There was an outrage on Facebook last Saturday about
President Obama’s statement about stay at home parents:
“Sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace
to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage
for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want
Americans to make.”
In context, he was talking about having tax payer funded preschool so
as to allow parents to not have to choose between a job and having
children. And while perhaps he did not mean to reject entirely the idea
that parents should stay at home with their children, he pretty clearly
stated that he thinks that working is the best choice for everyone.
I understand that when a parent makes the choice to leave a career
and stay at home with children, she is making a life-long financial
sacrifice. She is losing the chance for career advancement. But the
choice between a career and staying home is much more complicated than
the issue of money.
I personally began to think about the choice between stay at home
parenting and having a competitive career when I was in high school. A
young woman thinking about college, adulthood, and discerning religious
life considers all the possibilities. At my highly competitive, all
girls Catholic high school, the issue of working and raising children
often came up. A motivated, intelligent young woman does not know if and
when she will get married, but she does know that she is expected to go
to college and choose a career. My personal goal at the time was to
become a sports journalist. When I applied to colleges, I planned on
being a communications major. I even got into a pretty good local school
known for its journalism program, Webster University. It was five
minutes from my house, and I was offered a nearly complete tuition
scholarship. I could have succeeded academically there, and I could have
made my way into the world of journalism. But when it came down to it,
and I imagined life as a journalist, I realized that it would not be
compatible with my dream of family life. I could not be the beat writer
of the St. Louis Cardinals and be the type of mother that I wanted to
be. I had no idea if I would get married and have children, but I hoped
that I would. I made a choice to move away from a lucrative career back
when I was 17, not when I decided to stay at home with my children.
By the time I got my financial aid package from Franciscan
University, I was already wavering on whether to go into journalism. I
could have chosen a lucrative career path, but went instead with the
college that I thought would best form my character. I started off as a
communications major, switched immediately to undeclared, and within
three semesters had switched to theology and philosophy and was
participating in the Great Books program. I am so glad that I made these
choices.
My college experience formed me into the person I am now; I am
not sure what I would be like without this experience. I learned to
value virtue, family, and religion above material wealth and worldly
success. I learned to discern what God had planned for me, and it was
made pretty clear halfway through college that I would marry the man I
was dating. While I focused on that, I always thought that, if for some
reason I am unable to have children, I would pursue a doctorate.
However, within a month of marriage, I was already on track to be a stay
at home mom.
It was not easy to be a stay at home mom, even with my 12 hour a
week, bring the baby along part time job, on my husband’s meager
graduate student income. But we knew that it was important for our
family for me to be at home. During my first years of marriage and
parenting, I had close female friends who were all making economic
sacrifices to stay at home with their children. Some of them had part
time positions that they could work from home, and some of them had free
grandparent childcare. I lived in the subculture of college educated,
single income, stay at home moms. If anything, it reinforced my choice.
My pro-life Catholic friends all valued spending time raising their
children more than their careers.
When we moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to advance my husband’s career
(we moved for his tenure-track academic job), I became friends with a
number of moms who had Ph.D.’s. Most of my husband’s departmental
colleagues who have young children at home have all made the choice to
have one parent at home with the children, whether it be the mother or
the father. In philosophy, the decision of who stays at home is often
based on who has the tenure-track job. All of the academic parents who
stay at home also adjunct classes and write. I have spent many a play
date with these Ph.D. moms discussing the life and career that they had
thought they would have until they met their husbands in graduate
school. They are fully aware that by staying at home they are setting
aside chances at a successful career in philosophy, but they realize
that their children will only be young for so long and that it is
important for them to raise them.
I am not claiming that it would be wrong for both parents to work and
have their children taken care of by someone else. I think that having a
thriving career is a good thing and that many women are meant to have
competitive and lucrative careers. I am so thankful for my doctor, who
is a mother of six, and who delivers my babies and looks into my
children’s ears. I am thankful to my mother for keeping her nursing
career going while my father pursued a new career path. Both of them had
a strong presence in the lives of their four children. I am sure there
are many mother journalists who are happy in their lives and jobs and
have growing families. I really think that we cannot make a sweeping
judgment about what is best for “Americans.” Every family makes a
decision about what is best for their family.
And some families decide that a parent spending the weekdays with his
or her children is more important than how much money they make later
in life. Couples decide that, yes, they can make ends meet with a single
income, and they go for it. It is not an easy decision to make, and
career advances are sacrificed. But if anything is worth sacrificing
income for, the care of a human being is. The life and formation of a
human being is far more important than the salary one brings home. The
salary provides the material needs, the parent at home provides so much
more. The working parent, hopefully, finds fulfillment in work and home
life.
Other families have both parents working. Some arrange schedules to
have one parent at home at all times. Others have grandparents who can
help with the childcare. Others hire childcare. I do not think that it
means that these parents value or love their children any less than
those who are able to stay a home. I have spoken to working parents who
wish that they could stay at home, but they cannot make that sacrifice.
For a mother or a potential mother in a society that values so highly
education and then “doing something with that,” the tension between
work and family is always there. Feminism has brought this upon mothers.
But no mother who stays at home should be made to feel that their
choice was not worth it. Because, while children change ones life
forever, human lives will always be more valuable than worldly success.
.PNG)
I
had the print copy of the Magnificat Advent Companion last year, and
used it along with the daily readings to prepare for Christmas. This
year, I have had a chance to preview the Advent App, which features much
more than the print copy. In the app there is the daily Advent
Meditation, but there are also prayers for the morning, evening, and
night, the daily Mass readings and prayers (including the Order of the
Mass), and a whole slew of other Advent features. There are recordings
of Advent chants, an Advent penance service, the Advent stations,
prayers for the “O” antiphons, and even blessings for your Advent wreath
and Christmas tree.
