I've never liked the term: working mother. It says that I am some kind of sub-category; not a full member of the club. Maybe I'll feel better about it the day I hear someone called a "working father."
The label combines a bit of praise for super-human effort with a whiff of disapproval for the fact balancing work and family means someone is getting short changed.
I was on the front lines of that conflict for many years. Then one day, I simply declared a truce.
We've been at this whole women and work thing for several decades now. Impressive degrees, upward-trajectory jobs and cracks in the glass ceiling say that on a lot of levels, the promise of female economic emancipation is coming along quite nicely.
We have been to the mountaintop. So why are so many troubled by the view?
Working mother discontent is clear in the recent Pew study that found 60 percent of mothers would rather have part time jobs. You hear it in the furious debate that has raged since New York Times' Lisa Belkin first wrote about the "opt-out revolution" in 2003. "Why," she asked, "don't women run the world? Maybe they don't want to"
Almost five years later, we're still trying to figure ourselves out. Four major books have just hit the stands, attempting to deconstruct why mothers leave work, why they stay, and how they can come back - if, in fact, they want to come back at all.
The position on the right: women are leaving work to do what God and nature intended. This whole career thing was a feminist fabrication all along.
On the left: women executives are being pushed out by heartless, clueless, corporations that value productivity over parenting. A bit farther to the left is the argument that the longings of motherhood are simply programmed in like code during upbringing - mothers aren't born; they're socialized. The real barrier is not the glass ceiling of a corporation. It's the front door of the home.
Here is my contribution to the body of anecdotal evidence. Feel free to put me on a chart.
Since my earliest days, I wanted success as a researcher. I wanted to be in all the best journals. I wanted to discover great things and write books about what I learned.
I never even thought about being a mother. But then early in my 30s, it was all I thought about. Unlike today, that was the age when most women reached their go/no-go decision on having children. This was not a conscious choice. It was an emotional - even physical - need. Every tick of my biological clock sounded like a rifle shot.
We had a son. And much later in life, adopted a baby girl. And that whole world-class research thing? It's still here, and as insistent and time-consuming as ever.
What made my emotional struggle especially difficult was that my life wasn't. My husband did quite well quite early. Basically, I didn't have to do much I didn't want to. So stretching ligaments to embrace both work and domesticity, I know, must leave many without my options asking: "Woman - are you nuts?"
Maybe. But I'm not alone. High-achieving, goal-oriented women usually don't look for husbands who can take care of them. They want husbands who can team up with them. Those kinds of men tend to have careers that afford choices.
Compared to the past, these are somewhat enlightened times for men and households. They know what a washing machine does, that clothes will never crawl to the hamper no matter how long you leave them on the floor, and that the bristly end of the broom is the one that pushes the dust around. Importantly, new studies show they are spending more time with their children than ever before.
But studies also show that homes still run on woman-power.
In my years as a gender scholar at Stanford, doing extensive face-to-face research, I muscled equipment and materials up steep and countless steps of homes in San Francisco for hours of conversations.
And I remember, like so many other women, coming home to a parallel universe, with a whole different set of deadlines, demands and responsibilities. I loved that world. But I would ask my husband -quite often, quite loudly, and occasionally profanely - why does everything always fall to me?
In response, I would hear (all together now) "I do more than any husband I know."
And I always wondered: why are you measuring yourself against people who don't live here? And how do you even know? Do you guys sit around and talk about these things? Does washing the most dishes that week earn the same alpha points as being the longest off the tee?"
I was an unwilling conscript in the mommy wars. But I found a way out.
I accepted the fact that motherhood was not the choice. Work was. And if I wanted that choice, I would have to embrace the chaos - I would have to be the chaos - even if that meant occasionally showing up to lecture medical students wearing two different shoes.
My moment of enlightenment happened at the end of a very bad day.
We were away from home, getting ready for visiting-day at my daughter's summer camp. There were athletic feats to applaud and crafts to compare to the great works of civilization.
Suddenly, my husband doubled over in pain.
We decided to travel the hour back to San Francisco so he could see his own doctor. They said they would do some tests, and everything would be fine. I should be with my daughter.
So, it was back to camp. I was almost there, when I got a call that my husband was not so fine after all. He had a very angry appendix, and was about to go to surgery. He wanted me there when he was wheeled in.
So virtually within site of the cabins, I headed back toward a comforted husband, and away from a very angry daughter.
In a perfect juncture of teenage logic and virtuoso ability to play the harp strings of a mother's emotions, she sobbed: "how can you go back to the hospital when you know how upset I am that dad is in the hospital?"
My grown son piled on, angry that nobody (me) had called him earlier. And when I got home, our yellow lab, Stuart, had expressed his displeasure at being left alone so long with lethal efficiency.
By 1 a.m., my husband and his appendix had said their good-byes; my daughter's tears had stopped; my son had been assured he was still the go-to guy in family emergencies; all evidence of Stuart's anxieties had been scrubbed clean. As for me, I was making my way through the pile of paperwork I had intended to start early in the evening of the previous day.
I was frazzled. I was tired. I was irritated. But I was content in the way you are when your choices are your own, and they take you to a place you accept and understand.
No book, no research, no trend line was going to tell me anything I didn't already know. I work. I'm a mother. And on this day from hell, I was exactly where I needed -- and wanted -- to be.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
What answer would we get if we asked working men this question? NO ONE like spending 40-50-60 hours a week at work. The world would be better for everyone if we all worked part time.
But Dr. Drexler, you speak from such a privileged viewpoint I wonder how helpful your comments. Sure, for rich women like you the idea of work is a ‘choice.’ Unfortunately, most women are not in a position to choose.
Women are criticized BY OTHER WOMEN whatever choice they make. Assuming they have the luxury of CHOICE as to work outside the home or stay home full-time. We as mothers need to stop judging eachother if we truly want employers and men and anyone else to stop judging us. The article last week blasting Elizabeth Edwards' mothering choices is the prime example of what we do to eachother, and thereby to ourselves. We open ourselves up to judgment.
I truly believe that if black people did not call eachother N!**er
if homosexuals did not call eachother F@G
if women did not call eachother S!UT
... it would be a whole lot easier to get these words out of the vocabular of America
===
Sorry. You're just wrong. It most certainly is a choice.
Authentic motherhood IS the choice to make raising, as well as spawning, a child a priority in your life.
And so is authentic fatherhood.
For anyone who thinks otherwise, I have two words for you: Britney Spears.
The fact is, there are men and women who are mature enough to accept child rearing as the sacred responsibility it is, and order their lives accordingly...
And there are those who should stick to canaries, or cats, or a pet rock.
Everyone, in every life, faces many tradeoffs. Make 'em, accept the losses as well as the gains, and then shut up and get on with it.
And let other people make their own choices - and leave them the hell alone.
Or - as the AA people put it: "Live and let live".
You and all mothers have my unending admiration. I'm retired but working at 3 new jobs at this time for more total work hours a week than I did when I had a career. I'm single, I also do all my own cooking, cleaning and everything a huge house requires in the way of maintenance etc. Still, my output pales to the schedules and itineraries of many working moms I know. Adding children to the mix seems unimaginable to me. Women have an unmeasureable strength that can't be measured in muscle and efficiency studies alone. Men may have some brawn advantages but few have the mix of coping and physical skills that I so often see in the women I've known.
Great article. Pray for our sons and daughters to come home soon from this illegal occupation in Iraq and try their hand at being with their families and enjoying the gifts of being at home.
A petulantgemini
If a woman with children finds a cure for cancer, we'll all want to make sure that she's a MOM first, and curing cancer was just a job.
Think about this scenario: a childless woman running for President. Would she have a chance in hell of being elected? I don't think so. After all this time, the ultimate female success is still successful eggs, no matter how successful she may be in any other area of life.
Ultimately it's up to women take charge of how they want to be defined and stop playing the victim card--as long as they believe a mother is the most powerful thing they can be, sexuality will always be valued over talent and skill.
Just my thoughts.
However, with a helpful partner with a collegial attitude and kids who respect you (most days), a woman can have whatever she wants in terms of career knowing under those circumstances, work is indeed the choice. What a wonderful choice it is!
If you are a single parent, the focus is definitely changed and life is definitely more chaotic. I've done both and partnering was a thousand times better. I had a wonderful 50 year career with 2 spouses (at different times) and two kids. Now our adult children just assume that women will contribute their gifts to the marketplace. How wonderful to see that role modeling actually does work.
To check an Owellian viewpoint of Labor Day, as well as my responce, read:
http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=2717
No success in life can compensate for failure in the home. And that applies to both fathers and mothers.