We've had the "mommy wars" before and they were a waste of time. Work is what almost all of us do one way or another.
And this stay-at-home mom business is just another false political category like "soccer moms" -- an easy label that doesn't fit anyone and a way to force a wedge between women voters.
You can't stay at home if you're taking care of children whether you're a mom or a dad. You're out and about bringing them here and there, getting things done and often assisting at the schools or after school activities. As a parent, I know how much work it involves.
And because all parents want to do it right, absent a reliable manual, raising children is a source of joy but also often of anxiety. Children become ill, get hurt, deal with bullying, face learning challenges, to say the least, and they turn to their parents to help them through. Any candidate who uses parental anxiety as a political football is scraping the bottom of the political barrel.
Besides, there is no winner in this silliness dividing women for political gain. There are great mothers who have paying jobs outside of their homes and great mothers who do not. Not working for pay outside the home (or from it) doesn't automatically make one a good parent and doing so does not automatically make one a deficient parent.
With regard to Ann Romney, I can't imagine that the wife of a former governor isn't considered someone who worked. As the wife of a candidate for governor and twice for president, she has traveled extensively and worked. Sarah Palin was Governor of Alaska. She worked. Michelle Obama works as both a mother and the First Lady. And most of the women I've met who don't work for pay do a lot for their communities. They volunteer and so they WORK! We all work one way or another.
I taught a diversity course and leadership at USC with Betty Friedan. We dealt with the issue of working and raising children. One thing was very evident. It's easy to get pulled into a debate about whether women should work without remembering that a good percentage of them don't have the luxury to weigh the pros and cons. A significant number work for current or expected economic reasons. We shouldn't forget that.
Then there's the fact that girls raised with ambition, which most families endeavor to provide, are going to want to work or take on personal challenges. Ann Romney did this as an award-winning equestrian who completed her bachelors' degree through Harvard University while raising children.
Given the economy and our efforts to help girls achieve as they choose to, the mommy wars scuffle is little more than an elitist political ploy on the one hand and a hypocritical one on the other.
Besides, what business is it of ours to question why women work for pay and why they might cease to do so for a while or for the rest of their lives? We all contribute in different ways. Far more important is what we do as a society to help families. Do we make their lives more difficult? Do we take away their ability to make a good living? Are they holding three jobs just to get by? Do they have good health care? Are they under impossible levels of stress just to feed and clothe their children?
These are the things that matter. The rest is just a way to get women tied up in knots about whether they're doing what's right for their families. And, of course, to then use that untenable condition to get votes. Let's just not go there, not again!
Kathleen also blogs at Comebacks at Work.
Follow Kathleen Reardon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/comebackskid
Stewart J. Lawrence: It May Be Time for Hilary Rosen to Become a Stay-at-Home Mom
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner: It's Not a "Mommy War," It's a War on Moms
Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points -- "Mommy Wars" Versus "War on Women"
Joe Peyronnin: The Party of War
Hilary Rosen says Ann Romney never worked 'day in her life ...
Ann Romney v Hilary Rosen - ABC News
I've been a working mom too. At the time, I worked for my boss AND my family. Situations arose then that I don't have to worry about now, like Friday deadlines when another 1/2 hour of work would make all the difference to the office but it's not fair to those at home; brown bag lunches for everyone, including me; turning down travel; missing one all-important company event or another when all of a sudden your kid is too sick to go to school.
I didn't feel slighted in the least by Rosen's comments; I know what she meant.
Mike:
laugh & if you could ask my poor wife she would thank you. :-)
It will be my pleasure to read your blog as well as your posts.
Fanned & faved
Mike:
That may require 'work', but it was not what she was elected to do.
The assumption that the only reason to have both parents working is in order to afford a second car, a vacation home, a boat, or other luxuries is an insult to the millions of two-paycheck families who are barely making it even WITH two paychecks.
Not to mention the myriad of reasons why both must work: maybe one parent runs a small business or is self-employed, and the family needs the medical insurance provided by the other parent's job. If they have a child who needs extra medical care, this could be a huge reason not to be able to quit working outside the home.
And of course single parents - but the conservatives just don't like that idea in the first place, do they?
If you and your family have found a way to live on one paycheck, good for you. But stop implying that those who can't are in it for "luxuries".
I own my own home, and despite being single, I have to clean it. I have to buy groceries and cook my own meals, do the laundry, etc. Cleaning more often, making a bigger dinner or washing more clothes doesn't suddenly make it a job, especially when the people you do it for only exist because you chose to take them on. It's still a basic function of being alive. Before vacuum cleaners, microwaves and washing machines, housework might have taken a whole day, but those days are gone. There are plenty of empty hours at home when the kids are at school, and I don't know why we can't acknowledge it.
I was born in 1950. My mother went to work so we could get out of a tenement and into a two-bedroom one-floor house, three kids in one room. She couldn't afford day care or a sitter so she worked the night 11-7 shift, came home and took care of us until we were old enough to be "latch-key kids" and take care of ourselves, about ages 8 to 11.
My mother worked because she had to, not because she wanted a career. So do most woman, it's a job not a career. The workplace is now 50% female, that's because of need, not want.
Being a full-time mother is a luxury that Ann Romney can afford, most mothers can't. Dems completely missed this: Ann Romney stays at home because she is rich, not because she is a better mother. My mother was twice the mother of anyone who stays home. She went to work for us, not her. If you don't see it that way it means you grew up entitled, believing that work is an opportunity not drudgery. That women work because they want too, not out of need. The working class have jobs, the rich have careers.
Japan, Germany, Italy and France all pay women who have worked for pay 60 % of their salaries, to stay home for 5 years to rear their babies....that's thinking and caring not only about "working moms but the children too.
In America women are lucky to get 3 weeks maternity leave with pay, plus their jobs back.
The other issue I have not seen the "so called experts" talk about is....when you put your children into day care or pre-school, some one other than your family is IMPRINTING THEIR VALUES ON YOUR CHILDREN.
Any child Psychologist or Pediatrician will tell you that between the ages of 0 to 5 years is when your child learns about SOCIALIZATION. When that time is spent with some one other than the primary families, it's not your values being taught to your child any more.
That is the Main reason for a woman or father to be with their IMPRESSIONABLE children. America would serve itself better to honor "stay at home moms with Pay, to nurture a generation of contributing people to society, not troubled and confused people that, Day Cares and Pre-Schools are producing at an alarming rate.
As the mother of 8 who stayed home with my kids through their formative years and had 2 careers, it's just my observation.
C60
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129456/Do-girls-want-career-attract-man-Provocative-study-casts-high-fliers-new-light.html
A bet: your parents went to college, or you would see it my way. You believe work is a choice, but it only is to those born to privilege. And only those with college degrees get jobs anybody would want, and they are only 40% of the population. Most people hate their jobs. My ex stayed home 7 years to raise our kids, but I was a software engineer with six-figure salary, in the top 10% of income. The median wage in the US is $27K, half make less than that. See how the other half live.
ann romney always had the option to stay home. not the vast majority do.