I
was never raised by a stay-at-home mom. She works here and there, have this
full-time job and at the same time make sure that the family business is going
well. At a very young age, I live in a make-believe world that my young mind
can only grasp that all mothers work. When there is a PTA meeting, an
educational field trip or even a simple school event wherein she should attend,
I should tell her ahead so she can fit it in her schedule, it seems normal for
me to file a request to my mother who manage a lot of people in her work until
it sinks into me that not all mothers work, some just stay-at-home and you
don’t even have to fit in their schedules. Is it hard to have a mother like I
have? Yes. But one thing is for sure, I learned at my mother’s knee that women
have a choice and that every working mom is a superwoman.
Some
say that working mothers should be worry because their children MIGHT stray
away from the straight path since they are not around all the time to see how
things are going on for their children.
Well, too bad for that a study published under the Journal of Family and
Marriage this last April, surprisingly shows that the amount of time mothers
spend with their kids has no bearing on their children’s emotional well-being
or their academic achievement. The beauty of this study is not to show that stay-at-home
moms are throwing their lives, but that mothers privileged enough to have a
choice between going to work should stop being anxious about what’s best for
their children and focus on their own needs.
As
I see myself growing up amidst with my ever annoying brothers, I can testify
that we did not deviate from the conventional notion about the effect of
working moms to their children. Rather their upbringing brought the best out of
us. We learned how to become entrepreneurs at a very young age, wherein kids at
our age are so busy learning how to play tex or pogs or jolens, we are busy
learning how to make money. Oh, don’t worry we had more than enough play time
all throughout our childhood lives it is just that we find it too boring and
such a waste of time. I saw my brothers make a lot of friends, play and play
until they drop. Me too, I gained a lot of friends, established a friendship
that I cannot even count in my fingers, I learned to play all the street games
and been tagged in a lot of them. I know that hell exist during that time, your
feet should not touch the ground or else, you’re it! But guess what? We had fun
but at the same time we grew up responsible and well-rounded.
I
know my parents, especially my mom is not afraid of leaving this world and
worrying that her kids don’t know how to sweat for food and money, she is
confident that she trained us well. But people kept on asking her? You are a
full-pledge manager and a businesswoman.
Are you sure that you’re doing your motherhood job pretty well too? And my kikay mother just mentally tossed her
salon-straight blonde hair at them and says “My kids are my proof.” Yes, they are super busy especially my mother
because she has two jobs because she knows the feeling of not having anything
to eat and making the upbring of her children as an excuse to not work is a
big, NO, NO. But it doesn’t mean she doesn’t make it on time to eat dinner with
us, go to church with us every Sunday, ask us about our days or even attend
meeting or recognition days. She is always there and never been absent.
So,
should the question be, are working moms spending enough time with their kids?
Is it really about the quantity? The question should be how do working moms
spend their time with their kids. It’s the quality that matters not the length
of time. Yes, you are there all throughout their lives looking out for them,
but how do you look out for them? DO you just cook the food? DO the dishes? DO
the laundry? HOW? IN WHAT WAYS?
And
if in any other way, that being a working mom make her less of a person or less
of a responsible mother. Well, then you are wrong. Having a full-time job to
attend to the family’s financial need and at the same time makes sure that her
family is working well. She has two jobs and only half is being paid, and the
other is being done for free, now tell me is she is not doing her motherhood
job very well?
I’m
not here to tell you who's better and who's not. But I’m here to tell you that
being a working mom is a choice just as being a stay-at-home mother, but this
choice is not being done for the sake of her family but for her OWN sake. Her
rights as a woman. Women should not just be confined inside a box, the world
needs to hear her, and the world needs her contribution, not through
second-hand degree but first-hand degree. Right there at that moment, sharing
her ideas, sharing her skills and talents.
If
women should just stay-at-home and tend to the needs of their family, why
finish a degree? Do you need that to make sure that you’re family is working
well? Why waste your time doing projects, thesis, or even a speech, if you’re
just going to put all those education behind and be a stay-at-home mother? I don’t
have grudges against them, but it is ironic to burn the midnight oil and not
use it in the future. I know there will be someone who’ll say that “of course
they need that to teach their kids, later on.”
Oh,
really now? Is that what you’re going to tell your daughter? “Sweetie, get a
good education and then look for a good husband, build a family and serve them,
after all you learned a lot at school how to make speeches, mathematical
equations and create a thesis and stand in front of people and have a paper
defense, right? That will really help you in becoming a good mother, after all
education for women is just for formality.
There
are perks of being a son or a daughter of a working mother? Research have
showed that the children of working mothers have liberal attitudes towards
women in the workplace and that sons of working mothers take a greater share of
parenting and other household care roles.
In
the study made by Harvard’s Business
School professor, McGinn, and Milkman, they listed a lot of perks of having a
working mother through the data they have gathered. If you had a working
mother, you’re more likely to have a job, because 69% of females with a working
mother were lucky to be not a bum compared to other 66% of females with
stay-at-home mothers. Even those women who have working moms earn a lot more
money, they are even most probably be granted with a supervisory position at
work. And working moms daughters has a higher potential to achieve higher level
education since their mothers are their role model. And when it comes to the
length of time of looking after their children, stay-home-moms and working moms
are rowing on the same river. And lads whose momma’s had a job are more likely
to help around the house. Oh, see? Here’s another one, and these lads tends to
spend more time looking after their kids when they already have their own set
of family.
Am
I being biased? I hope I’m not. I do salute every stay-at-home mom’s out there
for their choices however my vote goes for all those mothers who chose to live
their own dreams and at the same time help build their children’s dream. And if
the future for every woman out there is to just build a family, help raise
their kids and stay inside the house just like the traditional way. I encourage
every female in here to drop out of their classes and forget to get a degree
because you don’t need that to be a perfect mother. And if literacy will be
your reason for that, a high school education will be enough.
I
do know that my mother sometimes think to just stay at home, wake up without
worrying about her salary or the business, just us to tend to but we all know
that not working is not an option for her currently.
My point is, mothers—women have a choice----a
broad range of choices, and being a mother does not necessarily mean to just
stay-at-home. When I look at my mom and when I look at our family, I know that
being a working mom is not that bad, it showed me that they can be mommazing.
It showed me that there is equality. It showed me that women are not a slave.
It showed me that though there are double-standards, a woman can have a place
in this world; a woman can be anyone she wants to become without letting the
society dictates what she should just be. All mothers are working mothers; the
only difference is the venue. But just by looking at my mother, I know that a
woman can both wear stilettos and an apron. Nonetheless, most of all she manage
a lot of people but never even once she forgot how to raise her children well,
and I am one of the living proof. Actually, I don’t even know how she does it.
