puzzleannie:
some things never change, the whole women’s lib thing, before it got hijacked by the ERA/radaborts/lesbian rights gals was about choice, choice of job opportunities with equal pay for equal work, choice about college options and programs, choice about professions, choice about stay-at-home or work. Now that choice has become a fightin’ word a choice that is not PC is going to generate shrill rhetoric from gals who will never be happy until everyone else is as miserable as they are.
I have been called a parasite on society when I have been home raising babies, and a child abuser when I went to work and put kids in day care. You can’t win either way, so my advice is just to ignore the ignorant and do what is best for you and your family–and try to resist the temptation to convince others they should make the same choices you did.
puzzleannie, your post made me cry, and so did yours, fitz.
I am single, no kids. One could argue that these feminists have influenced my life, and so they have. After all…I’m stil single. I put my career first and I didn’t want kids. (Now, after a couple of baby dreams, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m supposed to be a Mom and not a nun).
Anyway, I have done extensive work with kids…first in day care for school age children, and next in kids with major mental health problems.
In the child care position, I remember pulling a bully of a kid aside after he nearly brained several others with a bat he was desperately swinging around him. I saw his mother come to pick him up and she was never nice to him. Let’s call him Adam. I pulled Adam aside and as I had no training (I was only about 16 or 17), I put him in a type of basket hold just to contain his behavior and we went to an unused room. I held on to him until he quit fighting and I explained to him patiently that he was not going to be exposed to other children until he calmed down.
He did. This child was MEAN and he was aloof and we kind of despaired of him…but at the same time, our hearts broke. And one day I felt someone grabibng my hand. When I looked down some time later and realized it was Adam I nearly fell over. This child needed love…and I think I might have been the first person to respond to him with love instead of screaming discipline. Or whatever “Mom” provided.
In the psych hosp, I worked with a couple children, both born of 2 successful psychologists…both completely institutionalized by the time they were 14. Both parents worked…neither could be bothered to stay home and raise their children. Granted, both had illness beyond control of genetics, but I refuse to believe that that family could not have existed without 2 incomes… either Mom or Dad could have stayed home and applied their specialized education to their own children rather than someone else’s.
THAT, my friends, is selfishness.
Both of those children, by the way, put me on light duty due to injury from their assaults. It should have been their parents.
Now when I deal with customers in my job, in which I have to ask for employment info and wages, the women I speak to often are hesitant to reveal that they do not have their own income. Society has made them ashamed. I am always quick to say that they have the more difficult job…you’d be amazed at how that affects rapport. Especially because I mean it.
Many times they take this to mean that I have my own children. Nope. I just used to get paid to raise the children of the parents who didn’t want to deal with them on their own.
How sad. How very very sad that now this GIRL has the gall to call motherhood “selfish”. (I was 20 when I was first injured by a violent 14 yr old boy “raised” by psychologists). She has a lot to learn.
God bless you all who stay at home wiht your children. There is a special place in Heaven for you.
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