So, this blog is all about a little corner of momspace I've carved out for myself; thus I suppose it's fitting that this post refers to "the mommy wars." Someone I know mentioned this phenomenon to me last week, so I have done a bit of reading to get acquainted with the debate. It seems the mommy wars refer to one's decision to either be a stay at home mom or a working mom, thus politicizing a highly individual choice.
I also found that some feel the mommy wars are nothing more than a media/marketing campaign, or an intellectual debate fought primarily in the sociological realm. "Real" or not, what IS clear is that, once again, women's minds and bodies are not their own but political and ideological battlefields.
I can tell you which decision is right for our family, but I cannot tell which is right for your family. I cannot tell you which side of the DMZ you should be on. But I can, after thinking about my own experiences, tell both sides to get real.
Let's start with working moms (don't worry ladies, I will get to the stay at home crew too). I generally feel like Switzerland--have no real beef with working moms, and have not been targeted for their aggression either. However, let's get one thing straight: I heard a working mom state on public radio recently, "I do everything a stay at home mom does, PLUS work full time!"
I am so sorry, honey, but you are seriously deluded and it is time for you to get real. If you want or have to work, that's fine, but you must own up to the consequences and realities--and that includes the fact that you are paying someone else to care for your child for almost all his/her waking hours. Let's take a conservative commute time estimate of 30 min each way for you to get from home to daycare to work. Let's say you work the typical schedule of 8-5. That would mean you are away from home 10 hours of the day, not even counting any errands you might run before or after work, or any extracurricular activities.
That is 10 hours of the day that your home is not being lived in. 10 hours of not feeding your own baby, changing diapers, cleaning up spit up, teaching ABCs and colors, reading to your child, preparing and cleaning up after messy meals, and managing your child's daily joys and crises. Do not even tell me that you do the job that I do. Do not pretend that you can cram those missing 10 hours of heavy-duty daytime parenting into getting ready in the morning, dinner, and getting ready for bed. In the medical field, you would be an on-call doctor, not the one working all night in the emergency room--not even working at the walk-in clinic or pulling office hours--at least, not until you pick up your child in the evening.
Do not pretend you can provide the quality of care a good stay at home parent does after a long day of work. Get real and answer honestly: do you come home to read to and play with your child--or do you come home and jump into opening mail, doing housework, and checking your email? After talking with moms who have done both--stay at home and work--I have been told, "I feel guilty because when I was working, the last thing I wanted to do was come home and parent. All I wanted to do after a long day of work was sit down and relax."
Ok, now that I have offended the working crowd, let's move on to the stay at home moms. Stay at homers, you too must get real and be honest. First of all, do not act like a martyr or that you are a prisoner to your family. Unless you belong to some austere religious sect or have a very special situation (say, a special needs child who requires intensive in-home care), no one has forced you to be at home. You *can* go to work anytime you like.
Also, opting to be a stay at home mom does not automatically make you a better parent than the working one. I think all of us moms have met terrible stay at home parents, great working parents, and vice versa. Please do not pretend you deserve a medal for round-the-clock parenting if I see you sitting on the couch and screaming at your kids all day.
Finally, you do not need to pity working moms because they are our sisters who *have* to work. Many of them choose to and want to. Not everyone is cut out for 24-hour, 7 days per week mommying. And I commend them for knowing themselves well enough to do what they feel is best for their family.
After all, your kid is more likely to suffer from having an unhappy, resentful mother than a working one.
For awhile, I thought we as women could say "we've arrived" when we reached the point where we can choose to either stay at home or go to work. When no one forced us to stay at home, nor did they force us to hand over our children to paid providers and march off to work. Now I realize that I was wrong. We have not arrived.
No, we will be able to say "we've arrived" when we are both free to choose, and free to do so without guilt and feeling like we need to explain and justify ourselves for our decision.
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