The mommy wars

For all of the men who read this, you may not understand the Mommy Wars. Let me explain. Stay-at-home moms and career mothers sometimes debate on whose way is better. Stay-at-home moms say that children need one on one attention, which can only be achieved by giving up your career and being a mom full time. Career moms believe that women can only be all that they can be if they have a career outside the home. Then there are women who cut their hours back from their jobs and work part time or have a paid work-at-home job. And some women stay home when before their kids start school and go back to work when they are older. Which view is right?

Stay-at-home moms have unlimited time with their kids. They really get to know them and can adequately respond to their needs. When their child gets sick, they don’t have to ask for time off from their jobs to take care of their kids. They develop a close relationship with their child. When these women can find a balance between their families and their own personal lives, the child thrives. Sometimes women become isolated in their homes and can become lonely. Also, these types of moms can become so focused on their families that they neglect other areas of their own lives. Some moms have no life outside of their kids, which is not only unhealthy for them, but their children as well. In some extreme cases, these moms don’t allow their children to develop relationships outside of family because they have no life without their children.

So are career women better moms? Child care can be beneficial to children. They learn social skills, develop relationships with other adults besides their parents, and it prepares them for school. Some mothers have to put their children in full time day care, so they can learn English. It’s easy for career moms to not focus all of their time on their families, but do they neglect them? Career moms can sometimes become so obsessed with their careers that they do neglect their kids. Some moms are so frazzeled from work that they have to hire a baby-sitter to watch their kids. When moms always put their careers ahead of their kids, their kids start to believe that their moms don’t really care about them. Eighteen years is all that most women get to parent their kids and once those years are gone, they can’t get them back. If they spend all of that time on their careers, they never develop a relationship with their child. After they grow up, they may decide not to have a relationship with their moms, which is a real loss to these women. Also what will these women do when they retire when their whole lives were centered on their work?

Going to my old churches, I heard both sides of the story. When I lived in a small town, working moms looked down on stay-at-home moms because they felt they were too lazy to work. Their husbands only earned minimum wage and they had to work and put their kids in government day care to survive. Stay-at-home moms there really had to cut back on many things to afford staying at home. Then I moved to a suburb and stay-at-home moms looked down on career women as selfish and neglectful of their families. Their husbands made a lot of money and they could afford to stay at home. Many of those career women did work for self-interest rather than for money.

I used to think that all working moms were neglectful of their kids. In many of those families, the parents’ jobs, friends, and hobbies were a higher priority than their children. Children of stay-at-home moms behaved better than the children of these working moms in the small town where I lived. Their parents didn’t discipline them and many of them grew up and became aimless alcoholics who have no goals in life other than having fun at the bar. When I moved to the suburbs, I saw a darker side to the children of stay-at-home moms. I saw four-year-olds who didn’t know how to socialize with other children. Older children who would throw fits every time their mommy left. Some of these kids acted no better than the children that I worked with in day care.

Who is right? I have come to the conclusion that the best moms are the ones who find a balance between their personal life and their family life. While their families are a high priority, their hobbies and friends are not neglected. These women have personal goals that they want to achieve that are outside of their families, whether they have a career or not. Women also need to consider what is best for their families, regarding working or not. I feel that if their husbands don’t earn enough money to support them and their child and they can’t cut back on expenses, then they should work. On the flip side, if the child is disabled and requires extra care, and their husbands can earn enough for them to stay at home, then they should stay at home. The final conclusion that I came up with is that good and bad parents come from all walks of life. There are many great stay-at-home moms as well as bad ones. There are also many wonderful working moms and terrible working moms. It all depends on whether these women can find balance and consider the needs of their families.

Eat Pray Love Book Review

Oprah interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert a few months ago about her new book Eat Pray Love. Oprah promised viewers that if they read the book and followed it, it would change their lives. Then she interviewed other women who followed Gilbert’s advise and how much happier they were after reading the book. I was really intriqued and decided to read the book to find out if it would change my life.

Eat, Pray, Love is a true story about Elizabeth Gilbert’s life after she almost had a nervous breakdown. The story starts with her living with her husband and crying on the floor in her bathroom every night because she didn’t want to have children with him. Thinking that she would save herself and sanity, she left him and started a relationship with another man. This also didn’t take away her guilt or curb her panic attacks, so she decided to take a year off and travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia to find herself. By the end of that year, she gets better and has a peace in her life. She credits this by finding a balance between meditating and seeking pleasure and encourages women to do the same thing.

Women should only read this book as entertainment and not take it seriously because there are many flaws in Gilbert’s philosophy. This book wasn’t really about her finding a cure for her panic attacks or finding God, but about her finding a belief system to support her selfishness and not feel guilty about it.

Rather than communicating to her husband her fears about being a mom and trying to work things out with him, she leaves him. Then she can’t figure out why he ends up hating her and not even wanting to speak to her. In the meditation school in India, she learns to let go of her guilt over her failed marriage without acknowledging that she was wrong. I am not saying that she should lock herself in her bathroom and cry everyday because of her failed marriage, but I do think that she needs to admit that her actions caused him a lot of pain.

This sort of philosophy is nothing new because criminals do the same thing. The ones that admit that they committed their crimes always try to minimilize and justify it. Their victim had it coming to them. Or the victim’s family will eventually move on. They try to convince people that if society treated them better than they wouldn’t be forced to kill.
Their philosophy flies out the window because they can’t ever look at their victims’ families while they are in the courtroom hoping for justice.

Most of the adults that I know in my life have had disappointments. No one’s life turns out the way that they plan. Some people want to have a spouse, but can’t find one. Some people want children and can’t have them. And some people want a career and can’t get it. The vast majority of them don’t have mental breakdowns and make selfish decisions, but rather deal with their disappointments and move on. The people who I admire the most accept the life they do have and try to make the best of their circumstances. Even if they had the luxuary of taking a year off traveling, they wouldn’t do it.

I seriously wonder what Elizabeth will do the next time she is disappointed with life. Oprah showed viewers what Gilbert’s life is like after writing the book and I have to say it is pretty stress free. She works from home and doesn’t have to keep any set hours and pretty much does whatever she wants. Her philosophy is working because she doesn’t have any stress in her life. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she had a breakdown after dealing with a disability. She will either do that or permanently move to the meditation school and wish her disability away.

If life has no consequences, then yes her philosophy would work. The thing is life bites back. Selfishness is usually a sin that destroys relationships in the long term. Think about how you feel when you are talking to people who only talk about themselves and never ask how you are doing. I admit that I get to where I just avoid them because I get so tired of hearing about them and they don’t ever listen to me when I want to talk. In a more extreme example, lets say a young mom takes the advice of Eat Pray Love and decides to leave her children because she doesn’t enjoy taking care of them. Rather than admitting that she hurt her children, she tries to find all sorts of ways to justify her actions. Her children grow up and forgive her, but don’t want a relationship with her to spare themselves further pain.

Eat Pray Love should only be read for entertainment purposes because it is fun reading about foreign countries. If women want to find peace in their lives, they should accept that sometimes life comes with disappointments and learn to be unselfish. If they are feeling guilty, they should confess their sins to God or the priest and do restitution to their victim rather than indulging in recreational activities or meditating. Doing this isn’t easy, but it will bring you long term peace.