The Most Ignorant Thing I've Ever Heard

My friend Karen is pregnant with her first child. She's due in June and plans to arrange for childcare and return work full-time.

For most working moms, this is a typical scenario. The vast majority of us have no choice but to return to work. Others do so because they need that balance of time between being someone's Mom and someone's employee.

For those who have the financial stability to make it a choice, it's a personal one. I have incredible respect for women who stay home with their kids, and know that without question it can be as hard - if not harder - than going to work each day.

But for some reason, some women just have to make sure the world knows that what they're doing is better than what everyone else is doing. And today someone - a woman who stays home with her child - did just that to Karen.

"Women who put their kids in daycare just don't love them as much as women who stay home with their children," she said.

Wow.

This, to me, is truly the definition of an ignorant statement. How dare she generalize about every working mother in the world in such an offensive way? What does she know about my relationship with my children? And who made her the expert on parent/child relationships?

I wanted to spit. I wanted to scream. And part of me wanted to cry.

Most disturbing about that statement is that, for me, it hits the exact nerve I try to protect. As confident as I am in my decision to maintain my career while raising my children I often have moments, minutes, hours and days filled with doubt, particularly when one or both of my children are sick. It's in those moments that I wonder if it's selfish for me to try and maintain a career, and if I"m going to miss out on my children's childhood, and if it's going to be worth it in the end.

But when the self-doubt clouds dissipate, I always come back to the same conclusion. I am a better mom because I work and I think I am a better employee because I am a mom. I am in awe of moms who love staying at home each day with their children, because I don't know if I could.

My office walls are covered with their artwork, my windowsill is filled with framed photographs, and my computer desktop picture is of Jake sitting on Dave's lap. I talk about them constantly to my coworkers, call daycare at least once each day and am out the door each day by 4:15 so I can pick them up by 5.

I don't know how much other mothers love their children, and I would never try to guess. But I know at the core of my heart that my children and husband are the most important things in the world to me and I love them so much that sometimes it actually hurts.

So, well-meaning woman with the distasteful advice I have just this to say to you: shut up.