My mother worked, and I turned out okay. In fact, my mother worked a lot. She was a teacher until I was born, then she added a Ph.D. in psychology, followed by a law degree and a legal career that would have made her father proud. Eventually she entered the international insurance business. No, I don't understand what an international insurance expert does any more than I understand what an international lawyer does, but it certainly gets her lots of frequent-flier miles.
My mother worked, and I turned out okay. I recited this like a mantra through nine months of pregnancy. Not only did she work, but she loved working, and yet ... we had dinner each night as a family (takeout, usually, but let's not quibble). I never came home to an empty house after school. There was always someone to help with my homework (or bring it to school when I forgot it) or pick me up and tuck me in when I was sick.
My mother worked, and I turned out okay. Within days after Evan was born, I knew he would be okay, too. One afternoon I loaded him into his stroller intending to sit in the broiling sun in the courtyard of our Houston apartment building and edit a manuscript while he slept. The elevator was broken. I had to bounce the stroller down the stairs. He woke up on the very last step, and his screams were accompanied by the unmistakable sound of a diaper being dirtied. I carried the stroller back up the stairs, changed the diaper, nursed him back to sleep, then collapsed in a miserable, sweaty heap on the couch.
Yes, Evan's mother would work, and Evan would be okay. But whether his mother would be okay was far from certain.
When our native Texan was three months old we moved back to New York and took up the life of suburban commuters. It was a life led to the rhythm of a portable breast pump and the whistle of the early-evening train. Missing the 6:19 from Grand Central meant missing bedtime and bathtime at home. Some nights that broke my heart. Other nights I was secretly relieved (but racked with guilt at my relief) that there'd be that much less for me to do when I finally made it home.
"How did you do it?" I asked my mother in a tone that was more accusation than compliment. "How did you study for the bar exam and keep us fed? How did you write your thesis and proofread our homework? How come your generation did it and mine is losing its collective mind?"
In the world according to Mom, the answer is threefold. First, she says, my life really is more complicated. She was a mother first. Then she had a career. She didn't graduate from law school until I was a senior in high school. When her youngest child left for college, Mom was forty-two years old and there was no one waiting at home for a bath and a story. When I am forty-two my youngest will still be in elementary school. Mom did things serially while my generation does them simultaneously.
That said, Mom gently suggests that me and mine all think too much. Working mothers, she reminds us, have always felt torn. It's just that there are more of us now, in jobs that are more fulfilling partly because they are more demanding, and we are not a group who sees a need to shoulder our frustrations quietly. There is a hint of reprimand in her voice when she says this. Her own mother worked, and she turned out okay -- but there were times when her parents just couldn't be there. "That's why they call it work," she says, quoting my grandmother.
But the most important difference between my life and
hers, the reason I felt like a failure and she felt like an
adventurer, is a difference I came to see only after I had children of my own. When I look
back on my childhood, I remember the security of knowing someone
else was always there. What my naive eyes didn't notice was who
that someone was. When my mother wasn't home, my
father was, straightening patients'
teeth in his suite of offices
attached to the house, greeting me when I came off the school bus
every afternoon, bringing my homework when I forgot it (truth be
told, he sent his receptionist to do that, but I was relieved to be
rescued), and tucking me in when I was sick.
Yes, my mother worked, and I turned out okay.
Thank you, Mom and Dad.
Related Links:
Families with Style: What We're Doing for the Weekend
Working Moms: iVillage Community
