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My Mother/Myself
By Linda Baker
Web Exclusive

Nothing stifles political correctness more quickly than child rearing. I'm referring, specifically, to the theory that women should be the primary caregivers. Many would-be parents are eager to prove this an antediluvian notion, only to find, post-childbirth, that the practice is not so easy to extinguish.

My husband and I were no exception. Before our son was born, I planned our parental life as a living, breathing, equal division of labor. I would work half time; so would my husband. We'd bottle feed occasionally, so that I wouldn't be the only one to wake up in the middle of the night. He'd give the children dinner, run their baths, and play a prominent role in toilet training. And so on.

But in all my calculations, I never factored in the power of the body--my body, that is: my life-giving, milk-producing, female body. Not that I was a biological innocent. What woman doesn't know that having children is an intensely physical experience? The nine months of pregnancy, the unspeakable horror of childbirth, the endless hours of breastfeeding. My husband, as I grew fond of telling him during the third trimester, would always be one body removed from the various stages of the birth process.

Still, we clung to our original beliefs. Once the child emerged from the womb, bereft of enabling devices such as the umbilical cord, he would be free to bond equally with Dad.

My son Kiel is now five, and here are some of the things I wasn't prepared for. First of all, he's in love with my hair. Kiel has joined with my hair the way other children bond with a stuffed animal or tattered blanket. Whenever he is tired, hurt, or just plain bored, my son grabs handfuls of hair, curls it around his fingers, and twists it in his hands. For him, reaching for my hair is an instinctive gesture, just as a hungry infant might search for the breast. My response has become equally automatic. His hands go out, and I lean my head forward. Synchronicity.

My three-year-old daughter Sasha, meanwhile, has set her sights on my arm-my forearm in particular. Like her brother with his hair fetish, Sasha needs my arm to fall asleep or to soothe herself after mental or physical trauma. "ARM! I need your ARM, Mommy!" she cried the other day when she fell off the slide at the playground. Glaring at any parent who might look askance, I reached out. My daughter took the proffered limb, rubbed it against her face, stroked and caressed it. Having had her fix, she then skipped happily back to play. My children, in short, have colonized my body. There is little chance of me staging a successful revolt, nor do they show any signs of leaving of their own free will. Last night, as I read to them in bed, Kiel was playing with my hair and Sasha was nuzzling both my arms. "A woman's body is not her own," I remarked, to no one in particular.

The hair/arm fixation is only the tip of the iceberg. My children monitor my body with the infallibility of a surveillance camera. And when I make a wrong move, there is no way to logic them out of the inevitable tantrum. "You don't look the same when you're wet, mommy!" cries my son every morning when I come out of the shower. Instinctively, he reaches for my hair, its moisture only sending him into fresh paroxysms. With Sasha too, it's always the mundane that matters. "Put your glasses back on, mommy," wails my daughter on those rare occasions when I take them off. "I don't like you with your contacts in."

It would be easy enough to write off my children's obsession with my body as idiosyncratic behavior. My mother, for example, thinks the problem arose because my children spent the first two years of their lives sleeping in the "family bed." She may be right. But this does not explain the fact that my daughter demonstrates little fondness for my husband's arm, nor that my son has yet to develop a tactile relationship with his father's admittedly fine head of hair. And neither of them seeks to control or dominate his body as they do mine. What's more likely is that Kiel and Sasha's strange habits are an extension of the separation anxiety all children experience. To the child, a mother's body is both corporeal and symbolic, its absence cause for existential despair.

Whatever the reason, the children's fixation has wrought havoc with our dual caregiver theory and practice. It's true that my husband worked half time during the first two years of Kiel's life. But both children resisted any effort to translate quantity into quality. While they adore their father, they do so in times of health rather than sickness, in good times rather than bad. I'm the one who heals the scraped knees, soothes the developing ego, and quells the nighttime fears. It's not that their father is incapable; it's just easier for me to wrap my body around them and, through osmosis, make their problems my own. As Kiel and Sasha's mother, I am, clearly, the primary caregiver.

What it comes down to, I've decided, is that my young children believe they are me, that my body is their body. That's my version of anatomy is destiny. And yes, for feminist-inclined parents, the implications are troubling. Nothing is more ideologically laden than child rearing, and most people feel an overwhelming need to perpetuate their own reality. In the history of Western civilization, this usually means using mothers as ammunition against gender equality.

But I, for one, have never been an advocate of sociobiology, a study of social behavior that inevitably consigns women to secondary status. On the contrary, if my body is biologically scripted, it's because, as writer Luce Irigaray puts it, woman is "the sex that is not one." In an increasingly diverse world, that's a liberating idea, not an oppressive one. If my children's obsessions lead to deeper understanding of that concept, who am I to complain?

Co-parenting is still my ideal. But in the meantime, I'm happy playing host to Kiel and Sasha, two of the most adorable parasites I know.

Linda Baker writes on women's and environmental issues from Portland, Oregon.