What a Mother Does

There’s been some controversy recently about stay-at-home moms. I read an article about a woman without children who complained about her friend who was a mom, asking why she didn’t answer phone calls or emails or invitations to hang out and wondering what she was doing, just sitting around? I read the rebuttals by the columnist and another by a stay-at-home mom/blogger, and agreed with both. Children take up a lot of a mother’s time, and even if she would like to spend time with her friends, there is so little time left by the end of the day/week/month/year to do things without her children that she just wants to have some time to herself.

Some people might not agree with me, but I feel that being a mom is the best thing in the world. Staying at home with my kids is my current occupation, and I love it; sometimes it’s hard for me to see why a mother would choose to do anything else when she could be treasuring her beautiful children at home.

Because of this, I’ve always been a bit disdainful of women who are well off enough to stay home but choose to go back to work. I understand those who need to work to support their families, and I’ve always felt bad that they didn’t have the means to stay home. The logic behind the choice of working when you could stay home eluded me; I always thought, “do they just not love their kids enough?” until just the other day.

I was watching an episode of the TV show Bones, in which the female lead, a scientist who solves murders, had just had a baby. In this particular episode, she went back to work for the first time after having the baby, and everyone was asking her, “Don’t you miss your baby?” She would always reply, in her logical way, that she knew where the baby was and could go see her anytime she wanted to, but that she was doing important work and that the asker should probably get back to work as well.

At the conclusion of the case, they caught the killer (as they always do) and she and the male lead sat down on the couch with their daughter. “Do you want me to take her so you can get some sleep?” he asked. “No!” she replied forcefully, “I’m... fine.” After a bit of cajoling on his part, she admitted almost tearfully, “I missed her so much!” He suggested that she could take a bit more time off work, but again she said, “No!” and explained that the work she did was important and that even though she missed her, she wanted her daughter to know that her work was important, too.

By that point, I was crying; I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to have to leave your child in the care of others to do what needed to be done. Imagining how I would feel having to do that wrenched at my heart.

I was ashamed of myself. How could I assume that just because a mother went back to work that she loved her child less? Of course a mother wants to treasure her child every second of the day! Just because she works does not mean she feels any different about her children than I do about mine.

So to all the working mothers out there: I apologize for judging you. Never again will I assume that the reason you choose to be away from your children is because you don’t care for them. I understand now that whatever a mother does, whether at home or away, she does for the love of her children.