Angry SAHM gives the finger to the NYTimes
Building on both Ann and Siva's posts...
"'My mother's always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time,' Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. 'You always have to choose one over the other.'. . ."
Maybe, Cynthia, that was because twenty or thirty years ago, there was even less support for working mothers than there is today. However, women like my mother, who had to work outside of the home, and her mother, who chose to work outside of the home, forced their partners and employers and the media and the government to look at working mothers a little differently. Conditions have improved for working mothers today -- it's not perfect, but a little bit better thanks to flex-time, job-sharing, telecommuting, and onsite daycare. (Thank your lucky stars, Cynthia, that these are options generally available to a white collar professional like your future self.) To say that the children of these women are getting screwed, despite studies that show the exact opposite, is STUPID. As a full-time stay-at-home mother, I think it's great that you know you'd like to take some time to stay home and raise your children. Good for you. However, don't slag the majority of women who choose or, God forbid, have to work outside of the home.
On a related note, I'd like to mention Miriam Peskowitz's The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother?. I'd recommend it, but I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't read all of it, yet. However, I've read much of it and I've found it much more truthful, on target, and well-written than something like Judith Warner's Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, which really, really pissed me off. From the publisher -
"The media, from Dr. Phil to the New York Times Magazine, is adamant that there is no love lost between working parents and those who stay home with their children, each fighting an ideological and economic war based on what they think is best for their children. Yet in reality, as Miriam Peskowitz powerfully discloses, parents don't want to fight one another at all; they simply want more options. Moreover, the very sides in this debate don't exist: one third of all mothers work part-time, falling into the vast abyss between full-time careerist and at-home mommy. How does the corporate climate in America force women to claim either a career or a family at any given time? Are the choices women are making—to either adjust careers, 'carousel' in and out of the workplace, or quit altogether—really choices at all? And how do we expand the definition of productive worker to include an engaged parent? These questions and more are answered and explored in this moving and convincing treatise on the new-century collision between work and mothering."