Relative View

Balancing tasks, attitudes part of a family's story

Abby Shifriss | courtesy photos

Abby, our youngest, volunteering in Americorps before she went to college, ended up stripping bark from trees as her team helped to construct a nature center in Oregon.

I watched a PBS interview Bill Moyers did with anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson years ago.
She spoke of leaving Iran, where her husband was teaching, when the 1979 revolution happened: “I had friends who were happy to go back to the veil, because at least then their roles were defined. In our country, men and women are struggling with who does what.”
I loved that interview so much that I wrote Bateson a letter, asking if she were teaching any classes in the Boston area, where we lived then. (I had read “Blackberry Winter,” the autobiography of Bateson’s mother, Margaret Mead, and knew that she lived in Boston.)
I explained that I was at home with my baby son, thinking about next steps in my work life.
She called and offered me a job as her assistant.
Bateson has written about women and work and juggling time and needs, especially in “Composing a Life.” But for the couple of years that I worked for her in Boston while she was teaching in Washington, D.C., during the week (opening her mail; doing errands or trips to the airport; walking her big Akita dog, Shizou — all with my little son in tow), I learned from seeing her home life that she and her husband found ways to both have demanding jobs and take care of some needs at home as well.
For instance, they lived in a big triple-decker house. They had the top two floors and the bottom floor was an apartment, usually rented to a couple of graduate students at a good price, with the understanding that someone would be there when their daughter came home from school.
And being her assistant worked well for me, needing to make some money as well as take care of my toddler, as well as for her and her husband, working long hours as professors.
I don’t know what the background was in their house, but over the years, so much of trying to juggle tasks and demands in our home ... let’s just say there has been plenty of talk about just who does what.
And hiring help, as Bateson hired me? Not possible for us.
We tried, as our Shifriss Adventure Team (the name my husband, Jordie, gave to our family even before the kids were born) grew up, to emphasize personal responsibility and teamwork, non-sex-role-related.
I was heard to say, “Laundry is not brain surgery!” and then when I took a few journalism classes, “I abdicate as Queen of this kitchen!” Then, conversely, I would expect my husband to take care of car problems. (I am ashamed of that.)
Though I’ve often found myself stuck in old patterns, the kids don’t seem to be.
For instance, Adam makes a really fine pie crust (which he learned in nutrition class at Bloomington High School North). And he’s the only member of the family to routinely use an iron.
Amalia, in Los Angeles, has been involved in several accidents in which her car was rear-ended. One was especially challenging: “The man who hit me tried to say I hit the car in front of me first. I don’t know if he thought I would just cave and not fight it because I am a woman, and was dealing with it on my own, or because he was part of a very famous family. But I fought, I got a lawyer and we went to arbitration. It took a long time, but I won.”
And Abby, our youngest, volunteering in Americorps before she went to college, ended up stripping bark from trees as her team helped to construct a nature center in Oregon. Although I call myself a feminist, I felt shocked when she told me she had been trained to use a chainsaw. She said “That’s why I didn’t tell you until afterwards.”
Change does happen, even if it takes a while. I’m still learning.

Contact Lynne Foster Shifriss at lshifriss@yahoo.com.