The Mommy Wars: When did We Become the Enemy?

When we first adopted my son at the age of seven months, I took six weeks off my job as a teacher. At the end of those six weeks, I dropped Brian off at a wonderful daycare center, amazingly located right across from the street from my school, and became a Working Mother. Each morning I would drop him off at First Class at 7:30 a.m. approximately eight hours later, I would pick him up and head for home.

Twenty months later, I gave birth to my daughter. Once again, I took six weeks off before returning to work. But this time was different: I had already informed my boss that I would be quitting at the end of the school year. The cost of this magnificent childcare was pretty much eating up my entire salary, and Brian’s frequent ear infections were making too many of my mornings a nightmare as I attempted to arrange alternate child care. It was time to begin a new career as a Stay at Home Mom.

I’ve been home for five years now, and will probably remain home for another three. At that time, my younger daughter will be enrolled in full day Kindergarten, and I’ll return to teaching, hopefully at the same school I tearfully left five years ago.

So I have experienced both sides of the Stay at Home Mom issue. And I can honestly say that I’ve been lucky enough to base my choices on what my husband and I felt was right for our family at the moment, not economic necessity.

But if you take a look at many parent’s magazines, that doesn’t seem to be the case for many families. They frequently portray the work or home issue as one of two enemies, locked in mortal combat. At Home Mommies self-righteously claim that their way is the only way—that any mom who goes back to work is placing her own ego above the needs of her child, and that no “good” mom would do that to any child she truly loved.

The other side of the issue isn’t presented in any more kindly a manner. Working moms claim that they are providing economic stability for their children: missing the childhood milestones so that their children can attend good schools and attain all that life should hold for them. At home moms are seen as selfish, risking their child’s future for the sake of finger-paint and Barney.

As I read these articles, I can’t stop asking: When did WE become the enemy?

There are so many serious issues that have profound effects on our kids. Take your choice: school violence, poverty, gangs, the lack of affordable housing and childcare, illiteracy…. The list goes on and on. Yet so many moms seem to choose instead to focus on what other moms are doing, and why it’s wrong. The whole argument just boggles my mind. Why the incredible interest in what others are doing? Assuming that their children are well clothed and well fed, why do we care who is there giving the milk and cookies at the end of the school day?

The whole thing seems so petty, so sophomoric to me. Entire cities on the Gulf Coast were destroyed in last fall’s hurricanes—now there’s an issue effecting children for you. Yet instead of focusing on rebuilding those schools, we see yet another article on “Why what I do is right, and why what you do is wrong!”

Is this the lesson we want to teach our kids? Is absolute intolerance for another’s choices the model we want them to learn from?

I say, let’s change the focus of the battle. Instead of fighting against each other, why not fight against all those things which prevent kids—either our own or someone else’s—from living the kind of life we all want for our kids.

Wasn’t it Lincoln who said “A house divided against itself cannot stand”? Let’s band together and improve things for kids, each in the way he or she is best able.