Family life in 2005

Increasingly, more women are working out of the home to make ends meet in this economy. Well, at least I have re-entered the workforce after a 5 plus year absence. Today is one of those days I don't really feel like working. It is snowing outside and my youngest daughter has a slight fever and a cough. As I start to write this, I should be clearing off the car and finishing getting ready. I guess I better go do that. I'll write more of what I wanted to after work.

Update: It is now 9:20 pm, I am home from work, we have eaten dinner and the kids are in bed.

The February 21st issue of Newsweek has a cover story on The Myth of the Perfect Mother. You can get part of the main article here however, they require payment for the full text of the article. The article discusses how there is an epidemic of craziness that mothers feel now. We were raised with the ideal of what a perfect mother was and we fail to realize that it was an ideal and not easily achievable if even possibly achievable.

We feel like failures when our kids are not in enough activities and our houses are not clean and we are not putting dinner on the table for the family and we are not contributing to society ourselves. As women, we are forced to make a choice between spending time raising our children as stay at home parents or to pay someone else to do that while we work. With ever present financial concerns (a new focus in our household, like many others), the reality is that we must work to help support our families. In our house, we were lucky that Glenn was able to adjust his schedule so that we could split the childcare betweent the two of us, but many of our friends are not so lucky.

I want better for my daughters, I don't want them to have to feel stresses about being the "perfect mother" and feeling like a failure for the choices they make. I don't see their lives being substantially different (unless we manage to win the lottery without ever playing). Families need solutions, and as American families, we are some of the most overworked in the world. Good childcare is very expensive - how can one afford childcare that is several hundred a week for an infant and several hundred a month for a school-age child. Private schools are expensive - one we looked at when thinking about our options for Ivy was $8000/year for kindergarten! Public schooling can be risky from an educational standpoint, depending on what school district and the needs of your child.

I don't have any ready solutions, and I realize that many of these same issues apply to fathers as well. All I can say, is when you see the person next to you is a stressed parent, remember that it is not easy to bring up kids these days. Remember when you walk into my messy house that my kids are clean, well-fed and happy and that is what really matters to us. Remember when Glenn or I look like we are about to fall over from exhaustion that we are struggling to make our own solutions and that involves us pushing ourselves a little harder and getting a little less sleep on average.