Stay at home Moms are bad!!?

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Stay at home Moms are bad!!?
89
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 3:23pm
This is the kind of crap that I'm talking about when I say our country is falling apart.

How in the world this woman makes these statements and believes them is amazing.

Oh and here are her qualifications:

"Ritter is director of the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at UT and an associate professor of government and women studies."

Want to bet whether she is on the left or the right?

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Ritter: The messages we send when moms stay home

By Gretchen Ritter

'Well, I could have just stayed home and baked cookies." In the firestorm that followed her comment, Hillary Rodham Clinton learned that you should never deny the virtues of stay-at-home motherhood.

Nowadays, the candidates' wives prove their maternal merit by competing in a cookie cook-off every four years. In the decade or so since this line was uttered, women's rights advocates have grown silent on the topic of motherhood. Few dare to criticize the new stay-at-home mom movement recently discussed on this page in the Austin American-Statesman.

It is time to have an honest conversation about what is lost when women stay home. In a nation devoted to motherhood and apple pie, what could possibly be wrong with staying home to care for your children?

Several things, I think.

It denies men the chance to be involved fathers. This is a loss for them and a loss for their children. What does it mean when fathers are denied the opportunity to nurture their kids in ways that are as important as their work? What do the children miss when they don't have fathers changing their diapers, picking them up from school, coaching soccer, making breakfast or dinner and doing homework with them? On both sides, the answer is too much.

Women who stay at home also lose out — they lose a chance to contribute as professionals and community activists. Parenting is an important social contribution. But we need women in medicine, law, education, politics and the arts. It is not selfish to want to give your talents to the broader community — it is an important part of citizenship to do so, and it is something we should expect of everyone.

Full-time mothering is also bad for children. It teaches them that the world is divided by gender. This sends the wrong message to our sons and daughters. I do not want our girls to grow up thinking they must marry and have children to be successful, or that you can only be a good mother if you give up your work.

Nor do I want boys to think that caring for families is women's work and making money is men's work. Our sons and daughters should grow up thinking that raising and providing for a family is a joint enterprise among all the adults in the family.

The new stay-at-home motherhood movement parallels the movement to create the "perfect" child. It's not just that mothers are home with their children; they are engaged with their children constantly so they will "develop" properly. Many middle-class parents demand too much of their children. We enroll them in soccer, religious classes, dance, art, piano, French lessons, etc., placing them on the quest for continuous self-improvement.

Many of these youngsters end up stressed out. Children should think it is all right to just hang out and be kids sometimes. They should learn that parents have interests separate from their lives as parents. And we should all learn that mothers are not fully responsible for who their children become — so are fathers, neighbors, friends, the extended family and children themselves.

Finally, the stay-at-home mother movement is bad for society. It tells employers that women who marry and have children are at risk of withdrawing from their careers, and that men who marry and have children will remain fully focused on their careers, regardless of family demands. Both lessons reinforce sex discrimination.

This movement also privileges certain kinds of families, making it harder for others. The more stay-at-home mothers there are, the more schools and libraries will neglect the needs of working parents, and the more professional mothers, single mothers, working-class mothers and lesbian mothers will feel judged for their failure to be in a traditional family and stay home their children.

By creating an expectation that mothers could and should stay home, we lose sight of the fact that most parents do work — and that they need affordable, high quality child care, after-school enrichment programs and family leave policies that allow mothers and fathers to nurture their children without giving up work.

Raising children is one of the most demanding and rewarding of jobs. It is also a job that should be shared, between parents and within communities, for the sake of us all.

Ritter is director of the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at UT and an associate professor of government and women studies.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-29-2003
Fri, 08-06-2004 - 10:48pm
I hope you will post more often -- very well said! I love your last line about creating a "safe zone" for our children. HOME is supposed to be that place where, after a school day of being teased or failing a test or just plain having a crummy day, a kid can go and see his mom and have a cookie and get some help with his homework and play a game of Monopoly and *know* that he is cherished and important and worthwhile and loved. I know this, because it is just what I needed (and got) growing up, and it is just what I have pledged to provide for my kids. THAT'S MY JOB. I have other things I do during the day, but THAT'S MY JOB.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-06-2004
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 1:22am
I was a sahm for 3 years. I'm now working and i'd rather stay home. Watching my children grow, first roll, first teeth, etc. No camera will ever capture those moments and i'll treasure them for life.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-12-2004
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 1:44am
I just read that first post and want to barf. Someone of her stature should know better than to present her opinon as if it were fact.

and all the degrees in the world will not make someones opinon fact.

At the end of it all, all I can say to her, is, "whatever you need to tell yourself..."

BTW I am NOT a SAHM though I would love to work part time in liu of full....
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 6:22am

I wish to acknowledge

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 10:39am
I am appaled at what Ritter wrote in her article. I am a stay-at-home mother who was once a "working mother" and sent my child to daycare. It sickened me to know my daughter was being raised by someone other then myself, and as a Professional Counselor working with children I saw the effects of children left without parental involvement. I fought a lot of resistance from family when I decided my child was more important then my career and quit to stay-at-home with my child. It was the best decision I have ever made.

Parenting is about joy and sacrifice. Ritter, it seems, views children as an accessory in the life of a mother rather then a human who needs to be nurtured by those who gave the child life.

grayeggert

p.s. My husband is an integral part of my children's life! I wonder if Ritter has children?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-12-2003
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 11:51am
Well put!

Why are we, as women, so ready to be divisive? Some women can stay home, some can't, some want to, some don't. Who can say one way is more superior to another?
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-01-2004
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 6:09pm
"I also have friends that choose to work and send their children to daycare. Their children are perfectly normal and happy too."

Very good point. How many of those same friends would yank their kid out of that day care and find a new one if their kids were being badly influenced by that particular place, too? All of them, I'd wager. Just because moms work doesn't mean they don't care about their kids. And just because moms stay home doesn't mean that they don't have a life, that their kids are spoiled, etc. All of them are stereotypes, that are false to boot!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-14-2003
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 9:41pm
To Ritter:

First, mothers--staying (at home or otherwise) have long been a powerful group socially and politically throughout history. Just because they may not be in formalized organizations or professions doesn't mean that they/we haven't affected profound change in our world. A mighty and powerful group that has been disenfranchized by a world that only recognizes male (read: money making, hirarchical, competition driven) forms of accomplishment and movement--now there are women out there who will blame mothers who feel that they can provied the best care for their children for the continuing condition of gender inequality in this world?!

Second, a family based on equality and communication can certainly raise children with the knowledge that just because their mother choses to stay at home doesn't mean that because she is a woman she must do so. The only way to counter the messages of inequality in this world is to change the dialogue--not to try and organize our lives and make choices based on what employeers/professionals/men may think--doesn't that make them more powerful than if we make choices based on what is in our hearts and what works for our family--weather it's the mom or the dad staying home with the kids.

And finally, mothering is the hardest most challenging job I've ever had. I have been pushed to new limits and have experienced profound accomplishment. I feel more creative and powerful than I ever have before. I don't feel this way just because I'm a mother--I feel this way because I've made life choices that work for me and feel good.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Sat, 08-07-2004 - 10:04pm
I find this disturbing and sexist. Disturbing because someone is actually encouraging parents to be less involved with their children and sexist because it says that a woman who chooses family over career is less of a woman. It's the feminist movement gone wrong. How could wanting to give your children the best care possible, which I believe comes from the parents, be harmful? Since the new "two working parents family" has evolved children have been shuffled to the side, mostly out of necessaty, and our society is seeing the results in a very negative way. I am not saying a woman is wrong to have a career and a family, it is great if you can find a way to do both and it is sad if you have no choice but to do both. Please do not assume that I am slamming working mothers, single working mothers, or same sex partners I think that they are just as good as parents as anybody else. But how could anybody fault a mother or a father for that matter for finding a way to stay home with their children. A woman staying home with the children does not automatically mean that the father will be less involved in fact I think that if one parent is staying home taking care of things that can't be taken care of during the work day by the other parent that family time would prove to be more quality and less stressful. I am a working mother and probably always will be because we live in a society that requires me to work in order to get by, but if I could I would work less and spend more time raising my child instead of paying other people to do it for me. This woman seems to have a hard-line close minded and slightly defensive view of the movement to bring parents back to the home. We live in a free country and if it makes someone happy to stay home with their children and they can do so then why should they be made to feel as though they are doing something wrong?
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-08-2004
Sun, 08-08-2004 - 12:19am
Vader716: I totally agree with you.

Who the hell does Gretchen Ritter think she is? I am a stay at home mom working every stinkin day with a home-based business that I am good at and also create health and financial wellness. I show my community what chemicals in our store brand products are doing to our families, are you saying I'm not contributing as a professional woman Ms. Ritter? Fortunately, I have the ability to stay at home and do this, I only hope other women are so lucky. Oh and by the way, my two sons see their mother working her butt off, making a difference for those around us and there to get them lunch too!!!

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