The War on the Working Mom

I don't like to post about hot-button issues, one part due to not wanting to step on people's toes unnecessarily. But also because I just find it a waste of my time. Howevere being a working mother, specifically someone who is active duty military, I was pretty annoyed when I came across this piece. To summarize, a woman is a bad parent if she isn't shackled to her house until her kid is 18.

I see it all the time on my daughter's birth board too, women waging wars on eachother because one is choosing to work, go to school, whatever. Everyone competing for who can win the title of "best mom ever". There is this overwhelming guilt-trip put on women who decided to go back to work and it's just ridiculous. Some mothers choose to work because they want to, others don't have any other option. Truthfully it doesn't matter why, these women love their children just as much as the ones who stay at home. I know sometimes the reverse is true, women are made to feel guilty for wanting to quit their job and stay at home and that ain't cool either. The bottomline? There is a whole lot of guilt-tripping going on that is detracting from the real issues that are plaguing mothers.

Instead of trying to scold eachother for working or not, mothers need to band together and start asking the real questions: why does daycare need to be so expensive in the US? why are we, a first world country, falling so far behind other countries when it comes to the care of mother and children? Why is the average paid maternity leave only 6 to 12 weeks when our neighbors in Canada get 50 weeks? Why aren't fathers pressured to stay at home as much as the mothers are?

These are the real questions we need to focus our energy on, the topics that need to be raised to our government.