Working Mothers and Stay at Home Mothers is there a choice?

Before you start thinking that this post is going to be some bash on working women or stay at home mothers, it isn't. Its just a single girls opinion of what the feminist movement and some LDS views of the role of women. I am not an expert on the feminist movement or on motherhood and its trials and tribulations. Which is why I think it is easy for me to make a statement. I have a view which favors neither, but has empathy for both. I thought about this because I recently have had this discussion with several friends. Some of which are stay-at-home mothers and others are working a traditional 9-5 job with children in daycare.

First, feminism. In the 19th and early 20th Century, the LDS church was quite revolutionary in its view of women and their roles in comparison with the rest of the U.S. LDS women were early suffragists and some of the first to vote and even hold political office. Many Early feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony even worked with LDS women to further the movement across the country. LDS women attended and received professional degrees at a higher rate than the rest of the women in the country at this same time, some LDS women even becoming doctors. Women felt confident in their roles within the LDS community as wives and as feminists.

However, the term feminist has become synonymous with "bra-burnings" and "man-haters" due to conservative talk shows and other misinformed people. I believe that there are certain aspects of feminism which have allowed women to become whole. By "whole" I mean, discover for themselves what they can become due to choice and not societal expectations or limitations of what they can become.

An example of what the feminist movement has done for women can be found in my first story, my mother. My mother is a great role-model for my sisters and I. She received her advanced degree in a country not her own and a language which she struggled to read and write in. Her lowest college grade was a B+. I'm not going to say what my lowest grade was, but it was lower than a B+. That's all you need to know. Her younger sisters followed in her footsteps earning master's degrees in traditional and non-traditional areas for women such as; Teaching, Nursing, Accounting and Computer Science. This was in the 1970's and 1980's.

My mother and my father together determined that she should work and support our family. He worked as well, but in Real Estate and had a more flexible schedule. So my father did the carpooling and had dinner ready at home. There are times when she struggled with that decision, but through prayer and example they raised great kids, especially their middle daughter. ;) My mother and her sisters have all encouraged their daughters to gain and education and join the job force as they did. She sometimes envied women who could stay home full time with their children and felt guilty for working.

Many of my friends also have similar histories with their mothers. I remember as a freshman and Sophomore at BYU, some of my friends and I discussed our future after graduation. Most of us agreed that while we all wanted to become mothers, we also wanted to work. This had just become an expectation of ourselves because we believed that since our mothers had balanced work and home, so could we.

Fast forward about 10 years and my friends are now divided. Some are stay-at-home mothers and love their role, but feel guilty for not being able to juggle it all. Others have learned to balance home office jobs or traditional office 9-5 jobs with family life or at least they are trying. The feminist movement did not solve this dilemma nor did it create this problem. It allowed women the choice to choose what they want. Reasoning that it created this problem is like saying that because a teacher taught a concept and then gave the students a quiz on the subject, the teacher set-up the students for failure. The teacher should have just not taught anything new, simply allowed them to regurgitate old information, so that they could just continue in their bliss.

I love the movie Mona Lisa Smiles because I feel that the writer perfectly summed up the dilemma of women with families. In the end the brilliant character played by Julia Stiles is accepted into Yale Law School. She declines the invitation, because she wants to support her husband. Julia Roberts character laments about her wasting her talents as a housewife and Stiles character responds by saying,

"You stand in class and tell us to look beyond the image, but you don't. To you a housewife is someone who sold her soul for a center hall colonial. She has no depth, no intellect, no interests. You're the one who said I could do anything I wanted. This is what I want. "

The essence of what my mother who had a career and women who decided to work inside the home achieved, is that it allowed THEM to make decision as to what worked best for their family. Society should not dictate what role you must occupy within it. You and your husband determine that. Or if you don't have a spouse, you have the option to not be forced to occupy a "traditional" career that is "acceptable." You can become whatever you want. Fulfilling the measure of your creation, isn't that what the gospel is about, to have a fullness of joy. So, while I don't embrace all of the aspects of the National Organization for Women (NOW). I celebrate the barriers it has removed for women and allowed them the opportunity to make a choice for their families and themselves. What am I going to be when I grow up? Whatever I want.