No Less a Woman for Opting Not to Work
As a mother who has made the choice between working and staying at home, I was glad to read that Martha Groves feels no guilt about being a working mother (“No Apologies Here,” Dec. 7). If a parent even has the option, the decision to work or stay at home is a difficult one to make and be entirely comfortable about.
I do, however, take issue with many of Groves’ assumptions about stay-at-home mothers and the effect they have on their children and society.
I did not choose to stop working because of my husband’s salary or because of some misguided notion that it would be so much easier to stay at home. In fact, I earned a higher salary than my husband did, and the loss of my income has been an economic hardship. I am not a poor female role model by not working, and I hardly believe that I have set back women’s rights by staying at home. I graduated magna cum laude from UCLA and received a law degree from Stanford University, a fact that my children most certainly will know.
Besides, my daily actions and deeds, and those of their working father, will have the most lasting role-modeling effect on our children. Furthermore, staying at home for now to raise my children does not mean the end of my career or make me an economic cripple should I divorce.
The bottom line is that working or staying at home is a highly personal choice. I would never assume that Groves is any less of a parent for working, so I would ask that she not assume that I am any less of a woman for not.
EVELYN JEONG
Tarzana
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What Groves fails to recognize is that all mothers are working mothers. Whether they drop their kids off and then go to meetings and on business trips, or whether they “linger” (as Ms. Groves condescendingly writes) at the school to volunteer, everyone works.
Groves also fails to recognize that there are women who work for no pay, by volunteering countless hours to organizations. Perhaps she needs to contact the League of Women Voters, California Parent-Teacher Assn., American Assn. of University Women, Amnesty International and Planned Parenthood. Perhaps she can do some shopping at the UNICEF gift shop, which is staffed by volunteers. At each of these places she’ll meet women who work their tails off volunteering and never even have the time to think about apologizing!
It’s unfortunate that Groves has gotten pulled into this “my camp” and “your camp” mind-set. Each person deserves support, regardless of his or her choices. Groves has shown a lack of sensitivity to those mothers who help out in their children’s classrooms each week by stereotyping them as gender drones who never think about the “potential economic and societal consequences of their choice.” I think they do every day. Especially when they are confronted by people who write whiny, condescending and self-indulgent articles in the L.A. Times. Groves would be wise to “linger” in her daughter’s classroom a bit.
KANANI FONG
La Habra Heights
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Wow. Martha Groves would have me go back to work and leave my precious infant with an underpaid stranger so that her daughter won’t be so miserable.
Groves must support her specious, self-centered rationalizations by insulting parents who opt to parent full time. We women gleefully fled the workplace to let our men support us because it was just too darned tough in the real world. Please. I left a challenging, fulfilling job in the entertainment industry to be a mother to my baby. Do I miss my job? Of course. Am I envious of the career ascension of former colleagues? Duh. Would I trade what I do for anything in the world? Not on your life. What I do is in the best interest of my children; I am role-modeling my priorities--not job, but family. My kids see me as capable and caring--and they see me all the time.
Groves should feel guilty. Very, very guilty.
MARY BROWN
Altadena
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Ms. Groves:
My purpose in writing to you is not to try to make you feel guilty. You are a single mom; you have to work. My purpose is simply to relate an interesting anecdote that, I think, negates much of what you have to say about the positive effects of role modeling, etc.
Of all my friends who were brought up by working moms, all--I repeat, all--when mothers themselves chose to be stay-at-home moms. Now, granted, this is a sample of four, nothing on which one can base a scientifically sound study. But the fact that all four chose the same course is interesting to me.
All these women were raised under different circumstances, but all have solid college educations (some went to graduate school) and, up until their first children were born, were professional working women who enjoyed working.
Something to think about.
KRISTINE H. WYATT
Via Internet
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Brava on your article.
Thank you for saying so succinctly and movingly what I’ve been thinking for so many years! As the single full-time working mother of two daughters, I wholeheartedly agree that we are leaving behind a valuable legacy for our children by being “women of the world” instead of just “ladies of the house.”
I also believe that in this work-obsessed society, we need to take a deep breath and look at our quality of life. We all have errands to run, doctor and dentist appointments, car repairs--duties that take us away from our jobs. Your suggestion of working a shortened week has always made sense to me. I remember taking a job-sharing workshop in San Francisco in the mid-’80s (when my first daughter was born). Whatever happened to job sharing? Part-time professionals? There wasn’t enough corporate “buy-in” for these ideas to even get off the ground.
For anything to change, it’s going to take a strong grass-roots groundswell of brave women who aren’t afraid to speak up and start making demands on their employers. Unfortunately, with today’s unsteady corporate environment fostering the notion that we should “feel lucky that we even have a job,” most women are too timid to make waves.
Keep spreading the word. With help, maybe someday someone will hear it.
ROBIN B. MOORE
Glendale
