Dear Dr. Laura,

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

Can I just say this?

We keep hearing from heads of state, political candidates, senators, congressmen, businessmen, mainstream media and Wall Street that the United States is suffering from a labor shortage.

I call bullshit.

Look across the dinner table and see that beautiful wife? See your brazen sister, your wise mother and the really smart neighbor?

She’s not just a “SAHM.”

She has a masters degree.

She has a doctorate degree.

She’s got 10 to 20 years of experience in the labs, in the newsroom, in the office, in the market, on wall street, in the classroom, in virtually every sphere of industry that exists.

Women hold half the knowledge and a very high level of training and experience, not to mention the creativity and ingenuity this country needs.

This country is FULL of skilled and knowledgeable women who are waiting to be invited back into the workforce.

What are they waiting for?

Family-friendly working conditions and equal pay.

Instead of claiming they have to move their operations overseas or import workers for a qualified workforce, employers would be wise to look at the resource right in front of their face: WOMEN.

Qualified and educated women who are worn out from sexual harassment from coworkers, pregnancy discrimination, lack of family medical leave, working hours that extend 2 crucial hours past the school day, lack of sick days, etc.

Solution - employers should stop being so attached to the workplace policies and the rigid 40 hour work week that shut half their qualified workforce out and invite the women back.

They’ll come.

Visit Momsrising.org for information about what kinds of specific workplace policies will lure women back to their industries.

You know what I find fascinating?

The religious conservatives, by which I mean the specific people in my life, who have always been the biggest influences on my own Internal Mommy Wars are in full, unequivocal support of Sarah Palin and have no doubts that can be both an effective mother and vice president.

Then why do you doubt that I can be both a great mom and fulfill my professional ambitions using the gifts and the calling God gave me? I wondered, as I lay sobbing during one yoga practice last week. If there is some distinction between she and I - and our worthiness for my family’s support - I don’t get it.

My whole motherhood and professional, experience would have been vastly different had these same people in my life been as unquestioningly supportive of me and my abilities to do both as they have been about Sarah Palin.

The economic and emotional toll of my own internal Mommy Wars can be added up to include: poverty and massive amounts of debt including a bankruptcy, unbelievable strain on my marriage almost leading to divorce, addiction to anxiety medication including a hospitalization that incurred yet more debt, severe post partum depression, not to mention the decision to stop having children so I could return to work without debilitating guilt and extreme economic “sacrifice” sooner.

But, at least I was a “good mom,” according to the specific narrow definition my family and cultural influences - religious conservatives, represented by Sarah Palin - have held out as the one virtue I must live up to above all.

Go figure.

They don’t even know her, they’ve never met her, they’ve never seen her with her children, they know very little about her politics even. Yet, they support her without reservation, judgement or criticism. If only I’d been worthy of the same support.

Thank God for Sarah Palin - I’m choosing to make their full support of Sarah Palin apply to ME and all other women. Her mission is no more important than mine, her abilities to both be a good mother and ambitious in her work is no more developed, her values no more sacred, and above all - she is no more entitled than the rest of the working mothers of this nation to respect, equal pay and working hours that adjust to acknowledge the existence of a family.

I’m choosing to let go of their judgement that has so effected my choices. It’s quite liberating really. Its like releasing a burden that has weighed heavily on my soul and tainted my experience of motherhood.

My motherhood experience has been about unnecessary guilt and sacrifice - false choices really. False choices that have made me teeter on a fence between working and motherhood, judgement and approval, fear and love, economic stability and poverty as sacrifice, powerfulness and powerlessness, economic independence and social acceptance - it’s not as though choosing to not work to be a good mom to acquire the currency of their social acceptance and approval came without serious consequences.

Forgive them for they know not what they do. I want to be free of their criticism and judgement, therefore I forgive it.

I don’t think they knew. They didn’t know they would feel this positively and supportive about a working mother character. They may or may not realize the kind of inner-turmoil they’ve caused in my own emotional life. Likely, it is only a reflection of their own inner conflict about themselves - not really about me at all.

I’m going to expect them to feel the same about my abilities as they feel about Sarah Palin’s and if they choose not to, well, this time I’ll perceive that choice as their failure, instead of my own. I’ll figure out a way not to internalize it.

Surely, I had this power all along - lots of other women have done it - but I wasn’t strong enough to apply it. So, I forgive me too.

Thank God for Sarah Palin, she’s liberating me from a social construct and false choices and a deep inner conflict about working and motherhood.

Image source: JohnMcCain.com

I hear mothers talk about how sacrifice is “worth it” for their kids. I especially hear this if mother’s have given up something valuable - economic independence, dreams, ambitions, time, goals, careers, autonomy, hobbies, interests, etc.

When did I - as a human being - lose my inherent value? Was it when I stopped being the child so worthy of my mother’s sacrifice? Or was it when I became the mother, expected to sacrifice everything for my children, and then say, “it’s worth it?” Or was it when I turned 18 and stopped being a legal child?

I’m just curious how one human being has elevated value over another - children over mothers specifically - but then somehow they grow out of it?

I want to introduce you to Elizabeth over at CareerandKids.

I’m feel both impressed and I inadequate by her resume. She’s a fulltime nurse, married 17 years with 3 children and writes GenBetween and BusyMom.

Frankly, I’m exhausted just thinking about having that much on my plate.

One of her latest posts is about how most mothers working fulltime would take a pay cut to spend more time with their kids.

“I didn’t cry all the time, my job was flexible enough that I could pick up someone from school if I needed to, and, I got home at the same time every day…But, another huge benefit wouldn’t be realized until years later when my mother became ill.”

She wonders aloud Do Mothers Get a Pass on Working Late? and questions whether resentment about mothers is justified.

I dig CareerandKids. Elizabeth shows us how we CAN instead of how we CAN’T. Stop by and check it out.