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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (66153)	12/12/1999 1:47:00 AM
From: Michael M	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Lizzie, I don't mean this as a put-down, but since you admit to not being a parent, I have to place you right in the middle of the "As-if-they-would-know" crowd. Most women I'm close to work outside the home. Those that don't also have active and demanding lives of considerable merit. I know NONE who need validation from talk show hosts. In fact, I know NONE that listen to/watch talk shows -- they're too damn busy!

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (66153)	12/12/1999 3:00:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Teenage girls and self esteem have EVERYTHING to do with our cultural emphasis of youth and perfect beauty (especially for women) and very little to do with stay at home mothers. Except for the fact that I would wager you a good chunk of change the children of mothers who CHOOSE to stay home with their kids are better off than those who don't. My children know I could pull in a fairly large salary- but I choose to be home, for THEM- because they are the most important work of my and their father's life. Any other work we do, is aimed at producing a better life for them (and for my husband and myself as well- we don't want to starve or anything). I thought, when I was working so hard in college (top of my class in everything- an academic superstar) that I would leave the child rearing up to a nanny. I thought the English system (well - the upper class system) made so much sense- why should MY productivity stop just because I had children. But when I had my first child, I realized I never wanted to leave her. I know that if I do my job right she (and my other children) will grow up to be strong enough to leave me, but I will never leave her. Children are so much bigger and better and more important than you think they will be- and you get out of the experience of being a parent what you put into it. If you put in a few hours a day in between day care and bed time- I think that's sad. It's just my opinion- based on nursing all my children. And being able to stay up with them all night if they were sick. Holding a sick kid all day long on my lap if they were miserable. Taking them to school every morning and picking them up every afternoon. Driving for every fieldtrip, being available for classroom parties and playgroups. I know there is no one in the world who could do what I do. No one could love my children more than I do. I don't have any self esteem problems. And you know- all those talk show hosts- when they talk about how important women at home are? Maybe it is becuase women at home ARE important- and it's ok to say so. Rather than "reassuring" women- maybe it is just a case of giving women who have chosen a different career their due. Because we do deserve an enormous amount of respect. We carry the slack for all the working parents who don't have time to be "there" for their kids- where ever "there" is. I have a van that seats 8- and when I drive on fieldtrips I'm driving 6 other kids of parents who didn't show up to drive. And when I organize all the parties for my daughter's class- I have to phone all the parents and coordinate them, and from the working parents I hear "just assign me something I can pick up at the store" - well that is fine, but we are doing crafts for each holiday, and games- and it is the parents who are HOME that show up to help with that. And it is the stay at home moms that run the PTA, and the girlscout troops and the boy scout troops and ALL the other things that add so much to the lives of our kids. I don't think stay at home moms get anywhere near the recognition they deserve- every working mom ought to say a little prayer every day for the few stay at home moms that are left to run everything.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (66153)	12/12/1999 12:21:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

<<I don't have children, but if I do, I will most certainly work fulltime, not because I have to, but because I will want to.>> Lizzie, you started posting here when I was taking time off, so I really have no idea how old you are, but I can tell you that lots of women I know believe they are going to go right back to work after they have children, but once their babies are born they are terribly torn at the thought of doing so. The lucky ones who have enough money to stay home then often change their minds and stay with their children. I think this is partly instinctual--unimaginably strong bonds are formed when you have a baby that you cannot really understand until you have experienced it. This is different from the early 80's when I had my child. All the college-educated moms in the park on Saturdays were working and very proud of it--they typically went back to work when their babies were six weeks old, and the sooner they did, the stronger they felt. In fact, there would be arguments in the park as our babies played because feminism was such a driving principle that they accused me of wasting my life because I chose to stay home and nurture my child. By the early 90's there was really a sea change as many feminists realized that being a super mom really was a myth, and that freedom of choice as to whether to work was very important, not a rigid ideology that stay-at-home moms were unproductive. I have a younger friend whose first memory of his mother is saying goodbye to her when she dropped him at day care. This seems very sad to me. Children need immense attention from one adult who spends time with them; this is how they are stimulated to grow and learn. As far how your self-esteem issue ties in here, I can only comment that I believe my own daughter's self-esteem is much healthier than it would have been had I worked when she was little. I think that it speaks volumes about how much you love your child if you are able to defer your own gratification long enough to nurture them completely at least until they are in school. That is just a few years, and the rewards are lifelong for you and your children. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if your opinions change a bit when you have a child. I suspect they might.