Why is Ma Ingalls Happier than You? (Part 1 of a series.)

And so begins another series.  This one is inspired by the well-known Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  As a young girl, I read and re-read these books countless times, seeing life on the prairie through the eyes of Laura and Mary.  Sometimes their lives seemed so different from mine:  I couldn’t imagine life without electricity, or the fact that an orange could be so exotic and rare that it was a special Christmas treat.  And of course some things were so similar.  Being the new kid in school can be hard, and it seems like there’s always some obnoxious Nellie Olesen around to contend with.

Reading these books with my son, I now find myself fascinated by the woman Ma Ingalls must have been.  Although the basic work of tending to children and the household have remained constant for ages, Ma’s life was so different from my own.  She repeatedly moved her family to the very edges of civilization.  Along with Pa, she grew most of what her family ate.  She made their clothes.  She faced the illnesses of childhood without the benefit of vaccines or medical care nearby.  Her contact with family and friends was sometimes frequent and sometimes quite limited.

And yet, she doesn’t seem to suffer in the ways that I see moms, particularly stay at home moms suffer these days.  Her physical circumstances were much more difficult than those that moms today face, and yet, Ma Ingalls (at least as portrayed in the books) does not seem to experience the kind of existential angst that the moms I know often do.

I’m not really interested in a debate about whether women had it harder ‘back then’ or whether women today who live in circumstances analogous to hers have it harder than privileged women in developed countries.

What interests me is looking at why women living in contemporary society seem so much less satisfied with our lives than women of earlier generations and other times.

I have a few thoughts- and maybe you do too.

In this post, I’d like to consider the notion of ‘productivity.’

Have you ever heard a mom (perhaps even yourself!) say, “I just haven’t been very productive lately.”

Chances are, if you have heard or said this, it wasn’t the gloating of a woman who’d just been on vacation, or who had just finished off her third box of bon bons.  More often when I hear (or say) this, it’s with a tone of discouragement or frustration.  The women who utter these words have usually been running around crazy busy, doing stuff like mad, and yet, at the end of the day/week/month, they aren’t really sure what they’ve done.  But they are pretty sure that it hasn’t been productive.  And whatever they’ve been doing, it definitely hasn’t been satisfying.

I hear these concerns about ‘productivity’ a lot.  I hear them on the playground or in the parking lot just chatting with other moms.  I hear them from nearly every woman I’ve had the privilege of coaching.  I even hear them addressed in some form or fashion in nearly every woman’s magazine out there.

I used to think that this complaint was part of the way that women tend to devalue our own work.  Feeling like what we did wasn’t important, even though it was essential for the sustained functioning of our family and community.

With that framework, I’d encourage moms to really take a look at what they actually did and give themselves a little credit.  Given just a little nudge, they could usually see that they hadn’t really done nothing, and that at least something had gone better because of their actions.

As far as it goes, it’s not a bad strategy, and it almost always helps– at least some.

But I see now that it really doesn’t get to the heart of the issue.  The lightbulb came on when I saw clearly the distinction between ‘production’ and ‘maintenance.’

The bad news:  You’re NOT being productive…

One of my finds at the book sale from a few weeks ago was a little book by a guy with a big name.  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the landmark book Flow has a followup: Finding Flow.

In this book he talks about how people spend their days and where they are most likely to find the sweet spot where we are fully engaged, mind, body and will, in whatever we’re doing.

According to Csikszentmihaly, when we’re not sleeping, our time is divided between the activities of ‘production’, ‘maintenance’ and ‘leisure.’   As he defines them,

Productive activities are what we must do to generate energy for survival and comfort.

Maintenance activities are what we do to preserve the body and its possessions

Leisure is what we do with time left over from the first two.

Leaving leisure aside for the time being, let’s take a look at production vs. maintenance.

Using these definitions, we can see that much of what Ma Ingalls did during her very busy days was in fact productive.  Taking the most basic of human needs, food, clothing and shelter, we can see that she was instrumental in producing each of these.  She planted, tended, harvested and prepared the food that fed her family.  She made most of the clothes that they wore.  At least once or twice, she helped Pa build the very houses they lived in.  Much of her day was spent in this kind of ‘productive’ labor, securing the survival and comfort of her family.

In addition to her ‘productive’ labor, the Ingalls family certainly had some maintenance to do.  As far as ‘maintaining the body,’  I think of this as making sure people get enough food, water, sleep, and that basic health and hygiene are looked after.  Ma made sure everyone got fed, tended to when sick, and had a bath on Saturday night.  She mended their clothing and with the help of the girls, kept their homes neat and clean.

We read about Pa taking his gun down and cleaning it in front of the fire every night.  Tending to the animals was no doubt a big job and an essential part of preserving the possessions of the family.  But simply because they had relatively few possessions, there was less to maintain.

Reading these books today, I don’t think that Ma had an easy life, but she had a good life.  I get the sense that she ended her days tired, but satisfied.  She had been productive.

Now consider what your own life looks like with these distinctions in place.  For stay-at-home moms in particular, not much of our time is spent in generating energy for survival or comfort.  These days, when food comes from the grocery store and not the garden out back, money is the energy that is used to produce this necessary ingredient for survival.  Similarly, keeping warm requires not the effort of chopping wood, but money to pay the electric bill.  And while I know plenty of moms who knit or sew, I don’t know any who would even attempt to produce enough to clothe themselves or their children.

Our days are filled with maintenance.

Let’s start with the maintenance of the body.  On the one hand, human physiology hasn’t changed since the pioneer days.  We still need roughly the same number of calories each day, and the same amount of sleep.  So you might think that the time and energy required for this piece of maintenance would  remain constant.  But this doesn’t seem to be the case.  For one thing, our standards of hygiene are certainly higher.  Though my son would love it, the tradition of the Saturday night bath won’t really cut it these days!  Roughly daily showers or baths is the norm for adults, with more flexibility for kids.

Maintaining the body also means that moms are usually in charge of keeping track of the medical and dental appointments- something that Ma didn’t have the luxury of .

And while the Ingalls family certainly never needed to make time to go to the gym to stay fit, our sedentary lifestyle means that we have to exert a little effort to exert ourselves.

And don’t get me started on the stuff….

While the Ingalls girls had two or three dresses, we have walk-in closets bursting with clothes to be kept clean.  Even if we don’t wear half of them, energy goes into preserving them.

Laura and Mary had one doll each.  I’m guessing cleanup time was a no-brainer in the Ingalls household. It’ a total cliché how much stuff today’s kids have so I won’t even go there except to say that it takes energy to maintain it all.

And what do we even need to say about the maintenance our homes require?  It never occurred to me as a girl reading these books, but as an adult I realized that Ma never had to clean a bathroom!  She had two rooms to sweep, one plate, bowl and cup per person to wash and one treasured china doll to dust.  Our houses are so big and so full of stuff that they need constant tending just to prevent entropy from completely taking over.  Nuff said.

There is one form of maintenance that Csikszentmihalyi doesn’t mention but I think is worth including in the work that moms do and that’s the maintenance of relationships and communities.  Remembering birthdays and sending cards and gifts for all those special occasions.  Checking in with the friend whose husband is sick.  Soothing the tensions that arise between family members, friends or colleagues .  All that volunteer work for the school, scouts, church, etc. These are all ways in which our efforts help preserve the communities that we belong to.  Sometimes we write off having coffee with a friend or hanging out on Facebook as ‘goofing off’ or wasting time, but it could also be seen as building or sustaining relationships.  And these relationships are essential to our own sanity (which is why we sometimes feel selfish or indulgent!) but they are also an essential contribution to the continued good functioning of our community.

Probably because it involves people and not stuff, this kind of maintenance is usually much more enjoyable than doing the laundry or vacuuming the carpet.  And yet, perhaps because it’s enjoyable, we don’t seem to consider that this too takes effort.  Goodness knows there are folks who are a bear to find gifts for.  But we do it anyway.  We think carefully and lovingly about them and even if we end up with a gift card, we make sure it’s from a place we think they will like!  Bridging differences whether it’s within the family, or a turf battle at school takes finesse, compassion and lots of solid thinking.  It may not look like much from the outside, but it takes real work to keep communities from falling apart.  And this is what we do.

So no, you haven’t been productive

The punchline here is that on those days you feel like you haven’t been very productive, chances are you’re right.  You’ve been busy.  You’ve been working hard.  But you haven’t been producing, you’ve been maintaining.  And while maintaining is an essential function if you want to preserve what you have, it’s not sexy or glamorous.  And it turns out that it’s one of the least satisfying ways to spend our time.

Bummer huh?

Tune in next time to find out why maintenance is so unsatisfying, and what we can do about it.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear what you think.  Does this resonate with you?  Let us know in the comments!