I’m not talking about the so called “War on Terror” here. The war to which I am referring is the one that is taking place right in our cul de sacs. It is the ongoing and much debated struggle to coexist between the Stay At Homes and the Working Moms. The Clash of the Millennium Moms, so to speak. As a working mom myself, I may be a little biased when I say that not only does this war exist, but the crazy stay at homes started it!
I’ve been on both sides of the fence here. As others before me have done, I will not even try to profess that the life of a stay at home mom is easier or less demanding than that of a working mom. Contrary to mainstream belief, today’s stay at home mom is not plunked in front of General Hospital while her children roam the streets. In most cases, this is a woman who never dreamed of being a stay at home mother. She has the same pre-motherhood background as most working moms. She has degrees, she started out in the corporate world, she HATES cleaning the house! Like Millennium Working Moms, Millennium Stay at Home Moms have come a long way baby. Let’s face it, she has redefined the role. She treats her role as “Mother” the same way she would have treated her role as “Business Woman.” She’s competitive and she wants to be the BEST. Her day is highly organized and free time is not on her schedule. Her product speaks for itself... literally. Her 6 month old knows sign language. By the time he’s 18 months he can count to 10 in English and Spanish. Her kid can read before he’s 4 years old! Unlike her counterparts in the corporate world, she does not get annual reviews, spot bonuses, raises or promotions to tell her she’s doing a good job. “Oh my god, your child is a genius,” is what she gets. In my personal experience, she also gets a bit of a chip on her shoulder. She knows she is different than her predecessors. She is very conscious of not being held to the same stereotypes that they were.
When I first went back to work, after a 14 month stint as a stay at home mom, I felt how real this war is. In fact, 4 years in, I have no stay at home mother friends left. My return to working life was not met with compassion or understanding as to why (financial hardship and a struggling marriage because of it), but with judgmental “how could yous?” Not only did I have to deal with the guilt of leaving my children for 10 hours a day, I had to deal with the guilt of “betraying” my friends who “would NEVER let another person raise” their children. The same group of women whose support I relied upon while not working, treated me like an outsider when I was. Everything I said was picked apart for double meaning. I had one former friend say to me “Your daughter does not go to school, she goes to daycare.” To her, my referring to daycare as school (which lets face it for $20,000 a year... it better be school), was my way of saying that her choice to stay home was depriving her child of an education. Regardless of its actual meaning, almost everything I said about my working life was misconstrued as being an “I’m better than you” slap in the face. As a person who really does have trouble thinking before she speaks, I decided to quietly excuse myself from this group before I further offended my “friends.” Of course, this act was just as offensive as it seemed to prove their theory that I no longer saw them as equals.
Here’s the thing... I probably didn’t. And on the flip side of the coin, they didn’t see me as such either. In fact, EVERYTHING they said was obviously questioning my ability to be a good mother. Fore mentioned friend once offered me a book on parenting. It was after she witnessed me scream at my 2.5 year old daughter for hitting her newborn brother in the face. All I heard was “You're a bad mother, your kid is a brat and it’s all because you work.” I felt incredibly judged when I was with my stay at home friends. I also did quite a bit of judging. I would nod as I heard another “woe is me” tale of not having a moment for herself, but I was thinking “For crying out loud, if you would just let another person watch your kids once in a while, you could take a break!” Stories that I could once relate to, now caused the words “Oh my god, you are so crazy” to pop into my head. The growing disdain was most certainly a two way street.
The question is... why? Stay at home and working moms have so much in common. For starters, we are ALL crazy. We’re stressed out, we don’t make time for ourselves, we feel like we’re letting everyone down, we question our choices, our husbands resent us. The list goes on and on. AND... it would be so easy to blame this feud on our husbands. They get together for their man only events, like golf, and they compare us! Then they come home and just like gossipy old women, they tell us everything the other husbands said about the other wives. Working Mom hears, “Husband X got home from work last night and Stay at Home Mom handed him a smelly baby and said ‘your turn.’ Can you believe that? She is home all day long and as soon as he walks through the door she wants him to change diapers.” Stay at Home Mom hears, “Husband Y had to pick the kids up from daycare every day last week because Working Mom was stuck in meetings, again. Why did she even have kids?” And they both hear “Childless, newlywed Husband Z’s super fit, hot wife goes down on him every night. You didn’t even do that before we had kids!” Despite all of this, The Clash of the Millennium Moms is not the doing of the Millennium Dads (though they may use it for their advantage). The cause is really quite basic and it’s the same reason my daughter, to this day, randomly smacks her brother. Jealousy! We are, without a doubt, jealous of each other. We both want what the other has. Working moms feel guilty for working and they wish they could stay home. Stay at home moms feel regret for giving up careers and earned income and they often long for their pre-family working days.
I am in no way suggesting that any of us SHOULD feel these things, but the hard truth is that we do. Until we stop holding ourselves to such high standards, we are not going to be able to do so for other women. Let’s face it, we are really judging ourselves through the eyes of others. Maybe we need some sort of national group therapy to bring peace to the suburbs. Until then, my money is on the working moms to prevail. Not necessarily because I am one, but because I know we have something that stay at home moms don’t have. Chemical warfare! One strategically timed play date and the stay at home family is laid up for weeks with The Daycare Cold. It gets them every time!
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