Nina In New York: There's No Such Thing As A Mommy War

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

On any given day, I am engaged in a number of small-scale wars. I am in a war of attrition with my toddler and her increasingly terroristic demands, most of which focus around more and more and more Dora the Explorer. I am at war with myself over various guilt-driven internal struggles, from whether I should start working part time to how I'm performing as a parent to why I can't just say "salad" instead of "french fries," JUST ONCE. Speaking of, I'm in an epic battle with those last ten pounds of stubborn, stubborn baby (french fry) weight. And, of course, at various times throughout the year I find myself embroiled in one-sided wars with retail establishments over some personal injustice I feel they've perpetrated against me or humanity.

It's exhausting, being me. I know I'm not unique.

So, I have no time or energy for these so-called "mommy wars." I'm not even entirely sure what they are, because it seems like we moms vehemently disagree about a whole lot of things. But according to this article, an impassioned response to this strongly worded op-ed about how stay-at-home-moms are "unemployed:"

...originally the "mommy wars" were coined and popularized by Newsweek in 1990 to describe the conflict between working mothers and those who stayed at home. 'Tension between mothers is building as they increasingly choose divergent paths,' the article said.

It's funny—just yesterday, I found myself watching the 1989 Steve Martin comedy classic, Parenthood, on TV. I flipped to it in time to listen to a monologue by a frustrated Mary Steenburgen about the pressure she feels to go back to work now that her kids are older, despite the fact that she has realized she's happy to be home. She's good at it. But it means others look at her as though she has a lack of drive, as though she's lazy. Boy, it's amazing what goes over your head when you see a movie when you're eleven. All I'd remembered was the "diarrhea" song. Remember that? Yeah, it'll be in your head for the next three weeks. You're welcome.

The point is, it seems very little has changed in the past 25 or so years. Some moms are staying home with their kids. Some are working. We're all still super duper mean about it, and nobody seems content to just live and let live. The only thing that's different now is that we have the Internet, so the war has gone nuclear.

I saw a vociferous argument on Facebook surrounding this article written by a smug stay-at-home mom, about how she quit her job because she loves her kids more than she loves her career. That would seem to imply that if you don't stay home the reverse would be true, which is really nice. Then there's this article, which simultaneously informed me of and disputed a new claim that the amount of time you spend parenting your kid in person doesn't actually affect how the kid turns out, which is clearly a direct slap in the face to anyone who sacrifices the things they want in order to spend any quality time with their kids, which is pretty much everyone who has kids.

So, there's lots to discuss, and there are lots of discussions happening. We're offended. We're offensive. We're tired. We're tiresome.

Can't everyone just shut up and get along?

Here's the bottom line: our great grandmothers and grandmothers and mothers fought and scrapped to create a world in which women could work or not work, and we've, in turn, created not a debate of beliefs, but a crusade of self righteousness and guilt slinging. And I think the fundamental reason behind it is that, no matter which choice we've made as mothers (if we've even had a choice in the matter), we feel kind of crappy about it.

I'm not saying we are necessarily regretful. But I'm saying that this decision is an incredibly difficult one which never stops being complicated. It's fraught and filled with contradictions and conflict. We can't possibly stop struggling with whether we are doing the "right" thing for ourselves and our children, because we want so much. We want balance and happiness and peace and fulfillment, we want to raise confident, intelligent, sensitive kids, and for that there is no clear path. It's a murky road filled with potholes and brambles and wrong turns and over-extended metaphors. It's hard to feel 100% about anything we do, so we turn our self-doubt outward and it transforms into defensiveness, resentment and hostility. And thus is born an incredibly reductive and condescending media trend that takes an impossibly complex aspect of womanhood and turns it into the title of a Kate Hudson movie.

Let's support one another, tired as that cry may be. Are our roles in the world still so ill-defined? Are our identities still so nebulous and troublesome that we feel threatened when someone does something different with her life? Well, yeah. I guess so.

It shouldn't matter which perspective I'm writing from. I consider myself in all camps, or none. I'm a party of one and one of millions. Some people argue that anyone with the choice to stay home or work is coming from a place of privilege, and that we should feel lucky. That's true. But the larger truth of it is that we are all privileged to have our children and parent them, because a lot of people would give a limb to say the same. To call this a war is to assume that each "side" has a cause. There is no cause here. What are we fighting for?

Here are some things worth fighting for: funding for research into infant and fetal death and terminal childhood illnesses. Personal liberty. Equality. Polar bears. Cadbury chocolate in America. This isn't a war. It's a squabble. Now everyone go to your room and sit quietly until you're ready to cut it out and say you're sorry.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!