I was watching a news report about a mother who had just returned from Iraq after many months away from her three small children.
It was a heartwarming reunion. Watching the hugs and tears, and with deep respect and admiration, there was still a small voice deep from the reaches of my own motherhood experience, that asked: "How do leave your children for such a long, dangerous, time?"
Women in combat. Women in space. Women taking national and international assignments for their companies. Women pursuing opportunities, passions and -- in the case of female soldiers -- a sense of patriotic duty. All of that, of course, is simply women following paths long open to men.
But is a society that is easily accustomed to women in challenging, male-dominated and even dangerous jobs equally comfortable when the separation those jobs demand involve leaving children behind?
Freedom of choice does not necessarily mean freedom from stigma. Extended absence from children simply does not raise our judgmental hackles for a father the way it does for a mother. For a father, it is likely seen as providing for his family or sacrificing for his country. For a woman, there is that nagging perception that she -- for whatever reason -- found something more important than her children.
Even though fathers are showing themselves to be effective and even excellent care-givers, when mothers leave for extended periods, there is a question: "Who's watching the kids?"
Travel a little further along the continuum of choice over children and you encounter walk-away mom. She lives apart from her children by choice. She didn't lose them; she left them - for a dream, for a job, for a relationship, for the sheer need to rediscover a self she feels has been subsumed by family.
She showed up on the radar as a blip in the 80s and 90s, when a flurry of books had titles that captured feelings about mothers who break what we assume is one of nature's most powerful bonds: Mommy Doesn't Live Here Any More, The Absentee Wife and, simply, How Could You?
Various reports have called such departures everything from a trend to a phenomena. As a researcher myself, I know that trends spring easily from low base numbers.
Much of the evidence remains anecdotal -- although a U.K. survey put the number of walk-away moms there at 100,000, rising 12 percent a year. If the attention of social media is an indicator, there is a Face Book page called Against Mothers who Abandon their Children for No Good Reason." A quick read shows most of the posts come from children left behind.
Two years ago, an article in Marie Claire magazine ran a headline ladled generously with judgment: "What Kind of Mother Leaves Her Kids?" In fact, the article, by Lea Goldman, was simply a first-person exploration of motivations and experience.
One of the women profiled, author Maria Housden, left for the solitude she needed to process and write about losing a child. While away, she fell in love with a man, and moved across the country to be with him.
In her second book, Unraveled, Housden wrote about reaction to the decision to give up custody: "I did something divorced fathers are expected to do every day. But when a mother does it, it's abandonment." With the financial success of her books, she writes that her husband provides the structure, and she can afford to give her kids the adventure."
Another woman profiled by Goldman, Rebekah Spicuglia, says she married young, to the wrong man. They separated, and battled over custody of their young son. She rose from busing tables at the restaurant where they worked to acceptance at University of California, Berkeley. Rather than separate her son from a loving father and extended family, she gave him up. She also admits, she was intoxicated by the freedom the arrangement would give her.
She remarried and moved to New York, while her son continues to live in California. Today she says, many people can't process her decision. She told Goldman: " Mothers like me -- well, there isn't really a dialogue about us. People just don't even know how to talk about it."
Some women are breaking the motherhood mold by pursuing lives that take them away from their children for extended periods. Some -- far fewer -- are doing it by leaving their children to create new lives altogether.
Fathers forced to be away from their families for long periods elicit sympathy and even admiration for their sacrifice. For mothers in the same situation, the reactions are often more complex -- extending to maternal choice and even fitness. When fathers leave their families for good, we take comfort in the fact that the kids are still in mom's warm embrace. Mothers who do leave seem to violate some natural order; where to leave their children -- even in the care of a loving and capable father -- is to abandon them to fate.
Should they be judged differently?
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It's not a matter of mothers over fathers; it's a question of how important are the needs of children to our society?
A nephew of mine was broken-hearted and deeply wounded when his mother abandoned him to move across the country to pursue her new passion- lesbian living. I am happy for her that she was learning more about herself, but did she have to abandon her son to do so? No.
Human beings have psychological and emotional needs, and to be accepted and cherished by your parents is probably the single biggest need we have. Human society needs to recognize this and make it a priority. Every child a wanted child, not because we allow birth control (which is still a great idea) but because we actually value children. That should be the goal.
Travelling parent when there isother family to ensure the children get their need for emotional security met? No problem. Dropping kids off with others so you can get YOUR adult needs met at the expense of the children YOU CHOSE to bring into this world? Not cool, regardless of gender.
This is the problem with the current feminist discourse, a distinct inability to see beyond themselves. They see women are being stigmatized for leaving their children in the hands of unqualified fathers, and don't think for a second that the labeling of fathers as unqualified could ever be a worse stigma then asking why the mother leaves.
My daughter and her husband have two wonderful children, but my daughter is the "breadwinner" for most of the years of their marriage. Does he parent the same way my daughter would? Not really, but don't say that his love and care don't translate to SAFETY and NURTURING for those children.
How much of the difference is SOCIETY and CULTURE when it comes to parenting genes? I maintain that society has caused men to STUFF their natural tendencies to care for children. How many men attempt to get a "do-over" with a second family when they are able to spend more time with their new family?
There are REAL BIOLOGICAL differences in the ability to have children...men at 70...no problem physically, women, not so easy! I question whether most of the differences stem from this one point and not basic differences between men and women!
I think you are being unfair to feminists here. Feminists are keenly aware of the problems of gender stereotyping for both men and women. The question "if moms away working, who's taking care of the kids?" does not suggest that men are inadequate caregivers. If it were the custom in our society for men to be stay-at-home dads when women went back to work then your point would be valid. What the question assumes, however, is that men are working as well as women and therefore the kids are in daycare.
It turns out that ALL kinds of fathers are prevented from being parents to their children. Why is this so, and will mothers who become primary breadwinners be treated similarly? This article, which is about a small subset of mothers, does not address these questions.
I'm not that comfortable with women choosing tough physical jobs, e.g. mining (as we saw in "North Country") and military. However, sometimes this may be out of economic necessity.
As far as possible, a woman should try to stay close to the nest. But I'm a traditionalist.
There seems to be a gender battle going on in society today, and it's not very good, is it.
Men are so much more villified during divorce/custody proceedings. Just look at the way they get jobbed in alimony and custody battles. The Mother is Always the better parent. The man is always the cad. Women owing child support, by the way, are much more likely to be deadbeat parents than are men owing child support.
Second, this comes off to me as hypocritical from a feminist source. Whenever the question of family court reform in favor of more fathers' rights comes up, the feminist voice argues -- again consistently -- that the mother child bond is biological and inherently more important than the father child bond along with a generous sprinkling of female moral superiority to help rationalize the argument.
Then, after having convinced everyone this is the case, complain that women sometimes defer that bond that they implored us all was so important.