The Plight of the Working Mother Through the Eyes of a Working Mother

Recently an article from a 1955 issue of Woman's Day Magazine made the rounds as mass e-mail and women from 2008 were up in arms. How dare they suggest we cook and clean and run to the door to greet our husband with drink in hand while perfectly groomed kids sit in Sunday best ready to partake of the evening meal already steaming on the table? What do you mean don't burden him with the story about how little Billy failed his math test? Why should I wait until he settles down and unloads the stress of his day on me? After all, I cooked, cleaned, and cared for children all day and that's a job too!

The women who were assaulted by this article in 2008 and passed it along in an effort to insight outrage in their friends are who I used to be. A woman who bought into the notion that she was defined by her financially beneficial job more than she was by her naturally and genetically encoded one. A woman who thought she would take time off to have kids and then go back to a career. A woman who realized that wasn't possible and she needed to give up her June Cleaver dreams and go back to work or there wouldn't be a house to come home to. I was too drained from working to hang out at baseball practice all afternoon, make supper, wash and fold laundry, clean dishes, and then host the cub scout meeting later that evening with fresh baked brownies in hand. Uh-oh, what happened to little Billy needing help with his homework? No time for that. No energy for that.

I'm not saying we should be living like an article from 1955. Environments change, animals adapt, that's the natural order of things. Our problem is we changed the environment too drastically and too quickly for adaptation of the female species and now we are suffering severe growing pains. There is a resurgence of women as stay at home or work from home moms because it is a good thing. Women who rail against staying at home; claiming even if they could they wouldn't because they want to contribute significantly to the financial well being of their household are being held hostage by the notion that the only way to be a value is to have financial worth in the job market.