Judgment Was Swift and Often Harsh

Maybe I should have expected the outrage.

I considered it a fairly innocuous request: Help me out, readers, with some suggestions for finding good child care.

But in the first days after that column ran, I was hit with a barrage of letters, faxes and e-mails declaring me--and other working mothers of my ilk--selfish and stupid, women committing child abuse by abandoning our babies to “paid strangers” while we satisfied our selfish needs at work.

It’s a proposition that goes back generations: The only proper way to raise children is by having a parent--read Mom--at home all day to make sure they turn out right.

A nice idea in the abstract, but, unfortunately, most of us don’t live in the abstract.

We live in a world that forces hard choices, presents less-than-perfect alternatives. And we make the best decisions we can, knowing that how we live shapes our children’s lives.

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“The answer is so straightforward. You choose to become parents, you choose the job. It’s that simple; just stay home.”

“A child needs a parent to constantly nurture it. If you can’t look after your own child, you shouldn’t have one.”

“My wife stayed home for the first 15 years of our kids’ lives. We were fortunate to own a home, and we survived. You ask for an easy answer: STAY HOME AND RAISE YOUR KIDS.”

Many of the notes were from dads, bragging about the well-behaved kids their wives were turning out.

Others were from women, who invariably began, “I am a full-time mother . . . ,” then went on to belittle working mothers--who’d be surprised to learn they are only their kids’ mothers part time, as if we stop being mothers when we walk out the front door.

The notes made me feel hurt, then angry and finally disappointed and bewildered by the venom directed at women like me and by the writers’ smug, self-righteous tones.

“I hate women like you,” said one vile, epithet-filled letter, signed only “A mom that quit her job, cut back and am doing the hardest job on Earth, raising my own children.”

She called me selfish and used an expletive to make her point. “I feel sorry for your kids,” she said. And I feel sorry for hers. Maybe I’m wrong, but I find it hard to believe her kids would be worse off in day care than they are at home, with a mother so obviously angry and profane.

Among other writers, there were gradations in judgment--distinctions made between familial care and that of a “paid stranger” or special dispensation granted to single moms.

In other words, you’re allowed to work if your mother or sister-in-law will keep the kids, but not if you have to take them to the lady down the street. Those lucky enough to have willing family nearby can be excused for failing to uphold their maternal duty.

And if death or divorce leaves a woman alone, “adjustments can be made so the children don’t have to be raised by paid strangers,” one woman proclaimed. I wish she’d have gone further to tell me what those adjustments might be. Four years of life as a widow have presented me with few alternatives to a paying career.

Two-parent families have no excuse, readers said.

“If you can’t afford to stay home and raise your kids, you shouldn’t have them,” wrote one woman with a fancy San Marino return address.

Having children, it seems, is a privilege reserved only for the well-to-do.

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I suppose what they imagine is a self-absorbed woman, oblivious to her family’s emotional needs, with a high-paying job that strokes her ego and provides her with a lavish home, luxury cars, exotic vacations--but deprives her children of what they need most. A woman who works because she cares more about her career than her kids.

I’m sure those women exist, just as I know there are stay-at-home moms who plop their children in front of the television to watch Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer all day or spend their time at the gym or the mall while a sitter watches the kids.

But both of those are stereotypes, caricatures that represent the worst of the genre, not the reality that ought to drive this debate.

I know many working mothers, and not a single one leaves her children easily, without worries or regrets.

Every family, though, has different standards and circumstances that lead them to decide what is best for their children.

In some families, that means both parents work, so that they can afford to live in a neighborhood with safe streets, good schools, plenty of opportunity for their children. In others, that may mean Mom stays home and Dad works long hours, sacrificing the time he would spend with his kids. And in families like mine, that means a single parent does the work of two, trying to balance work and home.

In every case, there are trade-offs and sacrifices, benefits and rewards, lessons both learned and taught.

And we ought to extend tolerance and understanding to those families leading lives different from our own, instead of belittling the choices they’ve made, attributing them to selfishness, stupidity or indifference.

Be grateful, not proud, if you’re lucky enough to be home with your kids--and thankful you have a job, if you have to work.

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I envisioned this column as a defense of working mothers. I’d trot out statistics to show you “stay at home” advocates just how wrongheaded you are.

But maybe it hits too close to home for a woman who’d rather be with her three children--even if it means watching the “Spice World” video for the 100th time--than here in this office, trying to make ends meet.

I field half a dozen calls a day with the same question: “Mommy, when are you gonna be home?” And my heart breaks each time I have to answer, “Later, honey,” because I know “later” is not soon enough.

But in the end, I don’t believe my children will suffer. It’s a different life from your children’s, maybe, but not one with less care or love.

I believe that because I’m the daughter of a working mother, raised by unselfish parents whose children grew up feeling not neglected but steeped in love, schooled in self-reliance and encouraged toward excellence by the choices our parents made.

And I ask you to grant that possibility to my children too.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.