Motherhood – paid nothing, worth nothing?

A friend forwarded me a column by ROBYN BLUMNER, who says stay-at-home moms are worth  - ”nothing.”

This is in response to the whopping $138,000 that Salary.com claims at-home-mothering is worth based on the many roles moms fill. Blumner writes, “stay-at-home moms need to understand the reality of their choice. They are handicapping their future financial security and that of their children by being economically dependent on a man.”

She is absolutely right. But, so what?

I tried to ignore my maternal instincts and work full-time with the kids in daycare. I tried to buy into the whole “have it all” career and kids feminist promise. Believe me, I desperately wanted it to work out. I wanted to be the ambitious professional, the wonderful mother who doled out the quality time to my kids, maintaining my financial independence and loving every second of it.

It SUCKED!

“The consequences of economic dependency are the subject of a new book, The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, who has raised two children along with her husband, while maintaining a professionally fulfilling and money-making career. Her blunt but honest thesis that stay-at-home moms have made a choice that “represents a fundamental abdication of responsibility for their own lives, ” has made the dependent class positively apoplectic,” writes Blumner.

Okay, so I’m pretty much financially dependent right now while I raise my little kids – four more years to go until Mr. Z trots off to kindergarten. I guess I’m “abdicating the responsibility for my own life.” Since abandoning my full-time career, I’ve seen my husband’s income rise and there is no doubt if I return to the corporate structure I might never get back to an equal salary.

I’m totally making the “feminine mistake.”  

Except that I don’t base my self-worth or the worthiness of my entire life on financial independence. Is financial independence the end all be all? Should all other aspects of life – spiritual, maternal, emotional, and physical be fundamentally based on my economic ability to walk away from my marriage?

Is that what feminism is really all about? Must we shut off the maternal desire we have to be the one who raises our own kids? I feel like it is my right, responsibility and privilege to be the one who spends the majority of their day with them. I feel like the first 5 years is when they develop a fundamental self, I insist that it’s my influence as their mother that is priceless. No amount of financial security can buy it or replace it.

It’s my maternal desire, my motherlove, such old-school feminist arguments ignore.

Feminism demanded the right to work, the right to equal compensation. But, maybe it’s time to expand the definition.

It is time for feminists to reject the completely masculine 40 hour, Monday through Friday, be in the office for every minute, work overtime if necessary to get ahead, paradigm of working.

Rather than adapt careers and professions to the women who were entering them in mass, the mass of women tried to adapt into a male paradigm that originated when there was a housewife at home managing children and home.

The result is that it’s too hard to pull off having a family. Kids, with two full-time working parents spend the majority of their waking hours in daycare. Literally. This is unfair to kids and my maternal desire just couldn’t make peace with that reality.

Those old-school feminists who insist I should “opt back in” to maintain my financial independence made some sacrifices I’m not willing to make. What they haven’t done, but what I would like to see them do, is make the working environment (in which they have struggled their way to the top) more inviting to the feminine.

Women make up nearly half of the working masses. Perhaps we’re now in a position to demand a work day consistent with school hours, real virtual work arrangements, less hostility to sick children or field trip excuses. Work environments that recognize my motherlove and maternal desire to be the biggest influence and spend actual time (rather than quality time) with my kids.