Writing While Mothering
By a Woman with Small Children and a PhD in Classics
“You seem impressively together” my Editor-in-chief Donna Zuckerberg texts me, on the topic of how I’m managing work and life now that I have three children. “That’s never the case, I can assure you,” I message back. Donna replies: “the seeming is the important part.”
I get this a lot (it must be that the lipstick I usually wear gives a not-a-hot-mess impression?). People are always asking me how I manage to write, edit, and keep three children alive. “Lowered expectations” is my usual response. And to a certain extent, this is true. I don’t dress myself or my kids in clothing unless we are leaving the house, we eat a lot of takeout, I have an impressive tolerance for mess, and—horror of horrors—my Pinterest boards are bored fantasies, not to-do lists.
Don’t get me wrong, I probably do have lower expectations for certain things, but I also have a lot of help from my mom and husband and a superhuman ability to tune out noise. Because I get this question a lot, and because our society usually sends the message that women can’t work and mother at the same time (or at all), I decided to share my memories of what was happening behind the scenes of every article I’ve written for Eidolon or our editors’ blog, Idle Musings.
