I like bad words and I cannot lie. You other mothers can’t deny.
For my generation, many of the swear words of our youth are no longer acceptable. Thank God. Thank God we learned, changed, and slowly understood they weren’t really acceptable in the first place. The expletives that have remained, the good ole’ unproblematic classics - thank God for them too. They’re clear, concise, and oh so very versatile. Am I expressing excitement? anger? disappointment? utter glee? I could use the exact same word for all of these emotions and more. Such efficiency! ::chefs kiss::
The thing is, I only recently realized the bad words aren’t simply the obvious profanities. The bad ones are often camouflaged, like chameleons changing color based on their context. They are words like “sorry” when used as a prefix to any valid thought. Or “only” and “just”. It’s only the two of us. I’m just a mom. They are words like “housewife”, or “spinster”* or “ambitious”. Depending on who said them and when, they could make you feel one-dimensional or small or selfish. Sometimes, they are even words like “productive”, triggering questions around self-worth if you’re not careful. (The bad words that trigger a toddler though? I’m not sure even a famed herpetologist** could spot those slippery suckers)
Earlier this year during a trip to New York, as my friend and I walked down the street in the West Village, I ran into an old co-worker and his wife. We exchanged the requisite niceties and introductions to those around us. I felt my pulse quicken when he asked me where I was working these days. Ten minutes later, our conversation wrapped and we walked away. What did I say? Your guess is as good as mine. All I can remember is feeling like I blurted out defensive sounding non-sequiturs. Why was that hard? My career guilt (tl;dr: career may be a long non-linear game and my decisions are ridden with complex feelings) aside, maybe it was about the words.
I know my vocabulary needs a little zhuzhing. I saw this article on how parents who leave the workforce for childrearing are just taking career pauses (consider me mid-song, pre-crescendo). In the cases where they are cutting back hours, they are just down-shifting. Here’s one on replacing the term stay at home mom (we do leave the house folks!). I love this idea of re-examining our language, of realizing the implied perceptions and limitations, and reframing. Ctrl + Find + Replace.
It’s clear I didn’t develop my associated feelings about language in a vacuum. We are continuously conditioned by primitive and subtle messaging, critiquing every sentence we speak. We’re graded against unyielding archetypes. We’re represented as June Cleaver or Miranda Priestly or not at all. We’re told that our unpaid labor isn’t actually worthy of the title “work”. Our vernacular is shaped by the abstract entities of society and culture, but also a very tangible one - the employer. Could they sign up for linguistics training too? Maybe then we wouldn’t then be so afraid of the dreaded “gap” in our resume, another occasionally bad word.
There are numbers that can articulate the power of words. Some estimate the ‘motherhood penalty’ (as compared to the ‘fatherhood bonus’) is an actual pay gap of $0.37 - $0.29. On the low end, that’s $0.63 earned by a mom for every comparative dollar earned by a dad. (Imagine the financial implications for single parents or couples who aren’t heteronormative, such as a home with two moms). The ‘penalty’ is typically based on those moms who remain in or re-join the workforce. Many do not. Here’s a quick infographic below from the Economist on the percentage of women who re-enter the workforce ten years after having a baby. Why yes, the US does indeed have a net negative percentage, showing little to no improvement over time.
But I digress. We know the data, viscerally. We fear it even. But what about our vocabulary? If I can’t change the data myself, I can at least change my lexicon, right? Because something about the words we are using is not capturing the expanse of my “unemployed” universe. And the really bad words? The most insidious ones? They were changing how I valued myself. So what are the good words? And is multi-hypenate one word or two?
I guess this is my public announcement that I’m a herpetologist now. Oh and a newly enrolled English major specializing in linguistics. I really am the jack of all trades. Jokes aside, I formally pledge to be more intentional with my language, more thoughtful about how it makes me (or others) feel. I invite you all to do the same, and would love to hear what words make you feel good. Maybe we can borrow from one another.
I am not just what I did today, this week, this month, this season of life even. I have so many interests, hobbies, skills, and tremendous experience to offer. It’s hard to remember this sometimes, outside of a salary, a year-end review or a promotion, but I know it’s still there. There’s one word I’m not changing though. You guessed it. $%#&!
*Yes, surprisingly “spinster” is still in circulation, just ask my landlord from 2010-2012 who initially refused to rent to me because he didn’t want to “encourage spinsters”. I’ll never tell him I married.
**to save you from googling this (like I did), a herpetologist specializes in the study of reptiles and amphibians.
ICYMI: Career guilt | What do we owe each other? | Where are you from? | Do you have to know sorrow to know kindness? | Captain’s log
Someone recently said to me, in reference to the female community she has, “we’re all walking each other home”. The words left me warm and so clear on what she was saying!