for Tuesdays, I meet Marianne and get coffee and chat with her during her 40 minute lunch break. She hasn’t ever asked for my help (I’m pretty sure she has a system going), but it’s way past time for me to offer.
Darn. I tried for the paragraphs, honest.
Larkspur, it’s something on my end. I can’t figure out why it isn’t taking line breaks. If someone can help, please do.
About your friend: I’ve had plenty of people who have offered to help with this or that and I’ve very rarely been able to accept the help. Fuck pride, I guess. It’s about time I start looking for opportunities to trade different kinds of commodities with friends.
I’ve been through a slightly similar experience with my son’s kindergarten teacher.
1 - she had parents sign up for the conferences on the open house night.
2- open house night began at 5:30, which since I can’t get back to where we live until 6, I was 30 minutes late for.
3 - of course, by then, all of the evening appointments were gone. Taken by people who clearly could get there earlier. Argh.
4 - her reply, well, one of you two will just have to come alone.
5 - my reply, that’s nice. neither of us two can take any more days off this year. i understand your position, because you can’t be here until midnight or something, possibly we could do the conference by phone?
6 - oh no, i don’t do that. I like to be able to be really present during the conference.
7 - well, would you rather be unpresent and have a conference, or be presently alone?!
8 - Well, i can see where you’re son gets his temper from.
Argh. I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if I’d had to say, “there is no ‘two.’”