Dr. Laura's 'In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms'
Dr. Laura is busy promoting her new book, In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms; it's been covered by virtually every major media outlet. Eight years ago I wrote a book on this same subject. Though the angle and content is different, the message is 100% the same -- which is fine with me. You can't have too many books supporting moms!
But watching Dr. Laura do the media circuit reminds me of my experience. I, too, sat down one day to write a book about the importance of motherhood. I too wanted to offer at-home moms the support and encouragement they so desperately need. Modern culture does not honor the work of motherhood; instead we support and even encourage mothers to drop their children off with substitute caregivers while they tend to more important matters. Plus we've changed what it means for a mother to "have to work." Instead of using this phrase to refer to women like my grandmother, whose husband lost his job during the Depression, we use it to refer to any mother who chooses to return to work and place her children in full-time, substitute care because they are used to their comfortable lifestyle and can't imagine changing it -- which does a tremendous disservice to parents who make great sacrifices to stay home with their children. Indeed, an honest assessment of the major sociological change that has taken place in this country -- from mothers at home to mothers at work -- requires a response much deeper than just "she has to work."
Despite the working mother trend, there are millions of women who don't follow it -- millions of mothers who wouldn't dream of dropping their babies off with virtual strangers for 8-10 hours a day -- and they need recognition and support in a way our own mothers didn't. In our mothers' day, it was understood that children are entitled to be raised in their own homes by their own parents. It was a collective understanding that moms belong at home -- not, as feminists taught you to believe, because women are oppressed or have nothing better to do with their time. It was a collective understanding because America was cohesive in its appreciation of the greater good of society. Our priorities were entirely different then, and mothers never questioned the value of what they were doing. Women may have wanted more out of life at that time, and perhaps they didn't know how to marry these two separate spheres; but they never considered paying other women to raise their children for them in exchange for their "right" to pursue these other ambitions.
Today mothers do this as a matter of course. As a result, women who make the choice to stay home do so hesitantly, questioningly -- as in, "I think this is the right thing to do, but society tells me otherwise. Is there something wrong with me?" My book was written for these women. It assures them that not only are they doing the right thing, they will be happier in the long run -- when they see the fruits of their labor. So I titled my book The Work of Motherhood, and its premise is this: Raising children is a full-time job, one that dramatically alters the paths women were on prior to becoming mothers. Therefore, working full time while trying to raise young children is impossible. This is not anti-feminist, nor is it a matter of one's politics. It is just a fact. No matter how much women would like to balance work and family, the endless demands of children don't allow mothers to dedicate themselves fully to someone or something else. This doesn't mean mothers must be out of the workforce permanently. But it does mean they'll need to sequence their lives -- plan their lives in such a way that they'll be able to pursue work and motherhood, but at separate times. Or do them simultaneously when their children are older, as women have historically done.
Unfortunately, when you sign up with a publisher you sign away a few rights. One of these rights is the right to title your own book. So my publisher decided to change the title of my book from The Work of Motherhood, which clearly focuses on at-home mothers, to 7 Myths of Working Mothers -- which clearly does not. They did this to get the attention of the media, and it worked. We heard from Glamour magazine, CNN, the Today show, etc. But it didn't work out for me on a personal level. People were (and still are) under the impression that I sat down to write a book to attack working mothers. And nothing could be further from the truth.
Still, the media wants to "get" anyone who supports moms at home. Why? Because the vast majority of women in the media aren't or weren't home with their kids when they were little -- so books like mine and Dr. Laura's don't serve their purpose. By now we all know how the media operate: They're the most self-serving bunch on the block. But while the media may have hated my book, I heard from hundreds of parents across this country who were grateful for it -- which makes all the flack from the media pale in comparison.
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Until the mid-1960s, housing discrimination locked most urban dwellers into relatively homogeneous ethnic neighborhoods. Most families lived in whatever level of housing they could afford on the husband's income, and their children attended the local public school .
With the Civil Rights movement came an end to school and housing discrimination. With the sexual revolution came a massive wave of unmarried mothers having children with a succession of boyfriends. The only way to insulate one's children from the resulting social depravity was to live in a suburb financially out of reach of the majority of single mothers and their housing vouchers . For most families, this requires two parents each earning as much money as they can.
First off, I would like to comment on the fact that this lady spent the entire time advertising her own book whenever the article is supposed to be about another book.
Basically, I think that this woman is just upset that her book bombed and this lady's book sold.
Also, I am in a Woman's Psychology class right now and we just covered an entire chapter devoted to mothers and work and I would like to point out that it has been scientifically proven that working mothers are happier with their lives and healthy than most stay at home moms. Now, I am not critizing stay at home moms because I find the idea to be very humble and worthy of praise; however their should be no criticism of working mothers.
The world would be a great place if in it every mother had a husband that worked at a job that paid well HOWEVER America leads the industrialized nations in lack of biological fathers. So.. I don't think its very practical to assume that every mother (or even most) could afford to stay at home with their child and wait for money to fall out of from the ceiling.
...I would never look to the uber-judgmental Dr. Laura, whose own life contradicts much of what she preaches, for validation.
Ms. Venker says that she did not set out to write a book that attacks working mothers , but she also states that "...being successful in the workplace and at home simultaneously is impossible."
...which means that in her opinion working moms cannot be sucessful at being moms if they are sucessful at work...which is a direct attack on the mothering abilities of working women...unless, of course they are not sucessful at work, in which case they probably won't be working very long.
She also writes "This is not anti-feminist, nor is it a matter of one's politics . It is just a fact." "Fact"? does she have some hard data to support this? It sounds to me like this is more of an opinion than a "fact".
"No matter how much women would like to balance work and family, the endles demands of children don't allow mothers to dedicate themselves fully to someone or something else. " That's true enough, but I would argue that it possible to be "sucessful" at work without investing your entire being and all of your energy to your work life. Everything depends on the job you're doing. Working at a garden center? probably...working in venture capital?...probably not.
By making this sort of blanket statement about all work and all working moms, by asserting that it is "fact" when it is no such thing, and by not allowing that there are varying measures of what constitutes "sucess" at work, Ms. Venker is - despite her denial - attacking all working moms.
For her pretensions, for her doctorate in physiology, for her 'youthful indiscretions, and especially for her ceaseless and hypocritical judgments of others, Laura Schlesinger is utterly without any sort of credibility in my book. The best favor she can do mothers or fathers or anyone else is to remain silent from now on and attempt to heal herself.
Meercats don't singularly mother their offspring: they parent them collectively, and they turn out just fine. There's no reason that similar approaches can't work for H. sapiens. Think outside the nuclear -family box, which box is near death because we're evolving socially past the need for it. Can you not see the obvious signs? I suspect that monogamy will follow closely behind. We are changing - adapting - as a species to a new environment , largely of our own making because of overpopulation, and singular parenting is one of the casualties of the process. Get used to it, because there is plenty more adapting yet to do.
I never judge a women or man based on there job status, but more on the behavior, health and happiness of their child.
(I know it's not my right nor my place to judge, but just about everyone does it to some point, whether it's the screaming kid in the grocery store or the bully on the playground)
When a person is putting there career before their child, I feel they are very selfish. I know of several families, that drop there children off by 6am to a day care , and than have a nanny pick them up and watch them till past 8, sometimes the child in bed before the parents even get home.
This is not healthy for the kid. This child is usually very spoiled materially. Usually Not disciplined in the least. (Because a daycare can't discipline nor can the nanny) and just aren't happy.
I have also seen where both parents worked full time, but tried to work on different schedules, and only used a daycare on the rare time when there schedules over lapped. Yes it's more work this way, but there kids are so much happier, and better behaved, then the first choice.
Now granted a child raise by a stay-at-home mom or dad isn't always not spoiled, and happy, nor is the one who is stuck in day care always spoiled and unhappy. But more often than not, this is the case.
I think what I'm trying to say in this long winded post is, don't judge a family based on whether someone works or doesn't work, but if they are putting the children first.
Just to clarify I am a stay at home mom, who tried the work thing for a year, and just couldn't adjust to not seeing my precious son for so many hours a day per week, nor was my son ever happy with me leaving him. My husband and I did the different schedule thing, and was never in a daycare, but it just wasn't what was best for our family.
Laura Schlessinger herself was a working mother and did very well with it indeed. It's always been hard to take her seriously because her life is filled with contradictions as she preaches one thing and lives another. I could give countless examples. This also was the person who told gays that if they wanted to adopt children they should only adopt kids other people didn't want to adopt because same-sex parents are second best (there is absolutely no research to support that belief). I was a regular listener to Schlessinger when she was on radio in Chicago and always found her stimulating, but she also was illogical, holier-than-thou, rude and seldom practiced what she preached (which she acknowledged and excused). She is undeniably interesting and fascinating and bright, but she is also seldom honest and straightforward.
What are the contradictions? It can't be about her working. When her son was a baby, she worked after he went to bed. The she worked when he was in school.
There is nothing wrong with someone admitting there may be a better way than the way they did things. I did drugs when I was wrong but now I am totally anti drug. I learned how bad they were through experience. Does that make me a hypocrite. If you disagree with her give reasons that counter her reasoning. Criticizing her personally does nothing to further the argument.