Take Your Pick
All right, ladies, step right up. It's fine, don't worry, those among you who are not ladies, but merely female with aspirations toward ladyhood may also step up. Into the breach, that is. The rearing breach. Those among that portion of the population who, being female, also professing to a personal interest in becoming a mother, this is for you. The question of the day is: stay home - or - out and about.Home, to look after the children's welfare. Home, to be a full-time caregiver, partner-in-marriage, housewife, active member of your close community. This group feels that the responsibility of rearing their children remains with them, not with any alternative childcare agency, be it another responsible adult, or group placement. You personally see your children through infancy to childhood, emerging teens, young adults. All of the hallmarks of physical and mental attainment are guided by you through your constant presence, and care. This is the "traditional" view of motherhood, seeing your children develop, stimulating their awareness and growing learning skills, socializing them, endowing them with values reflecting your own. You are home when your children arrive back from school. They will remember that you were there, always. To share the school day's interactive news of the day, to salve hurt feelings, to explain inexplicable situations, to help with homework, to serve up fresh-baked cookies and milk.
These mothers feel taken for granted, devalued by a society that expects all of its adults to contribute in ways seen as meaningful to the society at large. For the most part, the fact that stay-at-home mothers contribute to their society by raising well-adjusted, emotionally burnished children who pick up their parents' values through the osmosis of observation seems to be overlooked by the critical onlooker. The work involved in raising children in a well functioning home, be it with two parents or one, (good luck if you're a single mother) tends to be overlooked in favour of the importance seen in a working mother's more direct-appearing contribution by raising the GDP; earning a living, contributing to the commercial aspects of society's expectations.
Ah, the mothers who, through tight financial circumstances, single-parenthood, boredom with time away from adult interaction in the workplace, ambitions to succeed in a determined career path, life is no bed of roses. They've chosen, or they have had the decision imposed upon them by circumstances beyond their control, to work outside the home, their children's daily care given over to a paid surrogate. Whether this child-minder is someone in the family such as grandparents, or a neighbour who takes in children for a fee, or a community-based child-care centre, the daily communication, interaction, guidance and observation of their child's needs and development are truncated by necessity and outside the immediate purview of the parents. Much will be missed, never to be retrieved, from developmental milestones to opportunities of guidance and inspiration.
In the process, women will find extra satisfaction (or not) in pursuing a career, or just simply earning their way through a paying profession or job. They know they will miss much in emotional contact and support on a daily, ongoing basis with their children and accept that as an unfortunate byproduct of choice or necessity. They also in the process take on an emotional and physical burden that demands rejection of some elements of motherhood and housewifery. The tradeoff buys a little more time squeezed out of a seemingly impossible daily routine. And the outcome is a perpetually fatigued, sometimes guilt-ridden lifestyle. This has an undeniable impact on mental and physical health of the mother. Children who are not cared for and supervised closely by a parent too distracted to pick up signals also suffer.
Take your pick. This is an imperfect world.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 15, 2006
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