Does this make it a 360?
Doing 180 seems to have stirred up some strong feelings and I guess I wasn’t as clear as I thought. So here’s what I was trying to say: I was saying that if I stayed home and didn’t work at all, I’d become a little nutty and eventually be the mom wearing the funky hat. So I need to work, in some way, other than working to take care of my kids, even though I may not always want to. And it’s that tension of doing what I don’t always want to do, but seeing the benefit in spite of myself that makes me a grown woman and I’ll continue to work to keep the funky hat at bay. I agree with your comments:
There are many ways to define adulthood.
And it is about our choices, of which we sometimes have so many: work, don’t work, work a little, work a lot, work a lot with a little help, work a little with a little help, work a lot with a lot of help….
The subject of working and mothering is something that I’m going to continue to address, because that’s what grown women do…GOTCHA. No seriously, I am going to keep writing about it becasue it fascinates me and is something I’m trying to figure out.
As for Blogher, I’m glad you guys had such a great experience. As you know, mine was mixed.
August 9th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Girl, you don’t have to explain yourself—I totally understand the “funky hat” thing. It’s all about identity. Yes, we all have choices, but they are imperfect choices, and most of us don’t get our #1 choice, either. In my experience as a working mom, when you work outside the home you get to keep some of the identity that you carved out for yourself in the career world, separate and apart from your role as a mother. The “funky hat” you describe is about as far as you can get from the identity you have now. Even if you did leave your job to stay home with the kids, you don’t want to have to sacrifice your identity to the point of wearing that funky hat. I know, I get it, and I’m the same way.