A Letter From The Other Side

Last Saturday, The Washington Post published The Case to Stay Home, a letter from Jennifer Wolff of Bowie, Md., who was responding to reporter Amy Joyce's Outlook article How to Handle the Return. Ms. Wolff, who described herself as a "full-time mother and homemaker," advised the pregnant Ms. Joyce to "follow her heart," which she clearly believed meant staying home full-time once her baby arrives in June.

While I disagree with Ms. Wolff -- following your heart can also mean continuing to work once becoming a mom -- she went on to say something I fully endorse: "The Post, with all its working mothers, seems to almost exclusively print the viewpoints of mothers who work outside the home."

Ms. Wolff is correct. A great deal of mainstream media coverage neglects the views of moms (and dads) who stay home. When mothers and fathers leave work, their voices, unfortunately, often get silenced because they are no longer holding a pen or microphone or book contract. The people who are still at work control the messages, policies and procedures that everyone reads and hears and sees.

Turn on your TV, open a newspaper or stop by your favorite bookstore to see what I mean.

In the past twelve months, two high-profile books were published whose titles -- The Feminine Mistake and Get to Work -- belittled stay-at-home moms for the foolishness of their choice not to work.

My Baby or My Job? -- the headline for a recent Oprah Winfrey show -- suggested a binary choice: If you choose your baby, forget about ever getting back to paid work.

After Years Off, Women Struggle to Revive Careers was the grim message delivered by a 2004 Wall Street Journal profile of moms who had destroyed their careers by staying home.

Time Magazine, 60 Minutes, the New York Times and other national news sources have run similar stories in the past five years. Almost all of these stories were written or produced by working mothers. Having made the choice to continuing working, it's obvious we working mothers have conscious or unconscious biases that our choice is the superior one.

For the 81 million mothers in America, no single choice is "superior." More often than not, it's not even a choice. Roughly 70 percent of mothers with children 18 and under must work for financial reasons. Many others stay home for financial reasons; their wages don't cover child care. Even parents with bona fide "choices" face a pathetically limited decision set because our country's employers and our government do very little to make it feasible for both parents to work full-time and raise children with peace of mind. Neither the working or at-home lifestyle should be judged as superior or inferior by outsiders. However, too often, even supposedly objective news coverage presents one lifestyle or another as the better one.

So, bravo to Ms. Wolff for writing "from the other side." And ditto to The Post for printing her views.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  May 29, 2007; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  You Go Girl!
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