tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7936855.post110901552445076994..comments2023-10-09T05:27:59.888-04:00Comments on Why Won't You Grow?!: The unreasonable search for perfectionDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02587995461067202017noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7936855.post-1109082763704509432005-02-22T09:32:00.000-05:002005-02-22T09:32:00.000-05:00As I was walking out of Walgreen's with my sick an...As I was walking out of Walgreen's with my sick and snotty child the other night, I saw the cover of Newsweek and felt a quick wave of anxiety. Not because I thought "Oh my gosh! AM I the perfect mother?" But because I am SO SICK of articles like this! And so suspicious. Is this just another backlash? Another article meant to make women feel bad about what they're doing/not doing (especially if they are (gasp!) working)? Another article about uptight middle-class conformist suburban moms? <br /><br />As it turns out, yes! Though the article made some good points about the need for us to work collectively for decent and AFFORDABLE child care (including a living wage so child care workers can afford to be child care workers) and a change in corporate culture, it basically outlined the concerns of women who take themselves way too seriously and who fail to see that their economic condition DOES give them choices--lots of them. Meanwhile, it failed to take into account the dire needs of poor women who have the real--and ignored--problems. I cannot muster sympathy for women who fall into these avoidable traps--avoidable because they have the money and education to know better--and then complain about it.<br /><br />You know what? Raising children has never been easy! The generations that were able to stay at home did so at an economic, social, and political cost that many women today would consider unthinkable. They worked just as hard. And they didn't have birth control, either. If you want to stay home, bake pies, and watch your little Huck Finns and Anne of Green Gables walk barefoot to the fishin' hole, then move to the country and do it! Just know that you're going to have to give up the SUV, the credit-damaging trips to Target, the stainless steel stovetops. You're going to have to STOP SPENDING. Really. That seems to be so much of what's going on here. <br /><br />Hooray for Anna Quindlen! Children need parents to be laid back! They need daddies who will spend 5 minutes trying to get a PJ shirt off because you (child) keep sticking your arms back in the holes. And both of you are laughing. They need to know that parents hate soccer and Chutes and Ladders:<br /><br />"But I really wanted to be reading rather than standing on the sidelines pretending my kids were soccer prodigies. Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games."<br /><br />I am this kind of mom. We get the kid out, we expose him to different things, but really we just have fun, we trust him to keep asking questions and ourselves to answer them, and we have a great time--and he knows we do.<br /><br />Kids need other people to teach them. I feel fine about leaving Stevie at daycare--those people like children a heck of a lot more than I do, and they have people around to check themselves when they grow impatient! Their job is to teach my kid the things that I can't/won't. And they do a good job. And I can afford it. And I chose to work. And my mother--single, forced to work--had it a hell a lot worse than me. And my grandmothers--one abandoned after giving birth to her third child and forced to make a living, with no higher education, in a small town in the 1950s; the other who woke up to find the house on fire and had to grab up two babies and run outside, barefoot, in the snow, and watch everything she owned burn, with no money and few to help her--well, I'm not jealous.luluhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02078248950005444423noreply@blogger.com