Hip Mamma

The Mommy Wars

originally published March 29, 2006

“Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.”

Lin Yutang

In early 1998, I sat in a convention center in Atlanta listening to Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda speak at a business women’s luncheon about all the possibilities available to “today’s mothers.” I was feeling incredibly optimistic about my future as a woman. I could have an education, a career, a marriage, a family, a home, and I could accomplish it without compromising any of my ideals about feminism or quality child-rearing, all while loving our mother Earth, contributing to society, and toning my gluts in my sleep. No problem.

I’m not sure when it hit me that Gloria didn’t have any children of her own. Perhaps it was at one in the morning when I had paced the floors with a colicky baby for three straight hours, night after night, with no help from hubby because I had chosen to stay home with the baby after all, and in my over-achieving warped head that meant I had to do it all by myself. Can’t wake the “working” parent.

In my sleep-deprived stupor, I called my mother in tears. “What do I do?” I demanded to know. “Hmmm, I don’t know. You and your sister were such good sleepers. You never had colic.” Click. Fuck you very much, mom. You and your whole “have it all” generation. And where was Gloria so I could kick her in the mouth while I was at it? Probably sleeping soundly wrapped in a very high-thread-count sheet that wasn’t stained with breast milk and spit up. Bitch.

I had chosen to put off any career aspirations and stay home with my bundle of joy because I knew no one else could care for him as well as I could, with as much love and understanding, with as much wisdom and kindness. And because infancy and childhood, like life itself, is fleeting, and I had all the time in the world to make money, and only these few precious years to watch his rolly baby fat limbs turn into long little boy arms.

The research the psychologists were doing on early childhood development had concluded that “what you teach from birth to three is what will mean the most to me,” and I took that to heart. I could put in three years. I could totally give myself over to this little human who needed me more than anything in the world for three years. Thirty-six months. One thousand ninety-five days. Twenty-six thousand two hundred and eighty hours. Not that I was counting. As I stood there with this hysterical baby, I began to suspect that I had been sold a bill of goods. Nobody told me how hard this was going to be. Nobody told me how much I would want to go back to work.

For three long months, I paced the floor with a colicky infant. For six months, I slept in two-hour intervals. For 18 months, I served as a 24-hour convenience store for my son’s nursing needs, The Suck N’ Run. For two years, I didn’t sleep through the night. Not once. For those first few years, I deflected the inquiry, “When will you have another baby?” by, instead of scratching the person’s eyes out, simply replying, “Oh, I don’t know, we’ll see.”

But, through it all, I loved the little guy. Mark Twain said, “My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” And I did enjoy Justice. He was difficult, strong-willed, completely against the idea of rest in any form, but he was the kind of challenge that made me sure I could do anything. Being a mommy really is the toughest job you’ll ever love. But all that aside, as his third birthday approached, I made giddy plans to return to the workforce and to arrange excellent childcare for my guy. After all, he was three, I was done. I had put my time in. I could go back to work and not feel guilty. Right? Right?

The first day I left him at the day care center was the most difficult of my life. He cried, I cried. I called my husband on the cell phone hysterical, lost in this city I’d lived in for seven years, unable to ascertain where I was or where I might be going. He instructed me to pull over. I did, and had a good cry, and eventually found my way back to the loop. I knew it would be tough, and it was, tougher than colic. A strong feeling of separation anxiety flooded over me as I relinquished the control I had had over my child’s every action, his environment, everything he ate, what he saw, and who saw him. He was on his own. Sniffle. Maybe he would write to me someday.

A few days later, I sat in front of a computer, at a desk, in a quiet office, with a cup of coffee that was not being threatened by curious hands, and I looked around. It was so quiet. I could totally concentrate on what I was doing, OR, I could let my mind wander for awhile, OR I could get up and go to the bathroom, by myself, at anytime I chose. Wow. “I have really gotten away with something here,” I thought to myself. I thought of all the stay-at-home mommies I knew. Poor suckers.

It didn’t take long for reality to rear its ugly little noggin, though. A full-time job is just that, full-time. And it is exhausting just getting up, dressing, going there, getting the kid where he needs to go, and add to that the fact that you have to actually perform a job, possibly well, and that you still have to be a mommy when you are done. The housework, cooking, cleaning, errands, doctors and dentist appointments, all create an ominous presence in the back of your mind known as “the to-do list.” Grocery shopping isn’t something you do once a week anymore; it’s something you do in a rush when you have the time. Time, in fact, becomes your worst enemy as you guiltily keep track of the hours of quality time you get each week with your child, and the knowledge that it is never enough.

It is from this reality that I read an advertisement for the new book, Mommy Wars, a collection of essays edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner, and written by both working and stay-at-home moms. In it, “Stay-at-home and Career moms face off on their choices, their lives, their families.” Face-off? Wars?

Haven’t we all come to recognize as modern feminists that we can have it all, just not all at once? And that one mommy’s happy life as a homemaker can be another’s ticket to a straightjacket and lace-less footwear? Can’t we all just get along?

Probably not. And it is simply because that in order to endure our choices, we have to feel we are right. That we are superior. Mommies who are staying home need to feel that the sacrifice of self for the greater purpose of putting wonderful humans into our society is worth all the colic, vomit, sleepless nights, and tandem trips to the bathroom. Mommies who are working need to feel the financial contribution they are making to their family is just as important as their physical presence at home, and that their desire for a definite and separate identity is valid and important. And neither camp will ever get away without a certain amount of guilt about the choices they’ve made. C’est la vie.

I wish I could say I am not guilty of participating in this petty form of degradation, but, hey, I’m only human. When I hear a mommy going on and on and on about how happy she is that she’s staying home with her kids, I secretly think, “She doth protest too much.” And it is all too easy to commiserate with my working mommy friends about how tough “we” have it, knowing full well that my life was just as frantic (okay, more so) when I was staying home.

Ah, no one really wins in war. The fighting continues; judgments are passed; casualties pile up. It’s natural. But let’s not forget that we are all in this womanhood thing together, no matter how we choose to do it. Society needs moms who have careers outside of their homes as much as it needs wonderful women who mother full-time. If we cooperate, we can pass on to the next generation of feminists the confidence that they can make their own choices about what kind of women they want to be, and maybe they can feel a little less guilty about it when they do.

Elizabeth Deroshia beavislsbuffett@yahoo.com

Elizabeth Deroshia

beavislsbuffett@yahoo.com