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Home › Articles › Child Care › To Work or Not to Work

To Work or Not to Work

The Mother's Dilemma

By Tamar Krantman Weiss

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 (Oxford Univ. Press, reprint, 2001). But it was not until the last 30 years that middle-class women began doing paid work outside of the home. Until then, the status of a "working mother" was labeled working-class, or poor. Williams explains that by the 1980s mothers were being sent mixed messages, some saying that all adults must work, others intoning that in order to be a good mother, a woman's life had to revolve around that of her child. Today, women who want to return to the workforce often don't, Williams says, "in order to preserve time with their children."

Laura*, a young mother of two, felt that after being at home with her second child for a year, she "was having a brain meltdown," she says. "I felt that I wasn't growing in ways outside of the home ... I was doing my best at mothering, but being a mother doesn't mean being with your kids 24 hours a day." Laura found a job that she felt would improve her career options – and allow her to be home by 3 p.m. for her kids.

Juggling It All
This is not to say that women don't have a difficult time juggling career and family. It is impossible to be supermom and employee of the week at the same time. "Don't blame yourself if you feel you are serving many masters and pleasing none," Williams says. "Your sense of inadequacy does not reflect personal failings, but a system in which the way we define the ideal worker conflicts with the way we define our ideals as parents."

Lura, for example, insists that mothers must be firm with employers in order to keep the priorities of the family at the forefront. In her experience, if a woman is firm and confident, employers will not punish mothers for their numerous commitments outside of the job.


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