Happy Mother's Day
The news celebrates the liberation of women.
It's Mother's Day. On the news today, they interviewed a grown woman who was the daughter of a single mom. They honored her late mother by highlighting her great achievement of attending medical school during her mothering years. I thought, "But if the mother was in medical school, then who was tending to her children?" As the interview progressed the daughter recalled a pleasant childhood of attending public school and Sunday school. That was my answer.
The mother was busy in medical school and as a child, the daughter was cared for in institutions. How does any of this highlight the role of mothering? It doesn't. The narrative the media wants to push is that a good mother is a career woman and a happy child attends public school.
I, too, am a single mom. But I've decided to homeschool my child, work part-time, and live with my parents to give my daughter a sense of belonging within a family. The news would never have highlighted my story. It doesn't go along with the modern liberal agenda.
Gloria Steinem, in the late twentieth century, championed to bring women out of the home and into the workplace. What we get today is the news reiterating this same narrative. But before this, it was commonplace for women to stay home and raise their families.
So today I'd like to honor all the moms who could have gone to medical school but have chosen, for now, to be a mom. The best job of all.
One of my favorite books for preparing for motherhood is Erica Komisar's Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters (2017).
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Komisar explains women can do it all - just not at the same time. As a clinical social worker, she worked for many years with emotionally disturbed children with behavioral problems and found the common link in these children was an absent mother figure.
While a family might all sleep under the same roof at night if a mother is physically unavailable because she is at work all day and emotionally unavailable thereafter decompressing from the stress of work, she isn’t attuned to the child's daytime experiences and the child is likely to suffer.
The remedy Komisar offers is that if women choose to prioritize their careers, then when motherhood comes, the best thing a career mom can do for their children is ensure there is a present caregiver - may it be another parent, family member, or hired care - that is a consistent presence in their children's life.
The best role models for children are the ones who are present with them.
Happy Mother's Day!
Sincerely,
Cedra