Today's Moms Are Either Ones Or Zeroes

The digital age has undoubtedly brought about tremendous benefits to the world. But just like the industrial age that preceded it, it has resulted in a world paradigm that doesn’t always benefit children and other living creatures. During the industrial age, all thinking was modeled on the machine, ignoring holistic relationships where the sum was sometimes greater than the combined parts. Today, when I look around, we seem to be dominated by ones and zeroes. Everything is on or off, yes or no, black or white. The tendency to oversimplify is eternally human, but seems to have reached tyrannical proportions in the binary age of soundbites.


Nowhere is this more painful to me than in the false dichotomy of motherhood that women face. Working mom or stay-at-home. Self absorbed and neglectful or antifeminist and subjugated. More than thirty years after the birth of the feminist movement, and we are still facing the same bullshit choice. Career or children. Of course, some things have changed, but essentially, we still live in a world that is structured around a midcentury nuclear family, with one breadwinner and one homemaker. This despite the fact that 93 percent of households no longer fit the mold.

Stay-at-home moms face insecurities about their ability to support themselves, stereotypes of privilege and trophydom from society at large and are quite frequently bored out of their minds by the repetitive drudgery of the work they do twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Most of them would love to go to work – just not all the time.

Working mothers face insecurities about their ability to meet their children’s emotional needs, stereotypes of having skewed priorities and emotional deficiencies, and are quite frequently driven to distraction by how much they miss their babies. Most of them would love to stay home with their kids – just not all the time.

I read a sociology book once that said the first generation of any formerly excluded group that breaks into a coveted position (the first wave of immigrants in a new nation, the first blacks to join the country club, the first women in the boardroom) usually protect their tenuous position by working to reassure those in power that they are not a threat. "Despite appearances," the newcomers seem to say, "I am more like you than like myself." The first female president is more likely to be a neocon than a progressive. By this theory, first wave feminists broke into business by giving up their families and being tougher and more good-old-boy than the good old boys themselves.

The next generation of feminists tried to have it all. Family and work. They played by the old boys’ rules all day and tried to follow the feminine rules by night. They were the mothers of the latchkey kids, before there was a childcare infrastructure. They missed first baby steps and field trips and midweek afternoons exploring the zoo. They made less money than men in the same positions. They were taken less seriously because they often had to miss work to take care of their kids. It didn’t really work.

But here we are, Generation X, the third generation, laboring under the same old failed infrastructure. And why? We’ve had three generations to practice. Today there are so many highly educated women having children. We want to spend time with those children, be involved in their lives and not miss all those wonderful developmental moments. We want to keep our professional minds and skills sharp. We want to contribute financially and not just hygienically to our household.

So where are all the professional- level part-time jobs? Either or is a stupid choice. We can do better. This is a favorite topic of mine. It will come up again.

Post Script on 3/1/11:
Here is a more recent reference for the changing face of America's families:


http://houstonfamilyattorneysblog.com/2010/11/more-non-traditional-families-emerging-in-us.html