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Outdated
Battle
Mothering
experts say this not only is unproductive, it’s outdated.
“The whole thing
about the mommy wars is that is an antiquated argument,” says
Maria Bailey, founder of BlueSuitMom.com, a web site for mothers
in professional or managerial positions. “What you’re
seeing in the upcoming generation of mothers is a shift.”
That shift started in
the 1990s, when the number of married mothers opting to stay at
home with their young children began to climb. By 2002, the Census
Bureau reported that nearly a quarter of all children in the United
States— 10.4 million of them— had stay-at-home mothers,
a two percent increase since 1994.
Of the 72% of mothers
with children younger than 18 who remain in the labor force, nearly
one third work fewer than 40 hours a week, according to 2002 Bureau
of Labor statistics.
Bailey says the statistics
are deceiving, though, because mothers can be counted in both categories.
For instance, mothers who work from home may classify themselves
as “stay-at-home” mothers for the Census, while the
Bureau of Labor Statistics counts them part-time workers.
“The term ‘working
mom’ and ‘stay-at-home mom’ is completely blurred
by the change in attitudes of women,” Bailey says.
The fact is, mothers
of Generation X (born from 1965 to 1980) and Generation Y (born
after 1977) are re-writing the rules when it comes to balancing
work and family. These women came of age in a time of unprecedented
education and opportunity for women— indeed, since 1982 more
women than man have earned college degrees in the U.S.— and
they likely expected to have both a career and a family. Many are
doing just that, in creative ways. For instance, former New York
times economic reporter Ann Crittenden, in her book The Price
of Motherhood: Why The most Important Job in the World is Still
the Least Valued, estimates that 45% of women-owned businesses
are based at home. And given that the Center for Women’s Business
Research calculates that women-owned business are growing at double
the rate of all businesses, and are “one of the defining economic
and social trends in the U.S. over the past decade,” this
is no small number.
Other mothers are simply
opting out of the career track for a few years, with every intention
of jumping back in when their kids are older. It’s called
“sequencing,” a word coined by Dr. Arlene Rossen Cardozo
nearly twenty years ago in her book of the same name.
“One of the ways
we begin to put the [mommy wars] to rest is to realize that most
mothers today are in a continuum,” says Enola Aird of The
Motherhood Project, a national coalition of diverse mothers who
promote social change to benefit children and families. “Sometimes
we are at work, sometimes we are at home, and then we’re back
at work again: it’s not ‘us’ against ‘them.’”
Shifting
Demographics
The other issue that
makes the Mommy Wars increasingly obsolete is the shifting demographics
of the country, especially the growth of stay-at-home dads, single
mothers, and mothers of color.
The number of stay-at-home
dads in the U.S. has increased 18% since 1994. To put that in perspective,
one million children lived with stay-at-home dads in 1990; in 2000,
that number had jumped to 1.7 million. Likewise, the number of single
mothers also increased: in 2000, 13.3 million children lived with
a single mother; in 2003, that number swelled to 16.8 million.
For these families, the
Mommy Wars are outdated at best and offensive at worst, primarily
because they ignore the issues these families face. For instance,
dads who opt to stay home usually do so because their wives out-earn
them, a new but growing phenomenon: in 2001, 25% of wives in dual-income
families made more than their husbands. For some of these families,
the wage gap is enough to have the husband work part-time, or quit
entirely, to be with the kids— similar to families in which
wives earn less than their husbands and exercise the same at-home
alternatives. Unlike women, however, men suffer much more societal
and employment discrimination when they try to achieve a better
work-life balance. Indeed, many dads have no balance at all, given
that one third of employed fathers work more than 50 hours a week.
“One of the things
that’s harmful about the Mommy Wars is that it takes the focus
off of the role of men, who are desperately eager to have more of
a role in the family,” says Ellen Bravo of 9 to 5, the National
Association of Working Women. “Men won’t share fully
in raising children, and household chores, and deciding about how
to balance work and family, until they stop being punished at work
for wanting to do that.”
The Mommy Wars also negate
the issues of single mothers, the majority of whom must work to
provide basic necessities for their children. According to the Child
Trends Databank, less than half of parents who were owed child support
in 2002 received the full amount they were due. And alimony, at
least in Texas, is hard to come by: Texas law allows a maximum of
three years alimony— and only if the couple has been married
at least ten years and the alimony-seeking spouse is unable to work
because she/he lacks the ability, is mentally ill, physically incapacitated,
or must care for a child with needs substantial enough to prevent
obtaining paid employment. Given this, the debate over whether to
stay at home is usually moot.
“Single moms don’t
get that choice,” says Cara Santos, founder of the Austin
Single Parents Co-Op. “We are automatically thrown into a
sink-or-swim situation and it is scary.”
In addition to being
the fastest-growing demographic, single mothers also are likely
to be low income or poor: the 2000 Census found that 12% of single
mothers with children younger than 18 received some form of public
assistance. Santos fits that bill, but she wants to raise her children,
ages 2 and five months, at home. She manages to make that happen
by living in a one-bedroom apartment, babysitting and receiving
sporadic child support from her ex-husband. She acknowledges, however,
that most single parents simply have to work because there’s
no financial alternative. For them, the Mommy Wars add insult to
injury.
“Single parents
are already judged unnecessarily—[people think] we are all
poor, uneducated, sexually promiscuous, [and] drug addicts,”
Santos says. “On top of that, now we are ‘bad’
moms for not staying home with the kids.”
The debate also does
nothing for mothers of color, says Gloria Perez-Walker, founder
of Latina Mami in Austin. Minority mothers are more likely than
their white counterparts to be single, low income or on public assistance:
nearly a quarter of minority families are below the poverty line,
according to the U.S Census Bureau. For them, the Mommy Wars have
little relevance.
“Most of the women
I work with…don’t have the luxury to deal with [the
Mommy Wars],” says Perez-Walker. “It is a very different
experience: they’re simply in survival mode.”
Cease
Fire For Cultural Change
Perez-Walker’s
point is well taken by mothers working to change the national landscape
to support all families. Their first item on the agenda: stopping
the Mommy Wars.
“As with any other
public warfare, women and children are being caught in the crossfire,”
says Wallace. “The first way in which that shows up—how
you know you’ve been hit—is when you start doubting
yourself. The amount of energy women spend doubting themselves would
send a rocket to Jupiter.”
Wallace and others believe
that energy, if redirected, could fuel a powerful push for social
change that would benefit all families.
“[Mothers] are
the sleeping giant of American politics,” says Crittenden,
who teamed-up with the National Association of Mothers Centers to
create Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights: an organization dedicated
to promoting the economic, social and political importance of family
child and dependent care. “By pitting mothers against each
other, politicians don’t have to take action [and] it destroys
[mothers’] ability to act as an interest group: Divided we
are conquered.”
Now, however, diverse
organizations that once had little in common—ranging from
the Family and Home Network, which supports at-home parenting, to
9 to 5, the National Association of Working Women—are
presenting a united front when it comes to the needs of families.
A powerful case in point
is the joint statement issued to the press by Heidi Brennan, of
the At Home Network, and Dr. Joan Peters, author of When Mothers
Work: Loving Our Children Without Sacrificing Ourselves, after
their appearance on the Dr. Phil Show. For the first time, two women
in seemingly different camps of the Mommy Wars went public—together—to
affirm the commonalities in their philosophies about mothers’
needs.
The statement urged mothers
to “set aside any negative reactions you have to ‘mommy
war’ comments and join us in moving beyond this media-exaggerated
conflict.” While the statement acknowledged the differences
in opinions mothers have about work and motherhood, it called those
differences “marginal to our shared commitment to a society
which recognizes the value of care-giving and nurturing of children
and others.” In short, it re-framed the argument from one
about women to one about families and, specifically, children.
The statement called
for, among other things, wide-ranging workplace flexibility for
parents, a lower tax burden on families, and health insurance for
children. It also took to task the media and a consumerist culture
that influences kids and “infect[s] our own personal views
about parenting, work, and civic life.”
The white flag went up—
in a big way.
Those working in the
trenches of the mothers’ movement now say all mothers must
join the effort.
“Here’s the
thing,” says Ellen Bravo of 9 to 5. “If what we really
care about is what’s good for kids, instead of being mad at
each other we need to be mad at the lack of flexibility to care
for kids.”
Top on the agenda for
many mothers’ advocates is paid parental leave. The United
States is among just five countries worldwide that do not offer
this benefit; the others are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Lesotho
and Australia (although Australia’s government is now debating
the matter). It’s an issue both stay-at-home moms and working
moms can embrace and it has the added benefit of helping all families
and, especially, all children.
Other important issues
include flexible and reduced work schedules; Social Security credits
for stay-at-home parents; pay and benefit parity for part-time work;
and easing the tax load for all families. All of these, say mothers’
advocates, would assist mothers on both sides of the Mommy Wars—
and, importantly, those who are left out of the debate altogether.
Chiefly, because none of the issues is strictly a mothering concern:
instead, all reflect consideration for the care of children.
Mothers’ organizations
agree it’s an uphill battle: what they’re seeking is
no less than a cultural shift, one that changes society from being
focused on conflict and consumerism to centered on compassion.
“We [as a society]
have to make some hard choices here,” says law professor Joan
Williams. “Are we going to reshape work around the values
of people and family life or decide that our kids don’t need
us and embrace the ‘ideal worker’ norm?”
All of the mothers’
advocacy groups want the former, but getting it is going to take
a united front of committed foot soldiers— people who aren’t
distracted by fighting the Mommy Wars.
"The bottom line
is that American mothers— whether or not they combine paid
work and family, regardless of marital status, race or class—
are all stuck in the same leaky boat," says Judith Stadtman
Tucker of The Mothers Movement Online. "We can make matters
worse by trying to shoot each other in the foot, or we can learn
to respect our differences and concentrate on building a better boat."
This
article originally appeared in Parent:Wise Austin Magazine - May
2004
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