Mommy wars are always going on, even in time of peace around the world.
Attention, stay at home moms! It is 4:11 in the afternoon on Tuesday. Quick! Is your house spotless clean? Laundry all fresh as a flower, folded and put away in color-coordinated order? Bathrooms clean, dinner on, and kids sitting quietly at the table doing their homework? Are you wearing pearls and heels? Make-up freshly applied? Waiting for daddy to come through the door? Ready for a night of un-interrupted passion? Anyone? Come on…someone…
Not me… 4:11 in the afternoon at my house is a backpack strewn, feed me I need a snack, drive me here, there, and everywhere kind of chaos. With four kids and a husband, I refer to it as re-entering the atmosphere. You should have come yesterday. The house was perfect….yesterday.
Stay at home mom Caitlin Flanagan paints a different canvas. Please don’t confuse her with the title of “housewife.” That term was so last century. Ironically in her writings, this where Caitlin spends most of her relative time.
The heat is on, and the mommy wars are in full swing. Iraq? Last year’s news. Illegal Immigration? Whatever! Mommy Wars…Whohoo!! Bring it on!
Are you kidding me? I don’t have time for a war of mothers!
I have googled myself to death on the subject of the “Mommy Wars.” High on the non-feminist vs. feminist hit list? Caitlin Flanagan. She claims to be the polar opposite of those fighting for a mothers right to work, and she insists a womans place is in the home catering to her family.
I would agree wholeheartedly if she were a traditionalist. I am very high on the stay at home and nurture your family advocacy list, but this lady has my blood boiling!
Is she the spokesperson for the real stay at home mom? An author who got a few lucky breaks in the magazine world. A just-released book to embrace our inner suppressed homemaker selves? I perused the book. She is all over, and nowhere all at the same time. She is more of a flibbertigibbet. And, she is a WORKING mother. The difference is that she does her full salary (and I am sure with some great benefits) work at home. Does that make her the same as a stay at home mom? Yes, and no. She cannot say in truth that she is dedicated one hundred percent to her children. My husband is a stay at home dad two days a week. Where else will he go on his days off? He is dedicated to the children and me on those days. Is it one hundred percent? Heaven’s no! More often than not, he is thinking of the job he has to do when he gets back to work. Is it one hundred percent for anyone if we are doing real math?
Caitlin Flanagan writes for the very well respected Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker. Ms. Flanagan is a self-professed “Martha worshipping” (she once disdained, but now can appreciate) stay at home mother of eight-year-old twin boys. Her bio sounds OK;so far. Being a domestic goddess myself, I can buy that. Gosh her hands must be full with twin boys! The dirty laundry alone must nearly kill her!
But dear readers go deeper. Ms. Flanagan is a pampered wife of a Mattel Entertainment Executive living in Hancock Park, California. She has plenty of help with which to do the dirty work of the home. In her book, she touts how fast her nanny was able to strip and change sheets while handling a stomach flu-ridden child. Poor Mommy Flanagan was having to witness such a site!
Before you take my head off, thinking petty jealousy, stick with me…I have no issue with Ms. Flanagan living the good life. She could be as pampered and manicured as one could dream. So much of what she writes is such a contradiction that I cant tell if she is indulged or repressed. In one article I read, she says she is “far too educated and uppity to have knuckled down and learned anything about stain removal.” So she is not versed in the art of housework. So what? Why take on the woman who admitted she is not suited to the house, and would instead be doing something else outside. The woman who feels she may be a better mother to her children if she is not depressed and hating her job at home. Maybe the boardroom fulfills her and makes her better. I take issue when Caitlin puts the working mom’s head in the guillotine and fans the flames of war.
I am still trying to discern the difference between the upper-middle-class working mother and professional working mother that she writes about. She claims to be a professional mother. Higher University degree, I assume. Perhaps her degree is from a more prestigious University. That is an entirely different war.
Ms. Flanagan eschews the working professional/upper-middle-class mother who hires a nanny to care for their children. She goes on in one of her articles to say that a child who loves his nanny is wishing instead for his mother.
As a former nanny of many years, I can buy what Ms. Flanagan says about this topic. Children are secure that way. They love the one that gives them love, the moment they are with them. It is called security. Of course, a young child would desire the mother. That same child will want her mother who is standing ten feet across the room while the nanny handles her as she is projectile vomiting. Ms. Flanagan can see through her magic “nanny finding” glasses the difference between the working mother’s nanny and the stay at home mothers’ nanny. Apparently, birds of a feather, in this case, do not flock together. It is ok for her to be a stay at home mother and to have a nanny. But not you, you selfish working mother! She refers to the working mother’s nannies as servants. Weren’t servants owned? A nanny illegal or not is free to come and go as they please, and they often do. The term servant is really for third world countries where they are paid one to two dollars a day for slave labor.
Caitlin is well educated and is a stay at home mom by choice. She makes sure her husband has a hot meal waiting when he comes home. She sees to it that her home is in perfect order. She never misses anything in her childrens lives! Her home is glorious, and she is practically perfect. Very Martha-esque in every way!
What do Caitlin and Martha have in common? Masters of the game “Smoke and Mirrors.” Masterful really! Martha has sold millions on being skillful in the domestic arts. Attention to detail in the home has made Martha very wealthy indeed! Caitlin has a million or more readers reading her tales of the blissfully happy homemaker who nurtures and cares for her husband and children.
Of course, we all know the smoke and mirrors game of Martha Stewart. She barely cared for her only child when she was growing up. Martha served time in federal prison, and now she lives an impossible life of perfection that can only be seen in magazines. Who among us has not wanted for one moment the perfect family room all fluffed and dusted, just to have grubby little people come in and mess it all up? Marthas newest home is color coordinated right down to the animals that roam the grounds. That, my friend, is just plain weird. As a photographer, I know it takes hours of “staging” to get the staged room to look just right for a magazine shoot. Hours! Martha can live this way because she has no children and no husband. She is legendary in her treatment of her hired help. Lord help the guy who did not fluff the pillow just so! Smoke and mirrors and unattainable for the average healthy family.
Both ladies had the right connections at the right time with which to spin their lifestyles of perceived perfection and the proper way for us all to live. Marthas ex-husband published her first book, and Caitlin’s friend got her the writing gig at Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker followed.
The truth about Caitlin Flanagan is that she lives in a glass house and should probably be last in line to cast stones at the working mother. As a so-called “stay at home mom”, she employed a full-time nanny from the time her children were born until they were toddlers. She speaks of the pity and disdain she had for the working mothers that dropped their children at the daycare center near her home. She has never, and I repeat (can this be so?) never changed dirty bed linen. She is not skilled nor is she desirous in pursuing the art of cooking (where does the hot food come from?). She has a weekly organizer (who among us would not kill for that one alone) come to her home and admits to not cleaning up after her children (remember the flu incident?). I have not made any of this up! This information is all taken from pages and pages of articles on the web. In last months issue of Elle, she was featured in a section where although she would own up to domestic help, Ms. Flanagan will not talk about how much child-care she has now. It probably would not fare well with the real stay at home moms if we were to find out that after her kids spend the day in school, they were handed over to a nanny or caregiver at home. She does not consider herself a working mother, because she endures the task of writing for prestigious publications at home.
It is not my intention to sound bitter. Part of our problem as mothers lies in who we put up on the public pedestal and call a model for gracious living.
Caitlin Flanagan rakes the working mother over the coals, and as a stay at home mother, I take umbrage.
She is no different than the working mother who is outside her home that she attacks in her articles. She hires the help she needs or wants to do the jobs she does not wish to or can’t do. The only slight difference is that she is there while her children are being cared for by hired help. I have to tell you, as a former nanny, that is just plain uncomfortable. The mother at home who has a tag along nanny, mothers at whim. Orders the nanny around in front of the children as if a common servant. In her book, she speaks of ordering her nanny to do what she wanted to on the spot, and how the nanny followed the order, most of the time. It is all so degrading. I hated being a mommy tag-a-long. Perhaps, it is the stay at home mother that has a nanny following her that is employing a “servant”. The working mother counts on the nanny to do the job outlined for her in the mothers absence.
Ms. Flanagan further criticizes working mothers and uses Mary Poppins as an argument stating “It is Mary Poppins, who earns the deepest love a child has to offer: that which is bound in his trusting dependence on the person who provides his physical care.”
I will agree with Ms. Flanagan here, except that her theory is flawed. Mary Poppins worked for a wealthy family with a stay at home mother. Much like Ms. Flanagan herself. Was this a mirrored look into Ms. Flanagan’s own life? Did the children bond to the nanny who provided the physical care? Ms. Flanagan speaks of sacrificing her happiness to care for her children. She made an “educated” choice to stay home. Therefore, where exactly is the sacrifice? Why can’t one be happy and raise their children?
In this war of words between the working mother and the stay at home mother that has hi-jacked the mainstream media, is it really in the best interest to judge? Forgetting for a moment the mother who has no choice but to work, it is the mother who chooses to work and hire the best possible help to care for her children that cannot be attacked at this stage of the game. This “Mommy War” is not about feminism. It is about choice.
I have two daughters about to graduate high school. How can I insist on good grades, and a college education, but then demand that they marry well, hire nannies and stay home. Our daughters are outnumbering the men in higher education at this point.
Do I not want them to marry well? Of course, I do. But I also want them to achieve professional success. Both have very high aspirations. I also want their marriages to endure. I am expecting loads of grandchildren! And I want them to stay home if they choose and not hide it, if like their mother before them they work from a home office. I want my daughters to do what is right for them and their spouses. I also want them to respect the choices of their female peers.
Last week, an exhausted working mother called me as she walked her dog late at night. Most days she loves her career. She is a Ph.D. and makes a difference in the world of higher education. On this day, she wanted to throw it all in and give up. She openly dreamed of a summer with no work and spending lazy days reading for pleasure. We have known each other since high school and took different paths in life. She was always the top of her class. She worked very hard, but to the casual observer, it seemed with an ease that she achieved the highest level of excellence. She is one of the brightest people I know, and I am honored to be counted among her friends. Her husband claims her brownies to be the best in the land. Her garden is worthy of awards. She is a philanthropist, she is a professional, and she is a terrific mother. So what was it that got her all out of sorts?
It was ten o’clock at night, and she still had laundry to finish.
She is, in the end, your average mom, just like me! Piles and piles of dirty, stinking laundry! Everyone in life has to decide what to do with the dirty laundry!
She never puts me down for my choice to stay home. Quite the contrary, she is one of my biggest fans! Different path during the day, but at night and on the off hours, she is not that much different than me. She cooks, she cleans, gardens, and nurtures, and on top of it all, she tackles the never-ending laundry pile. I have countless professional female friends with the same story.
In every house across America, the common thread we all share, and perhaps the one thing that will put an end to the unpleasant mommy wars. Dirty Laundry!
Here is to the choices you make! And this includes Caitlin Flanagan.