The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (25 page)

I asked them if they wanted to talk about the problem in their marriage. They said they did; it might help. What was the problem? The problem was not their child. They were profoundly pleased with their exuberant, bright, winsome, curly-headed daughter and wanted another child just like her. For different reasons, both were unhappy in their present jobs, but neither lived for career, anyway. They never fretted or quarreled about money, and neither one spent much. (“Barbara will call from the store and ask me whether she should buy a blouse, and I’ll tell her, sure, but why
are you asking?”) Many of the usual causes of trouble didn’t bother the Livingstons.

They said the problem was partly that they lacked time together. Softhearted people, they opened their home to dozens of kin and friends in need. Barbara’s father stayed with them for six months when Barbara was pregnant with Cary, gradually gaining weight and getting off the bottle. Shortly after that, they invited Barbara’s mentally retarded cousin to live with them. On a regular basis two or three nights a week, they invite friends or out-of-town colleagues to dinner.

In addition to the continual rounds of hospitality, they heaped loving attention on Cary, and this, too, effectively prevented them from talking to each other. As Barbara explained: “We were in a bad habit for a while. One of us would lie down with Cary and then fall asleep. Whoever was awake would drag the other to bed half-dozing. Now we’re trying to get Cary to sleep earlier so we can have some time together. But it’s a slow process, and scary, because we got so far apart.”

They both recognized a pattern of avoidance. But what were they avoiding? Barbara said: “I’ll say something critical. He’ll withdraw. We’re afraid that we won’t know what to say to each other, and we’ll have to face some things. I felt that he was holding things back from me. But he wasn’t. He’s just like that. And in my hurt, I developed a shell that just got thicker and thicker. I lost touch with what makes me happy. I just knew something was wrong.”

I asked John, “How much do you feel the problems you’ve had communicating and feeling close with Barbara are related to having two careers and a family?” He answered:

When Cary was four months old, Barbara went back to fulltime work at her old job, and Consuela came from eight-fifteen until six o’clock. At this point, John got some time with Cary but not under the relaxed condition he would have liked. And now the pressures on Barbara had slowly escalated as well. As John put it:

John had found in Barbara the one person who could communicate with him in a way that his mother and father never had, and now depended on her for that. When Cary was born, Barbara focused on the baby. John focused on Barbara, feeling excluded, hurt, and angry.

At the same time, John felt these weren’t the “right” feelings: he wanted to have as much paternal feelings toward Cary as Barbara had maternal ones. But perhaps because Barbara unconsciously crowded him out, perhaps because he didn’t know how to feel paternal, that’s not how it worked out. On the surface, the idea was “we are equally involved in parenting Cary.” But in reality, it didn’t feel that way. Given John’s belief that his wife’s career should be as important to her as his career was to him, John felt too
guilty
to
complain about her long hours. In the face of this conflict, he withdrew and began working longer hours at his own job:

Finally, John quit his job and was quickly hired by another company, where once again his work situation was difficult: “There are three vice presidents. None of them trust me, because I’m not Japanese. I’m getting nasty telexes from my boss in Tokyo asking ‘Where’s this?’ and ‘Where’s that?’ Then my boss in Los Angeles is talking to the people who work under me about my Tokyo boss’s complaints.”

Feeling abandoned at home and criticized at work, John began to suffer anxiety attacks. As he described:

For his anxiety, his doctor prescribed Xanax, but now John had gradually become dependent on it: “They do control my anxiety, but they’re downers. They make me lose sexual interest. I used to take about two a day. I wanted to get off them; every time I’d call for a refill I’d hope they’d say no. I’m still taking them, but not nearly as often.”

Desperate for a nonchemical solution to his anxiety, John went to a biofeedback institute, where his instructor told him he was suffering from “male menopause.” But John was doubtful: “I don’t think that was it. I felt my anxiety had more to do with my home life and my work. I didn’t go back.”

Never in his life had he so needed someone to talk to and never had it seemed so hard. Barbara was trying her level best to take care of Cary and her job; beyond that she felt trapped in the heavy silence between them.

In the eighteenth century, young parents like John and Barbara might have been faced with a bad crop of corn, a fire in the barn, a child’s colic. And one might have suffered a “nervous disorder,” said to be caused by diet and damp weather. Each might have found it hard to communicate. Each might have felt alone. But they wouldn’t have dreamed of divorce.

As a late-twentieth-century couple, the Livingstons required of their marriage a higher standard of human happiness. A marriage without talk or sex is, by modern measure, a marriage that need
not be. The question of divorce was haunting Barbara and John when they thought of seeing a counselor.

The counselor suggested that they ask the mentally retarded cousin to leave the house, that they put Cary to bed earlier, that John wean himself from the Xanax, and that they both give more time to their marriage. But where would the time come from? The first shift, or the second? John thought this:

I asked him, “You’d be willing to quit your job?”

John said he wanted Barbara to quit because of
Cary.
But it was he, not Cary, who was feeling deprived.

I asked Barbara if she would be willing to quit her job to stay home with Cary. She looked vague. “I don’t know. I can’t feel my feelings.” When she gave her reasons for working, she mentioned such things as “wanting to be able to spend twenty dollars for
lunch with friends rather than three dollars for a sandwich at Bill’s.” The work itself, she went on to explain, was a little boring just now. Then, dissatisfied with her answer, she repeated, “I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

Barbara and John’s family myth had been: Barbara can’t stop to talk to John because she’s a busy working mother. The counselor had begun to show them that Barbara’s perpetual motion had also become a way to avoid conflict with John. Now she didn’t dare stop.

This fear of conflict struck me during a certain episode that occurred in the kitchen one evening I was with them. John was preparing a delicious baked chicken from his own recipe. Barbara was sitting at the kitchen table, teaching Cary Spanish names for the parts of the body. (“Where are your
manos
? Where is your
cabeza
? Where are your
ojos
?”) Consuela spoke little English, and Barbara was trying to create some consistency. They had invited Ann, an acquaintance in town on business from Kansas, to dinner. Ann turned out to be a dog fancier (“rather have a dog than a child”) who was two weeks past the signing of her divorce. Daisy, meanwhile, had been banished to the cellar, where she was silently cutting teeth on Cary’s old dolls. Occasionally looking toward the cellar door, the guest held a polite smile while Cary tied a chair to the garbage can with a long rope. I was also a guest that evening, talking for the moment with Cary.

Barbara asked me if I’d read the book
How to Be a Better Parent.
I said I hadn’t. In what little time she and John had available, she was eager that they learn how to be the best parents they could. In particular, she’d noticed that she was more often the disciplinarian, John more often the “softy.” One thing they already did well was parenting; feeling confident, perhaps, that they could build on that strength, she said to John: “You’ll want to read
How to Be a Better Parent.
It’s really good. We need to work on being more consistent.” John looked doubtful. She remarked about another parenting book, which he had liked. “It was okay,” John replied. She urged him a bit more to read
Better Parent.
Feeling
pressed at work, and perhaps accused of being not quite up to snuff in the one area of life he did feel good about, John turned on her. “Do they have lessons on how to be a bitch?” There was a long, painful silence. “I didn’t mean that,” he said softly, “I
really
didn’t.” “There’s truth in sarcasm,” Barbara replied. They saw no way to undo the harm and, with the two visitors, the embarrassment. Almost against their will, the marital machine had punched out regrettable words that could not be taken back. Finally, the child improvised a new rope game with the guest, amused us all, and the rest of the dinner was fine.

The last I’d heard, the owner had moved Barbara’s beauty salon to Stockton, adding a two-hour commute to her workday. Yet, reporting this news, Barbara was curiously relaxed. “So, it will be a long drive,” she said. John philosophically added, “We’ll have to see what the counselor says.”

Two months later, they invited me to dinner again. I said I’d bring dessert. John answered the door. “Nothing’s changed,” he said right away. “We had twelve for dinner two nights ago. And three friends of Barbara’s from New York have been staying overnight.” One friend who was moving to San Jose placed an ad in the newspaper for an apartment, listing their home phone number, so the phone rang day and night. I asked if they didn’t feel imposed on. “No,” John said. “We’re happy doing it.” Their openheartedness to others, their sociability, their love of commotion was continuing, as John thought it probably always would. “When Cary grows up, I hope she invites friends over.”

But despite what John said, something had changed. They had not created more time for themselves; they were beginning to fear it less. I noticed that the house looked more fixed up and settled in. For the first time, John mentioned the idea of a vacation without Cary. On an afterthought, Barbara had decided to keep the dog. Still for the most part the dog was in the yard or basement—set aside, like the marriage. But now they wanted to keep her and she was allowed to frolic excitedly in the kitchen with Cary for a while and urged to calm down before she was sent outside.

Barbara voiced the feeling that, as the grand arranger of the second shift and primary parent to Cary, sometimes she felt like John’s mother. Their counselors had assigned John the task of trying to feel and act more like Barbara’s father. Before he died, John’s father had not put his hand on John’s shoulder, had not talked to John about things on his mind. Since John’s mother had been uncommunicative as well, there was little in John’s childhood he could draw on for this task. But he had a hopeful, exuberant manner as he described trying to feel and act fatherly toward Barbara. It was fun to try. And if Barbara wanted him to, he was pleased to try his very best. It was an “exercise” the counselors had given them, a little embarrassing, but already Barbara looked pleased.