Last month, I received a PR email about an interesting study of working and stay-at-home moms. I found the results a lot more interesting than the underlying attitude. First, they had women identify themselves as “career-oriented,” and then tell whether they were working or staying at home now.
Indeed, our survey found widespread work/life disconnection: Women want one arrangement, but settle for another. Fifty-five percent of career-oriented stay-at-home moms we surveyed, for instance, would prefer to be working now. Equally troubling, 71 percent of mothers surveyed equate work with something done only to pick up a paycheck.
[Working moms would] like to scale back during preschool years. We discovered strong feelings about these early bonding years with about half of career-oriented moms ranking staying home with preschool children as desirable. [Hooray!] Some 42 percent of career-oriented moms, for example, said that allowing their children to be cared for by professionals did not meet their definition of being a good mother. Part of the issue is that moms are ambivalent about child-care centers: their cost, their quality and the enduring implication that “someone else” is raising their children. . . .Yes, working moms (51 percent) feel guilty about not spending enough time with their kids. And stay-at-home moms (55 percent) worry about not making a contribution to the family finances.
The study also looked at other ways mothers are unhappy with our lives. Slightly less than half of all mothers say that they are their own worst critics. I certainly feel the most pressure to perform from me. Another prevalent concern: the house. It’s a wreck, whether you’re working or not—55% of working mothers and 44% of stay-at-home mothers frequently feel bad about how their house looks—we’re very worried that other people are judging our homes (42% of working moms & 35% of SAHMs say they worry about this).
Very interesting—and it makes me feel a lot better about myself, if not my house 😉 .
But there’s a very troubling message underneath all this. The article about the study is written for working moms (but 71% of these moms claim only to be working for the paycheck). The message in the study’s conclusion is that you should put off having children (until after college & age 25, so not forever) so you can make as much as possible. But that isn’t the worst part—that comes in the underlying assumption.
Are we really only worth what we make? I don’t buy it, and I don’t think even career-oriented moms should buy into that mentality. There are so many careers out there that have far more influence in the world than the pay suggests, and there are lots of careers with great pay and benefits that just aren’t for everyone. Just like stay-at-home moms, career-oriented moms (career- and anything-else oriented people!) have to find a definition of themselves that’s more than the number of figures before the decimal point.
What do you think?
