Greetings dear readers,
Up until about two weeks ago I was sure I’d never write anything again, so bummed out with my life was I. The start of 2019 was hard, and that’s why I wrote nothing. Just functioning was difficult enough. I had a miscarriage that started on the very first day of the new year, and it made me sad beyond belief.
During that journey I learned that hormones are incredibly powerful and, resilient as I might try to be, sometimes you can't control how you feel by just willing yourself better. Surprising, eh. I also learned how woefully inadequate the maternity services in Ireland are. I obviously already academically knew this, but to feel it on a visceral level is something else entirely. I now know we desperately need e-health records and in the meantime much better and consistent paper record keeping. We need a way to link up GPs and midwives, ER and outpatients and community care. I had midwives both congratulate or commiserate when I was in the in-between portion of time, and neither was the right thing to do.
One good thing came out this experience. I talked about my miscarriage to everyone I came across, because I was going through something that felt totally surreal and unexpected (foolishly, yes). I couldn't accept that I had to keep something so sad completely secret. I discovered that so many women I know and care about have had one, two, or even three miscarriages in their reproductive journeys. We shared and bonded and it was cathartic. I never would have learned that otherwise.
I intended to write a newsletter to combine my academic interest in 'feminist political economy', an abstract way of thinking about the structural causes of women's inequality, with my own experiences as a woman and as a mother. This year I've been confronted with the reality of that, and it feels far from good. It has been bearing down heavily on me, and honestly it's been demoralising. In my PhD thesis I wrote about 'invisible inequalities' and how multiple intersecting factors combine to make women's lives difficult, how these factors are often masked and for all intensive purposes invisible. Their impact is often felt privately.
Let me delve a little deeper into this for one brief moment before I leave you for now (I have a pressing project I must get back to - I'm cataloging every trad tune I got from my flute teacher from 2000 - 2006). I just finished studying, and so I'm hoping to actualise my potential and get some sort of nice job that allows me to use my skills and earn some money. But I can only apply for part-time jobs because it would be too much to have Anna in childcare for 50 hours a week. Plus there are no creche spaces available in my area anyway (I rang at least 8), and I can't put Anna's name down until I have a job because I can't afford to pay without a salary. They won't hold places and it's first come first served.
I had a casual child minder for Anna but I had to stop her going because I couldn't afford it. So now any academic writing, and job applications, anything for me, has to be squeezed into next to no time at all. And that weighs on me. It's also incredibly hard to even find part-time, flexible jobs to apply for. On the job site I look at, about 10% of the jobs are part-time.
It's a ridiculous situation to be in, really. Childcare is utterly unaffordable for most Irish families but they're forced into it anyway because the cost of living is so high. Women are still the primary carers of children. We still do the bulk of the housework. And we also have to work. But if we want to choose flexible, part-time work, it's very difficult to find, and it exacerbates the gender pay gap anyway. Women are delaying the age at which they have their first child, they're having fewer children, and the cost of living is creeping ever higher.
None of these issues are specific to me. And all of this comes with the caveat that I'm in such an unbelievably lucky position to be able to afford to stay at home with my child at all. These are issues of systemic maldistribution, a symptom of an individualistic society that pushes everyone to bend to the will of the market, devalues reproductive labour, informal work and all forms of care. I do believe we can change it, by getting involved in politics and challenging injustices we see in our everyday lives and teaching our small people to be very kind.
On a more positive note, my little human turned 2 and is as kind and happy a child as I have ever known. Her favourite songs are John Denver's Country Roads and Tears for Fear's Shout, which is fab.
Amy xo
Two Years!
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