It happens more often than I'd like: I'm somewhere minding my own business and either a former acquaintance or a complete stranger who has discovered my professional proclivities asks how business is going. I stand there rather embarrassed and wonder how to answer when I work in my professional trade hardly at all right now and spend most of my waking hours saying things like 'don't ride your trike down the stairs' and 'no, you can't put peas up your nose.' Why am I the embarrassed one? Why is it a cultural faux pas to ask how motherhood is going rather than assuming my career is the only thing of import in my life? Since when is being a stay at home mother something categorized in the 'don't' ask, don't tell department?' There seems to be a cultural assumption that if you don't have to stay at home, you don't.
The last time this happened, I heard myself saying in answer to their perplexed look at the idea that I only work part time, says I, "I'd rather be a mom." And it was true and rather freeing! Society may look down on parenthood, see children as a nuisance, and wonder that anyone would spend any more time than necessary with their kids, especially with the ubiquity of public school and day care, but as a former kid who really didn't have parents (with my raising left to said ubiquitous institutions), let me tell you that society has it all backwards. Family is the most important thing to a developing person and to the future of society as a whole. We're raising a whole generation of screwed up citizens who think work or football or social media is the most important thing in life, which does not bode well for the future of our society. I think raising two or three happy, healthy, well adjusted people is a whole lot more important than whether I'm fulfilling the cultural norm, and it's okay, I'm just weird like that.
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