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Add to FavoritesThe Unexpected Price of Being a Working Mother
Working women do not make good mothers because their focus is distracted. It seems strange to debate this topic under such a pretense. The fact is that people are far too busy multi-tasking to pay attention to anything, let alone their families.
Multi-taski ng is a way of life. Women have been doing it since the beginning of time. We manage well enough, yet there seems to be something missing. We are losing contact with the human race as we wind down in front of the T.V., only to fall asleep on the couch.
Women are tired. We have found many ways to address the demands of society, but we have given up on the idea of slowing down. There simply isn't enough time to slow down and lessen the load we carry. In fact, we have even gone so far as to place more demands on ourselves.
We are the caretakers, volunteers, nurturers, and life bearers of the world. We are the ones who must pick up the slack, or cut back on our wants to meet family needs. It is our job to miss work when the baby gets sick. It is our responsibility to make the home a warm and happy place that smells like home made goodies.
Women organize extra-curricular activities so that children can succeed in life. We spend countless hours running around town gathering special supplies for our children's science project, and then stay up late helping them put it together. And of course, we are the same ladies who adhere to sporting schedules, music lessons, sleepovers, and birthday parties.
Throughout it all, we make lists, set alarm warnings on our cell phones, post notes on our refrigerators, and even send ourselves email from work to home and vice versa in an effort to maintain our hectic lifestyles.
We moan about the little bit of time we have to squeeze in a decent haircut, often opting to skip the shampoo and blow dry. We talk about our lists when we meet up with our friends, assuming we have time to have any.
Working women manage to succeed in the many things they do. Their resolve to meet the demands of everyone who needs them is admirable. While they are able to juggle the many tasks they have taken on, I think it is questionable to call their accomplishments good.
As a society, standards have changed. It used to be good for schools to have after school sports. Today we have not only cut sport programs, but are beginning to eliminate librarians and nurses in our schools. We are working harder and settling for less.
Working women are often caught in the middle. A good job used to pay the bills and offer health care. Today, a good job is one that won't be downsizing with the economy. Good television used to be family oriented. Today, good television is a reality show with too many bleeped out words in it.
Anyone can be good at anything if that's their choice. However, the overall trend is to be satisfactory and move on to the next thing on the list. Being good takes a lot more effort than going through the motions. It takes passion, hard work, and sacrifice.
Having a career is fulfilling and it may even pay the bills. It allows a woman to explore her interests and earn rewards for her achievements. It offers interaction from coworkers, and advanced education opportunities. It is an individual choice that focuses on the individual, often being an outlet when things get frustrating at home. Many people use work as an excuse to avoid dealing with family issues.
Taking care of a family is noble. It offers a woman a chance to explore her creative side. While she has a vested interest in teaching her children manners, it is rare that she will receive certificates for doing so. Interacting with other adults is often done when she digs through her purse for coupons at the grocery check- out stand. Advanced education is accomplished only well after the kids have gone to bed. The choice to stay at home focuses on others, and does not offer an easy escape.
By the time we pay daycare, travel expenses, wardrobe, dining without cooking, and a host of other extra expenses for women to be in the workforce, I have to wonder if we haven't settled for less and called it good once again. Is it really worth it to invest in latch key child programs, extra security in our schools for out of control students, and alarming statistics pertaining to teen pregnancy, high school drop-outs, and failing academics?
Working women do not make good mothers. Working women are essentially jugglers who are stressed out, running on empty, and exhausted. Organization is the key to their mediocre success.
Good mothers require less focus on self and society, and more focus on family, morals and values. Good mothers allow less to be more. They teach our children that there is more to life than getting ahead, have time for silly dreams that may or may not come true, and cater to different personalities without giving up their individual self worth. Good mothers simply don't have time to work, outside the home, that is!
Learn more about this author, M. J. Joachim.
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Yes
Majority of mothers who work outside the home do so because of their desire to give their children and family a better life. That alone, is a trait of a good mother. It is unfair for people to think that working moms prioritize their careers over their families, or worse, that they do not care what becomes of their children while they are working their socks off in the office.
On the contrary, most of these hardworking women hurt inside whenever they are not in PTA meetings or are not there when their little angels come home from school. It's just that they are made of tougher substance, with stronger determination and clearer vision for them and their families. At the end of the day, these women who have the strength to set aside their own feelings for the sake of the whole family, are heroes in their own right.
Let's face it, the times are different now. Gone are the days when families can subsist on single incomes. Nowadays, it is almost impossible for most of us to put food on the table and send the kids to school without both parents working. Which is more acceptable, a woman with education and skills choosing to stay at home and leave all the breadwinning to the father while her whole family hardly makes do, or someone with initiative, willing to walk the tightrope to strike a balance between family and career, so that the children are well-fed and clothed and given good education? Would you rather admire a woman who contents herself with staying at home hiding behind the pretense of being a good mom while she cannot even tell if her children will ever have the chance to get to college, or someone who takes matters into her own hands and sets up a system which allows her to work while raising her children so that she can provide for them a better quality of life?
The crux of this whole debate lies on the definition of a good mother. There are as many definitions as there are people who attempt to define her. One way to describe a good mother is her character. Is she caring, loving, affectionate or considerate? Does she put her family's needs above her own? Or is she selfish and vain and spiteful?
If we go by character to describe a good mother, it means that being a good mother does not rest on what she does (e.g., working versus staying at home), but rather, on her attributes that define her mothering style. Therefore, a working mother can be a good mother as much as a stay-at-home mother can.
A good mother can also be defined by her parenting style. Is she strict with enforcing the rules? Does she see to it that her children are disciplined early on in life so that they grow up to be responsible and upright individuals? Or, does she spoil them to bits and forget about character building, so that every whim and fancy of the children is catered to?
Again, parenting style does not have anything to do with a mom's having a job or staying at home. It is about her determination to train her children to be mature, responsible and behaved individuals. She may have lesser time to monitor her children's behavior in a day, or to spend quality time with each one of them to build up their trust and confidence, but that does not mean that a working mom cannot possibly raise disciplined kids. It's all a matter of balancing work and family and time management, stuff that working moms easily understand and practice.
Only those who define a good mother by the time she spends at home are stupid enough to argue that those women who work outside the home can never be good mothers.
Being a good mother and a successful career woman is not that difficult anymore. For one, there are a lot of options now for career women who want to spend more time with their children and families. Work-from-home options are already available, and so are jobs that have night or weekend shifts, so that husband and wife can alternate looking after the children. But even women working regular hours can still possibly perform well as parents.
The key to becoming a good mother and be successful at work is to strike a balance between what the family needs and what one can give to their job. In fact, working can even enhance one's mothering abilities. There are different life skills that a woman can develop in the workplace that she can also apply at home to improve her home management.
For example, an office-working mom should be technology-savvy enough to make use of modern gadgets to manage the home while away. Yes, technology can help a lot in making up for lack of time to spend at home. There is the telephone to check on the children wherever they are. A GPS device tells mom where her darling daughter is anytime of the day. Computer software to put a cyber-fence around the children's internet surfing are also available so that they can work on their assignments even while Mom is still in the office.
Weekly-planned menus, pre-cooked frozen food and trained older siblings on home management are also great helps to a busy but efficient mother. The organizational and negotiation skills developed in the workplace puts Mom at an advantage when planning and preparing the family's food for the whole week during weekends, assigning chores to each of the kids, and dividing workload between herself and Dad.
For single mothers, it is a little more challenging if not tricky to balance home and office life, but there should be a way to go about it. There are family and friends to help as child minders. There are government support of all kinds for them, too. While the children are young, it can become very daunting, but as they grow older and more independent, any single mother can wing it.
We cannot deny that there are working moms that fail miserably in this delicate balancing act. But that does not mean that they are not good mothers. They just have to put in more effort but they can get there as well as the others.
A good mother is one who is willing to give of herself to her family, someone who is flexible enough to adjust her expectations from life in order to ensure that those dearest to her are well-provided for, protected, loved and assured a better future. Thad does not depend on whether she has a monthly paycheck or not.
What makes a good mother is her heart, her strong, positive character that she can potentially replicate or develop in her children. It is possible to raise responsible, well-adjusted individuals while one is busy leading a multi-level marketing business, or carving a career as a top-notch surgeon or keeping watch over the affairs of the world's biggest business bank and at the same time fiercely loving and providing for her family.
Learn more about this author, Ma. Teresa Baniaga.
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