I recently immersed myself in a copy of Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families, edited by Leslie Morgan-Steiner. In this collection of essays, women write about the difficult and complex range of emotions and events that lead to their decisions to stay home or work once they have kids.

I read this book while my son, Ben, was napping, or while I was feeding him, or before bed. I kept expecting I would want to escape the mom world for a little while when I had a break from taking care of Ben, but I enjoyed reading this book so much because it made me feel connected to other women like me. Most of them consider themselves feminists; most enjoy(ed) their work; most talked about sleepless nights and nursing their children. A lot of my own thoughts and feelings were reflected in the essays, and that has made the sometimes difficult days at home a little easier.

Despite my adoration, however, there was one huge issue I couldn’t get over. All of the women, with the exception of maybe one or two, are writers, editors, and freelancers. This seemed inordinately unfair to me. Writing is probably the one occupation that has the most flexibility. You can do it in the middle of the night, while the baby is sleeping, on weekends; you can do it in your bedroom, your bathroom, at your mother’s house, while the baby is in the swing. While I appreciated how articulate the essays were, and realize my enjoyment probably had a lot to do with each contributor’s talent, I couldn’t get over what seemed to me a huge deception. Perhaps the title should be Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms IN THE FIELD OF JOURNALISM Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. Each essay also begins with a long bio of the author, listing the companies and/or publications for which she’s worked, so that each woman seems ambitious and successful, whether she stays at home or not. Most women have wealthy husbands, too, but I guess one must if she faces the choice of staying at home full time.

The topic of moms working or staying home has plagued me since I was a teenager. Growing up in a mostly single-parent household, I always expected to work. I remember hearing arguments and angry interrogations about how money was being spent, and I decided I never wanted to lose the power that comes with pulling your own financial weight. I also liked it when my mother worked; I imagined her being important and efficient, the kind of worker who everyone admires and depends on. I much preferred the image of her in a fast-paced office than mopping the floor or dusting the tables while my brother rolled across the floor.

Any woman who wants to have kids considers how she’s going to make career and family work: she either works full-time after a brief stint at home (usually 6 weeks to 3 months, if she’s fortunate to have maternity leave); she works part-time, or she stays home indefinitely, until her children don’t “need” her anymore. She thinks about this in a way her husband does not. There is usually no question about what a man will do once the baby is born: he will work. The woman, on the other hand, struggles with guilt either way, especially if she enjoys her job. Ever since Linda Hirshman published her subversive article, “Homeward Bound,” in a 2005 edition of American Prospect, about intelligent, promising young women opting out of the work force, I have thought more intensely about how women’s individual choices make a big impact in the larger political body. Hirshman follows ambitious women from Ivy League universities for a few years after they’re married and discovers that many of these women choose to stay home once they have children. She critiques feminism’s use of the word “choice” and claims that women within these milieu do not really have the choice they think they have; rather, the glass ceiling we heard so much about in the 70′s and 80′s now exists in the home. Instead of college-educated women making a difference in their accounting firms, law firms, or even government, they’re raising children and losing their ranks at the prestigious jobs they worked so hard to get. Hirshman wonders why and proposes some solutions that many Americans would scoff at (marry a liberal, have only one child, hire a nanny, but do NOT stay home).

As a teacher at a private girls’ high school, I discussed the article with my students. I always hoped that the young women in a mostly upper-middle-class environment, where 100% go on to college, would have grand plans for their future. Politicians, doctors, lawyers, professors…this was the point of a single-sex education, right? The confidence to set large goals and attain them without the self-consciousness that might plague girls from coed schools. But by and large, the girls I spoke to wanted to be at home with their kids, like their moms. They pictured having jobs–nurses, teachers–but stopping when it was time to make babies. It didn’t help that most of the young female teachers who taught them left once they had a baby, or that the female career-day speakers worked only part-time (despite having teenage children), or touted the importance of being home with kids rather than working (Mary Kay make-up representative included). Yet I had a few students who willingly confessed that they once thought or still don’t think their moms do important work during the day, and watching soaps or going to the gym (their description) seemed very leisurely compared to their stressful schoolwork. One even mentioned that her father’s favorite joke is how little his wife does around the house. After a heated discussion in one class, a student asked excitedly if I thought it was okay for her to be a model first and then a mom. I tried hard to avoid the question, but no doubt she saw my frown. When I took an informal survey during study hall about how girls felt having working moms vs. stay-at-home moms, they didn’t have horror stories either way, but the conclusion they came to was that I shouldn’t worry about my kids because a teacher gets the best of both worlds. The bell rang before I could ask, “What about other women with different careers? What are they supposed to do?”

Here is the inherent problem, I think, with advocating a mommy-at-home society: it will always be a male-centered society. When parents have daughters, those girls will be encouraged to stay at home and raise kids, just as their mothers did, and their mothers before. How does this differ from a Puritan or Victorian ethic, that girls should learn the cooking, sewing, and cleaning, since that’s all they’ll be expected to do? Sure, modern women who stay at home can raise sensitive, caring boys, who may or may not take women’s plight into consideration when they become senators. But why would the young girl who sees how easy it is for her mom to pick her up from piano lessons, drive her to her friends’, or volunteer to make cupcakes, choose a career? Why would she have higher ambitions if the work force isn’t all that important? If her mom’s main interest at the dinner table is her daughter’s latest crush? The only reason for her daughter to be smart then, to do well in school, is so she can travel in a similar circle of intelligent and ambitious men, marry one, and enjoy the pedicures that follow. Oh, and then raise kids who benefit from her college education. The boys are rewarded by going on to Ivy League schools and becoming CEOs, the girls by marrying CEOs and raising their boys to become CEOs. The cycle continues, with a couple of congressmen, judges, and doctors thrown in. Meanwhile, we’re back to the advertisements where Wellesley graduates smile next to ovens, but stick their heads in them when the camera is turned off.

Of course, this discussion centers around high-income households, where the family can afford to live on the father’s salary; most households in America do not have such an advantage. But unfortunately, it is the educated, wealthy class of people who make significant change in public policy. No one becomes president if he (or dare I say, she) doesn’t have the money and status to put him in the running. Sure, this argument about working mothers vs. stay-at-home mothers really only affects part of the population, but the privileged part of society is the part we naturally want to emulate, so the manners and lifestyle inevitably trickle down, at least to a large extent. (Otherwise we wouldn’t see people buying cars and clothes they can’t afford, and no one would call Target Tar-jay.)

The other side of this coin is that it is our society that must change. Momsrising is an organization vying for free child-healthcare and for law-mandated paid maternity leave (rather than this three-month-no-pay crap. As if most Americans can afford a three-month pay cut when they have a child). But how will our society change if no women are on the other side of their picket fences, using their power and leverage to change it?

But do individual choices matter that much within the larger system? Some women will stay home, some women will work. It’s always been this way. Maybe far fewer will work, but they will still be out there. And some women will be totally fulfilled raising their kids full-time. Should they be forced to work if raising their kids is what they’d prefer to do? Of course not. Just like women who love their jobs shouldn’t give them up out of guilt or a sense of responsibility that they must be at home all day with their children.

I always thought that I would work out of financial necessity, and there would be no choice to be made. But the more I thought about it, and the more my belly grew, I decided I wanted to be around for the little guy growing in me, as much for myself as for him. That’s right–a lot of moms don’t admit it, but staying home is as much for them as it is for their kids. Who wants to miss any of their children’s milestones? When I hear Ben coo-ing in the morning or see him grabbing his feet in Happy Baby pose, my heart lurches; he’s so precious, and my instinct is to care for him. I want to keep record of all the little accomplishments he makes, the different smiles, the way I can calm him down when he fusses (which changes from week to week), because before I know it, he’ll be moving out of the house. Also, to say that I could never be home with kids–it’s too boring–is suggesting that he’s somewhat of a burden in my life, or that I’m too good for it. But he’s a part of my life that makes it richer–not the only part, but a large one, just as my husband, friends, family, or fulfilling work are. Maybe women stay at home not out of a sense of obligation, but because they love their children, which biologically make sense–our bodies are made to carry them and feed them, why not raise them, too?

Over a much-needed dinner out, where I expressed these and other concerns, a close friend made it simple: different people have different jobs and roles in life. Some have a purpose to take care of kids. Some teach. Some manage huge banks. That’s it.

What I’ve been considering a society-wide problem could possibly be just my own confusion over which direction to choose. There is no right answer. So I’m going to see where life takes me. I’ll teach part time for a pittance, but money was never my biggest concern. I want to be important to my family and to others; I want to help people think in new ways, inspire them, have interesting discussions that make us better people.

And in the meantime, I will be thankful to those whose job it is to make baby swings, so I can go to the bathroom during the day, or check my email, or write this essay.

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