ThirdAge: Towards the end of your book you were very explicit about the babysitters who helped you. At one point you refer to one as "the woman who saved my life." Even your niece and nephew were driving your kids around. To what extent were these people helping you out a factor in your ability to fulfill such demanding work schedules?
Cokie: They were crucial. But look, there's no way to have two careers and two children without help. And we were in a situation where we could pay for some help and beg for some help and all of that. And all of America is coping with this right now--with having two incomes, two earners, and however many children, and trying to figure out ways to raise the kids, keep the house, keep the relationship. A lot of people don't have anybody they can hire. They're barely making it from paycheck to paycheck, and that's where family makes all the difference in the world.
Steve: A political story I was doing about voters--I guess it was the '94 election campaign--I sat in a coffee shop in Youngstown, Ohio, for three days, just talking to everybody who came in about their lives. And the first question I asked was, "What's really bugging you?" What I found out over and over and over was that what really was bugging them was time. That the most precious family value in America was time, because that was what none of us had enough of.
There was one woman who was so determined that she would be there for her children in the way that her mother had been for her, that she took a night shift job at a pharmaceutical factory from ten o'clock at night to six o clock in the morning. Then she would come home, make her kids breakfast, then catch some sleep, then be up again when they came home from school and fix them supper.
But that's the story of a lot of American lives. And so it's led us to several conclusions. One is just in terms of your own life. As Cokie says, family is a big help. And one of the great stresses on young marriage is mobility. In many ways, it's true that marriage is easier if it's within a community of aunts and cousins and sisters and family friends who can help.
TA: It takes a village.
Steve: It does, it does. We were at a wedding not long ago for a young man who was the child of Cokie's cousin. This was a wonderful moment, because the minister, a Protestant woman minister, got up and asked the whole congregation to repeat vows. And said to the whole congregation, "Do you promise to be there for this young couple?" I thought it was terrific because this was a reflection of the reality of what it really does take.
In a couple, it's not necessarily how many hours you both work as much as who controls those hours you work. One of the things that we decided early on is that we would never cover candidates.
So this was a way of maintaining a margin of sanity. You know, a lot of young couples don't understand that. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to make huge sacrifices in your careers. But that difference between being able to plan and not plan is often the difference between sanity and insanity. Next: Trial & Error >
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ThirdAge: Towards the end of your book you were very explicit about the babysitters who helped you. At one point you refer to one as "the woman who saved my life." Even your niece and nephew were driving your kids around. To what extent were these people helping you out a factor in your ability to fulfill such demanding work schedules?
