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Townhall...
Culture Challenge of
the Week: When Money Trumps Motherhood
by Rebecca Hagelin
“But Mom, I don’t wanna eat breakfast at school! Why can’t I stay home
and eat?” wailed Kirsten, nine-years-old. She looked plaintively at her
mom and waited for her to answer.
Connie was miffed. I don’t need this, she thought.
An engineer and mother of two, she had scaled back to part-time work
when Kirsten was born. It was ideal---professional continuity, business
networks, and limited hours so she could stay involved in her
children’s busy lives.
At her most recent performance review, Connie’s boss stressed that
career advancement required full-time work. If she’d bump back up to
full-time, he’d give her the most demanding projects so she’d get ahead
faster. Of course the time commitment would be demanding too.
It looked good to Connie. She thrived on positive feedback at work—but
received almost none in motherhood. She loved diving into a project,
focusing without interruption—a rare experience with kids around. Her
job made her feel needed and valued. Mothering garnered no such praise
from her friends and co-workers.
So Connie said yes. An extra 15 or 20 work hours every week shouldn’t
matter too much to her husband and kids.
They’d adjust, right?
But Kirsten didn’t – and Connie failed to look beyond the “breakfast”
complaint and see the heartache of her daughter again that morning.
How to Save Your Family By Embracing Motherhood
Connie missed the point—Kirsten’s reluctance was not about breakfast,
but about time, family, and relationships.
Kids need their moms—at every stage. A mother’s gift of time lays a
strong foundation for healthy adulthood, built on love, security,
affirmation and significance.
And in a child’s first year, mom’s full-time presence is crucial.
A new international study from the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development sounds the alarm over mothers, like those
in the U.S. and the U.K., who rush back to work—even part-time-- before
their children are a year old. Compared to children of stay-at-home
moms, kids of working moms had more limited vocabularies by age five
and showed significant deficits in reading and math by age seven.
Earlier research links a child’s time in day care with heightened
aggressiveness and behavioral problems. Surprisingly, the children of
better-educated moms are “even more affected,” in both achievement and
behavior. Children whose mothers return to work within six months
suffered the most.
The study contrasts starkly with a slanted 2010 report, which claimed
children suffer no harm when mothers return to work within three months
of birth. That conclusion, however, stands on shaky legs. Researchers
in effect dismissed the negative effects on children’s cognitive and
social development by offsetting them against the benefits of higher
income, career progress for mom, and quality day-care. (As if an infant
would value mom’s promotion over a stronger attachment to mom.)
Feminists and employers relentlessly pressure women to return to work
too early, or, as in Connie’s case, to replace part-time work with
full-time hours while their children still need time and attention.
The vast majority (62%) of working moms, however, want to be their
children’s primary caregivers and would prefer part-time work to
full-time employment.
It’s common sense, really. The best moms are most responsive to their
children. But responsiveness takes physical presence, first of all. It
also takes knowledge--a function of time. Only by spending time with
our children will we learn to read their cues and respond to their
needs.
It’s not only young children who need their moms, however. Our older
children confront a bewildering blur of social problems, from
pornography, to sexualized fashions and explicit entertainment to drugs
and violence. The casualties of poorly mothered children surround us.
But parents want to do right by their kids--82% of us say that family
is the most important thing in our lives, bar none.
If that’s true for you, Moms, then on this Mother’s Day commit to
giving your children more of what they really need - YOU.
Read it with links at Townhall
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