feminist parenting

A Case of the Human Condition: Scrubbing the Floor with My Daughter Cinderella

We still treasure our copy of Disney's VHS release of its "Cinderella" animated feature.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

The Oakland Tribune, February 26, 1989

”I want to scrub the floor,” said Christina.

“What?”

“I want to scrub the floor.”

There was no getting around it. Christina, who is 51/2, intended to wash our kitchen floor. She had been studying her “Cinderella” videotape for weeks, and now she wanted nothing more than to scrub.

Where had I gone wrong?

When she was 4, Christina liked to wash dishes. When she was 2, she asked Santa to bring her a broom for Christmas.

I arranged for a little broom and dustpan to appear under the tree that year. But I was worried.

Can a woman who actually likes to clean house be taken seriously? Can she get elected chairman of the board if she has to get home to do the dishes? Can she discover a cure for Alzheimer’s if her mind is on the furniture polish and the oven cleaner?

When Christina’s godmother saw the little broom, she, too, was nonplussed. “Barbara, you’re a terrible mother.”

Nancy was laughing, but she wasn’t kidding. Her own daughter, Liz is only 11. She can play the trumpet, speak Spanish, and has plans for a career in veterinary medicine. Liz will never be stuck with the dishes.

But Christina was born to clean. When she was 15 months, old, she emptied out the contents of her big brother’s sock drawer, like any normal toddler.

Trouble is, she then painstakingly restored every last sock to the drawer, while I looked on in dismay.

And now, at 5 ½, Christina is ready to move on to scrubbing floors.

Where will it all end? At 28, will she wind up in the suburbs with three kids and an adoring husband who showers her with diamonds and Maytags?

My feminist friends and I used to call it the Cinderella fantasy. As we saw it, the woman who entertains the Cinderella fantasy hopes to get by in life by winning the love of a man of means and living happily – and affluently – ever after.

That fantasy might have worked in the ’50s, but it is pretty much obsolete in the ’80s.

Three kids and a Maytag are easy enough to acquire. But husbands who can afford diamonds, let alone devoted full-time wives, are in short supply.

A woman can still get a husband if she is so inclined, but she also will need to get a job.

How do I break the news to Christina? How do I prepare her for the realities of the year 2003?

Christina has been watching that “Cinderella” tape day in and day out. She has learned all the songs and memorized the details of Cinderella’s ball gown and Cinderella’s rags outfit.

And now Christina was standing there in our kitchen, looking up at me wistfully. Just back from the dress-up trunk, she had a lacy skirt tied around her waist and a second frothy thing tied around her bodice.

Clearly, she was in Cinderella mode.

“Well,” I sighed. “If you’re going to wash floors, you will need to take off your ball gown. I don’t think Cinderella would do her cleaning in her best dress.”

“Oh, right. Of course,” enthused Christina. She raced off to her bedchamber to put away the royal finery.

Later, I made a beeline for my bookcase and my Bruno Bettelheim. Ah, yes. There it was, “The Uses of Enchantment” – a psychoanalytic treatment of sleeping beauties and knights in shining armor.

Inside, everyone was there. Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, the Three Little Pigs – and Cinderella.

Christina, if I was reading my Bettelheim correctly, was in the midst of a phase-specific psychosocial crisis.

She was not, it turned out, moving toward a life of passivity and treacly femininity as I had feared. On the contrary. With the help of Cinderella, my little Christina was resolving her Oedipal conflicts, accepting her femininity and addressing the issue of sibling rivalry.

She was moving out from Mommy. She was seeking a place for herself in the real world.

But as a scrub woman?

We got out the rag mop and the bucket. Together, in our Cinderella rags, we sloshed around the kitchen floor. Soaping and rinsing. Soaping and rinsing. Finally, the floor was clean.

Hey, this was fun.

Like the man said, sometimes a dirty floor is just a dirty floor.

Christina is 28 years old now, and there is neither a husband nor a floor mop in her life. I’ve finally figured out what all that Cinderella role playing was about. My daughter is a storyteller. At 28, she wants nothing more than to concoct stories for television.

A Case of the Human Condition: Why Can’t a Dad Be More Like a Mom? . . . Do We Really Want Them To Be?

Peter Newhall and his father, Jon Newhall. c 1981 B.F. Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

The Oakland Tribune, July 12, 1987

Have things changed since I wrote this piece for the Oakland Tribune? Are men taking on real child-rearing responsibilities? Or are they still just helping? Are women willing to cede some of their mom turf — are they letting the guys choose the pediatrician? The car seats? The hair bows?

Carol calls them “the little inequities.”

She is talking about the small, countless ways that men fail to notice what needs to be done for their children.

At breakfast, 2-year-old Max drops a spoon to the floor. John is reading the newspaper – he has to read it for his job.

Carol has to read the paper for her job, too. But it is she who notices that the spoon has fallen. She picks it up.

John and Carol have visitors. Max is about to walk into the living room eating a bagel slathered with cream cheese and jam.

Carol is talking to a guest. She would like to keep on talking – but jam is dripping off Max’s bagel.

John, engrossed in conversation with another guest, is unaware that a jammy bagel is headed for the living room.

Carol interrupts her conversation to steer Max back to the kitchen. John keeps talking.

“It’s their coping strategy,” says Carol of today’s fathers. “They fail to notice.”

Make no mistake. “John is a saint among fathers,” she is quick to add. He does the laundry. He dresses his children. He keeps them entertained while Carol sleeps in.

Indeed, John does a good 40 percent of the child care at their house, says Carol. For that 40 percent, however he gets tremendous sympathy and help.

“When I went out of town to a union conference,” says Carol, “John got dinner invitations for a week. When he is out of town, no one thinks to invite me for dinner.”

That’s because child-rearing in our job. We are in charge.

John washes his children’s clothes, but – and this is a big but – he does not buy them.

He does not haunt the flea markets for 25-cent sweatpants. He does not sort through the hand-me-downs. He does not rearrange the drawers to make room for the new clothes.

John dresses the baby, but often lets Carol choose the outfit.

He gets the overalls on, but can’t figure out how the hooks work.

He puts on the baby’s bathing suit. The straps criss-cross her chest.

He slips her into her nightshirt. The hood covers her face.

He gets it right the second time.

Is he playing dumb?

I can play dumb. In our house, Jon is in charge of the cooking. He asks me to help by breaking up the lettuce for a salad. I tear it into unmanageably large pieces.

Next time, Jon breaks up the lettuce.

The same way with kids.

We mothers read the parenting books, take the child development courses and spend long evenings on the telephone discussing separation anxiety, cradle cap and pre-reading skills with the other moms.

Baby is only days old but already we have her on the waiting list for that great nursery school over at Cal.

Summer is three months away, but it is not too soon to apply for gymnastics camp in Alameda or horse camp in Lafayette.

We relish our responsibilities.

Dads help – and they are getting more helpful all the time.

When we have an evening meeting, they agree to “babysit.” But when, at the last minute, their employers want them to work late, it is we who must come up with the child-care arrangement – spending 30 minutes of our employer’s time making phone calls.

Mothers are in charge. Fathers help. Perhaps that is why John was so annoyed when Carol complained to him about the bagel incident.

Who wants to help and then be criticized for not helping enough, or for not helping correctly? It’s much more fun to be in charge.

They would be good at it. They would enjoy – and resent – it as much as we.

Trouble is, I’m not willing to let go of motherhood as I have known and enjoyed it. I have ceded enough of my turf as it is.

I’m willing to let Jon have the cooking all to himself.

I’m even willing – though just barely – to let Jon decide whether granola bars are appropriate school lunch box fare.

But that’s it.

Maybe Christina will be different. Maybe – in 2017 – she will let her husband decide between cloth diapers and paper, between the Montessori and the traditional nursery school, between bangs and no bangs for her daughter.

As for me, I’m about as liberated as I can get – for the time being.