Elgan asks whether we women, wives, and mothers, feel belittled by the accomplishments of our husbands, brothers and sons. For me the answer is yes and no. By the people who matter to me most � my husband and son, my parents and brother, my in-laws � I have never felt my accomplishments belittled. I have always been encouraged to work hard and meet my personal goals. My family and friends have done nothing but support me and help me with my work, celebrating my successes with me, and helping me over times when things aren�t going so well. Anyone who does otherwise is pretty easy to avoid. I am probably my own worst enemy in this regard. I am far more likely to make light of my own work than anyone I spend much time with.

There are occasional moments where I feel my husband belittles my accomplishments � I have been known to accuse him of such a transgression in the heat of an argument � but he truly does not. In reality, he has been the most supportive of all, accepting the challenge of being a single-earner family while I finish school. But the fact is that school for me always competes with my other responsibilities of taking care of AJ and managing the house so my husband has time to do the work he needs to do to pay the bills. Because my work doesn�t bring in immediate cash, it is most easily compromised when things get busy. Yes, my work as a wife and mother takes precedence over my work as an academic at this time in my life and also takes a back seat to my husband�s work. But that is also an arrangement we have consciously made in order to manage our current situation. Although I still feel uncomfortable and occasionally frustrated with it, it is what works best for now.

In academia I have been accustomed to a culture that prioritizes intellectualism, something my upbringing also stressed. Although I�ve certainly been a victim of my share of objectification, I have, for the most part, been spared the conforming stresses of traditional gender roles. While there are certainly biases related to gender within an academic environment, not being taken seriously for my abilities and accomplishments was never a problem for me. I can hold my own. It wasn�t until I had a child and moved out of the city and away from the sheltering walls of the university that I had to deal with the invisibility quotient.

What is weird about being a parent in a place designed for the raising of small children (i.e. American suburbia) is that most of the places I go are all about children. Adults seem to exist in such an environment only as necessary appendages to those who are too young to drive or, in some cases, walk. In such a situation, having children is enough of a commonality to start a relationship of sorts, but it seems that such relationships rarely have the opportunity to exist without remaining firmly tethered to the children.

My husband and I were actually discussing this very issue this weekend prior to elgan�s query. The talk had been generated by a deadly dull party we had to attend and Tom Perotta�s novel Little Children. I haven�t actually read the novel beyond the first few pages and I�m not certain that I will (although Election was fabulous, so I�m willing to give Perotta the benefit of the doubt), due to the principal character�s situation, at least as described in those few pages. She is an escapee from a Ph.D. in gender studies who moved with her to the suburbs to raise her child and is finding the switch bewildering. And she seemed remarkably unpleasant, bitter and arrogant. And familiar. She is anxious about her lack of mothering experiences, alarmed by those who seem not only to do it all naturally and with great precision and discipline, but by those who seem to yearn for nothing but parenting.

I find it odd that the women I see and talk to nearly daily � at the playground, pool, playgroup, preschool � I know next to nothing about. I hope it is not because there is nothing to know. Surely one of these women has an interest beyond carpool and menu planning and toilet training. And yet, how is it possible that these interests never come up in conversation? It�s because we�re supposed to be invisible, engineering the raising of children and the running of the home without complaint or regret.

I complain all the time, but I never regret. I wish I had more time to do my work. I miss making decisions on the fly. I really miss being able to skip cooking dinner when I�m tired (although my husband, who likes to cook, definitely picks up the slack when he can). But I would be much more regretful if I�d never had the chance to be a wife and mother on my own terms. I made a conscious choice to stay home with AJ while he was small. I may not have had a full realization of what that would mean for me, but it was my choice. I don�t like the fact that my academic work is never mentioned, that my accomplishments aren�t relevant. But the fact is, in my current environment, they aren�t. And I don�t really feel like I need the validation from people who don�t understand what it�s about. I do feel like I am a little more dependent on the assessments of others within academia than I was before. I am so isolated now that I no longer trust my own judgments entirely.

The most difficult thing has been learning to feel okay about the work I do as a wife and mother. I never gave much value to the mundane tasks of keeping the house running. Consequently, I have had trouble feeling good about what I do. No matter how much time I spend playing with AJ, cleaning, cooking, making repairs, paying bills, I always feel like a slacker because I�m not doing the work that is meaningful to me. Gradually, I�ve learned to enjoy it more and to give it the time it needs, but it�s never going to be satisfying to me in the same way that my academic work can be satisfying. I don�t mean, by this, to say that raising AJ is not a satisfying enterprise. It is. But the day-to-day aspects of it can be extremely tedious even when the rewards are great. He is three. He needs my constant care. And sometimes I don�t think I have the attention span to keep up with him.

There is actually, I think, much more to say -- on our obsession with retaining youth, on the Stepford Wives, on the explosion of books on motherhood in recent years, on the rise in fertility treatments -- but I have rambled on enough for one day.

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