I wearied of the Mommy Wars shortly after becoming a mother nearly 10 years ago.
First, no one wants to listen to financially blessed women getting their Spanx in a twist about whether to earn a paycheck. Second, I’m passionate about living and letting live. Work. Don’t work. It’s all good. Do what fits you and your family. (Yes, we realize parenting, while unpaid, is work. We get it.) Thus, I reluctantly enter a skirmish unlikely to be settled in a column, let alone my lifetime. I was in a movie theater when radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger filled the screen. In tones fit for women who have been sitting too close to finger paints, she advertised her coming-to-a-theater-near-us event where she would celebrate stay-at-home moms. The broadcasts, shown nationwide in early May, helped plug her book, “In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms.” I’m all about praising moms of any stripe, yet the doctor seems bent on telling everyone with a uterus what is best for her.
If something makes my blood boil more than a woman telling other women how to live their lives, it’s an independently wealthy woman telling other women not to let the thought of a paycheck enter their pretty little heads. Or maybe the boil-over point is the independently wealthy woman making money precisely by shoveling such manure to women who spend their husband’s money to hear it.