SAHM vs WOHM: Continues till the end of time

This post is my Pop Mom of Babies Anonymous

I wrote about my travails as a working woman on my blog. I got a lot of responses from other working women stating that they feel the same way about things but were not sure if they can give up their jobs due to various reasons.. Be it money, be it the prestige, be it the insecurity, whatever.

The common thread though was guilt of not being there for the children, of not being able to give 100% to their homes, of being short tempered and so on. Debates on SAHM vs WOHM has always taken extremes with people from each side mudslinging the opposite side. Or we go to the other end and claim that "Whatever works for you best..is best".

Fat load of help that one is. It is true though. Every mother's situation is different, personal history, familial support, financial situation, there's really no solution fits all in this case (is there ever any case, where it does fit?) Then why we do feel like revisiting this topic every once in a while? We feel this extreme need to justify our stand and feel righteous of our choices. Why? Because no solution works all the time. And because sometimes our current situation is not one of choice.

I was talking to my DH the other day about this and he said a lot of things that annoyed me at first, then got me thinking.
**** Disclaimer; This is a male point of view atleast the way I understood it. I may have gotten it wrong, or it may sound MCP-ish at times.

He said that we women perceive our lot as a bad one because we have to make choices. Between child rearing full time versus part time. And we envy the men, who strangely enough have NO choices. Right from when they remember, they have been told to go out there and make money. Plenty of us women has also been raised that way, but he was wondering how we could end up being shocked by the fact that we'd have to make babies some day and therefore raise them. We knew we were going to have babies right? And that biologically, we were the only ones to do it. If we decided that we found work boring and that staying at home was more interesting, it would be the most natural thing in the world. Not many men have that choice, atleast not yet.

I was a little mad to hear that, but I also knew there was an element of truth to it. Sensing perhaps that I was getting irritated, he also asked me to look at this in the long run. Children need you intensely only for the first few years of their lives. After that they are pretty much on their own. The breaks that you take now will not matter so much in the long run of a 20-25 year career. It will seem frustrating now, but a few years from now, you'll look back and laugh.

**** End view point by DH

Is that the solution then? Take a break when the baby(ies) are young, and go back to work once they're in full time school? Hmm I'm not so sure on that one. I know a woman who works full time and her daughter is 13 years old. She thinks it's far easier to work when the babies are small, once they get older, they know how to guilt-trip you. Besides for plenty of us, our careers have really taken off at about the same time that we're having babies. How can we cope with it, how can we compete when all our peers have gone ahead? Sometimes, we are left so far behind, it is almost impossible to pick off where you left.

Maybe then we need to keep in touch with work, perhaps by working part-time or by volunteering someplace. Part time options ofcourse may not be available to all professions. Some employers will let you do it and then you end up working longer and longer hours until you've reached a point where your work is full time but your pay is only part time! Besides you need the same support system with working part time as you need full time and you may not be able to afford it on a part time job.

Let's see where we're going with this rambling.. Scratch out working if you feel guilty about leaving the babies in a stranger's care. Scratch out staying at home if you cannot afford to, or if you cannot later pick up where you left off. Scratch out part time because it may not work or be suitable for all folks.

What option are we left with?

Acceptance. Of our situation of exactly why we're doing what we're doing. We probably need to make peace with our choices. And learn to live with it. All by ourselves, no whining to all and sundry and no feeling like a matyr making the children feel guilty. And definitely no feeling piteous, triumphant, condescending, or superior towards other women who make different choices.

I know, I haven't said anything that has not been said before, I guess I just had to say it for myself.