The host of a blog addressing the experience of parenting recently shared with me that she had recognized what might be a trend in how women solved the dilemma of how to continue working but in a way that leaves us feeling that our work has not intruded upon our desires, fervent as those to work, to attend to our children and husbands in a way that leaves us equally as satisfied.
This trend she speaks of is that of mothers creating our own careers at which we work from home.
In short she’s describing what Scott Pratt, an author formerly contracted with and working for Penguin Publishers, has now become, an entrepreneur.
Mothers who like the blogger/mother of whom I speak, and Scott Pratt have been deemed mom-preneurs.
Thinking on this I began to wonder, why the media has and is not speaking more about women and mothers as entrepreneurs, mom-preneurs, in lieu of bringing undaunted focus to what they term the “…mommy wars … ” discussions that center on and seem to always descend to the point of drawing a line in the sand between those of us who remain at home full-time and those who work also outside the home?
Could they have focused their attentions on what will stir more drama when reading these articles?
Incited and excited readers tend to leave more comments, comments that bring more visitors to the website where a blog post goes live.
More visitors equals more clicks.
This increased action to a website leaves little room for silence to emerge. You know that silence that descends when we learn that what we thought was so much, so glamorous, so wealth inducing is really ‘ …. much ado about nothing.’
Or perhaps better termed: “Much to do, and gaining nothing …”
More clicks to a website brings more advertisements.
Advertisements on a website equal revenue–money.
Most women and mothers, like men, work at jobs offering little, if any room for creativity, simply because these jobs also provide health insurance.
Working mothers, like many men and women with no children, would create their own jobs and careers, work for ourselves, and purchase descent health insurance if made affordable.
They would not enter what we all know is a rat race, both for women, mothers and men, all of us, and live a more healthy, content, and peaceful lifestyle.
Notice I did not use the word, happy.
Built and operating on the motto of: “… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … ,” America never promised to deliver that happiness when offering its dream, only that those joining the herd race have the opportunity to pursue the dream.
But what if the dream is really an illusion? You know, like the plastic rabbit that greyhounds chase when racing round the field against each other and on whom people observing the races bet.
Is it a lie that the media with is unending list of wars, whatever the domain, urges us to chase, or a lucid dream, one conceived and born of our own imagination fuel by hearts’ passion and desires that we seek and nurture?
This pursuit towards the abstraction called happiness–whatever that is–and should we choose that path, exacts a toll, one that when tallied often leaves the individual holding less than when she or he began.
So often, on closer inspection, we find, and to our amazing, yet liberating disappointment, all that said and exhorted has tallied to much ado about nothing.
I trust that in your silence you too agree.
Otherwise I invite your comments.