Mommy Wars

This morning I read an article in The Financial Times entitled "Is This Really Feminism?", which reported on the "mommy wars" in the U.S.  Essentially, some working moms and stay-at-home moms believe that their respective choices are the only right decisions and that women in the other camp are morally reprehensible.  The original women's rights campaigners "fought to get women out of traditional roles and into the workplace," but now there is a new movement arising called "choice feminism," in which highly educated women are choosing full-time motherhood over high powered careers.  These changes in the women's movement are alarming all sorts of people, but I have one question: why?

Whose business is it how we raise our children, and why do people try to co-opt our lives and turn them into statistics for their particular causes?  Whether we women work full-time or part-time or stay at home with our children, we are doing the best we can for our families.  Every family is different -- its needs, hopes, dreams, and problems are unique -- and therefore every mother must make her own decisions about mothering based on what she knows to be true about her own family.  No one can stand outside a family and tell a mother what choices she should make -- not Gloria Steinem, not Caitlin Flanagan, not anyone.

I resent being told that I must do this or that because some zealot or other will be outraged if I don't sign up and blindly follow his/her cause.  Upon the birth of my son, a friend gave me some good advice: "Trust your instincts because, in the end, only you know what is right for your baby."  That advice applies to the working mom/stay-at-home mom question: follow your gut, because only you know your family well enough to make the right decisions about their lives.  None of us needs anymore pressure than we already have; we need to allow ourselves and each other to make sound decisions for our families and to support the decisions of others, even if they are different from our choices.  There is much stridency in our society these days about all sorts of issues, but that very stridency and its resultant intolerance (which usually parades in the name of tolerance) isolate and devalue the very individuals who make up our society.  Families are at the core of our society, no matter what form they take and no matter whether a mother works or stays at home.  Instead of judging each other and turning one of the most basic human relationships into a reason for intellectual warfare and snobbery, let's help each other to be the best mothers we can be.  In the end, we will answer to our children for our choices, not some movement leader with an agenda.