Women have been fighting for equal rights ever since the beginning of time. Thanks to some badass women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and even Madonna, we’ve come a long way. Women have gained the right to vote, the right to own our own home, the right to file for a divorce, and to even become CEO’s of our own companies. But somewhere along the way our society got caught up in the triumph and we forgot to say “it’s okay if you don’t want to be a CEO. Stay at home moms are cool too”
Don’t get me wrong I’m forever thankful for every single woman who has undergone any sort of oppression to give me the rights which I have today. But tell me why it is that when people ask me what I want to do as a “career” and what I want to do with my life, when I tell them to be a stay at home mom, they laugh.
“Then why are you at college?”
“That’s not a real job.”
“That’s all you want to do?”
“Don’t you have goals?”
For the first several years of my life my mother quit her job to stay at home and raise my brothers and I. We we’re blessed enough that we didn’t need two incomes, and we could live off just my father’s perfectly fine. Nonetheless, it was my mother’s top priority to put the needs of her babies’ first and she wasn’t going to work unless she absolutely needed to. Nurturing and raising her children was her job.
Before I go any further, let me yield a disclaimer: This is not a slam to single mothers who have no options. The grind that you ladies undergo to provide your kids with a happy life deserves the upmost respect. This is also not a jab at those families who do need two incomes to make ends meet. I see your struggle and I would never judge or slander it. I’m talking to the rest of society that believes that being a stay at home mother is not a real job because it doesn’t generate some sort of income. I’m talking to the career-obsessed woman who schedules a business meeting at the same time as her son’s baseball game. There is an ugly side to feminism and it’s taking the focus off the family.
The major social issues which we face as a nation today, stem from the lack of a fundamental family unit. Multiples studies have shown that children who grow up with their mother around the very first months of their lives, when they crucially need their mother the most, excel so much more at all aspects of life. I guarantee you that almost all of the evil and hateful acts we see in our world today, are caused by people who have never had someone around to show them what real love and affection was –someone to nurture and guide them as a young child.
Feminism has done a revolutionary job at convincing women that we are intellectual, strong, important, and powerful. But I shouldn’t have to feel ashamed when telling people that I don’t want to be all of that. I shouldn’t feel guilty or like I’m wasting my intellectual ambition on something “useless” when in actuality, devoted mothers are the backbone of this country. Being a mother, is one of the most valuable jobs in the world.
So if you want to be a lawyer, or a surgeon, or even President of the United States, that’s okay. Go for it! Or if find someone you love and want to marry and start a family with and then eventually just become a stay at home mother, then that’s okay too. That’s the cool thing about feminism; it allows us options.
But one day when you are a successful business women and let’s say you do have a child, please remember, you’re a mother first.
