Working Mother Guilt

[astra_nomer]

I like to read Leslie Morgan Steiner's blog at the Washington Post, called On Balance. She talks about many of the issues facing mothers these days, but primarily those of working parents. And while I don't agree with everything she says, she was spot on in her post yesterday, where she tore into a New York Times article with the headline, "Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care". She writes,

What the New York Times did not emphasize on its front page yesterday: that the increase in problem behaviors is extremely slight, reflected in a one percent higher score on a standardized assessment of problem behaviors for each year spent in a day-care center. ... That the research showed time spent in high-quality day-care centers is correlated with wonderful results such as higher vocabulary scores through elementary school.

And her explanation for the sensationalist nature of the headline:

The Times' primary reader audience consists of elite, well-educated, wealthy men and women, people who have a choice about what kind of care their children receive. These are the moms most conflicted about day care, since guilt accompanies choices about whether to work or not.

She is so right. Enough with the guilt-trips for mothers who choose to work. Stop telling us that we are ruining our kids' lives by working oustide the home and that we should be blamed for anything bad that does happen. And to those who say, "oh, don't listen to them, you can just brush the naysayers aside," well it's pretty darn hard to do that when you face the naysayers everywhere you turn, including the front page of the New York Times.


In other news, I took my car in for a carwash yesterday morning in celebration of 80-degree weather. They even vacuumed the floors and wiped down the interior windows. Yay, sparkly car! Then I made a quick stop for coffee and a scone. And wouldn't you know it, some bird thought that my car was much too shiny and left a splat on the driver's side window. Fortunately, the weather was too nice to let that ruin my mood.

Comments

[ilai]

I was wondering about that article when I read it earlier this week (well, the one that got printed in the Globe or Metro, I forget which, but they're all ultimately owned by the same folks anyway). The version that I read was much less detailed than the Times version and didn't mention at all the degree of increase in problem behavior. Yay misleading journalism....

[lokiect.livejournal.com]

huh, that's interesting. I was assuming that it was because we, as a society, still want to believe that mothers taking care of children is the most wonderful thing ever. or that we were raised right (my mom stayed home with me & my brother, we really liked having her there with us). or that if we didn't get that, we were raised wrong. or something like that. I guess I was thinking that as a society we're still trying to justify the broken infrastructure and social norms. I guess, given the audience, that might just come down to be about the same thing...

I twitched at what I read only counting time away from "mothers" and not "parents."

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[(Anonymous)]

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[(Anonymous)]

Saw this article and had the same gut reaction. I think that these types of articles pitting stay-at-home parents against working parents (ooops, only moms!), have been running the news mill since the 50s. Hey, if you don't have conflict, make it, right?

I can't wait for it to be warmer up here to get our car cleaned - it really needs it too!