Like a lot of folks, I have worked since I was a teenager.  I have worked for decades.  It was, quite naturally, a major focal point of my life.  I defined myself and my degree of personal success or failure based primarily on my job status.  We are groomed early on to identify and pursue our chosen career path.  It’s often the first question someone will ask you: “What do you do?”  How do you contribute to society?  What is your occupation, your field?

No one goes to college to get a degree in “stay-at-home momhood.”

Well, not anymore.  Granted, until the mid-sixties, some women did in fact go to college solely to snag a husband.  But here in the futuristic twenty-first century (where’s my damn flying car?), women are expected to bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan – and pay for the bacon, the pan, and at least part of the home.

When we achieved our glorious liberation (that bulge in my face is the tongue in my cheek), we were finally free to not only cause tiny humans to exist, but in addition to keeping them alive and running a household on a 24/7 basis, we could also leave home for a good chunk of the day and get our fair share of  the work-for-salary world, and all its wonderful facets.  Now, we no longer had to say we were “just a housewife” – now we were doing something important!  Power to the she-people!

Ahem.

I’m not going to lie.  I myself have had, in the distant past (as I like to refer to my twenties), disparaging thoughts about women who were “just mothers.”  So many women have both children and careers, I was disdainful of women who didn’t bow to the pressure to conform to the overachieving superwoman standard of the new generation.  Well, things changed, and so did my attitude about the work/not work debate.  To wit: I had my own baby, and was now faced with the dilemma myself.

According to Catalyst, a non-profit research and business advisory organization, as of 1996, some key working-mother statistics include:

·  40% of working women are mothers of children under age 18

·  83% of new mothers returned to the workforce within 6 months after childbirth

·  55% of working women provide half or more of their household income

·  48% of married women provide half or more of the household income

And  my personal favorite debunker of welfare-mom stereotypes:

·  71% of all single mothers are employed

Catalyst found that only 7% of all families conform to the tradition of a wage-earning dad, a stay-at-home mom, and one or more children.  As unfortunate an indicator of the decline of the nuclear family as this may be, it does still point out that women working is no longer “an option,” but a necessity and a fact of modern life.

But as Angela Thomas-Jones asks in her article , “What do working mothers want?”

I can only speak for myself.  Initially, what I wanted was a clear answer to whether or not I “should” work.  I went round and round about the guilt of leaving my baby in her precious, fleeting early years, to go make money and sit in a cubicle away from her for hours a day.  Work would always be there; I could work until I die (and at this rate, I’ll have to, har  har).  But my baby would only be a baby for a few years.  I could never get those back. 

Granted, I was extremely fortunate that money wasn’t an issue for me.  A lot of women don’t have that freedom, especially single mothers.  I didn’t need money, per se; but I did need that part of my identity back.  As I mentioned at the start of this entry, my life revolved around what I did forty hours a week for so long, it felt abrupt and weird to be at home all the time.  I was constantly groping for excuses when people asked me whether or not I was working again.  I would always promise that I would be going back, soon, very soon.

Two years later…

I’m now working part-time, twenty hours a week.  It has been an excellent way for both my baby and myself to ease into my being back in the workforce.  I get to have time with adults, a reason to wear makeup again, the satisfaction of contributing to society, and that lovely direct-deposit every week.  And my toddler is getting used to spending a few hours away from me, a few days a week.  “Mama working?” she asks her sitter, and upon confirmation of that fact, she’ll just go about her baby-business. 

We’re both glad to see each other at the end of my shift.  And I feel more like myself – the me I was before I reproduced; the part of me that’s an independent adult unto myself, not just someone’s mommy.  But it does feel good to slip off my work shoes at the door, kneel down, and let that someone rush into my waiting arms.