| Stay-at-home
moms need applause for good decision, not society's
sneers
By Megan Roe
November 14, 2005 | In
a world where women are shattering social barriers and
climbing corporate mountains, stay-at-home moms are
looked down upon.
Evidence of this comes from a flurry
of newspaper columnists and blog entries attacking a
New York Times reporter's Sept. 24 story suggesting
many female students at Yale University plan to put
off their careers to raise children. Louise Story's
Times article stated that 60 percent of female
Ivy League students who responded to an e-mail poll,
"planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely
when they had children."
Feminist blogs and some well-known
columnists displayed their outrage about the news article;
accusing Story of searching for certain results in the
e-mail poll and using the word "many" instead of more
concrete evidence to back her claims. Females and males
alike attacked the future stay-at-home moms featured
in the story as unambitious and immature. According
to a column by Keith Urbahn of the Yale Daily News,
in a letter to the editor a Yale alumna "dismissed the
thoughts of the young women who might choose motherhood
over work as the delusional musings of 'youth and inexperience.'"
Story's article obviously alarmed
the Women Faculty Forum at Yale University, leading
them to sponsor a program entitled "What's the Purpose
of a Yale Education? A Forum on Gender, Education and
Career in Response to the NY Times." According to the
university's calendar, the forum planned to address
the accuracy of the article's claims and to "ask what
beliefs and opinions are part of the decision of young,
privileged and educated women to seemingly give up that
privilege to be 'only' stay-at-home moms?"
Only stay-at-home moms. Did it never
occur to these scholars that some women might choose
to receive higher education for reasons other than to
become a CEO of a major corporation or powerful senator?
Yale University prides itself on producing future leaders.
Is the woman who raises her small children by teaching
them what she has learned, not a leader?
Why is it so appalling that a woman
might want to selflessly put off her career for a few
years to let her child know where he stands on her priority
list, rather than drop him in a day-care facility at
2 weeks old and see him on nights and weekends?
Story's article did leave out an
important part of the equation -- stay-at-home dads.
Parents should decide who will stay home at least part-time
and raise their children until the tots are old enough
to go to school. With only one income the family might
have to sacrifice the nicer cars, the large home and
the boat, but it's a small price to pay for time with
your children.
Why? According to the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development Web site, a study
which appeared in the July/August issue of Child
Development found that "the more time children spent
in child care from birth to age 4 1/2, the more adults
tended to rate them, both at age 4 1/2 and at kindergarten,
as less likely to get along with others, as more assertive,
as disobedient, and as aggressive."
A child's behavior is not the only
thing affected in day-care. "Rates of illness were higher
in children in child care than for children reared exclusively
at home during the first two years of life," according
to the NICHD's early child care study.
Children have benefited in cognitive
development from day-care centers. However, those effects
are most prevalent in an expensive or higher-rated day-care
facility. Negative affects on a child usually come from
cheaper forms of day-care. With two incomes some people
may be able to afford the expensive day-care their child
needs, but this should not substitute for the love and
affection parents can give to their child by constantly
overseeing the child's day-to-day problems.
If children are not your top priority
- don't have them. Stick to what's top on your list
and don't bring a kid into this world to leave the 2-week-old
to someone who can never love him as you do for 40-plus
hours a week.
Women should not be reprimanded for
choosing to primarily care for their children before
or after having a career. Either postponing a career
for children or children for a career is an intelligent
decision, rather than a delusional musing of youth and
inexperience.
NW
CC |
