Options Options Options

For the past few months, Mr. Metropolitan's job has required him to travel a great deal -- usually three or four days per week. Most of it has been cross-country travel, which means that if he's got business on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, he has to leave on Monday afternoon and arrives home at 7 am Friday morning, sleeps for a few hours and heads into work on Friday afternoon. Weekends aren't much better: usually he's able to hang out with me and the Toddler for half of a weekend day and spends the rest of the weekend's daylight hours in the office.

This is the kind of schedule that usually involves having a stay-at-home wife. The Husband is off working his manic schedule and the Wife is home cooking and cleaning and running the errands and caring for the Offspring. (And, of course, this is why so many men in the professional workplace don't really understand the challenges of working motherhood: their wives are home doing the stay-at-home mommy thing, so they don't see what's so difficult about working and having kids simultaneously.) But the full-time-work and full-time-mommy thing is challenging enough without also having a husband who's full-time-on-the-road.

In terms of actual blocks of time that Mr. Metropolitan is supposed to be covering, it doesn't look like much. His slot is supposed to be the 60-90 minutes in the morning after I leave for work and before the nanny arrives. But that means that either I arrive at work 60-90 minutes late, or else I split the difference with the nanny and get to work a mere 45-60 minutes late. Plus let's not forget that I already leave work earlier than everyone else in order to get home by the end of the nanny's shift. So basically, for the last month or two, I've been physically at my desk from about 9 am until 5:30 pm. Which, in the world of high-powered Manhattan professional life, frankly doesn't look so great. And, as we've seen, they don't even react so well when presented with a 7:30 am to 5:30 pm schedule.

Other than losing the ability to get to work on time, I also don't have any backup. "Hey, honey, something cropped up at work, can you go home to cover for me for an hour?" Or "hey, honey, I'd love to go meet a friend for a cup of coffee after work." Or even "hey, honey, I'm losing my mind a little today, can we order in a pizza and watch a movie together?" The answer to all three of these questions is no.

But what are the choices? Not so many, and they're not so enticing. Option One: get more help. I could hire someone to cover the early morning or evening slot on a daily basis. This is far from ideal, as it means that the Toddler ends up spending a grand total of maybe one hour a day with anyone who's related to her. I know people who manage their households like this. A woman I work with, whose husband has an equally high-powered job, has a weekday nanny, a weekend nanny, and a backup nanny who covers for Nannies #1 and #2 and doubles up on certain days. (Unsurprisingly, she's very highly regarded at work.) Why even bother having kids? As it is, I'm starting to hire weeknight babysitters about once a week so that I can attend a few of the many weeknight events that seem to pop up in November and December. That much I'm okay with, but not more.

So screw Option One. Let's look at Option Two: become a household with one working parent and one stay-home parent. Either I or Mr. Metropolitan could quit and stay home full-time. Two problems with Option Two. First, I'm not sure that our household finances could sustain the total loss of one person's income. I think we could manage it, but it would require a pretty substantial lifestyle change and would put a lot of pressure on the working Metropolitan -- whichever Metropolitan that might be -- to be Sole Bringer-Home of Bacon. And in any event, given that we're both decidedly underwhelmed by our jobs at the moment, this isn't a meaningful choice right now. Second, neither of us really wants to be a permanent stay-home parent. It might be fun for a few months, but I know I would need something else to occupy some of my time. (Remember that Visa commercial where the husband realizes that his stay-home wife has been reduced to speaking in babytalk 24/7 and has lost all sense of the adult world? He uses his Visa card to buy threatre tickets so they can have a romantic and intellectual evening sans kids and babytalk. They're watching the show, and the wife turns to the husband and says in a deep throaty voice: "Marvelous use of iambic pentameter . . . wameter." This summarizes the issue nicely.)

So this leaves us with Option Three. One or both of us could try to find some job that requires less of a time commitment, be it full-time or part-time. I'm not sure which jobs these are, exactly, but I assume they exist. Part-time isn't really an option for either of us in our current jobs. So I'd have to find a brand-new job on a part-time basis or else find some sort of lifestyle job that would cut my compensation by at least two-thirds but would be sufficiently personally fulfilling to make it worthwhile. I'm not averse to either of these possibilities, but (a) have no idea what they might be and (b) would have to strongly consider leaving New York to make that kind of pay cut work. Again -- no aversion, but no clue.

I guess there's also Option Four: persuade my parents or in-laws to move into the apartment next door. Believe me, if it comes to this, I have bigger problems than I thought I had.

I guess this is what it means when they say that women have more options these days then they ever had before!