Chuck pointed out this letter to the editor in our local paper that I seem to have missed:
I’m in my own little world apparently. Every day I wake up with two happy kids, even when I go out the door for work. I work nights, my husband works days and due to the rising cost of decent child care, that won’t change any time soon. My kids are happy, healthy and well adjusted.
People have commented on this on several occasions in public. If my kids are losers, as one recent letter writer suggested, then explain to me why my oldest is an A student at a local elementary school and holds the key to the world in his hands.
If the bare necessities didn’t cost an arm and a leg, I’d tell my employer I had other plans and I’d be home seven days a week. But thanks to our wonderful elected officials and all those brilliant, non-loser corporate CEOs, I have to work. I see my kids more than I see my husband, whom I’ve been married to 13 years now; if anyone or thing suffers here it would be our time together as a married couple.
But that’s OK, we’re better than that, as long as we make it and do it together, there are no “losers” in my house.
Jennifer Voight, Lafayette
There has been a conversation about the morality of working mothers in our paper, which includes tripe such as this letter that was printed adjacent to the one above:
Reflecting on the current discord in the letters to the editor concerning stay-at-home moms, I can’t help but think that some families have skewed the line between needs and wants. So it begs the question, what are the true necessities and what are the wants and desires?
I believe it comes down to what parents are willing to sacrifice to make the wants/desires into “necessities.” Many will claim that both parents in their household must work in order to maintain the basic needs of life and to sustain a basic standard of living. So does that standard of living include a newer home, new car and big screen TV? How many cell phones are required, as well as cable TV, broadband Internet connections, expensive vacations and trips out to eat? Are these needs or wants?
Each family will have to answer those questions and its priority list, but consider this: In ancient times, certain cultures would sacrifice children on altars in hopes of a good harvest, thus a higher standard of living. What altar are you willing to sacrifice your children on in hopes of more material wealth?
Joseph Werner, Lafayette
Mr. Werner, some of those religions of which you speak happen to be part of Abraham’s Big Three.
The letter to which these two originally respond is this silver-lined gem:
Last week a letter addressing the lack of infant care in our area was submitted by one of your readers. It saddens me to think that even before the birth of a child, parents are seeking facilities outside of the home to care for the child so they are free to, as quickly as possible, resume their careers, special interests, etc. What is the purpose of having children if only to pass off the responsibility of raising them to others?
Maybe I’m getting too old but, thankfully, I was blessed to have a mother who cared for me and my brother during infancy and our young adult years. Children that have had that taken away from them are the real losers in today’s culture. And, yes, parents are, too.
Jim Knippenberg, Lafayette
Oh, my brain! It hurts! Could this conversation be another infectious outbreak from Rick “Some Of My Best Friends Are Stay-At-Home Dads” Santorum’s It Takes a Family book tour? Women “don’t think family is important” if they don’t hop on board the trolley of professional motherhood.
And this is where comments like Jim’s and Joe’s above begin. If women don’t immediately commit to reigning over house and home, and house and home alone, this tells of the “me-centered generation” of selfish women who throw their children to the daycare dogs in search of self-affirmation and Oprah-inspired hoo-ha.
Let me state the obvious for anyone who may have missed it.
Single parents, who become single parents in myriad ways, work. They work, go to school, and sometimes use public services to their advantage in order to feed, clothe, and shelter their children. When there’s only one of you, you need daycare to take care of your children. Every never-married single parent I know has worked while they used public resources. Oftentimes, one person’s wage isn’t enough, which means…
Two-parent families work. They work, go to school, and sometimes use public services to their advantage in order to feed, clothe, and shelter their children. When there is only two of you and both of you have to work to keep the family going, you need daycare to take care of your children. Sometimes you make just enough to scrape by, and sometimes you make a little more. But “making a little more” doesn’t mean that you don’t care about your kids. If anything the common theme among parents we all know is that we want our children to have the things we didn’t. This doesn’t mean “a newer home, new car and big screen TV” or cell phones, cable TV, or broadband Internet connections, expensive vacations and trips out to eat, Mr. Werner. Oftentimes this means a college education, which costs a chunk of money these days, and…
Sometimes you’re straight wealthy. Sometimes you don’t need another worker in the house. People work for other reasons. A job can let a person use his or her special talents and skills. A job can be important because it helps people in the community. Or a job can simply be exciting or interesting. The people who love their jobs and puruse them even when a second income isn’t necessary are often the role models we refer our children to when they complain about future drudgery. And our kids need role models, right Joe? Jim? Rick?
This isn’t to say that stay-at-home parents are lesser than their working peers. SAHPs are always “on,” working without pay, and forced to be more creative with their resources than many. One of the greatest ironies is that the perceived dearth of stay-at-home parents is often thrown at the feet of feminism, a movement that may at one time looked down on motherhood but has reformed to attempt to help all women have to opportunity to realize their potential. Nevermind the fact, as someone else notes, that feminism and the 21st century are what allowed good ol’ Rick and Karen Santorum to have that conversation early on about who would stay home with their children, if either of them. Someone else notes that Ricky’s mom worked as well, but that’s no matter, not when you’re thinking of the children! The children!
But one of the things that bothers me in particular is the general notion that wanting nice or new things means that a poor person or poor family is selfish. Rich people aren’t made to feel guilty — after all, they’ve worked for it!
As someone who lives entirely off of debt, a meal out and some cable TV aren’t so bad. I’ll pay it back eventually. Financial aid is sort of like a credit card that you don’t have to pay back for four years, but with better interest rates and fewer black marks on my record.
In many ways this argument pitting the working worthy (or is it the un-working worthy?) against the immoral unworthy parallels many attitudes I’ve run across since becoming a mother. I am not entitled to feel good or have a good time or spend money on something silly because this is my grave of single parenthood and, goddammit, I’m supposed to lie in it.
Anyhow, Ricky in particular seems to think that the relaxation of gender roles when it comes to stay-at-home dads is progressive, but this is the guy who thinks birth control “harms women.”