In our post-Betty-Friedan age, more and more women are finding that true fulfillment comes from being at home.
Full column here, bits below.
I know what I’m about to say is not hip, cool or the slightest bit politically correct, at least not in my demographic of career-minded women.
But sometimes I dream of “just” being a mother.
I would peacefully, mindfully make homemade soup at the stove with an apron on and be home for my children with open arms every day when they walk through the door. I would spend my days lovingly preparing a nice home for my family, a healthy garden and clean soccer jerseys, warm and waiting for them on game day. I would openly and joyfully find peace and fulfillment in pouring my innate stores of compassion and nurture on the family I created.
While I don’t often allow these “just a mother” dreams to take root in my nail-biting, freedom-seeking, self-seeking, feminist-thinking, ever-new-and-improving mind, these images and ideas have recently come me unbidden, strong.
They came to me most recently last week when I had a health scare. In between the knowing and the not knowing, sitting in the doctor’s office with my husband, I didn’t care about my writing or my tentative new foray into professional photography.
I didn’t care about going back to school like I keep thinking I should, because, after all, my husband teaches at the local university and I could get a second degree for free in my spare time. I didn’t think about taking that gourmet vegan cooking class so I could wow the neighbors at our next dinner party or how I’ve been meaning to add a spinning class to my weekly exercise regime or how I need to do eat more tofu/read more news blogs/do more yoga so I can contort myself within every inch of my potential as a woman of the New Age.
Everything fell away.
And the only thing that mattered was family.
I didn’t care if I ever had another well-informed conversation about Obama’s health care or Glenn Beck’s boiled frogs.
I just wanted to go home and take care of my children.
I agree that we absolutely need our outside pursuits.
But in the interest of developing these countless others sides of ourselves. I believe we have dissociated ourselves from the idea that motherhood in and of itself can bring primal peace to our rattled psyches, and the most complete joy. Read the columns of the aging mommy columnists as they watch their children leave for college. Only then do we speak so openly of our children being the planets and us, the sun.
I think of family and how it breathes life and meaning into the hearts of the strung-out adults who make it happen, and I think of another moment involving not me, not a mother this time, but my friend, Brian, who is 42 with two young boys and dying from the metastasized skin cancer that has taken over his body.
He told me the other day that he is at peace with dying.
Why? I wanted to know. How?
“Because I did all that I set out to do.”
Fully expecting this accomplished man to talk about his work as a much sought-after wood craftsman and a world-traveled musician, I asked him what he meant by that.
“I taught my children all I needed to teach them,” said my dying friend.
The strange thing is we know this as a culture but are either too scared or too stubborn to admit it. Look at the accolades we give our school teachers for having ‘the most important job’ because they ‘touch the lives of all who come in contant with their students’ and ‘they affect eternity’ et alia.
We stress the importance of quality time, children’s programs, schools, health care, but refuse to acknowledge the basic need a child has for mommy. I can’t for the life of me get it.
It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? And as our culture continues to promote and glorify women in the workplace, deep down most women are still in touch with that part of their soul that longs to be the Queen of the Home. And it’s HARD WORK being a Stay at Home Mother! That’s what cracks me up when I will occasionally read some snarky comment that women who stay home are running away from the challenges of the work world…puh-LEEZE!