What a joy! My last blog: A Woman’s Place: Modern Motherhood, 21st Century Feminism, Why I am Not a Corporate “Drop out,” and Calling a Truce in the “Mommy Wars” hit a nerve and sparked a conversation that I would like to continue. Most comments have been supportive "Amens"; every comment has added constructively to the discussion of what it means to be a modern woman.
One friend, who works outside the home full time and also is raising two young girls, directed me to an article from 2003, in the New York Times, entitled: "The Opt-Out Revolution." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/26WOMEN.html?pagewanted=all. And, just last week, our local paper ran an Op-Ed piece, "I'd Like to Have Been a CEO, But I Also Wanted Children." http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=MS&p_theme=ms&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_text_search-0=gatzman&s_dispstring=gatzman%20AND%20(gatzman)%20AND%20date(last+180+days)&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=last+180+days&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=(%22gatzman%22)&xcal_numdocs=20&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no
I enjoyed reading these articles, not because they support my sentiments (although I believe they do), but because they give voice to other modern mothers, each of whom has reflected intently on their hopes and dreams and how they are fashioning a life that works for them.
I have appreciated deeply my women friends who have had the interest and courage to share their "wage-earning mom" perspective with me. One friend, who has a senior management role at a Silicon Valley software company and three young children, described how her role model growing up was her mother - a wage-earning mom. Her husband, a successful engineer/inventor/entrepreneur, likewise considers his mother to have been the most influential person in his life, and proudly bills himself as "the product of a stay-at-home mom." I believe these two viewpoints - the yin and yang of modern motherhood - capture a powerful truth - mothers are role-models regardless of their employment choices and both models work.
Adding to this ongoing conversation of what it means to be a modern mother are two tangentially related articles that are worth reading and pondering. The first, "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/1/#.TjWOw12w0hw, offers support for the very sane proposition that there is such a thing as a "good-enough mother" and that allowing one's children fend for themselves and struggle a bit is good for them (a healthy reminder for those of us with a tendency to "over-achieve," who have made a career of motherhood), and second, "Against Nature: Elisabeth Badinter's Contrarian Feminism" http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/25/110725fa_fact_kramer, (unfortunately this links to just a short excerpt from the article). Ms. Badinter, a french feminist, states that our culture maintains a deep-seated (and in her opinion false) assumption that motherhood is the "natural" state for adult females, such that denying it, postponing it, or delegating aspects of it to others violates our sociobiological destiny, which makes everyone tense and miserable. She argues that a rekindled obsession with all things "natural," including breastfeeding, is holding back women's rise to equality. I do not fully agree with Ms. Badinter's opinions, and I suspect some of her positions are taken with the intention of inflaming others and sparking debate, but I am thoroughly enjoying the many perspectives on this topic. I may write again to analyze and discuss these two articles in greater depth. If any dear reader has the inclination to read them and join in an analysis or discussion, I welcome dialogue on this topic. For now, I will repeat the refrain: It is time to lay down our arms in the "mommy wars" and, instead, use our arms to support one another along whatever path we choose.
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