All Mommies Care: the Daycare Thinky Post

During the run-up to Canada's last federal election, much was made of the Liberal party's recently signed national child care strategy as a key campaign issue. Discussion of the role of the federal government in supporting or managing the care of children seemed to split into mutually exclusive, strident, and passionate camps along ideological lines. Basically, the split was characterized thus: SAHMs espousing traditional values felt slighted, insulted, and overcharged for bossy socialist regulated day care in variously insitutionalized settings; working mothers dismissed the SAHMs as retrograde unenlightened housewives with no sense of solidarity. Of course, there was some nuance allowed: what about the expense of daycare for working families? what about the gap between minimum wage and the cost of care? what about the lack of available spots, at any price?

The letters published on this issue in my local paper seemed to indicate that moms (and it was by and large women self-identifying as mothers who wrote in) were indeed very angry with each other, very much split into two camps: one would hiss, "a child's place is in the home and why should the income tax structure penalize me for this natural desire to raise my own children?", while the other would sniff "my god almighty, you poor uneducated unambitious slob--just because you want to watch Young and the Restless all day doesn't mean us professionals can give up our lives."

It was pretty awful.

I can say I tended more to the latter position that the former: from what I read it seemed that the kind of SAHM who wrote to the paper was indeed very much opposed to things--career, autonomy, regulated institutional child care--that I hold dear.

Since I have started blogging, my world has greatly expanded, and my vision of what motherhood is has been enriched. GingaJoy is right: the SAHMs and the working moms seem to get along, by and large, just fine, at least in this little corner of the momosphere.

Why?

Well, it is clear from every blog that I read that every single one of you cares deeply about your child/children, is acutely conscious of the work involved in bringing a child into the world, and raising that child with love, with respect, and with skill. Every single one of you seeks to balance Woman against Mother, autonomy against partnership, personal growth against sacrifice for the greater good. Every single one of you, whether you stay at home with your children, have a nanny in your home, or drop your child off at formal or informal settings of care. You are each individuals, with different skills and interests, certainly, but I find that we share a fundamental care for our children, a commonality that is our strength in this bloggy space, the glue that holds us all to each other as readers and writers.

We are kind to each other, even in the very multiplicity of our choices and paths: when I wrote about how much I love my job, many of you who stay at home wrote to support me. When I wrote about being pressured into daycare, many of you wrote of similar experiences and how hard they were for you. When I wrote about trying to pump often enough for Miss Baby you were all very supportive of continuing that or mixing formula into the routine, whatever worked best in our individual situation. We all seem to be attuned to nuance and specificity, eager to support one another, to offer comfort rather than judgment.

Wouldn't our political debates about child care be so much more productive if we could all bring this kindness, this empathy, out into the public sphere with us? But how? I feel so very kindly towards you, internet mommies, because I have come to know you as mothers (and father, Denguy) and as people, and my understanding of family is thus enriched.

Can we tell our stories, and listen to others' stories, with this kind of kindness, in the real world?

This blog is my story, a meandering tale of one mom who works, one mom who is grateful to have lucked into a spot at her campus daycare, but who is now often found lying awake in bed, worrying about her baby girl! in amongst strangers! for hours and hours a day! A mom who barely made it to six months of maternity leave with her sanity intact, who is so grateful to be doing the work she loves while her husband stays home for the next six months of her daughter's life. Whose life and family is in so much better balance for the variety in her day.

I respect and admire the SAHMs I've 'met' by blogging. You are smart smart women, funny and caring. You seem happy to be at home. You are women I would gladly be friends with IRL. And the working mommies, oh how I begin to know your world too: the split between home and work, the fretting about the care of your darling darling children, the hard work of coming and going and balancing. The joy of coming home to be in your families.

My position is this: families need to have access--meaningful and ample opportunity--to supports for the care of their children. Families who forego one whole income in order to provide stable home care for their children need to have their sacrifices recognized, need to have this choice made more affordable. Families in which both parents need, for financial or personal reasons, to work outside the home--hey, families where both parents want to work outside the home--deserve to have access to competent, safe, loving child care so that this choice doesn't feel as though it entails sacrifice of children's happiness. As it stands, and from what I can see, one-income families pay a disproportionate tax burden for the choice they make for the good of their families. Also, families in which both parents work outside the home face severe stress, in an economy of scarcity, finding any kind of safe care at all for their children, let alone care of choice, or care that is affordable.

It seems to me that none of this is ideal. And that there's not much to be gained by pitting mommy against mommy. Not that that's what happens here, in the momosphere: far from it, in fact. But how to change the political debate.

I wish you and your families, children and significant others, all the very best happiness and security and satisfaction in devising the arrangements of home and work that suit you best. I wish this to be as friction-free as it can be. What I know is this: we love our children dearly, and wish the very best for them. But it's too damn hard to get it.