Single motherhood

It’s critical in the work of helping others to understand the underlying circumstantial factors and limitations of behavior. In my case, I am a single mother with three children in college, working for financial compensation part time and going to graduate school also part time. The related stress of single parenting during the high school years and consequent increase in cortisol, functioning to increase glucose availability and prepare the body to face perceived challenges, could be damaging to brain health (Hibel, L. C., Mercado, E., & Trumbell, J. M., 2012). But most would say my load has lessened since all three children are in school and in some ways it has. Yet, my children, ages 19, 19, and 21, are actually just older adolescents (Johnson, S. B., Blum, R. W., & Giedd, J. N., 2009) who need support, attention, visits, and real time, in-person love—not social media, texting, or even phone call love. We are just beginning to measure the time intensive emotional work of mothers (O'brien, M., 2005). In the context of brain health, if not in many other areas, this work of love is time well spent as it may mitigate the increase of stress-related cortisol (The Brain on Love, n.d., Love, Sex, Relationships and the Brain, n.d.). Yet, it’s a trade-off. And in my case, the trade-off is sleep.

The divorce rate in the United States hovers around 50%. Living alone, taking care of house, work, pets, bills, and maintaining friendships, and maybe beginning a new relationship takes far more time than when coupled in marriage or partnership. One person shoulders the fiscal, emotional, social, logistical, and maintenance responsibilities. Additionally, many women feel it is essential to reinvest their energies into a new career or additional education in order to have long term financial stability if, as I was, they mostly stayed at home to raise the children and not invest in career during the marriage. Jayita and Murali Poduval write that, “financial implications of living on a single income and economic aspirations compel a majority of women to get back to work” (Poduval, J., & Poduval, M., 2009).  This takes a lot of time. Again, it’s a trade-off. And again, it’s sleep. 

References

Hibel, L. C., Mercado, E., & Trumbell, J. M. (2012). Parenting stressors and morning cortisol in a sample of working mothers. Journal of Family Psychology, 26(5), 738-746.

Johnson, S. B., Blum, R. W., & Giedd, J. N. (2009). Adolescent Maturity and the Brain: The Promise and Pitfalls of Neuroscience Research in Adolescent Health Policy. Journal of Adolescent Health, 45(3), 216-221.

Love, Sex, Relationships and the Brain. (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2016, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201210/love-sex-relationships-and-the-brain

O'brien, M. (2005). Mothers as educational workers: Mothers’ emotional work at their children's transfer to second-level education. Irish Educational Studies, 24(2-3), 223-242.

Poduval, J., & Poduval, M. (2009). Working Mothers: How Much Working, How Much Mothers, And Where Is The Womanhood? Mens Sana Monogr Mens Sana Monographs, 7(1), 63.

Risk of Efficiency

What and by which measurements are we measuring?

What are we measuring? What are we not measuring? Is the productivity paradigm healthy? Is it progress to level up?

Robert Paarlberg states that in Stage One countries “without increased access to markets, improved technologies, health services, and schooling, productivity will remain low” (Paarlberg, 2011).

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To start with the last piece of that concept, lower productivity levels may allow other valuable factors contributing to the health of the community, which may be at risk when productivity is high.

In my work with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) installing a potable water system in Mexico’s high Sierra for a tiny, off-the-grid village called Bermudez (which was not yet on the map), community cohesion and lifestyle were valued equally to productivity; the villagers had time to drink coffee with neighbors, to ride up to the plateau across streams and through the woods to trade goods, to listen or dance with friends to ballads played on the porch. People laughed and sung and danced and moved their bodies in nature a lot. Are we measuring happiness? Physical activity? Positive social interaction? Immersion in nature?

[I’d like to note here that the Quakers wait until the community asks for their help and takes full responsibility for deciding the course of action.]

The productivity paradigm is at odds with the health of the community. Access to markets, better roads and transportation, is a two-way street— excuse the pun. It would most likely lead to foreign investment and market integration, which is shown to correlate to unhealthy food consumption (Stuckler, McKee, Ebrahim, Basu, 2012). In Bermudez, there were no soft drinks and no packaged food.

Improved technologies are costly to buy and to service creating dependency on external markets, most likely some foreign. This dependency pressures remote communities to move away from trade within the community and neighboring communities, and to create cash flow to pay for technological goods and services by increasing productivity, specifically of commodities in demand from external consumers. Is this paradigm healthy for the community?

Finally, what is valuable schooling for each community? In Helena Norberg Hodge’s work detailed in her book Ancient Futures (2009), for centuries children in Ladakh learned from their families and elders how to live sustainably in the harsh climate of northeastern India. When taken from their homes and land to go to “school”, they studied foreign subjects and concepts that had little to do with their lives. Additionally, they were exposed to foreign marketing that extolled Aryan physical qualities and western values and lifestyles and devalued local ones, and were separated from their families and the meaningful work and healthy food they had in their communities, tearing the fabric of their ancient and successful community system. Is that progress?

As I have no right to insist that remote communities are better if unexposed to foreign meddling, neither do others have the right to assume that productivity, “access to markets”, and “schooling” is better for health of these the communities. Self-determination may be the better answer.

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And we need to reconsider our arrogance towards people who labor hard on their "inefficient" farms. They are moving their bodies, creating community, talking to each other, outdoors, in nature while highly capitalized farms rely on expensive machinery, reduce human movement to the degree where farmers who were once lithe and fit are now combating obesity and depression. No doubt, the small farm life and growing carrots in rocky soil is taxing. I do it. But all the small farmers I know in Vermont who’ve been in the business for at least half a lifetime—and I know and have interviewed plenty—wouldn't give up their life if offered a million bucks and a starter castle. Well, maybe some.

References

Paarlberg, Robert. (2011). Governing Dietary Transition: Linking Agriculture, Nutrition and Health.

Stuckler, David; McKee, Martin; Ebrahim, Shah; Basu, Sanjay. (2012). Manufacturing Epidemics: The Role of Global Producers in Increased Consumption of Unhealthy Commodities Including Processed Food, Alcohol, and Tobacco.

Hodge, Helena Norberg. (2009). Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World. Sierra Club Books.