“From Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique to the “Mommy Wars” and the “Opt-Out Revolution,” every decade has its debate over a mother’s decision to work or stay home with children.” (http://www.wmmsurveys.com/WhatMomsChoose.pdf)The world is very different now than it was even just 20 years ago. Many mothers have to work to make sure their families can live and have basic needs because one income just is not enough any more.
Every mother has different circumstances to decide weather to stay home with their children or to resume work as soon as they can. Some families need the extra money to support their children while others make enough to live comfortably while only the father works. The world will never be happy with the way families choose to raise their children. Mothers that works and stay-at-home moms may raise their children differently, but neither is better than the other. Weather they are stay-at-home moms or working moms society will find a way to discriminate them.
Employed mothers seem to always get the bad end of the deal. Just because a mother works does not mean that she is a bad mother. Her children may act out and people just assume that it is probably because she is a working mom and does not spend much time with her children. People do not look into the situation. That mom may be a mom that works all day long and comes home and goes straight to bed, but she may also be a loving mother that comes home and cooks dinner for her family and spends quality time with them outside of work. Her children may just be having a rough time at school or with friends.
Research shows that daughters of employed mothers have higher academic achievement and greater career success. They have also been found to be more independent and show less acting-out behavior. Studies have shown that sons of employed mothers have lower I.Q scores. It has also been documented that the sons did well academically but their was a strain on their father-son relationship because men felt as if the women were running the family. According to The Effects of the Mother’s Employment on the Family and the Child the majority of sons and daughters of employed mothers agreed that men could do female activities and women could do male activities.
They said that both men and women were equal and that if a women was working all day it was only fair if her spouse helped do chores around their home. Children of working mothers have been shown to be more responsible at a younger age. If their mom is working the children would be asked to help do chores around the house. They also have to learn to do things on their own sometimes because with their mom working they may not always be there at the exact time that they need them. A mother being employed does have some negative effects on a family, but for the most part a working mothers children showed higher test scores, good behavior, and daughters seemed to have more self-esteem.
From television, people just assume that stay-at-home have the perfect families. On TV, the kids of stay-at-home moms do great in school and behave really well, while the moms have super clean homes and do absolutely everything anyone could think of for their family. In all actuality most stay-at-home moms have young children that they are constantly chasing around and taking care of so their homes may never really be that super clean house. They spend their days cleaning up after their children, cooking meals for their families, and spending quality time with their children teaching them things. Studies have actually shown that children with stay-at-home mothers score lower on many school standardized tests and IQ tests.
It has also been shown that children in these families do not believe that the mother can do things that their father can do, and that their father should not have to help clean and cook in the home. In most of the studies done in The Effects of the Mother’s Employment on the Family and the Child, the children of stay-at-home moms scored lower on nearly almost every test. The children seemed to be slower in school and less sociable. It was harder for them to interact with other children because most of them had just been around their mother until it was time for them to begin their schooling years. A lot of the children also had behavior issues. They got too much attention as a child so they were used to being the center of attention. They would act in in school so classmates and teachers would notice and give them the attention they were so used to always receiving.
These children were also less independent. They were used to having everything handed to them by their mothers and expected everyone to just do everything for them. Children with stay-at-home moms struggle more in school and have a harder time picking up on things. Although studies have shown many negative things about children with stay-at-home moms, there are also many benefits. “Some experts in early childhood development believe there’s no substitute for the consistency and nurturing of parental care, especially if the alternative is poorly funded childcare.” (http://www.babycenter.com/0_staying-at-home-pros-and-cons_6025.bc) Studies have shown that children that spend all day in daycares have more stress and agression than the ones cared for at home.
Stay-at-home mothers have the advantage of knowing that their children are being taken care of by a person that will always be around. They also get to be there for all of their childrens ‘firsts’ and it is not a stranger getting to see them walk or talk first. Staying home with children saves families a lot of money, because daycares can be very expensive. Stay-at-home moms are not how they are portrayed on television, but they are not bad mothers it is great that they can spend so much time with their children while they are young.
Society today discriminates on everything that they can get their hands on. Yes, they do discriminate against employed mothers who wish to have flexible work schedules. Most people that do not have children do not understand everything that comes being a mother. Many companies do not want to hire mothers because they are afraid that they are less committed to their job and less flexible. They are also afraid that right after training, or not long after being in the job, they would leave to have another child. “As a nation, we cannot afford to keep shorting mothers’ hiring and pay when children are relying on them.” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2011/01/20/companies-reluctant-to-hire-working-moms-jobs-interview-employment-economy-women/) Many companies are afraid that not long after staring their job, that the mothers would leave because they miss being with their child all day.
Companies do not even want to give mothers a chance at trying to earn money for their families. The amount of businesses hiring mothers with young children gets smaller and smaller every year. They are afraid that they take off too much time to tend to their children, which will only hurt the businesses. Even though it seems that society only wants to discriminate against working mothers, they also discriminate against stay-at-home mothers. If a mother stays home all day and takes care of her children, other parents assume that her house should be spotless all of the time.
They also constantly have people going around saying how they spend money that ‘is not theirs’ because they did not earn it, their spouse did. They say that stay-at-home moms do not contribute to their families finances and they should not be allowed to just spend any amount of money that they want. Finally, unemployed moms are discriminated against because people say they did not use their education and they let it go to waste. No matter where people are, what they do, or how they raise their children, society will always find a way to discriminate them.
Mothers that stay at home and mothers that are employed raise their children differently, but that does not mean that one way is better than the other, and that does not stop the way that society will find something bad in it and discriminate them. Every family is different, and some mothers want to stay home with their children, but they can not financially do it. The world today is not the same world that people lived in even just 20 years ago, because people in it will never be happy with the way that families choose to raise their children.
Works Cited
“Dr. Phil Stay-at-home Mom vs. Working Mom show – PhD in Parenting – PhD in Parenting.”PhD in Parenting. SquareSpace, 2008. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .
Goudreau, Jenna. “Companies Reluctant To Hire Working Moms.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 20 Jan. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .
“Staying at Home: Pros and Cons.” BabyCenter. BabyCenter, L.L.C, 1997. Web.
