When I was growing up, my mom chose to stay home, a decision that positively affected my childhood in a lot of ways. My aunt chose to keep her job when my cousin was born, and they also have a great relationship. What do these two women have in common? They both made choices about motherhood that we should support.
Motherhood is surrounded by a lot of disagreement. Working mothers are made to feel guilty for leaving their kids with a nanny during the workday. Meanwhile, stay at home moms are criticized for undermining the feminist cause by sticking to traditional gender roles. No matter what mothers choose, the end result is the same: society doesn’t approve. New mothers are faced with a choice, and whether they decide to stay at home or continue working, society will condemn them for it.
It’s a problematic part of motherhood that never seems to impact fathers.
It is these mommy wars, and not stay at home motherhood, that undermines the feminist cause. Instead of empowering women to make their own career choices, we’re policing mothers’ decisions. Instead of making it easier for women to work, we are quick to judge.
Stay-at-home versus working motherhood is a personal choice based on an array of personal factors. It’s a case-by-case decision that each mother has to make for herself. If a mother chooses to continue working after having a child, it is a choice we must respect. No mom should feel inadequate because she, like most fathers, works during the day.
America’s lack of nationally-mandated maternity leave certainly doesn’t help the situation. In countries where women have the job security that maternity leave affords them, they are far more likely to go back to work. This would suggest that women would prefer to go back to work, but often can’t because their job evaporated while they were in the hospital. Or, better yet, in countries where there’s equal maternity and paternity leave (for the father), gender roles and pay equity are far more equal, and studies show that mothers are far happier. In these countries it’s not just a given that the woman will be the one to sacrifice her career.
We must respect women’s right to choose their own careers, a choice we have never denied men.
Likewise, we must respect the choice to stay home. Many argue that if a woman isn’t working and thus not financially independent, she is destroying the feminist cause. But forcing women into the workplace when they have the desire and means to stay home and look after their children is just as bad as forcing women to stay home when they want to work. It takes away women’s autonomy and suggests that women can’t choose for themselves.
We must ensure each woman has the right to make her own choices about her own career, whether she has children or not. By suggesting that employment makes you a lesser mother (but not a lesser father — in fact, just the opposite), we’re saying that women who have children must sacrifice everything while their husband does not. By trying to force stay at home mothers back into the workplace, we’re saying women who choose full-time motherhood can’t choose their own career and life paths. That sounds like exactly the kind of mentality feminists are trying to fight.
We should strive to make both choices accessible to as many women as possible…
That means helping professional mothers by making it easier for them to balance professional time and family time.
It means supporting stay at home mothers in their decision instead of accusing them of whiling the day away in yoga pants.
It means respecting women’s universal right to choose their own careers — a choice we have never denied men.
In the end, feminism comes down to supporting women’s career choices. We fought, and continue to fight, for equal rights in the workplace, and women have more professional choices now than ever before. As mothers struggle to decide whether they will stay home or continue working, they should know that the feminist community supports their right to choose. Let’s stop judging each other and refocus our energies to make both choices easy and accessible to all women.
Don’t want to deal with the mommy wars? Here are 8 solid reasons not to have kids.
How do you feel about the so-called “Mommy Wars”? Let us know in the comments!
Whether women are financially independent or not, others shouldn’t care. It’s not like they’re the one getting all problematic about it.
Mothers are so important in society, yet we’re treated like we’re not worth anything at all.
I’ve been in a company that doesn’t accept new female applicants that are married or those who have children. They think that it gets in the way of the person’s performance when they have a family to take care of. As a mom, I know that my top priority is my child. That even without a proper approval of a leave and there’s an emergency that pertains to the safety of my child, I know I would sacrifice my work. I guess that’s threatening for them, knowing that you wouldn’t prioritize work over your family or children. Is that even rational? Is that even acceptable?
No, that’s not acceptable at all. That’s really unfair.
Life is so hard nowadays. If a mom is a single parent, she’ll have one hell of a problem providing for her child.
Gender roles don’t even apply now!
Men have proper paternity leave and they’re not even the one who gave birth.
I’d just like to think that nobody should really give a flying shit about what I decide to do with my life. We all want a family in the future with lovely kids, if not all, then some. But what I’m trying to say is that no one will ever stop judging. Life is just like that and it’s something that we can’t change in just a day or two. So the best thing that we can all do is to just not care about what other people think. Let them judge all they want. The only issue that would be hard to fix is the maternity leave that they give in companies that are way too short for a woman to even start their career properly.
Yeah, we need better opportunities than this. It’s so unfair.
This world is so materialistic that they’d judge the decision of of other people if they don’t earn money for themselves. It’s just so shallow.
It’s like those assholes never became babies that breastfed on their mothers.?
The government should really do better in trying to make the best choices available for women. First of all, not that we’re trying to be a VIP on this one, but they should at least keep in mind what it entails to have a longer maternity leave. One is that it encourages bonding between the mother and the baby. Two, breastfeeding will be easier and studies show that it’s really healthy for the child to consume the mother’s milk than milf formulas. Three is that we could be raising good children– the future of every generation. We give so little attention to what children need, not realizing that they would soon be adults that would be controlling every movement of the society.