Bring your kid to work
More discussions about moms, and where they do and should work, and what is and isn’t feminist, from Dooce. I have no stake here: I don’t have kids, though I might, one day — one never knows — and I know that, if I had the entirely free choice, I wouldn’t work, not fulltime. (No choices are entirely free, obviously, and I don’t in any way have this choice anyhow.)
But she asks: what did your mother do? Did your mother stay at home? Did she work? And how did you feel about what she did? If you could change anything about what she did what would that be?
My mother worked until we got my sister, then she stayed at home for a while, worked again, stayed at home. She now works — from home — and loves her job. (She has generally enjoyed her jobs, as has my father.) Apparently when she decided to stay at home when my sister was a baby and I was almost 5, I told my carpool, very excited, that my mother would be at home all the time. I do not remember this, it’s just a story I was told.
What I do remember is loving my babysitters so very much. (Except a babysitter I had later, who was verbally and — though I don’t remember this — physically abusive. I actually have an amusing-ish story about this. Well, amusing to me, but I have bad taste.) I remember being *so excited* when I got to visit my mother’s office.
And now — both my parents say they wouldn’t stop working their current jobs if they won a huge lottery. This is what I’d hope for: that you have the chance to do something you really love.