'Mommy Wars': To Work or Stay at Home?

Feb. 22, 2006 — An alarming number of college-educated women are leaving the work force to stay at home and raise their children, a trend that is a tragedy not only for the mothers, but ultimately their children and women as a whole.

So said law professor and working mom Linda Hirshman in a 2005 article for American Prospect magazine that has ignited an intense debate among mothers.

Census figures show 54 percent of mothers with a graduate or professional degree no longer work full time. In 2003 and 2004 Hirshman interviewed about 30 women whose wedding announcements had appeared in The New York Times in 1996 and who had had children. Five of the women were working full time, and 10 were working part time. The rest were not working at all.

"We care because what they do is bad for them, is certainly bad for society, and is widely imitated, even by people who never get their weddings in the Times," Hirshman wrote. "This last is called the 'regime effect,' and it means that even if women don't quit their jobs for their families, they think they should and feel guilty about not doing it."

Hirshman also said educated women choosing to stay home was bad for them as individuals.

"A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world," Hirshman wrote. "Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated, upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives."

A great counter to that message, I pasted below:

(from Boundless, a webzine)

Mothering is a career choice that is rarely respected. We should recognize and affirm women who opt to invest time in their children. The Bible is clear that sons and daughters are among the greatest blessings we will ever receive.

A friend of mine once said his greatest desire is to create something beautiful and lasting. That stuck with me. I want to create a beautiful and lasting marriage with a man, and with that man I want to bear and rear children, which are the most exquisite and eternal creations we humans can take part in fashioning. Architects design buildings that will someday fall, programmers construct computer software that will eventually be obsolete — but fathers and mothers cultivate souls that will never die. How wonderful to experience just an inkling of what God feels as our Father.

When I am old and I look at my wrinkled hands, I want to know that the creases came from — among many things — years of playing music, reading books, drawing pictures and writing stories. But my greatest hope is that those lines will remind me most of hours spent washing my babies’ and grandbabies’ tummies, tucking them into bed and teaching them what I have learned.

Maybe, once I've tucked my precious 3-year-old in bed, I'll have time to write my own commentary.  For now I'll just say, I am PRIVELEDGED beyond what words could express to be the full-time caregiver for our son.  There's nothing I'd rather do.  And I would consider myself a well-educated, intelligent adult who contributes greatly to society.