Is security found in work or in housekeeping?

This was this morning's headline on the column of Ellen Goodman, published in the Topeka Capital-Journal. Being a stay-at-home mom who also supports those who choose to work (yes, I consider myself a fairly strong feminist), I was drawn in by the headline.

Goodman talks about the difficulty of “opting in” to the workplace after having made the choice of “opting out.” She references Terry Hekker, a woman who apparently made a name for herself twenty-five years ago as a satisfied housewife and mother. After forty years of marriage, Terry is now getting divorced and lamenting, perhaps, that her choices have left her in a less than satisfactory position. Goodman quotes Hekker as saying:

"I read about the young mothers of today – educated, employed, self-sufficient – who drop out of the work force when they have children, and I worry and wonder. …Maybe they’ll be fine. But the fragility of modern marriage suggests that at least half of them may not be."

Despite the last couple of years when I have functioned as a part-time, working mother – I continue to strongly identify myself as a stay-at-home mom. Not only that, I am one who has chosen mothering as a career-of-sorts, even though it will never come with a pay check or the professional recognition some of my more career-minded friends have chosen. I recognize Hekker’s concerns. I’ve heard them. I’ve defended myself against them.

I guess this is the argument (among so many arguments for and against) against mothers staying at home that I find most disturbing. Mothers abandoned. Women who have “sacrificed their lives” and earning potential for a role in a relationship that is simply going to end, leaving them stranded with children, unable to afford the lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to.

It happens. I can’t deny it.

Even if you are merrily in love with a happily-ever-after kind of man… there’s always the possibility that LIFE beyond your control gets in the way. People are fragile. Things happen. Automobile accidents. Guns. Allergic reactions. These are things I have read about only today that have taken people from their families.

Let me see if I can get at what I’m really feeling here.

If you approach a relationship – make your choices and life decisions based on the idea that you are eventually going to end up alone – aren’t you just setting yourself up for divorce? There is this idea of the “starter” marriage. It’s almost taken for granted that young people will marry, divorce, and then marry again. I guess my question is, why bother? If you aren’t willing to stay and learn from a relationship, to commit the necessary energy to form a team – a true partnership – why bother getting married in the first place? Above all – why have kids?

But this isn’t the answer. I know perfectly well – in fact I have a good friend who married, had every intention of being with this man for the rest of her life, and then put herself through years of torture and misery to keep her happily-ever-after on track. It was an impossible situation. HE was an impossible man. Abusive. Controlling. Everything you don’t want your daughter to end up with. It’s true that some of us – her friends – never liked him from the start. It’s another unfortunate truth about people that sometimes love DOES make you blind. This is human nature. Perhaps it is one of our many, many flaws. Sometimes you are looking so hard for that happily-ever-after that you can’t seem to see that you’re molding it with spoiled clay.

And there are others. What about the young woman whose husband was diagnosed with cancer within a year after their marriage? What about the wife whose husband determined his sexual preference was other than what he’d tried to make himself believe for ten years of marriage? What about the single, fiery car accident that changes the life of a woman and her unborn child in an instant?

Life isn’t always pretty, or predictable… and it’s certainly not always easy. It’s not always what we envision. It’s not always what we have planned. Sometimes LIFE just happens and we have no way of controlling what becomes of it.

So, given that, would it be best to limit our options even when things are going our way? Should we deny ourselves the choice of full-time parenting, or even sharing the enormity of parenting and bread-winning with a capable and willing partner just BECAUSE things may not always be this way?

I know nothing of Terry Hekker. I can’t say why her marriage has ended or advise her on getting back in the work force in able to create a sustainable income for herself. But if I close my eyes and just try to imagine – it’s difficult – but just try to picture myself in a position tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or fifteen years from now – where my husband, my best friend and partner, is gone for reasons of his choosing or not… this is what I see…

I would stumble. I would likely fall. I would weep with remorse. I would rage about the unfairness of it all. Then, after some amount of grieving, I would pick myself back up, make a plan, and life would go on. It wouldn’t be easy. It certainly wouldn’t be the way I had hoped things would turn out. But the one thing I KNOW I would not do – I would never regret the time I have given to my kids. They are one change that I can be sure about. They are going to grow up. They are not going to need me forever. That is something I can count on and giving them this time, now, while I have the option, is worth every bit of risk I might be taking for events I cannot foresee.

I guess what I’m feeling is that you can’t allow yourself to live for all the worst case scenarios. You have to make your choices based on today. There is no goal more worthy than your children. IF you have children (and this is a choice, too), this is a choice you have made, as far as I’m concerned.

Being a full-time mother is enough, for today. Being there for my children, talking with them, learning with them, playing with them, cuddling with them, for every hour that I have the opportunity… that’s what I’m choosing today. Regardless of what tomorrow brings, I will not regret what I’ve done today.

I hope that Terry Hekker gets back on her feet and sees that this was true for her, as well.