Subject and Expectation:
In our first ever submitted piece of work by a guest author, Christina Dawson takes us to a place that no man can appreciate…the world of “mom guilt.” The world we live in doesn’t even resemble the world that our parents grew up in, and even more so, their parents. Christina takes us deep into the debate of which direction a mother should consider…being a stay-at-home mom or returning to work.
Dawson strives, with this work, to help all mothers to get over the inevitable “mom guilt” and realize their worth as a valuable and good mother, regardless of which route she decides to take in regards to employment. We are ever so honored to have our first guest author join the ranks of creating work with us to help us all to evolve from within. Enjoy friends!
Introduction:
First of all, I’d like to thank The Small Town Humanist for allowing me to contribute to the idea of “evolving from within.” I just adore this beautiful, humanistic, project and I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to be a part of it.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I discovered a show called, “Workin’ Moms,” a Netflix TV series about four moms struggling with balancing work and family life. I love watching these shows because I can relate. As a working mother myself, I had always struggled with the feeling of “mom guilt.” My own mother worked full time my whole life. Despite her own professed guilt that she later expressed to me when I became an adult, I had a great childhood and I also think I turned out pretty well.
By the time I had my first child at the ripe old age of 21, I found myself in the throws of the great decision, to continue to work or stay at home. I had pressure from my own mother, who had since become an ultra-conservative Catholic, wanting me to stay at home because she never felt like an adequate mother working full time. My mother-in-law at the time, also an ultra-conservative Christian, stayed at home her entire life, and my then-husband had a hard time imagining working and raising a family with someone who wasn’t at home all the time like his mother was.
Most of my friends had not yet had careers or children, and our social circle was based in a small, conservative Christian community. I definitely had believed that I should be and wanted to be a stay at home mother. Although I did return to work after my maternity leave was up, due to pressure from my husband and my own belief that it was probably better, I ultimately quit my job when my first child was one. I actually did think this is what I wanted and what was best for our family, however, I soon found out that it was not for me.
Whether it was the loneliness and isolation I felt (these were pre-social media days), my lifelong battle with anxiety, or the simple pressure of being a mother, I remember vividly that this is when I started drinking regularly. Every day at 4:00 pm I was at my wit’s end and poured myself a glass of wine. I loved my child so much but I just hated being a stay-at-home mom. After less than a year, I got a part-time job and began working again.
When my second child came along, again I struggled with the idea of being a working mother. Was I making the right choice? Was I somehow shortchanging my kids because I chose to leave them at a babysitter so I could fulfill my passion and professional aspirations? Inevitably, I threw in the towel and decided to stay at home again, this time managing a home daycare to keep me from getting bored. I was able to last about two years this time before ultimately deciding to go back to work, back to school, and then work full time. I have never looked back.
I have always been sensitive to the feelings of guilt that we mothers have no matter if we stay at home or work outside the home. In college I was even inspired to write about it, ultimately sealing in my final decision to work full time while also raising a family. Advancing my degree and landing an amazing job also helped me become financially stable enough to leave a bad marriage. My kids and I have never been happier.
Below is an updated, less scholarly, version of the paper I wrote back in 2013.
Today’s Mothers
Burdened with feelings of guilt and anxiety, mothers in America today often find themselves questioning their career choices after having children. New mothers, often before the baby is even born, hear the nagging, anxiety-ridden question ringing in their ears, “Should I stay at home or should I work?” Today’s mothers are bombarded with differing opinions on the subject, from the media, religious communities, or from their friends and families, causing unnecessary self-doubt and guilt.
Mothers of young children are often constantly trying to prove they are good enough and that they have made the right decision; emulating the perfect stay-at-home mother and wife, or the working mother who does it all and is “supermom.” Unfortunately, the question still plagues us even after a decision is made and the children grow past the infant stage. “Am I working too much? Should I work more? Am I making the right choice? Are my children happy?” Mothers, can you relate? Even if you have no choice but to work, that feeling of guilt is there. You know you want to have everything, be everything, and be everywhere, but unfortunately can’t. And when you drop off that screaming, crying two-year-old at daycare and head to work, it’s almost too much to bear.
We end up feeling constantly torn between our own personal aspirations and what society says we should be doing. Mothers in conservative religious circles often tend to experience even more pressure to stay at home, due to old-fashioned, biblical based beliefs that “a mother’s place is in the home.” The truth is mothers need to stop feeling guilty for their employment choice and realize that there is no right or wrong way to be a great mom. This is how I feel and this will be the goal, for these words to help to get rid of this haunting stigma that we mothers seem to automatically place on ourselves.
Making the Decision
Mothers who stay at home full time with their children enjoy certain obvious benefits.
Mothers who stay at home are able to spend quality time with their children and studies have also shown that maternal care can improve the cognitive ability of children. Families can save money on daycare and work-related expenses, such as clothing, gas, and eating out. They are also able to be more supportive of their husband’s career, especially if he works long hours. Stay-at-home mothers also are able to control their children’s activities and diets a little more effectively, and have time to participate in school activities or even home school their children if they need to or want to.
Even though balancing work and a family is difficult, stay-at-home mothers do not escape the affliction of maternal guilt either. A study published in The Family Journal entitled“Highly Educated Stay-at-home Mothers: A Study of Commitment and Conflict,” sheds light on this dilemma. The study participants, professionals who quit working to stay at home full-time, conveyed feelings of guilt, shame, and conflict– feelings usually reserved for the working mother. According to their findings, “Many stay-at-home mothers described feeling guilt about not doing enough for their children, as well as guilt for not working and making use of their education and skills.” Guilt over leaving the children gave way to guilt over wasting an education and not living up to their potential.
The Media’s Role in Our Lives
In the 1950s and ’60s, it was more common to have mom at home while dad worked. However, in the 1970s and ’80s, women began to rebel against the sacrificial role they saw their mothers play in the family and began to enter the workforce in increasing numbers. My own mother was among these “rebellious” women.
By the 1990s the word ‘guilt’ was everywhere. With the increase of mothers going to work, they began to feel guilty for not being there for their children and leaving them in non-maternal care. Inevitability, working mothers are constantly torn between work and family schedules, having less quality time with their children, and are not able to be as involved in school and other activities.
Despite the fact that now the majority of mothers work outside the home, the media grasped this awareness of maternal guilt and ran with it. Mothers’ interactions, or lack thereof with their children, have been blamed by so-called “experts” on TV and in other media as the reason for countless childhood disorders. Toni Zimmerman, a Ph.D. in the Human Development and Family Studies Department at Colorado State University, argues that popular TV shows, books, and magazines fuel what her and her colleagues call “the culture of mother-blame.”
In 2008, Zimmerman composed “Deconstructing the ‘Mommy Wars’: The Battle Over the Best Mom.” In the article, Zimmerman and her colleagues cite conservative Jewish therapist and radio show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who condemns working mothers in her book Parenthood by Proxy. Schlessinger is quoted as accusing working mothers of depriving their children of necessary affection and driving them to a “life of crime.”
The popular media in America today has fueled the debate over which is better, the stay-at-home mother or the working mother, making moms feel guilty about their career choices, thus fueling their guilt no matter what they do. Popular TV shows such as Good Morning America and Dr. Phil who have posed the question, “Who is the better mommy, the stay-at-home mom or the working mom?” For example, discourse taken from one of the Dr. Phil shows: “Working moms should hide in shame for putting their kids in a filthy daycare center….Stay-at-home mothers waste their education and throw us back to the 1950s.”
The resulting effect of this “mother blame” is that it makes good mothers feel guilty and inadequate, feeling they are damaging their children by their every decision. While this and other media seem to send the message that mothers are somehow harming their children by sending them to daycare and not being at home fulltime, over 50 years of research tells us that this is not the case.
When analyzing popular women’s magazines, Deirdre Johnston and Debra Swanson of Hope College point out that the content of these magazines contraindicates the ideals of motherhood they promote. At-home mothers are “presented with ideologies of domestic success but also represented as inept and incapable of achieving such success” and “in need of continual expert advice.” When they conducted interviews of 98 mothers, they concluded that both at home and working mothers perceived that the culture is more supportive of other mothers.
Mothers felt that no matter which role they choose, they will still feel themselves to be at odds with the culture and not validated. Johnston and Swanson explain that this lack of perceived social support can lead to “role ambiguity, exhaustion, and burnout” causing physical and psychological distance between mother and child…these feelings of guilt, along with the “mom vs. mom” mentality, debilitate a mother’s psychological well-being, regardless of their employment status, and are not healthy for mothers or children.
Questioning Social Science, Justification, and the Psychological Effects of Being a Stay-at-home Mother
One thing that the media fails to address adequately is that despite the benefits of staying at home versus working, stay-at-home mothers can feel isolated, depressed, and may lose their sense of self. In fact, a study by the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, showed that non-employed mothers were more depressed than mothers employed part-time.
Many American women find themselves mathematically justifying their choice to leave the workforce, debating the financial consequences of working or staying at home. A mother may find that her financial contribution to the family by working, a career possibly endeavored all her adult life, does not greatly impact the overall budget once childcare and word expenses are accounted for. She makes the decision to stay at home with her children because it “makes sense,” often forgoing her sense of self.
Although the stress of balancing work and family caused women to decide to stay at home, for some, a sense of lost identity and isolation sets it. Judith Warner, in her article, “Is Too Much Mothering Bad for You?: A Look at the New Social Science,” found that “mothers who don’t work outside the home were far more likely to be depressed- and plain old angry, sad, stressed, and worried—than mothers who were engaged in professional activities.” The stay-at-home mother can become overrun by children’s activities, and often justifies her decision to stay at home by endeavoring on soul-draining mothering perfection, which brings a whole new slew of things to feel guilty about. “Excessive parenting,” as Judith Warner calls it, is also detrimental to the mental health of mothers.
The Psychological Effect of Beliefs on Mothers
Despite what popular media portrays as the ideal image of motherhood, deciding whether or not a mother should work or stay at home is a personal choice, not a cultural one. Studies done across the world by scholars in the field of psychology have concluded that mothers’ values, beliefs, and attitudes about working, and whether or not their actions (working or staying at home) coincided with their beliefs, affected their psychological and emotional well-being.
Likewise, they have found that child social competence outcomes were greater when the mothers’ beliefs coincided with their actions. Mothers who believed they should and wanted to work were happier and had better psychological well-being when they were employed, rather than staying at home because of cultural and media pressure. In contrast, mothers who stayed at home because they believed maternal employment to have negative consequences, reported better psychological well-being as well. Basically, if a mother’s work status does not correspond to her beliefs, whether employed or stay-at-home, negative effects on families and children take place.
Erica Youngberg of Wartburg College holds a similar view; that working or staying at home is a personal decision. After analyzing studies in favor of both stay-at-home mothers and working mothers, Youngberg proposes in her article, “Working Mothers: Work-Life Balance and Relative Cognitive Effects on Children,” that “Ultimately, the maternal working or non-working decision is left up to the discretion of families on an individualized basis.”
How Does Maternal Employment Impact Children?
Perhaps of more significance in the “Mommy Wars” debate is the impact maternal employment has on children. According to Zimmerman “There is a substantial body of research that explores the effects of childcare and maternal employment on children’s well-being” and that children good or high-quality childcare can do just as well or better than children with full-time care from their mothers. It has also been found that working mothers were less depressed than stay-at-home mothers and that when fathers were more involved in childcare (because the mother is working too) maternal satisfaction was higher and test scores among children were higher as well.
There have been other positive effects found on children’s developmental outcomes like social skills when in non-maternal care. A study published in 2002 in Developmental Psychology, found “mothers who expressed more commitment to work and less anxiety about using nonfamily childcare, and who returned to work earlier, were more likely to have secure infants.” Another study in 2013 “Working Mothers: Work-Life Balance and Relative Cognitive Effects on Children,” concluded that “neither option (working nor non-working) will negatively impact children.”
Also that “several other studies support that non-maternal care for children with working mothers either does not have a significant effect on a child’s cognitive ability or that it has a positive effect.” The article also points out, “It can be argued that because educated, working mothers have met their own cognitive needs they may also be better equipped to look after their children’s cognitive needs” and that the effect of working mothers can affect children in a positive way.
What about mothers who have no choice but to work?
Unfortunately, some women are caught in the middle of this debate with no other choice. Many women aren’t even able to view staying at home as an option due to financial reasons or because they are single mothers. These mothers’ situations are not reflected in the “Mommy War” discourse at all. In fact, Zimmerman finds the “Mommy War” discourse “insulting to minority mothers and disadvantaged mothers whose images are not reflected (in the dialogue of maternal employment choices).”
White, upper-middle-class mothers are blamed for somehow putting their child at risk by working, while lower class or single mothers are instructed to stop relying on welfare and work to support their family. Further explaining, Zimmerman reveals the underlying message of the debate that “some children are just more important than others.” Clearly, the work vs. stay-at-home debate can be detrimental to all mothers and children in different ways, not just those who have the luxury of a choice in the matter.
The Realities of Being a Mother Today
Moms are always going to have some sort of guilt no matter what they do. In the end, what matters most is happy, healthy families. If working makes a mother happy, she should work. If staying at home makes a mother happy, she should stay at home if her finances allow. Mothers should no longer feel the need to conform to the “ideal mother” image portrayed in popular television and magazines, or in conservative religious circles, and instead look for answers within themselves and their families when deciding if they should work or stay at home with their children. If mothers were exposed to a more honest dialogue about feelings about their employment choices, the guilty feelings over employment, or lack of, and whether or not they are a “good mother” would subside, and mothers could get back to enjoying their time with their children.
Thank you STH!
I’d like to thank The Small Town Humanist for allowing me to contribute to the idea of “evolving from within.” I just adore this beautiful, humanistic, project and I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to be a part of it.
– Works Cited –
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“Employment Characteristics of Families Summary.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. United States Department of Labor, 26 Apr. 2013. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
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Joanne, Gilbert. “Why I Feel Guilty All the Time: Performing Academic Motherhood.” Women’s Studies in Communication 31.2 (2008): n. pg. Questia. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
Johnston, Deirdre D., and Debra H. Swanson. “Moms Hating Moms: The Internalization of Mother War Rhetoric .” Sex Roles 51.9-10 (2004): 497-509. PsychINFO. Web. 14 Oct. 2013.
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Warner, Judith. “Is Too Much Mothering Bad for You?: A Look at the New Social Science .” Virginia Quarterly Review 88.4 (2012): 48-53. Academic Search Premier . Web. 4 Oct. 2013.
—. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Kindle file.
Youngberg, Erika. “Working Mothers: Work-Life Balance and Relative Cognitive Effects on Children.” Business Studies Journal 3 (2011): 95-108. Business Source Complete. Web. 30 Oct. 2013.
Zimmerman, Toni Schindler, Jennifer T. Aberle, Jennifer L. Krafchick, and Ashley M. Harvey. “Deconstructing the “Mommy Wars”: The Battle Over the Best Mom.” Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 20.3 (2008): 203-219. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Oct. 2013.
– Works Consulted –
MedicalNewsOnline. “Working Moms vs. Stay-At-Home Moms.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 15 Dec. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Schlessinger, Laura. In Praise of Stay-At-Home Moms. New York: Harper, 2009. Print.
