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Why Can't We Be Friends?
You would think that almost a century after women banded together to gain the right to vote and several decades after we burned bras together and demanded equal pay for equal work, we would actively cultivate the solidarity that helped our gender make huge legal, political and social strides toward equality. But somehow we’ve managed to divide ourselves with our strident views, self-righeousness, and judgmental thoughts, words and actions toward our sisters.
Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from MomLogic, purporting to provide “the motherlode of news, advice and guilty pleasures.” I admire the people who run the site for their willingness to go beyond blankies and binkies and broach the controversial divide among women. Included in the e-mail was a link to guest-blogger Jane’s post, "Breadwinners vs. Bread Makers." It made me mad. And it made me think.
In a nutshell, Jane takes off from work and shows up in a business suit to serve pizza at her child’s school. She derisively describes the work-out-clothed moms (who Jane clearly thinks SHOULD have gone home and changed into something more appropriate since it was NOON) and superciliously tells of their “whining” about all they have to do. Jane’s internally expressed response was, “"Who are you people? You don't [inappropriate adjective] work!!!! What are you doing all day and why can't you figure out a way to get it all done and help with my [inappropriate noun]?" She concludes by pointing out that, “Working moms are still full-time moms, and we can run circles around you and still manage to serve you stay-at-homes some cheese with your w-h-i-n-e.”
Now you are mad too, right? I am guessing that whether you are a stay-at-home Mom (SAHM) or a work-at-office Mom (WAOM), you don’t understand where Jane’s vitriol comes from.
Where I’m from, the SAHMs happily serve as school emergency contacts for our WAOM counterparts. Our WAOMs take the time to express their appreciation for the SAHMs who run the small business that is the PTA. Our SAHMs keep kids overnight when WAOMs have business trips that conflict with those of their WAODs. Our WAOMs might send in a check instead of cupcakes or may dazzle us all by heading up the decoration committee for the dance. Our SAHMs may opt out of the carnival planning committee because it conflicts with her weekly golf game. Our WAOMs may forget to even join the PTA. But the bottom line is that we all give each other the benefit of the doubt and assume that we are all doing the best we can with what we have to work with.
My understanding of feminism is that it is about women having CHOICES! We can choose our educational path. We can choose to marry or not. We can choose what career to pursue. We can choose to have children or not. I guess I assumed that feminism included the choice of how to best fulfill one’s duties as a mother, including whether or not to work, whether to have a nanny or use day care, whether to use cloth or disposable diapers and whether or not to breastfeed.
I’ve been both a WAOM and a SAHM. For my first ten years as a Mom, I dropped my children off at a wonderful day care at 7, drove an hour to work, picked them up at 5, put a meal on the table and got the laundry done. For the last five years, I’ve been more involved in school activities including a brilliant stint (if I do say so myself) as 5th Grade Room Mom, been there to answer after-school homework questions, been a little more proactive in keeping my family life up-to-date and been available for the extensive chauffeuring that is essential to the tween/teen stage.
You know what? I’ve whined throughout the 15 years … no more in one capacity than the other. When I was working, I whined that somehow I always ended up doing laundry at 10 p.m. (to which my husband responded, “It’s not like you are banging it against a [inappropriate adjective] rock!”…but that’s another blog altogether!) When I wasn’t working, I whined that I no sooner dropped them off at school and they were coming home on the bus while I didn’t feel like I had gotten enough done. Whatever I like or dislike about my given situation, I LOVE that I have Mom-friends of every stripe who support me and who welcome my support.
There are a myriad of reasons why women choose to work and a myriad of reasons why women choose not to work. The latter are mostly not about the desire to watch soap operas or eat bon-bons. The former are not only about economic necessity. So let’s lighten up, huh? Let’s support our sisters in their efforts to do the best job possible, whether it’s for a paycheck or not.
Diane appears every Saturday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Di at her blog Live and Let Di.
Live and Let Di
Diane is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Wednesday.
I try to be the voice of Moms with teens. My daughter Haley is 16. She's at that age where she is convinced that I know nothing. I'm thinking I'll seem a lot smarter when she's 22. We bond over Broadway shows. My son Rory is 13. He started reading the sports page when he was 5 and his passion for anything sports-related has grown ever since. This year he beat out 9 guys in their 40s to win his Fantasy Football League. Watch for him on ESPN in a few years.
My husband Hurley works from home, but travels quite a bit. When he's gone, I usually take a break from making dinner and cleaning the house. Oh, I don't do those things regularly when he's here either! Our parenting philosophy is "choose your battles." The only problem is that we often choose different battles. It keeps it interesting!!!
Comments
If this made you mad, you might want to avoid reading the comments on the original piece that "inspired" this. Some of them just perpetuate the unnecessary animosity. I hope some of you will comment so we can all explore how Triangle Moms feel about this divide.
I read the original after reading yours. Which did fire me up, because it was such a generalization to label all SAHMs. But on the flip side, we who stay at home should not ever stand in judgment of women who are able and willing to juggle both a career/job and being a mom. Whether or not they have a choice in the matter.
Yes, we are all moms, but that is something we have in common. It's like having a dog or living in a neighborhood. It is unfair to start comparing based on that trait, for it would not even be comparing apples to apples.
I think most women are motivated, smart, and able to multitask regardless of where we focus. If we stay at home, we put 100% into it and if we go to work, we give that 100%. I think you did a fabulous job of taking the important parts of both sides and making us see the positive. I loved what you wrote.
ALL excellent points, Diane. That original article, and many of its comments, were very divisive. Like you say, everyone does their best when raising children.I am of a slightly different generation than you. My children are 32 and 29. I knew almost no mothers who worked...this just was not "done" back then. Yet none of us watched TV and ate bon-bons all day! I will say that now that my children have friends who are working mothers, they often comment that they feel very fortunate that I stayed at home.
I am also from another generation. I worked and raised two children on my own. I did roll my eyes when listening to some women complain about having "so much to do" ie. nails, food shopping, hair appointment and on and on. In hindsite I realzie there are some people both men and women who don't tolerate pressure and multi tasking very well either at home or at the office. I did always receive help from my children's friends' parents where they spent many after school hours in homes that had stay at home moms. One very good friend took both my girls miles away to stay with them when I worked during school breaks.
So your point is important, the women's movement is and was about respecting the choices we are now able to make.
After an initial defensive reaction, I felt sorry for the woman. She seems so un-happy. Don't worry, SAHM's; I would guess she talks about her co-workers, husbands friends, etc. in the same manner.
Sadly, there was a complete lack of empathy and respect towards the other women present. Described as complaining, one woman says that she's "overwhelmed," yet nothing is done to share the burden, offer support, or muse that life at home, though different from her own life-style, must have it's own challenges. Instead, the writer seems irritated that she is subjected to such un-pleasant buzz.
And why even care about how others are dressed?? It's easy to knock down others when trying to elevate yourself. One can only speculate, but there could be a major case of insecurity here. I wish her luck (and hope her children don't absorb her comtemptuous attitude towards others).
Good point about worrying about what people are wearing. One of the big reasons I love it here so much more than I did in Boca Raton is that I can be a slacker, dropping my kids off at school wearing my PJ top and sweats, living the rest of my life mostly in shorts and a Life is Good t-shirt. I don't feel like I am competing in a fashion show every time I leave the house.
And good point about "overwhelmed." I, as a sufferer of depression, should have picked up on that. Who is anyone to say what should or should not overwhelm someone else? And what overwhelms me varies based on whether my disease is under control or not.
Why can't we always assume that everyone is doing the best they can for the right reasons?
Well said! I agree with you.
Being at home with kids can be very overwheming and isolating as well. The perfect environment to express this is with other moms who might be able to relate to how you are feeling. Instead of compassion, the author feels distain.
Isn't it liberating... not to have to worry about how you're dressed?
I've lived in larger cities where I might not have felt comfortable wearing the casual clothes of motherhood. But after getting spit-up, peed & pooped on, learning what stains (finger paints, Aquaphor, Tri-Vi-Sol vitamins), and finding that much of my day includes getting up & down from the floor, casual is the way to go!
It reinforced the impression that the author lacked empathy in her e-mail: she couldn't envision the lifestyles of the SAHMs enough to realize that casual clothes make sense.
Who is to say that one way is better than another? As you say, we're all doing our best.
The funny thing is that on the very same web site today, there is a diatribe from a childless woman complaining about OPK (other people's kids) at a July 4th barbecue. But it's funny. It doesn't make me mad at all. The same woman who wrote about the SAHMs at school could have said it with a humorous slant and gotten away with it.
I haven't read the July 4th diatrabe but I did read the IHOPK thread that you initiated last week, and yes, I enjoyed it very much! It's bluntness was ameliorated by humor.
As you elude to, humor allows one to say something in a non-aggressive way. It's hard to feel defensive when you're laughing at a situation.
(Haven't you laughed at yourself for the way you dress? I once discovered, while un-dressing at night, that I wore my sweat pants backwards the entire day! But I did that while working too -- I once wore a shirt backwards, AND inside out. The tag was under my chin. Mortification!)
I agree with you: "working mother" could have used humor to more effectively convey her point. Her entry would have resonated with more readers and they might have been able to move past defensiveness to reflect on her point of view.
And some of the IHOPK contributors did one more thing: take ownership of the problem. Saying "I hate other peoples kids -- " is alittle different than saying that other peoples kids are annoying (i.e., they are the problem, not me). I think that's why there were so many defensive responses to w-m's e-mail. Did you read some of them? One reader wanted to un-subscribe immediately.
Good point about IHOPK rather than "they are annoying." I did read the comments and while I related to many of the commenters, the "unsubscribe immediately" thing sounded a little dramatic for me. I mean, the site has a ton of content. Some of it is going to interest you and some of it won't. Do you eliminate the possiblity of reading anything that might not sync with your worldview?
I've been wondering why parenting discussions sometimes become so
heated.
I guess it is like discussing politics or religion; there are philosophies that are so personally significant, that it is difficult to reason past it.
I think what's tough these days, is that in the generations past, people seemed to be more uniform in their lifestyles, more on the same page. Now I think we have so many choices, (for example so many more school choices!) that we naturally tend to compare ourselves to others, to question other choices, and we're constantly rethinking our own choices. I mean, I guarantee my mother never lay awake at night worrying about where she sent us to school. Things tend to be a little more confusing these days! And many people seem to feel the need to validate their own choices by criticizing others. Typically those people lack confidence and on some level who can blame people for questioning when there are so many mixed messages about what constitutes great parenting. Is it the mom who runs herself ragged chauferring the kids around (look what a good mom I am) the mom who stays at home and goes against the tide trying in vain to keep a non chaotic household, the mom who goes to work and tries to alleviate some of the financial pressure from her husband, the mom who only has one kid so they they can give them all their attention, or the mom who has a big family in order to reap those benefits....I'm glad we have so many choices, but it's not without difficulty!
I worked 40 plus hours for the last 14 years. I left it all behind 8 months ago to be a SAHM. For the last year I was a WOAM, juggling work, pumping breast milk, cooking meals, cleaning house, taking work trips and retrieving baby from the sitter.
Therefore, I have done both and honestly, being a SAHM has been a vacation compared to my life as a WOAM. My house is clean, the grass is cut, my hair is fixed, our meals are on the table, I've been to the gym and everyone has clean undies... always. I also do Arbonne so I have a side business to work at as well, but Arbonne is tailor-made for a SAHM. (ask me about it sometime!) Again, it is still a vacation compared to a 8-6 job. So there you have it.. both sides of the fence- where one is much greener for me; the SAHM side. As far as what you wear to pick up your kid up or to the grocery store? Who the heck cares, right? You have a man, you have a job and you are not selling anything so go on and wear your stained sweats and your pony tails. I do on occassion and it feels good!