The Mommy Wars.

[riotgrrl]

Mommy wars - We are in the midst of something called "The Mommy Wars" - mothers who work full time versus mothers who stay home full time with their children. In the 1960s Betty Friedan called it "The Problem that has no name" - the quiet desperation that mothers felt as they were forced to stay home all day with their children - with no time for work or personal fulfillment. Today, with the dual-earner family becoming increasingly popular, mothers are working full time more then ever before.

How are women dealing with this dilemma? If we decide to have children, can we be full time moms and still be self-fulfilled? Can we be employed full time and still be good moms? Is feminism changing motherhood?

[mylittlex]

I do think that you can have a full time career and still be a great mom. It is important to spend quality time with your children but it is also important for mothers to be happy. Your good mental health is much better for your children than the alternative. So do what makes you happy....
...as long as you can afford it.
We have to remember that even in the 60's it wasn't so simple. There are many groups of people who have never had the opportunity to stay at home with their children. Even at the time of "The Problem That Has No Name" there were women working in the homes of other families for minimum wages just to make ends meet.
I don't think that "motherhood" is or was ever easy to define. There have always been many kinds of mothers or mothers that have been in many kinds of situations.
Maybe another question to consider is
Is "motherhood" changing because of feminist ideologies or because having a career is so mainstream?

[sushime]

I think that our very definition of "motherhood" changes as we mature from a daughter into a mother. Every generation bemoans their own difficulties, for example my own grandmother would tell my mother how easy she had it, how she didn't need to scrub floors and do laundry just to make ends meet, how my mother should be happy she could have a real job.

Now I'm a mother. I'm a full-time student. I work part-time. I have other issues and concerns to deal with. Everyone assumes that I do all of the latter by choice. That I work because I want to, that I'm in school because I want to be. However, that's not technically true. This society we live in is an extremely competitive place. We're taught to be pretty, and nice, and demure, and quiet, yet at the same time we're to be go-getters, equal earners, top mothers. Working mother is a contradiction in terms--it implies that motherhood itself is not worthy of consideration as "work".

Motherhood is by definition "complicated". For most (myself included) it is at best, loosely planned. Expenses--both time and monetary--can rarely be calculated ahead of time. Babies have a way of catching us completely off guard. We are drawn by nature to stay with our baby, but pushed by society to return to the work place. Maternity leave gets shorter, day care centers close (or are hideously expensive--including UC's own day care center), we're backed into a corner... and it's affecting the generations growing up today.

I watch my son as he stares transfixed at the tv and I wonder what lies in store for him--whether I made the right choices, whether I continue to make the right choices. Society has one plan, and I have another, and it's a battle of wills every day.

[regalia]

how much does UC charge for daycare?

[sushime]

Sorry it took me so long to reply... finals ugh

Anyway, UC childcare charges (I believe) $175 a week (for a potty trained toddler), and that's after a generous $5 discount for students and faculty. w00t.

My son currently is in a full-time pre-school that I absolutely adore, and it's only $145 a week. Perhaps $30 doesn't sound like a lot... but when you're scrimping by at the best of times it's a full week of groceries. (Also once he enters nursery in the fall it will be cheaper still)

I thought perhaps more I said than money would be of interest...

[ucfeminist]

I think the whole damned capitalist system sucks and needs to change! What choices do we women really have nowadays? In many ways women are set up for failure when it comes to motherhood with all of the competing pressures.

All of the moms I know want to be the "ideal mother." And while I question the concept of 'ideal womanhood' I too have that impulse in thinking about birthing and raising a child.
There's so much responsibility (and blame) put on the mother and most first-time moms want to do everything "right," or at least better than what we think our parents did.

Breastfeeding provides a great example of the system sucking...or not. I look at my sister-in-law who wants to be the ideal mother but was also working and finishing her nursing degree during the first year of my nephew's life...breastfeeding (which she felt was a necessity) was turned into so much more work than it already is. Pads, pumps, freezing, etc. Everything was so demanding and most times she pumped at school or work (in a medical setting) she had to sit on the pot.

Society is so used to mothers putting up with crap they have no problem with cloistering them in the water closet.