To work or not to work?
This is the question that plagues mothers across the world, particularly within Western societies.
The concern many mothers express is, “Am I hurting my child by returning to work or by working?”
Many studies performed in America conclude, regarding this question, that “…mothers do not harm our children by returning to work.”
A recent article states, “Mothers who work outside the home feel happier about themselves.”
Dr. Sylvia Gearing of GearingUP, adds in Are Working Moms Bad for Their Children? that 69 studies conducted across 5 decades show that children of working moms are fine. “…Working women have higher self esteem, are stronger emotionally and financially and are excellent mothers, and that children benefit from having mothers who are confident, resourceful and in control of her life, traits that children appreciate and learn from,” says Dr. Gearing.
And yet she explains, “…most women are very ambivalent about leaving [our] children when they are young… .” This is understandable.
Dr. Gearing points to research from the Pew Research Center that reports “…working women are still conflicted about the competing roles, we play…” at home and that is demanded of us at work.
Perhaps this results from the fact that “…women still do twice as much house work and child care as men, something that has not changed in the last century.”
Dr. Gearing concludes, “Women are experts at beating ourselves up and that we expect perfection of ourselves in mothering.” I don’t know how men operate on this subject, but I have enough self-criticism for myself and three more clones of me.
On the other side of the equation, British charity, What About the Children (WATCH,) advocates that mothers remain at home during the first three years of the child’s life.
In her interview, How Children Feel About Working Moms, Sally Beck of WATCH explains the purpose of this charity and her message to women who are mothers.
I have conducted no studies on mothers who work both outside and inside the home versus those who work mainly inside the home.
Neither have I searched and gathered a list of the various studies done on this subject of mothers working.
As a stay-at-home mother for last 12 years, and who five years prior to that attended graduate school and earned a M.A. in Psychology, I agree with Dawn Meehan, who authored the recent article, The Working Mom Vs. Stay-at-Home Mom Debate: Who Has It Harder?, wherein Meehan advocates, working moms have it harder, or as Meehan writes, “Life is …suckier… for mothers who also work outside the home.”
Working primarily as a stay-at-home mom of three for the last decade and two years I have felt forever swamped with housework–washing clothes, emptying and refilling the dishwasher, etc., and helping my children with all the things every mother must assist them And then there is the livery service I operate–driving them to school, picking them up from school, taking them to after school programs, as well as helping them with cello and/or piano lessons, helping with and overlooking homework, listening to and counseling them on social issues, etc.
I rarely had a moment to take a relaxed breath. Each night I crawled into bed I feel I felt as though I had forgotten something, could have listened with a more attentive ear to whichever child came to me with a problem, or better yet, I wonder if the advice I offered would truly serve them in the best possible way.
I felt continually tired, both emotionally and physically.
I speak in the past tense because with our second and middle child now a college coed, and a little more time to which I have become accustomed, I have had the opportunity to think and reflect on all that I have done in the past decade working mainly as a wife and mother.
While taking in the enormity of what I have done, I cringe when considering the mothers of our daughters’ fellow students and peers who work also outside the home.
I wonder how these mothers feel and have felt when picking up their children from daycare and after school programs after having themselves worked at least an 8–hour day, usually from 9 am to 5 pm.
Do they possess the energy, and can they really listen to what their children may want and often need to share about their days at school?
More importantly, I wonder if their children even attempt to tell these mothers about their days.
Or have the children learned that mommy is tired when arriving from work and in their desire to help, do not seek to tell their mothers about the challenges they have faced in school?
I also wonder where these mothers gather the fuel to assist their children with school projects–projects require enormous creativity, and that, as described by our middle child’s third grade teacher, are designed with the intent of engaging the parent’s assistance as the child creates the project.
At a time when the nuclear family stands quite alone and receiving little help from extended family, and community I ask the question, “What about the mom?”
What about the physical health and well-being of a mother, or rather a person who is asked or demanded to work both outside the home and also in the place where she lives? Working mothers ultimately perform two full-time jobs.
In many ways we now constitute the new and additional pool of slave labor.
Mothers who work outside the home, leave their home to perform a job then return to a place that holds an endless amount of work that we shoulder.
I’m curious about these mothers who state they are happier working outside the home.
How many hours do they work? How many children do they have?
How much money do they earn? How old are they’re children?
As a psychotherapist, and a wife and mother of respectively nearly 30 and 24 years I have learned and observed the incredible power of denial, and how we, humans resort to this mechanism for coping when experiencing a lack of choice in the most important of matters that concern us.
I am not suggesting that all mothers of children less than 18-years-old and who work outside the home are not happy.
Neither am I stating that those who say they are happy are being dishonest.
Yet as with people who smoke, and those who drink more alcohol than is physically healthy, and that is emotionally and practically and safe, very few can, and do acknowledge the conflict giving rise to their actions.
Though quite aware of the damage they are causing their bodies–never mind the enormous potential for hurting others–these people demonstrate a vapid avoidance towards unraveling the knot sitting at the crux of what causes them to do what they know is harming themselves, and others.
Mothers are no less susceptible to doing this when our sole focus is caring for our children and keeping our families financially afloat during dire economic times such as these where women comprise 51% of the work force here in America and so many households need, if not totally, depend upon the income a mother delivers from the work she performs outside the home.
And still I ask what kind of message does this send our children, stretching one’s self beyond physical and emotional boundaries of what is safe and healthy?
More importantly, what are our daughters, who have the capability and choice to become mothers, thinking of these dire dilemmas in which their mothers find themselves operating and the choices their mothers are making?
What do these, our daughters think of what the psychologists and experts say on this issue of mothers working both inside and outside the homes, and urge all of us to ignore?
Lastly, how do our daughters feel when we, as mothers in our efforts to ensure the safe welfare of our children conclude that we possess no choice but work two jobs?
Only they know the answers that time in its patience and honesty always reveals.
If only we are willing to see and acknowledge the answers their observations yield.