A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars by Miriam Peskowitz. While Ms. Peskowitz made some very interesting points, I did not feel that the book offered enough concrete solutions to the current social problem of the lack of choices in balancing family and work.
She claims that the media (our favorite scapegoat) has created the mommy wars and continues to encourage women to judge one another for their individual choices. She goes on to say that this clouds the real issues that women (and men) face in reagrds to unpaid “care” work and paid “career” work. If we can work together to find better solutions, we will all have better lives.
One of the problems that face us today is that “The powerful acts of opening up better jobs for women weren’t accompanied by other powerful acts of social change that would have fully supported us in these new positions.” How many hours a week to these jobs require? How can working these jobs be balanced with other aspects of life? Perhaps for families with no children, it is still possible to balance demanding careers and healthy family and community life, but for families with children it is quite difficult. Different families look for different solutions to find some balance, and we all wish that there were more options available.
Ms Peskowitz quotes Amy Hackney Blackwell “The opt-out revolution isn’t about motherhood; it’s about quality of life and rejection of a system in which long hours have been confused with quality work.”
Personally, I believe that even without children, I would not have wanted to climb the corporate ladder. The pressure and the time demands would have eventually taken their toll on me regardless of the fact that I was a mother. Perhaps becoming a mother gave me a very handy excuse to take a step back and not devote myself to corporate life.
One question that stands out for me is why is it usually the mother, not the father, that ends up cutting back at work. I certainly don’t have the answer to that old question, and I am sure there are many reasons. For me and mine, I can say that pregnancy and breastfeeding left me tired. I could not balance full-time work and family. Being with my children, I discovered that for the most part, I enjoy being home and being with them. Perhaps men generally feel that they do not have the choice to opt-out. Perhaps they would be penalized even more harshly than the women who reduce their hours at work.
The work I do for my family is much more meaningful and rewarding to me than my for pay work overall. Why should I be made to feel guilty for wanting to spend time with my children instead of hiring a nanny who would get to spend time with them?
As for the social change that is needed, I believe that we need more choices for part-time work and part-time childcare. Benefits should be available for those who chose to work part-time. In the case of families with two adults, all benefits should be shared, whether it be retirement funds or Social Security credits.
To close, I will quote Ms. Peskowitz: “And why is it impossible to imagine that some women and men really want to be with their kids?”
