Mommy Wars

To tell you the truth, when Jamie first recommended this book, I kinda expected it to be a big yawn. (I should have known better--Jamie's book recommendations are always spot-on!) I am SO over the whole stay-home-vs-working-mom thing. I even blogged about this topic already, here and here. I used to ponder this issue when I was in my 30's, a fresh refugee from corporate America, and a shiny new mom myself. Now? I'm no longer in my 30's, and I've done a little of both sides (a very little of the working Mom side), and I really just think Moms should set things up however they want to. Whatever works for you, your husband, your finances, your family. Really--whatever. As for me, I'm a total SAHM, no career aspirations whatsoever. Been there, done that.

That was about a month ago. I got the book, couldn't put it down, loved it, hated it, and--here's the freaky part--in the past week I've submitted my resume for two different full-time jobs, and I couldn't be more excited about maybe (MAYBE) becoming a working mom, after all.

It wasn't because of the book, of course. Or was it? Not really--it was just part of a serendipitous (i.e., divinely orchestrated) combination of events that may wind up, you know, just changing my whole life around. No big deal. But actually--sorry--this post is not about me and my little career aspirations. Stay tuned for that. This post is about the book.

Just like the throngs of Amazon reviewers, I have lots to say about this book. I agree with the criticism that many of the women whose essays are included are somewhat out of touch with reality outside of NYC--socioeconomic reality, flyover-country reality, just-keeping-food-on-the-table reality. Yes--many of the women in "Mommy Wars" don't get it, on a lot of levels.

I really liked many of the women in the book. But not all. The mom I most wanted to go to "war" with said that she thinks that truth be told, mothers who choose to stay at home with their children full-time really are just getting satisfaction from the martyrdom aspect of it all. No kidding. My second-most hated one seemed pretty proud of herself simply for opting against an abortion when she found herself pregnant. Sheesh--am I the one who's out of touch with reality here?

Despite these two (very) bad apples, I really did find the book fascinating and absorbing. Inspiring, too, since almost all of the women were professional writers of one flavor or another, which is what I've always wanted to be when I grow up. I did get an overwhelming sense of the take-your-breath-away love for one's children that takes most of us by surprise when we have babies. There's nothing like it, and all the women in the book--even the one who frankly admitted, even to her son, that she'd have aborted him back in 1964 if it had been legal--all the women did seem to love their kids a lot.

You know what, though--abortion really did come up quite a bit in this book. I can only recall one essay in which the author actually admitted having had an abortion, but the general attitude in all of the essays was, to me, rather startling. Apparently, for sophisticated urban writer moms, abortion is no big deal at all, even though no one seems to doubt that there's a real baby already growing in there. This, my friends, is where we are after a generation of legal abortion. Next stop--out-and-out infanticide, I suppose. I pray not--and I pray for these poor women to somehow, sometime, know that enthroning of Self is not the key to a happy life.

Which leads me to the second way that this book made me feel like a disenfranchised freak (did I say that?). To me, all the essays had this undercurrent of selfishness--what's best for me, how can I be fulfilled, I've got these talents and ambition. Well, sure, but--really? Here I've been thinking that I shouldn't really be thinking about any of that. I've been under the impression that the key to a happy life is humility, self-sacrifice, self-effacement, serving others. Pride--defined as the worship of Self--is the greatest sin of all, is it not?

I'm not trying to sound self-righteous here, I promise. This whole humility vs. pursuing-worldly-success conundrum has had me so tangled up, it's why I hardly blogged at all last week. Because humility, yes, but we are supposed to use our talents and gifts to our very best ability. "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do," as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians. Our work--how we spend our time on Earth--is our offering back to our Creator. We're called to make it the very best we can, no?

Maybe I am the one who's out of touch with so-called reality here, and I'm just on a waaaay different wavelength from all the women whom Leslie Morgan Steiner found to include in her book about Mommy Wars. Maybe I'm just part of some fringe group of uber-Catholics who still try to follow the Church's teachings about how to have a happy life. I didn't realize I lived in such a bubble. But I like it here. I think I'm going to stay.

The book? Sure, I liked it. It made me think. A lot, obviously. And that's what good books do.