There’s been so much talk about quiet quitting in the workplace—also known as work-to-rule, or just doing your job and not giving all your time and brainpower to your employer. This NPR piece quotes a TikTok made by engineer Zaid Khan explaining the concept:
"I recently learned about this term called quiet quitting, where you're not outright quitting your job, but you're quitting the idea of going above and beyond," Khan says. "You're still performing your duties, but you're no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life. The reality is it's not — and your worth as a person is not defined by your labor."
I love this, AND ALSO: let’s extend it to the home. Let’s refuse to subscribe to the hustle culture mentality of motherhood.
(Amanda Montei over at Mad Moms had a great essay on moms quiet quitting housework, and that’s really worth a read if you’re interested in domestic labor, the 1975 women’s strike in Iceland, and the Wages for Housework campaign. )
Here’s my underlying grand theory of motherhood: a lot of what’s hard about motherhood as an institution and mother as an identity has a hell of a lot more to do with a performing a particular kind of motherhood—homemade organic baby food, Montessori-approved wooden blocks, kids enrolled in so many enriching after school activities that a whole logistics team can’t map the carpool—than it does about what our kids actually need from us. Kids are hard. Babies are basically impossible. But trying to perform good motherhood is work we can quit.
In other words: your worth as a mother is not defined by your labor.
a photo I took at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in August, from an exhibit I loved and whose artist I promptly forgot, apologies
(or at least make your kids help. Mine sort their clothes, then toss them into their drawers. It’s chaotic, but they end up with clean clothes they can usually find, so it’s fine. Making your kids help with this kind of work is also a way of making the labor visible, something Virginia Sole-Smith wrote about in her recent newsletter on meal planning. There are no cleaning fairies living in my house. Nobody gets to just have clean folded clothes whooshed into their drawers while they play their bajillionth hour of Roblox.)
behold, the king of laundry mountain!
stop packing lunches. My 9 year old decided he wanted to start packing his own lunch, so we told him he had to do his younger brother’s, too. Turns out he can peel and slice a cucumber and put an Uncrustable in lunch boxes just as well as his dad can.
stop being the family holder of all the knowledge. There’s a great Nora Ephron (I think!) thing that I cannot for the life of me find about how you should never know where the milk is, because once you do, you’re responsible for finding it, noticing when you’re running out, and buying more. (Her version is zippier; please let me know if you can find it!) But here’s the lesson: if you know how to pay the karate teacher, you’ll end up being responsible for knowing when classes are and how to tie the belt and checking the facebook group to see if the schedule has been changed again. (I’ve learned almost nothing about karate in the nearly two years my kid has been doing it! So much extra space in my brain that’s not cluttered by knowing sensei’s Venmo.) Let someone else know things.
Over to you: what are you quitting at home?
(And I’d love it if you would invite a friend to come chat with us! Let’s quit together!)
ooh I've got one more: I've quit dressing my kids for, or even knowing about, their various school spirit dress up days. I'm not going to devote even one moment to curating an outfit for "dress like your favorite decade" day because my kid does not have one and just getting socks and shoes on is more than enough each morning. (We do usually do pajama days because my kids love that and always remember it themselves.)
YES. Rejecting all Parent Homework of this kind is fundamental to my motherhood. I will forever send in cups and plates for the class party, I will never, ever bake or decorate for it.
I don’t interior decorate (that’s a hobby). My kids do their own lunches and laundry and have since around 8-10ish. Regarding lunches--if you need something it has to go on the grocery list as I am not checking or psychic. Regarding laundry--you can only keep one basket in your room for clean clothes. I don’t police putting away or frequency. We have had “emergencies” where a kid has to wake up early and use the speed wash function.
What I have a harder time with is splitting up stuff with my spouse. I feel unbalanced in some weird ways that have a lot to do with my refusal to do things at specific intervals (i.e. change and wash the sheets weekly). It’s complicated by the fact I am a stay-at-home mom whose job is ostensibly to do these things. So I feel like he actually has a larger share of regular required stuff than I do because I quiet quit a whole bunch of things years ago.
Ooh yes! I do such minimal decoration of any kind, this didn't even occur to me! But yes, do whatever holiday decorating brings you joy and not one bit more!
ooh I've got one more: I've quit dressing my kids for, or even knowing about, their various school spirit dress up days. I'm not going to devote even one moment to curating an outfit for "dress like your favorite decade" day because my kid does not have one and just getting socks and shoes on is more than enough each morning. (We do usually do pajama days because my kids love that and always remember it themselves.)
YES. Rejecting all Parent Homework of this kind is fundamental to my motherhood. I will forever send in cups and plates for the class party, I will never, ever bake or decorate for it.
I don’t interior decorate (that’s a hobby). My kids do their own lunches and laundry and have since around 8-10ish. Regarding lunches--if you need something it has to go on the grocery list as I am not checking or psychic. Regarding laundry--you can only keep one basket in your room for clean clothes. I don’t police putting away or frequency. We have had “emergencies” where a kid has to wake up early and use the speed wash function.
What I have a harder time with is splitting up stuff with my spouse. I feel unbalanced in some weird ways that have a lot to do with my refusal to do things at specific intervals (i.e. change and wash the sheets weekly). It’s complicated by the fact I am a stay-at-home mom whose job is ostensibly to do these things. So I feel like he actually has a larger share of regular required stuff than I do because I quiet quit a whole bunch of things years ago.
You are an example to us all!!!
Stop decorating for holidays (unless you want to!!!!). I don't. Maybe I buy a pumpkin.
Anything I'd spend on holiday decor I spend on plants or flowers instead.
Ooh yes! I do such minimal decoration of any kind, this didn't even occur to me! But yes, do whatever holiday decorating brings you joy and not one bit more!