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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Waaaaah We're Women, Hear Us Whine

Since Hilary Rosen's comment about Ann Romney never working a day in her life have I ever seen the feminine side of politics so worked up.  Having been a stay at home mom for a number of years, I can say it was the hardest job I ever did and the most rewarding.

Let's delve into the job of a stay at home mom, shall we?  We're the first up, making coffee, breakfast, orange juice.  We get everyone up, dressed, fed, teeth brushed, then we begin barking out the schedule like a Logistics Officer in the Marine Corps.  We drive kids to school, do shopping, cleaners, come home and start dusting, cleaning, laundry (which never ends when you have kids).  If you're Wonder Mom and can't quite cut the cord, you volunteer at the school so that you are never separated from your child, who grows up to go to college and can't cope without mommy there to cut his meat and therefore drops out to become a garage band musicians living at home with his mom, but that a whole other blog.

You pick up the kids in the afternoon and help with homework, make snacks, then begin running from practices and lessons to home to make a dinner no one likes and if you have a moment, kiss your husband on the cheek while you're doing the dishes.  You feed the dogs and cats, clean the litter box, get the kids in and out of the bath, into bed then spend the next two hours denying them water and TV time.  By the time you get into bed yourself, you wonder how you ever got beyond one.  Let me say this, in my picture, you don't see the men helping out a whole lot.  Why?  Because they're busy working hard so you can stay at home growing decent human beings who don't worship Jeffrey Dahmer.

If you pay someone to do this for you, you are not a parent, but a convenient womb who gets the Mother's Day present.  You wouldn't know good or bad parenting if it slapped you on the street.  I suspect that Hilary Rosen is one of these.

When you are a stay at home mom you sacrifice a lot.  You don't buy a lot of beauty and hair care products.  Your kids clothes always look immaculate, but yours are a little frayed.  However, no matter how many times you tell yourself that you are going out shopping for YOU, you always come home with something for THEM.  Because it's important to you that they look good and feel secure in the love that makes you put them first.  You don't go on spa weekends with "your girls" because the very thought of leaving the children home with only your husbands iffy attention span is frightening.  Not to mention, there is no money in the budget to even get there. When you decide to stay home and raise productive, intelligent children you know that you will have to sacrifice something.  In most cases it's a nice wardrobe and the feeling that you matter at all.  If you are decent and intelligent you will realize that raising that kind of kid is important, especially in this kind of world.

Stay at home moms do not raise cookie cutter children warehoused in day care centers and public schools.  They raise children who respect themselves and others.  Most of all, they respect their mothers because when they grow up and have a household of their own, they realize how much you gave up so they could grow up decent.  They are the types of kids who appreciate what they achieve because it's never earned cheaply.  In that respect, they don't sell themselves cheaply to drugs and promiscuity.

But here is the hardest thing for any mom, stay at home or in the workplace, you always, every single day, have to make time for you.  A bubble bath after everyone's gone to bed or just enjoying the silence with no demands after they've all gone to bed.  And know that someday you will have to cut that cord and that you will have a life after they are gone.  So you must always cut out your life, enjoy the things you want.  You have a very short amount of time to be a parent.  After that your life is long and MUST be your own, not lived vicariously through them.

For moms who work?  Honey, you have no idea how you do it all, but you do it, and I can't think of one real mom who wouldn't rather stay home with her kids but likes things like eating and walking around in something that's not dirty and raggedy.  I've done this job as well and it's exhausting.  But, please, never denigrate those women who do sacrifice to be able to stay at home with their kids and manage to pull it off.  It cheapens you more than any Feminist at NOW could ever begin to think.  If they do think...

But, that's another blog altogether...

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