As I become older I have noticed that I am beginning to more seriously consider the larger aspects of adulthood such as marriage and raising a family (not to say that I am thinking of settling down anytime soon). However, as I consider myself to be a very self-sufficient, independent girl who is concerned with having a successful and fulfilling career in the future, I wonder if sometime down the road that career will take a back seat to my decision of having a family later.
As I picture both my husband and myself to have full-time careers by the time we have kids, I cannot help but think about who will be the one more willing to sacrifice time at work, or their job completely, to take care of our kids at home. I understand that I could be the “working mom” who writes up performance reports and sets up year-end meetings whilst making sacked lunches for her kids and attending parent-teacher conferences. However, I would not be too eager to become the “working mom” so soon after giving birth as I have heard how crucial it is for there to be a stay-at-home-parent during the first years of a child’s life and that the mother-child relationship may be adversely impacted by sending children to daycare too early. These findings force me to think of the repercussions of the particular absence of the mother figure and leave me with the sense that I would want to cultivate my personal relationship with my children by establishing a positive engagement with them in the early stages of their development. So maybe when the time comes to start raising my children, I might take it upon myself to ensure that there is that secure mother-child relationship before sending them off to daycare. 
As I feel that this would most likely be my position on the matter regarding raising a family, I am reminded of a specific camp of women who are reluctant to put their careers on hold for such circumstances. These women adhere to feminist philosophies of breaking the stereotypical female figure whose sole purpose in life is to be a loving wife, keep a clean house, and to care for the children. To them, women who fulfill or happen to fit this image, which is dismantled by Julia Robert’s character Katherine Watson in Mona Lisa Smile and dramatized in the movie The Stepford Wives, diminish their attempt to be taken seriously in the professional world and undermine the demonstration of their capabilities outside of motherhood and being a wife.
Maybe I’m setting feminists back a few years by choosing to inconveniently "fulfill" this societal imposition on women to be nothing but wives and mothers. As I know my skills and talents, however, and the fact that I indeed can be successful if I chose to be so, I would have no problem coincidentally fitting these roles for a certain time as my choice to put my family before my personal ambitions communicates my little concern with how I would be perceived by others versus my greater concern with how my children would be brought up.
2 comments:
I agree that women, especially those who have attended some kind of institution of higher learning, are placed in a sort of dilemma when blessed with the gift of motherhood. Many of my hard-working female cousins have put their careers on hold for the exact reasons you mentioned.
However, by doing this, I don't necessarily think that women are stunting the growth of feminism. In fact, I would think it would be a lot less admirable, not to mentio very selfish if a woman completely neglected her children for the sake of her career.
Reading through your post, I couldn't help but be reminded of the "latchkey kid," which is a term that refers to children who return from school to an empty home because their parents are at work. Some parents cannot prevent this from happening, but there are pros and cons to leaving children alone. While this could potentially encourage an early development of independence and self-sufficiency, there is still often a stigma attached to these kids as being lonely, or bored, and vulnerable to peer pressure. I'm sure this is something that no parent would want.
I think as you reach that stage in your life, you will figure out some kind of strategy to balance both career and family, in a way that suits you best.
Well, here is where I can actually comment with authority. It is very difficult to be a "working Mom." Your children are your first priority, but then there is the unavoidable fact that earning a living is imperative to supporting your "first priorities." A woman with a higher education and better job prospects will more than likely be able to map out a strategy for taking a sabbatical from her career and returning to her field once her child is school-aged. In retrospect this is what I wish I had been able to do, but only with my current perspective do I realize that staying home would have been best for the kids. As a grandmother, with both of my grandson's parents working, I can see the turbulence this causes in his young life. When you are that working parent there is no opportunity to step back and evaluate the dynamics of raising a child while meeting your job responsibilities. You are in the trenches and often just managing everyone's schedule and trying to keep your head above water. Your family becomes a well-oiled machine in order to allow both parents to work. You arrange daycare and after school care and other activities and that leaves little unstructured time for you to just be with your child. It is cliched to say this but the time flies and you do not get a second chance.
My advice, plan, plan, plan, so that at least one parent is home with the kids until they reach school age. My guilt is assuaged because my husband was home with my two oldest for quite awhile, and home with our youngest for a brief time. Very femnist, right? Well, I will tell you, I wish it had been me at home with them, because missing those moments is my loss.
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