The pressure we feel is real. Mothers who stay home to raise their kids get it from friends who say, ?You?re giving up that education just to stay home?? and from strangers
Career women
who ask, ?What do you do?? and even from our kids. Questions such as, ?Why don?t you have a job, like Jane?s mom does?? can be damaging, making us question our choice to give up our careers and the income they generate. Some mothers who work outside the home are pressured by family members who want us to raise our own kids or by those who ask why we had kids at all and even sometimes by employers who can threaten our standing on the ladder.
Many mothers who stay at home to raise children or carve out time to work a second job are perpetually stressed out by alternating pressures to do more in each arena. They are strung between two rigid models of motherhood.
To locate the source of those pressures we must look beyond each other and the media-hyped ?battle of the moms? to the often contradictory society in which we live ? one that expects mothers to either stay home or work, but that doesn?t support either extreme very well.
Becoming aware is the first step in finding solutions. Here are some of the tensions under which we labor, how we can gain perspective by looking at the bigger picture and how to feel good about the future.
Staying Home
?What do you do?? is a question many stay-at-home moms aren?t prepared for. How we answer it says a lot about the state of modern motherhood. ?I adjust my answer to the person,? says mother of two Natalie Warner, also co-leader of the Princeton, N.J., Chapter of Mothers & More, a national support and advocacy group for women who are staying home from careers to raise their children. ?I tell strangers I?m an environmental engineer first. I guess I want all that education and hard work to count for something.?
Stay-at-home moms who have been trained to hold bread-winning jobs are particularly vulnerable to feelings of withdrawal from validation gained from all they used to do. We want to be identified as the smart, interesting people that we are and to not have our work as mothers devalued.
Our cultural tendency to dismiss work done at home puts us on the defensive. Moms who are at home can find themselves chafing at the myth behind June Cleaver, that we must be selfless to be good mothers without outside interests. This model assumes that our spouses work while we raise children, a job characterized less as work than as play. Having a job that?s perceived as all fun supports our guilt if we return to work or need a break, even if it?s just to go to a movie.
And we?re often burdened by the sense we?re letting the women who liberated June Cleaver down. ?I?m grateful to the women?s movement for giving us an opportunity to do something other than raise children,? says Manhattan mom Janet Stark. Our gratitude conflicts with our suspicion that the previous generation would be ashamed of us for passing up a hard-won career. ?Now it?s uncool to stay home. The Barbie career book has every career except mother. That?s supposed to make me feel good, but it doesn?t.?
Suburban women of color face an additional burden. ?I can see the surprise in people?s faces when I tell them I?ve chosen to stay home,? says Donna Robinson, who left her career as teacher and social worker to raise three children. ?They think I have no choice. It?s hard for professional, middle-class black women to connect with their Caucasian counterparts, because of the assumption that there?s a larger gap than there is in education and class.?
The Economics of Parenthood
The daily task of balancing a budget with one paycheck has equally tangible long-term implications. We?ll ultimately have less for our children?s education and for our retirement. At issue, too, is the possibility of being compromised in the event of divorce or death of a spouse.
Ann Crittendon, in her book The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued, tells us that primary caregivers and their children ?are almost invariably worse off financially after divorce than the spouse who devotes all his energies to a career.? Women who choose to stay home must, besides adjusting their sense of themselves, be prepared to give up cash and future security.
Working Outside the Home
Career women
Women working outside of the home are more often than not doing so to make ends meet, but many continue careers because it is fulfilling. Those who can choose are sometimes the target of criticism from both inside and outside the home.
Sometimes the most acute pressure we feel is from our own families. Gina Harrison of Margate, N.J., felt it from two sides as she tried to balance a career and two kids. ?I was relying more and more on my mother, but she eventually asked me to raise my own children,? she says. ?My husband wouldn?t consider quitting, though I could have supported us. Even if he had quit, I would have continued doing the majority of the housework. I was killing myself at both jobs, so I quit.?
Sometimes it?s not until we are forced into the extreme choice of staying home or not that we realize what a non-choice we have. Many women are bridging the gap by starting at-home businesses, so they can make their own hours, but it?s tough to make it pay for more than the requisite childcare.
Quality, affordable childcare is perhaps the greatest obstacle for moms in outside careers. And even if we do find it, we are subject to judgments by childcare workers themselves. Many don?t approve of leaving kids so many hours, as voiced by one childcare worker from New Jersey.
?The kids start the year out sad; then they get used to it but in a jaded sort of way. It?s heartbreaking.? Too often, it?s mothers who take the brunt of the implied blame.
Once at work, most women face employers whose bottom line conflicts with motherhood. When Beth Dugan, a project manager and mother of one, told her boss she was pregnant again she was immediately ?demoted,? but not in title or pay, giving her no legal recourse. In Stark?s case, it was her colleagues who made working less comfortable. ?They were resentful that our employer was allowing me flexibility to be home with my kids,? she says. ?Even though they had the same access I did, they didn?t take advantage of it.?
The work culture isn?t fair across the board, and it?s left up to each individual to carve out their own deal. Unpaid leave, minimal maternity benefits, long workdays, inflexible schedules and lack of on-site childcare adversely affect most of us.
Gaining Perspective
When you boil it down you find that all mothers, whether they work outside the home or not, are suffering under the same external pressures. The contrast between society?s pro-family stance and the actual lack of support we have to make good choices is beginning to come to light. At the core is an ever-increasing corporate drive to produce, which requires a greater commitment to the workforce than to the family.
The message we get from many employers is that if we aren?t pulling our weight, we?re taking time off, time away from contributing. And if parenting equals time off, the value for what we do when we choose family over production is diminished. Child rearing isn?t productive in the eyes of our social, governing and corporate institutions.
It helps to see that ?having a child is a life-altering event after which even if you won?t change the number of hours you work, you?ll just change what kind of work you do
Career women
and how you do it,? says Warner. By identifying what we need to thrive in both realms ? at home and in the workplace ? and by seeing women?s unique abilities to move in and out at different points in our lives, we can begin to integrate the two.
Whatever our choices, identifying the pressures we face as mothers is the jumping off point to change. Many women aren?t aware of how staying home to raise kids will impact their futures, says Warner. ?It?s important to try to raise awareness, so that women might in turn change legislation and/or the workplace to better accommodate them,? she says.
Mothers are on the go as part of a rapidly expanding ?mothers movement,? as Mothers & More puts it, and we?re changing the home front, one child and one job at a time.
2. Consider job-sharing with your spouse, alternating career time with child rearing time and more equal distribution of housework.
3. Volunteer yourself as a mom on school career day, whether or not you work outside the home, and talk about integration as part of your job.
4. Approach your employer with suggestions for job-sharing, flex-time or telecommuting.
5. Join an advocacy organization like Mothers & More, The National Partnership for Work and Families or the Families and Work Institute.
6. Lobby local and national politicians to increase paid family leave and provide excellent, affordable childcare.
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