Mama-Centric

A few months ago, when I was still writing a lot, I stumbled onto some interesting marketing exercises on the web. (Really, since I've been writing professionally, I've learned that content writing and online marketing are far more closely intertwined than I ever realized in my previous life, and at this point I know an amount about marketing that might shock some of my more delicate readers.)

Anyway, there's this major concept in online marketing in particular that it's very important for your "brand" to have a personality. If possible, this personality should appear to be warm, interesting, competent, hip, and extremely approachable, but most importantly it should strike people as "real". Of course, the easiest way around this challenge for most people is to use their own personality, brush it up a little for the internet spotlight, and use it to popularize and put a face on whatever they are selling (or, in some cases, "selling".)

More specifically, this personality-based brand forms the core of your business plan, and eventually gets surrounded by diverse products or services. So, if you're into ecology, you start a blog and develop a web presence about how much you love nature, complete with endearing personal quirks, multi-media and lots of interactive elements, and then once you get lots of fans you can write an e-book, sell advertising on your blog, host nature walks in your area, or whatever. You want to simplify your core message, then diversify your product line.

Which all sounds horribly cynical, but might or might not be depending on how you approach it. Yes, sure, if your goal is just to fool people into giving you as much money as possible, it's not that great. Interestingly, though, it's such a high-level meta-process that it overlaps with real life in several interesting ways. For example, you don't have to pretend that you're perfect. On the contrary, readers tend to identify best with people who seem open and honest about their personal peccadilloes. Also interestingly, the writer of the blog I was reading suggested that anyone could benefit from considering and refining their "brand" image, regardless of whether they were trying to sell anything, as a way to consider how they might be perceived by others.

It's got its strengths and weaknesses as a self-help technique, but a few months ago James and I decided to try it, with interesting results. We spent most of a day in the park, sketching on big paper and talking about how our different life goals fit together and where they connected. On this particular day, James decided that his goals connected through the concept of "art," and I felt that mine came together around the idea of "magic".

Which of course are big, loaded words, especially "magic". I'll admit to a fair bit of dabbling in the occult, an interest that seems to wax and wane mysteriously over time, and that's definitely related to my interest. But really, centrally, what I meant is much simpler than that. I didn't get around to writing a concise mission statement, but if I had there would have been something in there about reminding people that there are almost always more options than we see, that experts don't have all the answers, that positive or negative expectations often amount to self-fulfilling prophecies, and that there are so many possible sources of wonder in the world that no one person could ever exhaust them all. Magic.

So that made a lot of sense a few months ago, and I was going with that for a while. It was an interesting way to think about life, and it got me out of a slightly dreary rut. But then one day it struck me -- what about parenting? It's not that I ever forget about being a mom, but sometimes I forget, somehow, how fundamentally the experience has transformed my life. On a day to day basis, mama-centric considerations certainly take up a great deal of my time. And then, there are the bigger things. Very little in my life has been as fundamentally perspective changing, joyful, and yes, magical, as my experience of parenting so far. In fact, the only things that really compare at all have been falling in love and to some extent, other experiences of relationship.

It hurts parts of my brain to realize that parenting has, just possibly, become so central to my personal identity. Especially in recent months, while James has been working more and I've been working less, I've had to rethink a lot. I'm certainly not complaining. James seems to be enjoying his current success as a DJ and even the things he is learning in his construction work (which will come in handy if we get around to building a house some day) while I've struggled more and more with the realities of writing a lot of stuff that basically amounts to ad copy, while simultaneously wishing that people would stop consuming so much. On the other hand, I've been having a great time with River (so far two isn't terrible at all), and as James pointed out it will certainly be hard for me to work for a while after the baby is born, since if it takes after River at all I'll be spending most of my time nursing. So, I'm mostly a SAHM again.

I guess I'm lucky in that I don't feel this is an anti-feminist position to be in, and so far I haven't gotten much criticism for it (I've certainly heard about plenty of women who do). I feel that raising children is a great use of one's time, energy and talents, and that it is certainly hard work. I also feel that it's incredibly rewarding and fun, and for the most part, way more interesting than going to most types of work I can imagine. I actually know a lot of feminist moms who are in similar situations and agree with me, and while I'm glad that we didn't wait to have River until we could afford to work less, I'm glad that we can afford to now.

What surprises me a little, though, is that I don't know many families with stay at home dads. I wonder, do men just tend to like their careers more than women do? Or do they still feel more pressure to support their families? If educated women can feel lucky to stay home with their kids, why don't more men want to do it? If both parents want to stay home, why is it almost always the woman who ends up doing so? This is a real conundrum for me. If our baby is a girl, I certainly want her to grow up realizing that she has many possible adult roles other than becoming a SAHM. But on the other hand, I certainly don't want River to learn that if he wants to be a father some day, it will have to mean leaving his kids for someone else to care for while he works long hours to support them.

Of course, in our case, our employment situation is as fluid as ever. I'm still really interested in becoming an illustrator or possibly going into holistic health care eventually, but both of those projects would require a lot of initial investment in time and money that we just don't have right now. And James is doing the work that he does in part because it pays well and allows us all to spend plenty of time together too.

(I guess that was a little disjointed and inconclusive, but these things have been bumping around in my head recently.)