I've Moved!

Just in case some of you may not have noticed, you should check out www.hegemommy.com.  Yeah.  The big time.

From Player to Coach, and a Feminist All Along

I've mentioned in past posts the impact competitive athletics has had on my development, both as a woman and as a mother.  Long before I had my son I knew that if I ever became a parent I wanted my son or daughter to watch me play soccer.  Once my son was born that wish became a feminist imperative- he MUST watch me play soccer because my son was going to have a gender-neutral default when imagining athletes.  He was going to grow up watching women in competitive athletics and not think once that this was the "girls team" or a "girls sport."  For my son, athletics was going to start un-gendered and my identity as mother and athlete was a critical piece of that parenting.

That was until, after over twenty years of competitive athletics my body just kind of gave up.  It took me days to recover from a recreational soccer game, and that was after taking two Alleve pre-game to battle the ache I knew was coming.  I was showing up to work with bruises and scabs and deflecting questions about the stability and safety of my home-life as a result.  After one game where the back of a defender's head collided with my face, leaving me with a bloody nose and black eyes, I found myself thinking not about the shooting pain in my face, but whether I had enough makeup at home to cover the injury in time for the deposition I had to take the next day.  Yup.  It was time.  Despite all my feminist longings and love for the game, it was time to hang up my cleats.  

This was a decision I agonized over.  My son had made it to a couple of my games, but was far too young to remember them, let alone develop any foundation for processing my own feminist agenda.  Soccer had been a part of my life since I was six years old.  The only time I didn't play was to recover from injury, after a move, or at about month five in my pregnancy when my swelling belly made sprinting to the goal a comical and potentially injurious situation.  Soccer was more than just a sport.  Soccer was my sport.  Soccer was me.

Well, it's been almost two full years since I played my last game.  To this day the smell of freshly cut grass, the look of a late summer sunset, and early Saturday mornings all bring me back to the field.  Without fail I imagine shots on goal as I struggle to complete a neighborhood run.  Even after two years I default to competing on the field.

Just this month my son asked if he could play soccer.  Despite my obsession with the game I wanted him to bring up the possibility of playing rather than just signing him up with a team.  Of course I said yes, and of course I signed him up right away.  During the registration I was asked if I had any experience with the sport and if I had any interest in coaching.  I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

I may not be able to shape my son to see athletics in gender neutral terms by having him cheer for my team, but I may be able to by coaching him and an entire team full of little boys.  They'll have to take direction from a mom on something other than homework, housework, and manners.  They'll run with me, watch as I demonstrate drills, and get used to being told how to compete from a woman.  They'll watch as I deal with difficult parents and take on lazy referees.

I'm sure the gulf between reality and my expectations is wide, and I realize that one coach alone cannot defeat an army of gendered images of athletes.  But one coach is a start, just as one player is a start.  The season gets underway in May.  I'll be sure and keep you posted.

Family Planning, American Style

I don't think I'm going to have another child.  I'm not totally sure how I feel about that just yet, but I will tell you that it's a decision that I've discussed extensively with my husband and our insurance company.  That's right.  Not my general practitioner, our pediatrician, or my ob/gyn.  Our insurance company.

Like so many people right now, the decision to have a second child is as much about whether or not we could afford another kid.  This conversation has raised an issue I haven't thought about in years: ohgod what would we do if I got pregnant?

Let me be clear.  I love being a mother, even all the pain in the ass parts like not going to see music like I used to, rolling the dice every night for a full-night's sleep, all of it.  Without my son there would be no Hegemommy.  But, for the first time in at least a decade, the theoretical possibility of abortion has entered my universe.  Even typing that feels surreal.  

Abortion is an issue that makes me exceptionally uncomfortable, one that I've refrained from writing about on this site and in my other work.  I hate the tired rhetoric from both camps but I don't see a clear resolution of the issue.  Yet I am firmly pro-choice, and my current situation is exactly why.  It's a topic that just plain sucks.

The reality is that the tipping point in the decision to expand our family is cost: cost of pregnancy/delivery, cost of raising another child, and cost to the family we've already built.  As much as we hate money to be the driving factor of the analysis, it is.  The hospital bill for a second child would be around $20,000, and that is AFTER our $5800 deductible and the $600/month premium payments.  Putting another child in day care would increase our childcare costs to approximately $3000/month.  Those costs don't even factor in any loss of my income, even temporarily.  When we started to do the math the numbers simply stunned us. 

But, despite those numbers, we were bound and determined NOT to have this decision essentially taken out of our hands or come down to counting beans.  So, we did the responsible thing and started shopping around for additional insurance and considering alternatives to our current childcare situation.  Thankfully for us the childcare situation was an easier work-around now that I'm essentially self-employed.  At the very least, it looked like we had options. 

Not so for insurance.  Since I'm a member of the bar association my family and I qualify for insurance through that membership.  At first this looked like a real possibility, and I thought that, should we decide to have a second child, we had gotten our ducks in a row and could pull it off financially.  That was until the agent asked us directly  if we planned on having other kid.  I stalled because, well, I didn't have a good answer to that question.  At the time we were neither planning to or not, we were just figuring out the possibility of it all.  It seemed to me the reasonable, and indeed responsible way to go about family planning, especially in a recession.

Unfortunately our responsibility was met with the news that only some insurance plans would cover pregnancy/childbirth, and those that do have an 18 month waiting period to get pregnant- not have a child- but conceive a child.  Did I want a toddler in my early 40's?  Would that even be healthy?  My son would be almost 8 years older than his sibling by the time s/he was born.  When we imagined our family expanding this was not at all the picture we had in mind.

Here's the real crime.  If those costs did not exist, I would not be writing this post.  I'm not saying we would have committed to having a second child, I'm just saying that the possibility of pregnancy would not induce a panic attack.  If the costs weren't there an accidental conception would simply be a surprise.  We hear that millions of Americans, even those with health insurance, are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy, and here's why.  

If we keep our current coverage, we cannot afford the bills related to pregnancy and delivery.  If we switch coverage we will be older than either my husband and I are comfortable with when we finally do have a second child.  The insurance company wielded more authority in this decision than my ob/gyn and essentially forced the decision on my family before we were ready.  To the extent the pro-choice community advocates for all issues surrounding women's health, they need to fight harder, shout louder, about the cost and restriction women face surrounding health coverage.  And perhaps if the anti-choice community wants to make real headway in bringing down the total number of abortions they could use the power of their constituency to tackle the causes of abortion and fight for seamless, affordable health care related to pregnancy and deliver.  Far more often than not those causes are not drug addiction, one-night stands, or callous irresponsibility.  Quite the opposite, in fact.    

So Many New Beginnings!

Hi folks- amazing that it has been exactly one month since I promised you an update, more posts, yada, yada, yada.  Well, I have a good excuse, and one that is sure to benefit those who find Hegemommy a nice distraction.  I have been picked up as a contributing blogger here.  Yeah for paid writing work!

So, you can find me yammering about civil rights every Monday and Wednesday.  That is good news on so many fronts.  First, it helps me focus Hegemommy.  As you can see the last couple months were overrun with political posts- which is fine, except that it took me away from the "mommy" in Hegemommy.  That will change.  Second, it forces me to write even more, which leads to me wanting to write even more, which leads to more posts- you see where this is going.  Third, it is just plain cool to start the year off on the right foot with a paid gig.  So yeah.  Cool stuff.

Thanks for sticking with me as Hegemommy finds her legs.  And check me and the other talented bloggers out at care2.com.  It's a great site, full of ways to get involved in those things globally or locally.  Feel free to leave suggestions for posts or comment on the current ones.

Hats off to 2009!