Posted on 04/29/2019 4:43:27 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Last week, after an especially long day and an “epic” tantrum from her 3-year-old, Sarah Buckley Friedberg, a Massachusetts mother of three, posted on Facebook a mock ‘to-do list‘ that society expects of mothers today. The ending was inspired:
“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to lean OUT. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.”
Friedberg’s post went viral. But in just a few weeks most people will have forgotten about the article. Don’t be one of those people. Instead, do as Friedberg suggests.
Lean out
Reading Friedberg’s post took me back in time to the very first book I wrote, some 20 years ago now after the birth of my first child—before I’d had a second child and my writing for the subsequent five years amounted to whatever blog post I could squeak out when I wasn’t falling over drop dead from exhaustion—on the absurd idea that women can and should raise children and pursue careers simultaneously.
It also reminded me of Tina, a mother of three children under six who’s profiled in my upcoming book, Women Who Win at Love. Every time I hear Tina talk about her life, my heart breaks because I know the reality looks nothing like the mirage.
Like most women her age, Tina absorbed the idea that “balancing” full-time work with young children is just what women do and must therefore be manageable.
Her chaotic life proves otherwise. Like most families in which both parents work full time and year-round, Tina and her husband live what can only be described as a rat race. For starters, every day they must decide who’s going to schedule their work life in such a way as to accommodate the children’s needs. That alone sounds exhausting.
(Excerpt) Read more at suzannevenker.com ...
I don’t think “frat boys” had anything to do with it.
I wrote a term paper on this back in 1983. The debate between SAHM and Working Moms, pros and cons. Approximately 20 years later I would learn that you really can’t stay home to raise your kids for 14+ years and then go back to your career (even with a Masters degree). Also, you can’t be financially viable with one income for so many years with four kids while living in NJ, lol.
My Church has had marriage prep classes since the 80s at least. My husband and I attended way back then. It was a requirement for being allowed to marry in the Catholic Church. Baptism classes were also required in order to baptize one’s child. Yet, still here we are.
I think all those programs exist already. The problem is that living on one income is really hard and reentering the workforce after years of staying home is incredibly difficult. I did it and still hate it, lol. I went back to work part time when my youngest entered kindergarten and between work, the house, driving the kids to all their sports, music and other activities, it was insane. Then going back to work full time was even worse. Something always suffers, imo.
My kids weren’t going into daycare or spending hours in school aftercare. My elderly, now departed parents weren’t going into a nursing home. Something would suffer and it does. Our financial situation suffered (two highly educated people, and thank heavens my husband made enough money for me to stay home as long as I did, but not without financial consequences).
Respect would be nice but it isn’t necessary from strangers or society other than it being the common thing for a mother or father to do and not slammed all the time.
There was a time in my life where I really thought I should have done things differently: continued to work/be a two income family, went back to work sooner, budgeted better, made my kids pay for their college, invested differently, etc.
Why are we still struggling financially in our 50s? Because I stayed home too long? We live in NJ? We have four kids and put them through college? Probably.
I don’t know but I know now I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t put my kids in daycare (3 of my girls worked in daycare and they are thankful they weren’t in it).
My daughter worked at Kid Academy (three of my daughters worked there) when Ariana was sexually assaulted and murdered by her mother’s boyfriend. My daughter, a college student at the time, reported the bruises she saw. Nothing was done. A few days later, Ariana was killed by her mother’s boyfriend. Surprisingly, or not, my daughter’s account relayed to her supervisor was never questioned or documented. My daughter quit soon after the child died.
My kids will never put their own kids in daycare...but they will continue to work because there’s no other way now. So grandparents will help. But, whatever they do, they won’t stay out of the workforce for 14 years.
I’m not sure there’s an answer at this point. Sacrifice is so unknown to many now. We sacrificed but for what? There’s no financial reward in that. And our public and parochial schools are teaching the most liberal (socialist, democrat, anti-American) curriculum. Our Media is totally anti-American. Our education system, public, private and parochial, as well as our colleges, are anti american. Our Churches, also kowtowing to the anti Christian rhetoric...
Unless wealthy conservatives take back the religious, education, media enterprises, I don’t see how we turn this around. Until parents start parenting their kids, really parenting their kids, we are lost, imo.
I learned the same thing, even though I never stopped working -- in other words, I think it has more to do with ageism than being out of the market. No matter how good my work was or how much money it made for my customers, I was steadily devalued every year over 45. The same type of guys (in hiriing positions) who used to "hit on" women at work were now the ones repulsed by aging in a potential female coworker -- to them, a woman is just how she looks, or even how she smells on the primitive biological level of still being able to reproduce.
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