Well, it seems you have found the secret to a golden career selling books by the million and luring in listeners to your radio show – be one-sided and controversial. Get your face on every TV show that will take you and tell them how you know you are right because you lived both lives – as a career woman and as a mother. Tell them how you can separate the two, but other women should not because our children need us, especially in the first three years of their life.

The thing is, Dr. Laura, I don’t disagree with you there. I think children need us for the rest of their lives and we should always be accommodating. I think the mother-child bond transcends all others. But I believe the father-child bond is just as important, and that both parents can be providers for their families as well as caregivers for their children. I want my son to grow up supporting his wife’s decision whether she wants to stay home fulltime with her children or juggle motherhood and the career she’s studied hard for. I want my son to see that mothers can become doctors and CEOs and even presidents of great countries and still be devout caregivers to their children. I want him to understand that when he becomes a parent that his role in raising a child goes beyond bringing home a paycheck and being the great disciplinarian. He, too, should be a nurturer.

You see I’m not only black or white. I’m somewhat gray. I applaud those women who choose to stay home with their children and are fulfilled doing so. I tried to do that, but I’m not programmed that way. My desire to write again overwhelmed me, and my husband and I found a way for me to split my time between staying home with our son part time and writing the other. Those “other people” with early childhood degrees who have been “raising” my child the other part of the time have helped me socialize him and educate him in ways I could never do on my own.

Do I feel fulfilled as a woman? Yes.

Do I feel like my husband’s girlfriend? Always.

Do I feel like I have touched the soul of my kids? Every day.

And what about those mothers who have no choice but to work in order to feed and clothe their children? Are they depriving their kids? You say that every woman is capable of choosing her hours of work so that she can sandwich her job during her child’s school hours, but how realistic is that for a woman flipping hamburgers making minimum wage who is thankful for whatever hours she can get? Especially in this day and age.

But no, Dr. Laura. You’re always right, aren’t you? You hold yourself to a different standard than the rest of us, and want those of us who disagree with you to feel inadequate as a mother. Well, shame on you, Dr. Laura. Shame on you.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Photo, Amazon

Post from: Blisstree

Shame on You, Dr. Laura

It’s hard to be sensitive about the fact that not everyone wants to talk about kids, just as I don’t want to listen to a blow by blow reenactment of someone’s cat’s derring do’s. I’m glad there has been a baby boom at the office, because that does give me a pretty broad base of folks I can gush to every once in a while. What amuses me to no end is the fact that nearly all of them are fathers, not mothers. I love watching their faces light up when they talk about their kids, and recount their toddler’s antics when we share the lunch counter at noon. I want to sit the guy down who leaves right at quitting time every evening to get home to his wife and twins–does he feel the glass ceiling that women have traditionally felt? I wonder.

We didn’t do bring your kid to work day this year. A very extroverted four, my child just can’t sit quietly and color while I work. He has to help. He has to be involved. I remember when I used to have to bring him along to business meetings every once in a while, when he was just three years old. It was so funny! He’d sit on the couch or the chair, his little legs dangling, a crayon in one hand and a pad of paper in the other, while his mama discussed an ad campaign with the creative director. Every once in a while, we’d here this little voice pipe up: “Yup! Uh huh! Ow, wow, sure!” as he followed along and interjected his own professional opinion.

I wonder if I’ll bring him to the office next year. At least there are old printouts of floorplans laying around everywhere. He’ll have something important to color!

Post from: Blisstree

I talk about my kid too much