Women Vs. Women: The Family Values Debate Revisited

One thing that has recently come to my attention is how, in a world where we as women have fought to become a voice to be heard, the biggest stumbling block to any advances have come from other women.  I will not deny my belief that we still live in a man's world, and there are still a lot of things that need to be changed.  What concerns me more, though, is the lack of support women show each other for making the decisions they feel are best for their family.  I find it interesting that we women start competing with one another as soon as we notice boys, and it doesn't seem to end.

This feeling-that other women are our enemies-came to a head this morning when a friend of mine who belongs to another Moms Community, posted one woman's response to why our nations' kids are violent.  Her belief is that violence is caused by kids going to daycare, and she goes on to say this: "I think parents need to get their priorities right...I believe that a mother should stay home with her children. I know some of you are single or say you can't afford it, but if you really sit down and work up the numbers, you might be surprised."  She goes on to talk about how her husband works two jobs so she can stay home with their kids, and says that maybe we (other mothers) just need to make more sacrifices. I could easily turn this into an issue about single parents, or two-parent households where both partners HAVE to work; I could explore the economic policies of our nation and make THAT the issue.  And of course it has something to do with it, but it isn't really what I am getting at.

The thing is, we women make choices every day based on what information we have to work with.  For those of us who are single, with no kids, we are still faced with different choices about how we want our lives to be shaped.  For those who are mothers, the choice often becomes one of whether or not to work, whether it is economically feasible or, honestly, whether or not we WANT to be a stay at home mom.  There are somewho, like me and millions of others, work because we have to, because for whatever reasons, the fathers of our children are no longer around.  The choices we make are many, and instead of being supported and loved and encouraged by other women, we are knocked down for any decision we make.

Let me ask you this: what is wrong with a mom who does not want to stay home with her kids?  What if she is a better, happier mom when she goes to work every day?  What if another woman decides she doesn't want to even have kids?  What if one of us makes the choice to stay home with our kids and accept public assistance?  What if one of us knows she HAS to work, not just to provide for her kids but in order to have a sense of self-respect, of an identity beyond that of being a mom?  How can you look at any one of those women and say, "You are wrong!"?  It shouldn't be like that, but it happens all of the time.

Family values: what does that mean anymore?  Wasn't it Dan Quayle who went totally ballistic when Murphy Brown, an unwed woman, made the choice to have a baby on national TV because is undermined family values? And wouldn't he have been equally ballistic had she chosen an abortion?  Because neither one of those choices fit in with his view of what family values ARE.  Can we define them in one sentence, one paragraph, one page?  No, becuase they mean different things to different people, and of all people, we women should understand that.

I value my family, yet I am a full-time working single mom.  My kids all go or have gone to daycare, and none of them are violent.  They are kind and loving, for the most part, and know without a doubt who their mom is and what home represents.  Is my family of any less value than yours simply because I don't have a husband?  One mom I know has her child in daycare even though she technically doesn't HAVE to work, but she feels much better about herself as a person AND a parent if she works; does her family have any less value?  One of my sisters, whom I love dealry, has allowed her ex-husband to have what amounts to residential custody of their two children because she really isn't that great at the mom thing.  She goes to dance recitals and talk to them on the phone every night and sees them almost daily-is that not valuable?

These are the things I know about myself: that I am a single parent of four of the most beautiful kids in the world.  I work because I have to, but am also one of those blessed women who love her job.  And to be honest, I would like to be able to have the CHOICE to stay at home, but I wouldn't do it.  However, if you can stay home with your kids and want to, then good for you!  My sister?  So it wouldn't work for me-but is she making a choice that is best for her AND her children?  The friend of mine who had an abortion-can I, should I judge her for knowing her limits and making a choice that would, in the long run, benefit both her and her two children?  No-I can't.  And none of us should.  I can't say that you have to walk a mile in someone else's shoes in order to feel how they do, because it isn't possible; what I CAN say is, walk next to me.  Look at the lives of the women around you and instead of spouting off about how all of the world's problems are because these moms are sending the kids to daycare, look at her.  Just look; regardless of how we have come to where we are at in our lives, we have so much more in common than not.  We are supposed to be able to help each other along, to support one another regardless of our own personal choices.