Clearly, My Mistake

I was innocently trying to track down a news story about the LA immigration march/protest/police debacle (SOP for LAPD, it would seem), so I clicked over to CNN where I saw this story.

Ah, the Mommy Wars. Here we go again.

Usually, I try to stay out of them. TFL and I made our decisions and tried to make them work for us. Here we are all these years later and both Boy and GirlChild are headed toward outstanding schools but, much more importantly, they have good relationships with us and are generally healthy and happy. TFL is well-respected and successful in his field. I am, for all my self-deprecation, at a top national law school and an editor on the law review with a great job in my future. Clearly, I have chosen a dangerous and deluded path to follow with my (current) husband--or so some would say.

". . . she argues that many young mothers have forgotten Friedan's message, embracing a 21st-century version of the 1950s stay-at-home ideal that could imperil their economic future as well as their happiness."

My economic future is in peril; I could, after all, be hit by a bus or a crippling disease at any moment. Barring that, and possibly even in spite of that, I'll still have a long and flourishing career at The Firm. You see, I am perfectly willing to be paid obscene amounts of money by corporations who are putting everything on the line in a lawsuit; I am also perfectly willing to put everything on the line myself on behalf of my marriage and family. Clearly, I am foolish and short-sighted.

Now it is a fact that over the years far too many women were clueless about the family finances and found themselves in a serious pickle because of it. Tsk, of course. (Never mind that TFL is, himself, a bit unclear about the state of our finances at any given time.) But maybe you have a choice in life: you can risk your money or your marriage. And you can stay home with your kids or drop them at the sitter's. But whether you're a man or a woman, those are choices you're going to make if you decide to marry and have children. It's up to you to decide what is right for you, and what you believe in. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that what's right for you is right for everyone.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that there's only an upside and never a downside. Friedan was frustrated up to her eyeballs because she saw self-destructive behavior in her peers who put on blinders and did what what was done rather than face reality and take responsibility. Fair enough. So take off the blinders and take responsibility. If one spouse stays home with kids, there will be less total economic security and the spouse staying at home is putting a heck of a lot of trust in the spouse who is working. If both parents work, the children will have less time with one or the other of their parents and, probably, more economic security.

I'll let others write the paeans to home moms and work moms. Whatever. People have to make choices, and sometimes they have a lot of choices and sometimes they just don't. Working is better than starving. Again and again I find myself saying, it's a complicated world. And, clearly, love and trust are harder to quantify and  more dangerous to rely upon than money and cynicism.

I found a man I trusted with my future, and who trusted me with his children. It worked for us. But go ahead and tell me I am an idiot. Please, feel free to tell me that I have cut short my earning potential by a good 15 years. (Although at least I am not only going to law school to scope out a good wealth-maximizer to marry so I can stay at home and have children and waste my expensive education that could have gone to some man who would have made better use of it--a tirade for another time.) Clearly, I'll be listening hard as I go to my son's honor banquet and admire my daughter's latest amazing photograph and seek comfort in TFL's arms when law school gets to be Too Much (that would be every day).

You're right: I won't be listening. Because I--from the school that brought you Law and Economics, where we only talk about incentives and rational actors--I think money and cynicism are worthless when it comes to calculations about love and trust. My professors think I'm bonkers.

 

Comments

[ckm]

Pooh on your professors. Your MOTHER thinks you're wonderful! What a marvelous "tirade", and of course I agree completely, having done almost the same thing. Although, I must admit, my "career choice" is not the money maker yours will be, it is very satisfying, for a' that.

Having also been Dancer, Baker, and Candlestick Maker, along with a number of other things, and raising 5 children who are turning out rather well, and starting my latest career in my late 60's, I have little patience with those who condescendingly sniff at us who (gasp!) married in the 1950s. "Staying home and raising the kids" hasn't seemed to slow me down much. Congratulations on another fine piece of writing and the thinking and living that preceded it.

[Girlchild]

Well I, for one, am pretty darn glad you did things the way you did. Life works out differently for everyone, and no one can say for sure what works best for someone else's life. Chances are that their solution will be entire different. I have no idea what's going to work for my life, but now is not the time to worry about it. Art school, here I come!