Pants-Free Parenting: Women’s issues are really human issues

There have been moments, when the kids were screaming and there was poop on the floor and my whole body was shaking with exhaustion, when I wondered why I did this to myself? Why did I choose to have two kids in Iowa? Why am I not single, somewhere else? Or just somewhere else? Or just single? Or just able to take a nap?

The answers to those questions lie at the bottom of a tangled mess of economics and choice. I am a stay-at-home, working mom because there are few jobs in town that pay me a salary that justifies day care for two. Of course, there perhaps are jobs I could take. I could make it work. But the last interview I had offered me $28,000 for 40 hours a week with no maternity leave and no flexible hours and I have a master's, so no thanks.

While economics plays a factor, this is also a place I chose. I chose to have kids. I chose to quit my job when my second baby was born. I chose to everyday wake up and make my way through this jungle of sticky floors and tent cities.

A woman is reminded of that choice - lobbed like a rhetorical grenade. - every time she complains about her situation. 'You chose this!” 'You chose to have kids!” But choice is a very complicated issue. It's even more complicated when you add in poverty, lack of access to health care and an unsupportive or absent parent.

And despite the fact that it is the year 2015, women are still the default caretaker. Even columns like this are still deemed 'women's interest” - as if only women are interested in children, as if only women care. When I talk about catching hot vomit in my hands or late nights and missed deadlines, I've had people say, 'Well, you chose to have kids!” And I did. But that statement completely misses the point.

So what is the point? That's what I wonder in those moments. I had one just yesterday. A day stuck inside because of the snow and because of strep throat and a baby literally climbing the walls to get out. I left him alone for a couple of minutes to send an email and he started the coffee maker and colored on the walls. When I went to the bathroom, he climbed on the table and laughed while his sister puked in a bowl and Elsa sang 'Let it Go!” in the background. But it's hard to think too deeply about the social, geographical and economic factors that bring you to your knees picking chunks of cheese out of the carpet.

I do want things to be different. I want choice to be exactly what it should be - not some sort of trajectory made feasible by systemic sexism and a poor economy and a government that sees child care as a 'women's issue” instead of a human issue. It's hard for everyone. A friend of mine who is expecting asked me if she should quit her job. I asked her why wouldn't her husband do that? I asked her if she liked working? I told her that neither side is easier than the other. No one parent is better at this than the other. That we are all just muddling and we all have to find our own best ways and some are lucky enough to have more choices. But are they really choices when these are questions I ask myself all the time, but very few fathers ever do?

But where does that leave us? Me cleaning the carpet. The kids in bed.

I'm lucky. I'm grateful and I have whiskey and I know that finding your best way is a constant process. We give and take. But whatever else this is about, it isn't just about women's issues. It's about human issues.

' Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.