Home, naturally

Pamela Druckerman, author of “bringing up Bebe” is one of the debaters on NY Times “Motherlode” .

The topic of debate is the parenting styles of French vs. American women. Reading her argument supporting the “French” way of parenting, or, more specific, mothering, finally gave me some insight on why I can’t help but being troubled by this approach ever since the debate opened.

She says, “And as Badinter points out, what are mothers supposed to do once their kids are grown?” This type of questioning seems to be a common technique that appears all over the parenting horizon. Subtle yet noticeable, Druckerman implies that the decision to be a long-term, full-time mother messes you up for the real; that is, the corporate world and that no skills used or learned as a mother could be of any use when our children grow up. Sadly, of course, she has a point. The point is not, however, that with every year you stay at home and take care of your children your career potential diminishes. Rather, the point is to convince us to hop onto this bandwagon and therefore let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  That is, our society perceives stay-at-home years as anti-career and long-term, stay-at-home mothers do face a harder time getting back into the workforce. However, as long as mothers themselves proclaim this opinion as truth, women will, indeed, face a tough return into the “real” world.

My point is not to convince every mom to stay at home, and I’m certainly not arguing that staying at home is the only good way to raise kids.  We all know career moms who wish they could stay home and stay at home moms who wish they were back on the job.  My point is to begin to refute the assumption that staying at home kills your career, end of story. And my point is for moms, themselves to be accepting of that other option, because the ideal for many of us is to be at home and working full time . . . beautifully cloned.

What we learned from the recession is that everybody who is out of work has a difficult time going back. When you are ready to get back into the workforce, go back with confidence. Stop apologizing for spending time at home and get yourself up to speed in whatever area you feel it is needed.

I’ve also noticed that the same – “you’d better do this right away” argument is applied to many other parenting issues that often put the stay at home mom on the defensive; e.g.,

• “If you don’t let your baby cry it out, he/she will never learn how to soothe herself.”
• “If you don’t send your children to daycare, they will never learn the necessary social skills.”
• “If you don’t get back to work quickly after having a child, you will never be ‘Successful’.”

Children learn many skills over the years. They learn to walk, talk, and eat. It’s interesting that nobody ever suggests that you shouldn’t hold your baby’s hand because he might never walk by himself. Nobody ever suggests that if you feed your baby, she won’t be able to hold a spoon. Yet, for some reason, we assume that if we don’t let our children cry it out, they will never be able to go to sleep by themselves. We accept that the best way for children to get acclimated with others is to send them off to daycare – and that for some reason, family members don’t teach social skills to each other. And last but not least, we agree that motherhood puts us on the back burner when it comes to any measurable success in the years to come.

Words can be so powerful. If we don’t take the time to dismantle communication structures that sound convincing yet so often can work in both directions, we won’t be able to change the way we look at the issues surrounding modern parenting (whatever that is). Looking back in history, we never had a situation similar to today. We should take this as an opportunity to empower mothers to look for the opportunities instead of looking fearfully ahead to the years when we can’t call ourselves a stay at home mom anymore.