Mommy Wars

I picked up Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, and Their Families by Leslie Morgan Steiner hoping for a good discussion on the various pros and cons of staying home vs. working.

I didn't get it.

Maybe it's just me, but if you're intention is to take on this issue in a completely unbiased way, shouldn't you get an unbiased editor to spearhead this project?  Because Steiner clearly isn't unbiased.  She comes out and says she doesn't understand stay-at-home moms: how they can stand to be so dependent, so un-careerish.  How they can trust that their husbands won't dump them when they least expect it.  And she definitely implies that career moms are more "themselves" because they are interacting with adults in creative and lucrative ways.  Here's a quote:

"Whatever it is that separates me from true stay-at-home mothers makes me sometimes hate them."

Then she adds, "For a minute."  Somehow, even with the qualifier, that doesn't scream "objective" to me. 

And the book isn't.  I only got to page 86 before I got too discouraged to read on, that must be noted.  But of the first 8 essays, including the editor's intro, only 2 were by stay-at-home moms.  And it wasn't until the eighth essay that a mom brought up the crucial SAHM concept, the motivating factor for making the decision to stay home, which is: Maybe kids are better off being cared for by the people who most love them.  The writer who does lay it on the line is Catherine Clifford, who took a circuitous route to SAH mommying: she had three children in three years and couldn't keep a reliable nanny.  Since I'm blathering, I thought I'd quote a bit on how once she decided to stay home, she had to rearrange her thoughts on the issue.

"More than anything, I felt how powerfully my kids wanted, had always wanted, their mother.  And though it was hard to explain or justify, I, in turn, felt an awakened, primal, animal instinct that babies and little kids and even bigger kids need and deserve their mother.  This created big problems for my brain.

"Do kids need their fathers too?

"Brain: Of course, equally.

"Gut: Yes, but not as much.  Not in the same ways.

"Does that mean women shouldn't work after they've had a baby?

"Brain: Bite your tongue!!

"Gut: Basically, yes.

"Are kids better off having their mothers take care of them?

"Brain: There's no real evidence that children benefit in any measurable way.

"Gut: In some immeasurable way, children will know in their hearts that they are more important to their mothers than anything else, and that knowledge is invaluable.  When a child isn't mothered by her mother, something precious and irreplaceable is lost to both of them.  It strikes me as downright bizarre that studies assessing the benefits of maternal versus other care express it in terms of IQ, academic achievement, professional status later in life, quantifiable socialization.  This is love we're talking about, not an LSAT-prep course."


This is the kind of opinion I was waiting to hear from the contributors, but no one expressed anything like it until page 81.  I mean, as a SAHM one likes to think that the decision one is making - which has clear financial and career drawbacks - is made for a reason.  I have really struggled with myself when I read women's magazines because like Clifford said, they always tie long-range outcomes to academic achievement.  And apparently from that perspective it doesn't make a difference to a child whether his mom stays home.  But I'd like to think that in some way, it does make a difference. 

Also, many of the working moms cite as a reason for working the great amount of satisfaction they receive from their jobs.  I understand that these women are selected or self-selected from a well-known women who are well known because they've made great contributions in various fields.  It follows that they get a great deal from their careers.  But what about the women who work because they have to?  The women who can't afford not to work?  The women who clock in and clock out and that's it?  One would assume that they might have a different vantage point.  As a librarian, I had a decent job with decent pay and decent benefits.  My job would have allowed me - if, God forbid, anything ever happened to J. - to support myself and Max.  And I did like certain aspects of my job.  For the most part working was fine.  But it was never self-actualizing.  It never came close to being that for me.  Giving it up wasn't that hard.  Perhaps this is because I knew this was temporary.  Max will be in school someday and it's unlikely that we will have 10 more kids so my time as a SAHM is limited to a few short years.  But, still.  I might not like everything about being home, but there are lots of days when I'm grateful I can be home and don't have to do the job I used to do.

Basically, my attitude is this: I stay at home with my son.  I made that decision because I think it's best for Max and for our family.  I'd go nuts working and being a mother to a small child.  I know the stress would get to me and I'd be a worse mom for it.  But I understand that being home isn't for everyone and I also understand that for a great number of women it's not an option.  That's fine.  I'm sure their kids will turn out okay.  What I wanted from Mommy Wars was a little more interesting dialogue between women with real feelings and real opinions, even hard opinions being expressed.  You'd think that with a title like that there'd be more verbal bloodshed.  Instead there's a lot of tippy-toeing and saying, "Both choices can be valid" when it's clear that most of those people really think they made the right choice and the other side is either 1) selfish or 2) stifled. 

Well, this one's going back to the library.