Working Mothers: Bane or Boon

I say bane. Before you all jump my case, let me make mine. Anyone who knows me knows I am anti-working-mother. I do not believe mothers should work. Call me old fashioned or anti-feminist or even late to supper. But I do not believe mothers should work. Mothers should stay at home, keep house, keep the finances and raise and be there for their children. I do not believe in "quality time", I think that's a bunch of bullshit designed to make mothers feel better about dumping their kids' butts in daycare.

Now, my mother worked. But she is not the basis for my beliefs. My mother hated children. Why she had four of them is anybody's guess and I know a few of the reasons, sad and pathetic as they are. But she never should have had them and would not have had them had she had the ability to recognize and marry a decent man. I say that because a good marriage was pretty much one of the few options open to the women of her time period. My mother graduated from high school when she was almost twenty years old (she was a functional illiterate)in 1955. In those days, it was expected that you met your husband in one of two places: high school or college. That's just the way it was. A few privileged women went on to break out of the mold and get a higher education other than their Mrs. degree. Seriously, my mother would have been better off being a nurse or a teacher and living out her life as an old maid. Unfortunately, she was from Canada and a textbook example of an illegal immigrant. (They're not ALL from Mexico) Her town in Bonanza, British Columbia did not offer a decent education so she came to the US to live with her sister and sister's husband.( at least that's what I was told) Once she graduated she faced having to return to Canada or continue to live in the US on an expired student visa. She chose to get pregnant out of wedlock instead. Her story doesn't end there but my brother is a textbook example of an "anchor baby". It's obvious to state that my mother went on to live a life of bad decision making evidenced by this first foray.

Career decisions in my mother's time were few and far between. It was Career or Wife and Motherhood and many women were just fine with the latter. There were a few that thought they could Have It All but it was rare. You stayed home. You washed and ironed the clothes. You made the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on homemade bread and brown bagged it for your kids with their names clearly labeled. Your children had a hot breakfast every morning. They dressed appropriately in clean clothes, brushed hair and clean nails. They sat still in class, they shut their mouths and "The Principal's Office" was something to be feared and to be ashamed of. Mothers knew who their kids hung with, knew what their grades were, knew when homework should be completed and knew what their kids were doing. There were very few fat kids in those days because fast food was a treat...not a meal replacement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mickey D's wasn't on every corner but the Malt Shop was. And Malt Shops turned out burgers and fries like every other fast food joint. Kids played outside when chores and homework was completed. Yes. Kids had chores. They were responsible for keeping their rooms picked up and the lawns mowed, and in some areas, the chickens fed. Boys coveted bicycles because they could get a paper route to earn extra money. San bicycles, they bagged groceries at the market and earned ten cents per tip. Kids found ways to entertain themselves that did not include Playstation, Wii, Xbox, the Disney Channel and microwave Mac and Cheese.

We're doing a lot of things wrong in raising children these days because we're in such a fever to do things differently than from the way we were raised. Excluding myself because my upbringing was horrendous, I have to stand up for the Eisenhower-Happy Days-Joanie Loves Chachi-Leave It To Beaver Mom.

No. You don't have to wear a full dress, crinoline, pearls, high heels and lipstick to keep house...unless there's something really funky going on in your household and then...seriously...I can live my life happily without knowing the details. But I also don't buy this line from Julia Roberts in the film "Mona Lisa Smile":

"What will future scholars see when they study us, a portrait of women today? There you are ladies: the perfect likeness of a Wellesley graduate, Magna Cum Laude, doing exactly what she was trained to do. Slide - a Rhodes Scholar, I wonder if she recites Chaucer while she presses her husband's shirts. Slide - hehe, now you physics majors can calculate the mass and volume of every meatloaf you make. Slide - A girdle to set you free. What does that mean? What does that mean?"

Julia Roberts' character, Katherine Watson, is an art instructor at Wellesley College in the early 1960's. Her diatribe insinuates that it is pointless to educate a woman if all she's going to do with her life is be a wife and mother. So it appears to me that being a wife and a mother is lower than being an educated career woman which I call bullshit on. It's just bullshit. The most important job for a woman is her job as a wife and a mother. Perhaps back in the 60's and the fashion challenged 70's, the feminist movement found it necessary to prove that women were just as powerful and as smart as men. These are concepts that I honestly and truly have no problem with.

Women are strong. Women are powerful. Women are smart. If we are doing the same work as a man, putting in the same hours as a man, we deserve the same pay and chances for promotions as that man. But seriously, it ends there. Our mothers were sold some bullshit bill of goods that conditioned them and their daughters to not only believe they could "have everything" but that they deserved it...were entitled to it.

You know...you're not entitled to anything. You get what you work for and even then sometimes you don't get that. There are only so many hours in the day and at some point, you have to make a choice between two things. You don't get to have everything you want just because you want it. This is something we were supposed to have learned before the first grade.

What prompted this blog was New York Times writer David Leonhardt's article: Economic Odds Stacked Against Mothers: 'women do almost as well as men today as long as they don't have children'.

Which is pretty much true but not for the "women aren't smart enough" or "women can't handle positions of authority" nonsense. No, Leonhardt goes on to explain that working women take far more time off from work than their male counterparts. They cannot come in early to work and they cannot stay late. He also suggests that those women who do have children and have made it into exceptional positions of power in their careers are the exception but not the rule. You know... the friends of a friend of a friend argument. "I have a friend who has three kids and she does just fine." I'm happy for the friend. But she's the exception. Everyone else is the rule.

No. Here's my bitch with women in the workplace: I have not worked with one working mother that didn't resent me for my single childless status, didn't come in late or want to leave early for child-related issues, called in sick whenever her child ran a fever and flat out just didn't want to be there.

That is my number two biggest pet peeve of working mothers. The ones I have worked with do NOT want to be there. Flat out. They don't want to be there. There are a myriad of reasons WHY they are there but that doesn't mean they want to be. They don't. They are tired. They are exhausted. They are sleep deprived.

Let's face facts: anyone who has ever been a mother knows that kids are unbelievably demanding. And it never lets up. Ever. Ever. The demands never ever let up. One of my biggest bitches about people who have kids these days is that they don't seem to get the concept that children are a lifestyle change. It's not something you do to get the attention that was lost when your bridal glow faded. It's not something you do to get the parties and the presents and the special favors you got when you were the Princess Bride. It's Parenthood. And unlike the Bridal Glow, Parenthood doesn't fade away. There's no baby shower game that is worth the child that you sigh away resentment with when he demands more and more.

Kids are a lifestyle change, not something you do on the fringes of your life. I've seen brides put more thought, stress more decisions, weep over stupid shit like color schemes and party favors in their weddings and put next to no thought over the child they conceive and how in the free hell they were going to raise said human being. No one really gives a damn about some dorky party favor with "Mike and Sue Forever" ribbons attached to it but we're damn sure concerned that you don't raise Mikey Jr to grow up to be a criminal. What's more important?

Now to the job front. There hasn't been a mother that I've worked with that didn't resent being there. Resentment. Flat out. It's rude and it's crude but there it is. They resent being there. They are there for a variety of reasons, most I don't agree with. Anyone who knows me knows I don't buy the "You need two incomes today to raise kids" bullshit. If you need two incomes (and I know people who've raised six to ten kids and didn't have two incomes and their kids did just fine) you can't afford to have kids. But they resent having to be there. Mostly, they're tired...flat out exhausted. But they are resentful.

And NewsFlash!! Children aren't a right. They are a privilege. On a colder note, as a taxpayer, I'm sick and tired of paying to publicly educate your ill mannered children. But THAT'S a whole other blog.

No, I don't think it's sexism that thwarts women in the workplace. I think it's something they still refuse to acknowledge: their poor decision making in all aspects of their life that led them to be a working mother.

My Number One Pet Peeve regarding working mothers is their talent, penchant, and finely honed ability to bring their kids' sicknesses into the workplace and spread that shit around. Nothing pisses me off worse than catching a nasty cold because some working mom came to work carrying her kids' sick germs. Then she has to go home because whatever daycare she abandoned them in called her to tell her that "Nice try Mrs. Working Mom. But the Children's Tylenol you filled little Jessica-Amber with this morning has worn off. She's rocking a temperature and we can't have her here." So much for Working Mom carrying her load.

As a child, I do not remember ever having chickenpox. I don't remember being vaccinated for it either so as far as I know, I'm susceptible to it. Adults always suffer chickenpox worse than if they'd had it as kids. Did I ever see red when some dumbass mother came to work one day and announced "My kids have the chickenpox so if you want your kids to get and get it over with, come over by me, because they're contagious!" Like she was doing the office some great big favor. Never did she once consider that there might be some adult there who HADN'T had chickenpox and really...truly... wasn't interested in catching them from her snot-nosed spawn.

Currently, I do not work. I am a stay at home wife (whatever in the hell that means). No, I'm not sitting on the couch with bon bons watching Jerry Springer and Oprah. I volunteer with dog rescue, I'm trying to fix up our 112 year old house, the lawn is growing out of control, I'm a product reviewer, I have a popcorn business and I'm trying to get two books and a cookbook published. My husband works from home and I take care of him and the household. I have plenty to do and Jerry Springer would only get in my way. But even though I do not work outside of the home now in the traditional sense, I do not seek a return to the office environment. Nor do I ever see myself wanting that. I hate working with mothers. This next statement may be sexist but working with men poses far less trouble, angst, drama and upheaval than working with mothers.

I don't think it's sexist to say that working women cause more issues in the working environment than men do. You're too emotional, you take things far more personally and seriously and some of you just can't help bringing your personal lives to work and making the rest of us pay for whatever in the hell went wrong that morning. And if you're anything like my mother was, you just can't help causing trouble in the workplace. That woman had the worst thirst for causing trouble in the workplace of anyone I've ever known. If nothing angsty was happening, she'd just make shit up about someone just to get the ball rolling. It's called schadenfreude and it means taking pleasure from the unhappiness of others.

So just stay home. Don't tell me that it's not fulfilling. If you can't find enough to do, you're not very smart. And if enough of you stayed home and tended to your children and realized that they really not slices of heaven but little bastards that will con you for whatever they can get, you might instill a little discipline instead of asking public school teachers to raise them for you. Yes. Little bastards. Kids are smart. That's why they're so demanding. They will demand any and everything they can get. When they're babies, that's one thing. Demands are their only means of communication. As they get older their schemes become more insidious unless you put the smackdown.

I am reminded of a friend of mine whose daughter is a talented figure skater. Her daughter skates because she likes it and because she's good at it. Make no mistake. Figure skating looks easy but physically, it's the hardest damn thing you'll ever try. One of my friend's pals is a Typical Skating Mom who says to her own daughter, "Madison-Olivia, (or insert pretentious trendy name here)if you skate really well, we'll get you a new dress." Upon hearing that, my friend's daughter looked to my friend with hope and gleam in her eyes. To which my friend replied kindly but firmly to her daughter, "The day I bribe you to skate is the last day you skate."

Mothers need to be at home. And make no mistake. There's no shame in being childless. If you choose a career but eschew motherhood, no one's going to tar you and feather you. Too much child abuse in the news these days negates the whole "You're so selfish for not having children" argument which just steams of bovine excrement anyway.

Mothers need to be at home raising their kids. That's it. Until you can bring it completely to the workplace (and let's face it honestly, you're human... you can't keep up the whole separation of home and work thing forever) stay out of the workplace.