by Jenna Pope

Created on: December 26, 2009   Last Updated: December 27, 2009

Most women work for food – not fun.  Oftentimes, though, the media or different groups depict working mothers as selfish, self-serving narcissists who work for European vacations, cruises, bigger houses and BMWs.  This, of course, is not the case at all.

Another observation I’ve made is the portrayal of working women as doctors, lawyers, I.T. wizards – professionals.  Though it’s true that some women fill these positions, most working women are secretaries, claims adjusters, Wal-Mart Cashiers, waitresses, bank tellers, and the like, who are either single mothers struggling to make ends meet or married women, working to supplement their husbands’ incomes so that they can pay their bills.  That is, those who like eating.

My husband and I were married three years ago.  After a year of marriage, we decided to buy a house.  We found a modest house in a nice neighborhood, but it’s not a McMansion, and it is over 25 years old.  Would you believe that our monthly house payment is almost three thousand dollars?!  How does a young family find a way to buy a home, lock in some sort of payment security, and build up equity?  It is next to impossible, and if they do end up being homeowners, they will need two incomes to pull it off – well, unless the breadwinner is a neurosurgeon or a Rockefeller.

When it comes to working women – as usual – the media has skewed reality.  I remember years ago picking a copy of a magazine for working mothers, and on its cover was the R & B singer, Pebbles, and her two small children.  Pebbles!?  Why Pebbles?  I wanted to know how to make it as a working mother from Monday through Friday without losing my ever loving mind!  What did the feature article on Pebbles’ success as a working mother have to do with me?  It still chafes my hide that working mothers are sorely misrepresented by the media.

When I was a working mother, sometimes my husband would pick me up from work.  On one such occasion, he arrived a little early, and my three-year-old son marched up to the firm’s Senior Partner and announced, “My mommie had STRESS THROAT!” 

And then there was the time that I accidentally took my babysitter’s cat to work and didn’t notice it until I was getting out of my car.  Another day, I had to leave work early because my 12 and 13-year-olds had placed a hysterical call to my work to let me know that their cockatiel had drowned in our aquarium.  In all of the years that I worked, I packed in more stress per second than was humanly possible. 

My first babysitter gave me a coffee mug that had painted on it a picture of a woman with droopy eyelids, dressed in a business suit, sitting at a desk while she was hooked up to a heart monitor. 

Written below the picture was this: 

“Working women are just laboratory rats in an experiment designed to prove that sleep is not necessary to life.”

I take my hat off to all the women working to pay their children’s college tuition or put food on the table or pay their house payment – women who work because they have to.

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