Whether I like it or not, my advocacy has landed me smack in the middle of the mommy wars. I never intended it to be this way. I have tried to be as nuanced and non-judgmental as possible in my posts. My primary objective has always been to alleviate maternal guilt by sharing data on how flexible and resilient children are, how there are many possible ways to raise a healthy and happy child, and how the primary concern in the contemporary post-industrial context should actually be mothers’ mental health (given the high rates of postpartum depression and anxiety).
Unfortunately, there is no pleasing everyone. Emotions are too high and opinions are too strong. It feels similar to the abortion debate in that there is no room for a nuanced view. You are either pro-choice or pro-life. You can’t be pro-choice up to 14 weeks, and later if it’s dangerous for the mother (as is the case in most European countries). When it comes to a mother’s “choice” to work or stay home, it feels like mothers in this country either believe that childcare is bad or it’s not, being a working mom is bad or it’s not. There’s no middle lane.
This is silly. I don’t have the data to back me up, but I think most of us actually want the same thing. It’s not Option A or Option B; it’s somewhere in between. My next post will be dedicated to the importance of flex work and accommodating mothers’ desire to blend work and childcare, but for now I want to focus on the reasons why this debate is so emotionally fraught.
I don’t identify as a working mom or a stay-at-home mom. I have spent long stretches (many months in a row at times) where I dedicated myself exclusively to the care of my children. This was often not by choice, but rather due to temporary lapses in childcare over which I had little control. Even now that my son has started public kindergarten, my daughter is home with me most mornings because she was truly unhappy in daycare. I am able to write while she is with me, though not always without interruption, and I am lucky to have work that is so flexible. I mention this because I think I understand both sides. I’ve done both. I know what it’s like to work full-time in a demanding tech job and hand your child over to the care of others for the entire day. I know the guilt that comes with tearful drop-offs. I also know what it’s like to stay home with your children all day, day after day, for months. I know the itch that comes with feeling like you are wasting your professional talents, the simultaneous boredom and stress of caring for small children alone in a single family home.
One thing that is so tricky about this conversation and that I have personally struggled with since becoming a mother is: how much of this is about guilt and how much of it is about what we want as a women with an identity outside of motherhood. The guilt goes both ways. Women who stay at home feel guilty because they worry they are wasting their education and professional skills. Women who work feel guilty because they are afraid that spending too much time away is not good for their babies. Each party is trying to convince the other that if they could just let go of their guilt, they would see the light and change sides. That may be true for some moms, but not for all.
Because I spend a lot of time talking about how raising children collectively is completely natural and part of our evolutionary history as a species, I tend to get a lot of push-back from stay-at-home moms. Most of them are trying to convince me that being a stay-at-home mom is better for two reasons.
The first is that the work of mothering is inherently more rewarding, and if working moms could recognize that, and let go of their personal ambitions and achievement conditioning, we’d all be happier home with the kids. For these moms, the main complaint is that contemporary Western society does not value the work that mothers do. They feel like they are at the bottom of the totem pole, ashamed to admit what they “do” for a living. (I should note that this is mainly an issue for middle and upper-class, highly-educated stay-at-home moms). The argument goes that, because society does not value mother work, mothers who work do so to satisfy their own ambition, rather than giving themselves over to the less-valued, but ultimately more rewarding, work of raising children.
That may be partially true but I, for one, don’t find the work of raising children to be particularly rewarding. I love my children and I do want to spend time with them but for the most part, I would rather be writing than changing diapers, dealing with meltdowns, and fetching snacks. To put it in lay terms, the day to day work of mothering young children (in my humble opinion) sucks. This has nothing to do with ambition and everything to do with the fact that I am enjoying myself far more right now, writing this sentence, drinking a cup of hot coffee, than I would be changing another pair of pee pee pants and mopping up the floor. Maybe I am being a bit unfair here. Not every moment of parenting is so tedious, but studies on the subject have shown that women tend to rank active childcare as being roughly on par with vacuuming, in terms of average enjoyability.
Even if we don’t love our work, most of us get something out of our professional lives that we can’t get out of motherhood. For some, that may be social connection. I have a friend who used to work as a receptionist for a local dentist. Since her salary did not cover the cost of childcare, she opted out, but she recently confessed to me that she misses it. Why? Mostly because she got along well with the other receptionist and she misses that regular adult social interaction (which is glaringly absent from her days as a stay-at-home mother). For others (like me) the job of writing is pretty lonely, but I love having peace and quiet, time to sort through my own thoughts on motherhood, sip my coffee while it’s still hot, and just have some emotional and physical distance from my kids. Neither of these reasons have anything to do with ambition and everything to do with personal preference.
On the other hand, I also know mothers who struggle with leaving their children for long hours in order to work at a job that they feel mostly ambivalent about. I felt this way when I had to return to my tech job after the end of my maternity leave with my first child. There were things that I appreciated about being back at work (peace and quiet, an opportunity to use my brain in a different way, and - again - drink my coffee while it was still hot) but I also felt guilty about leaving my son in daycare all day so I could do…what? I was the product manager for a software project that felt doomed to fail. I was making plenty of money but the work felt meaningless and I would have preferred to spend more time with my baby. I felt that I needed that job at the time, mainly for financial reasons but also because I was scared of opting out entirely, there was no part-time option, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to get back into the workforce if I left. So it didn’t really feel like “choice.”
The point I am trying to make here is that when mothers criticize other mothers’ decision to work, on the grounds that it is somehow less fulfilling than being home with children, they fail to understand the real reasons why women work. Women work for many reasons other than to satisfy their own ambition. Many do so out of economic necessity. Many do so because they find intrinsic enjoyment in their work. Many do so because they like the social aspect. Many do it because they just want a break from their children. All of these reasons are legitimate. Are there some women out there who would benefit from letting go of their attachment to personal achievement and status, who would actually enjoy themselves more if they spent more time with their children? Absolutely. But I believe this actually characterizes a slim majority of working moms.
So I don’t really buy the argument that mother work is inherently more fulfilling, but I do find it much less worrisome than the second argument I often hear: that working is actually harmful for your children. I hear a lot of stay-at-home moms saying that they don’t really enjoy it, nor do they find it rewarding, but they feel they have to do it, for the sake of their children. In my experience, these are the judgey moms: the ones who feel the most need to actively shame working mothers for their choices. Because they feel that their own choice was a sacrifice, they resent others who don’t make the same sacrifice. It feels like cheating. If it’s true that the work they are doing can be done equally well (or well enough) by someone else - potentially someone with fewer degrees and qualifications - then that inevitably devalues their work. If, on the other hand, a child spending more time with the mother has a real impact on his psychological and emotional well-being (or intelligence or social skills or whatever it is people care about most) then that means that their work is valuable, even if it’s unpaid, and their sacrifice is worth it.
The best data we have seem to suggest that, like with so many things, the answer lies somewhere in between. Mothering does matter and, for children under three, spending less than 30 hours a week in care does seem to be associated with lower levels of aggression and anxiety. Some studies suggest that this dissipates over time. Other studies suggest that it does not. Most researchers agree that what matters most is that the care is high quality, that the caregivers are attentive, and that children can form a bond with them and with their mother (and father and others). The truth is that we don’t really know what’s “best,” but there are clearly many, many ways to raise a child that are “good enough.”
In my opinion, many of these mothers would like to be engaged in some kind of part-time flexible work, but because the modern workforce is so unaccommodating, they are forced out. Others truly feel that putting their child in care for any amount of time is harmful, and for some children, that may be true. All children are different. Some children enjoy the social setting of daycare (like my son) and others would prefer to play alone at home (my daughter). The problem is not about what you choose to do with your children and your time (assuming you are lucky enough to have the choice), the problem is that when mothers feel unhappy or trapped, especially if they are trapped by feelings of guilt, that unhappiness spills over and transforms into judgment.
I should mention that this goes both ways. Many working mothers who are unsatisfied with their work but who still have the ambition monkey clinging firmly to their backs become judgmental of stay-at-home moms because they can’t see the value of mother work. Their identify is too firmly intertwined with that they do for a living, with status and accolades, and this prevents them from finding balance and joy in their own lives, so they too become judgmental.
Ultimately, what I’d like to see is mothers making empowered choices based on what they want and need, rather than what they feel they should do. I’d like to see more working mothers who feel unfulfilled by their careers and who want to spend more time with their children (but who feel that doing so would be a “waste” of their education or skills) to say “fuck it” and downshift their careers in order to do more of what they want. I’d also like to see more stay-at-home moms who feel unfulfilled by the day-in-day-out grind of care work (but who feel guilty about not spending all day with their children) to say “fuck it” and let someone else take a turn with the kids. I think if we all felt empowered and happy with our own choices, we could let go of the need to judge others, and that would be the end of the mommy wars.
I worked at home and hired a woman to come in 15-30 hours per week, mostly when I had one child who took long afternoon naps. When she woke, the babysitter was there. Yes, I paid her to do "whatever" for the long afternoon nap my daughter regularly took, but I was guaranteed a large block of time in which to work. It was comforting to me that if my daughter really needed me i was right there.
You’ve underrepresented the reasons some mothers choose to stay at home. Many base this decision on science.
In neuroscience, the 0-3 years are understood as “infancy”. This isn’t just about benign “aggression.” What we now know from over 50 years of quality, cutting-edge neuroscience research and rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, alongside hefty meta-analysis—and from technological advances in neuroimaging—is that parental responsiveness to an infant significantly underwrites mental health, well into adulthood.
Consistent mother-infant co-regulation is critical for building proper brain architecture during the first three years: a time when 1 million neural connections are being built per second. The academic literature illustrates how the warm, prompt, and reliable response of a mother to her baby’s cries builds stress resiliency by activating (and therefore building/strengthening when repeated) the oxytocin system. (This system—a “cascade” of oxytocin followed by dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and GABA—is critical for mental wellness and recovery from external stressors. It's essential to bring babies back down to physiological homeostasis, where mitochondria and telomeres are no longer being damaged.) The above type of maternal presence wires neurons toward an adaptive response to stress for life. We don’t have the brain parts to “self-soothe” during these 0-3 years: Babies need the voice, eye contact, smell, skin, etc of a loving mother (or parent) to wire the oxytocin system. Not having their mothers around for these vulnerable first months and years, in effect, stunts healthy brain and limbic system development. We know babies breathe better, pump blood better, and sleep better when held and soothed by their mothers once stressed.
There is also ample research literature showing how the opposite of this—a negative or delayed response to cries—wires neurons toward stress reactivity into adulthood. This is rife in *most* daycare centers where one person is responsible for soothing 4 (or more!) crying infants: it's not possible to the degree developing brains need, as shown in the research. A baby whose stress response is activated (say, because they don't know where their mom is) and then prolonged, due to a lack of presence to their cries, releases a “cortisol cascade” of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and glutamate. When left unsoothed by the mother, the developing brain builds toward hyper-reactivity to stressors. The cortisol cascade in the infant’s brain and body becomes overwhelming for the infant when they’re not physically close to their mothers. This can lead to poor development of our nervous system (ie. the channels between the limbic system and neocortex under-communicate) and the aforementioned stress reactivity, which is intrinsically harder to soothe back to baseline. This type of poor brain development is rife in our culture of separating babies from their mothers—through daycare in the 0-3 years—obviously way too early.
We know that an over-reactive stress response leads millions of people to reach for both prescription and illicit opioids to soothe their nervous systems down to baseline, or activate that highly sought after oxytocin “reward”. Addiction is rampant in individuals who had neglectful early environments—for all the reasons I listed above.
Mental wellness (i.e. physiological wellness!) is concentrated in the individuals who had a parent present for their 0-3 years. These individuals are less of a burden on both our healthcare and mental healthcare systems. The field of epigenetics confirms all the above: our early experiences can switch on or off gene expression for mental illnesses.
You write a lot about alloparenting, but that’s not what modern childcare is. There is a significant difference between today’s day care and historical communal care where the mother is still moderately present or otherwise reachable. When young children choose to wander away from their mother to explore or be lured away by other kids on their own volition, that is *very* different from a mother dropping off a crying child in the hands of strangers for a full work day, every week day.
Moms who stay at home for the first 3 years don’t just find it undervalued, “but rewarding”, they find it undervalued but utterly important for their child’s future mental health.