Today is Mothers Day, a day set aside to honor all Mothers. While in our homes there are gifts and more for our Moms, I started to think about how America treats Moms, and also sorted through what it means to be a Mom in America today.
My Mother raised three of us in San Francisco. She was a waitress and worked a split shift to support her children. I still don't understand how she was able to do all she did, work, clean, cook and be there for us, but she did all those things and more.
It wasn't easy on her, especially given that when she got divorced society placed a stigma on divorced women. She dated, but her first priority was us, so she never remarried.
more....
My youngest brother was 10 years my junior, and my mother had to find a local family to care for him while she worked, on weekends I took care of my brother (not well mind you, but at least I was a warm body).
My mother has always put her children first, doing as much as she could, and sometimes more than she should, to provide a good life for us. I honor her today as she is someone who has influenced so much of my life and showed me what being a mother is all about.
As I got married and had children, the one thing I wanted more than anything was to stay home with my kids. I did stay home with them, and we lived on one salary in San Jose, we were not poor, but we certainly didn't live a lavish lifestyle.
Imagine my disgust when Marilyn Quayle started running around the country claiming she was a stay at home mom (those moral values at work). She had taken a leave from her job so she could "play" mom during the presidential campaign. Immediately after they lost the election, back to work she went (guess the stay at home part didn't really cut it in her book).
Staying home with kids is punished by society. Women lose their best wage earning years, lose the years that you "climb" the ladder, and when stay at home moms go back to work it is difficult at best to carve out a nitch that best represents the life skills one has learned.
Our society claims that raising children is a great thing, yet those of us who do raise our children are "dinged" for doing so. Yet, while we stay home, we become versed in more than most executives of companies will ever experience.
Further, stay at home moms lose any Social Security as working for your family does not generate any type of salary. Again, society does nothing to replace those wage lost years, and many women end up retiring close to poverty as their wage earning years are lost to child rearing.
While over and over we hear about "family values" our American society does little to support those who make the choice to stay home with their children.
In my case, I finally went back to school and got my degree, and now am working full time, at a salary that is about the same as a job I had over 20 years ago. Why is this? Because nothing I did as a stay at home mom "counts" to most employers. Doesn't matter that during that time I was very active in my community, my children's schools and more, because I didn't "work" the things I did had no "value."
Being a Mom is hard, it is heartbreaking and filled with endless joy at the same time. Even though I have gone back to work full time, I am once again contemplating working part time so I can be home more with my 14 year old son who is struggling with school right now.
In America those who have high salaries are looked up to, those who get by are looked down upon as they must not have "drive" or they don't "work hard." The choice to give up my full time job so that I am home more puts my family in the "just gets by" group, and American society has no value for those who choose family over funds.
American Moms are given lip service by many in our society, and it has become beyond reason that over and over we hear "family values" with NOTHING by way of action attached to these words.
Being a Mom anywhere is hard, as the concern and care for your children becomes overwhelming at times. You look back and wonder what things you should have done differently, how you could have been "better," and all those things that seem to float in our minds over and over.
Yet, though we don't have material "wealth" we have a richness of family. Both of our kids like to hang out at home (we lock ourselves in the back bedroom.) Our drum playing son has band practice in the garage, our college aged daughter has her buddies over to just "hang out." Our vacations are modest, the last one being a trip to my Dad's old high school in Oregon, a week of driving in the car, stopping here and there, nothing fancy, yet the kids still talk about the fun we had.
Being a Mom in America is trying on a woman, at least it is to me. Today we see this swing to the far right in our country, and I have to also wonder if my "job" as a mother means that full time activism is more important right now then my paycheck, knowing that the government which now exists is harmful to all our children.
Sorry to ramble on like this, but given it is Mothers Day I figured what the hell.
To all Kos Moms: HAPPY Mother's Day!