Hey, remember when being a mom was like a thing women did? Like, when people asked, “what do you do?” and they responded, “I’m a mom” and that was cool. That was enough.. why did that change?
Now, I’m not saying that women shouldn’t work. I think that if you have a passion for something you should go right out and work for everything that you desire. I’m also not saying that if you need the money that working is a bad thing. You have to feed yourself and your family and that is important… but when did it become shameful for a woman to be a mom. Like, a stay at home, take care of your family mom?
From the beginning of time moms have been a thing. In fact without moms there would be no more people. Being a parent and raising new people is the most important thing that there is. Making sure that these new little humans don’t turn out to be serial killers or wastes of space is very important. My father used to say that the most important job in parenting is creating independent people. But that takes a lot of work.
Childcare is a huge industry. Mostly run by women. The service industry is also huge and also mostly employs women. House cleaning companies mostly employ women.. these are all industries that have skyrocketed in the last few decades because women entered the work force.
Now again, I’m not saying that women shouldn’t work, or that all women should be mothers. If a woman decides that motherhood is not for her, by all means.. good on you.. if you decide that you do want to be a mother but you don’t want to give up a career that you love, that’s great too. But how many women out there LOVE their jobs. How many people out there LOVE their jobs. Most people can’t wait till the end of the day or the end of the week. I don’t know why having a job became the goal.. like it’s so prestigious to spend most of your waking hours doing something you hate just so that you can pay someone else to take care of your kids and clean your house.. because guess what? That’s their job.. you pay someone to do the things that you are shamed for doing for free, because it’s not real work. How is this good?
People complain all the time that the cost of living is so expensive. Well, this is because the market follows the money. When most families were one income families the market reflected that. Add a whole knew income and suddenly everything doubles in price. So you’re literally working to buy things that everyone could afford to buy before we all pushed to work jobs that we hate.
Again, I’m not saying that the Women’s Lib movement was bad. I believe women have the right to do and be anything that they want. Which includes being a mother and a wife. We always hear that on our death beds we never regret the deals we didn’t make but the family time that we missed. That we don’t look back fondly at the hours at our desks, but the moments snuggling with out loved ones. Our family and the people that we love are our reason for living… so why should a little girl be shamed for wanting to grow up and get married and have babies? Isn’t that what most of us want? When did wanting love and family become taboo?
Katrina Michelle Russell 