Leslie Morgan Steiner - Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families

Introduction

Our Inner Catfight

A few months ago, I celebrated a friends fortieth birthday at the Sulgrave Club, an elegant old mansion in downtown Washington, D.C. Dressed in a vintage black cocktail dress from my mother-in-laws party-girl days, I stood chatting with a neighbor, a mom like me who works part-time in newspaper and magazine publishing. I told her about my idea for a book exploring the tension and confusion between working and stay-at-home moms today.

Another neighbor, a stay-at-home mom whose kids go to school with mine, joined us. This woman is the head of the parent-teacher association at our public elementary school, as constant and welcoming a presence on the playground as a greeter at Wal-Mart. My friend, a former Washington Post reporter who makes her living posing provocative questions, asked our neighbor what she thought of my book idea. Specifically, what she thought of moms who work. Without breathing, the stay-at-home mom answered, Oh, I feel so sorry for them.

My cheeks flushed like a child with fever. Fortunately, the guest of honor turned on the microphone and started thanking her husband for the party, so I didnt have to disguise my response. This woman felt sorry for me? For all the moms at our school who work to support their families, to show their kids that women can work, who work to change the world, who work to keep their sanity?

My reporter friend was watching me closely. She doesnt feel sorry for me or you, she leaned over and whispered in my ear. She feels sorry in theory for women who work. Its why she doesnt work. Because she imagines that if you work, you dont have time for your children, your husband, life. She doesnt know what its really like to work. Just like you and I dont know what its really like to stay home full-time. Thats why youre writing this bookso we can end this catfight.

Shes right, that is why I created this book. Motherhood in America is fraught with defensiveness, infighting, ignorance, and judgment about whats best for kids, family, and womena true catfight among women whod be far better off if we accepted and supported all good, if disparate, mothering choices. For years I struggled to end my own personal catfight over career and family balanceand I tussled mightily to stop myself from disparaging other womens different solutions. I still struggle. Along the way, Ive perplexedly watched working women transmogrify into happy (and not so happy) stay-at-home moms, and seen others continue doggedly working, some happily and others with deepening resentment and anger over the drudgery and missed opportunities both at home and at work.

Nearly every week someone tells me how lucky I amthat I have the best of working and stay-at-home motherhood. Until two-thirty every day, Im a working mom in the advertising department of The Washington Post. Then I tear down the office stairs (late, always late), speed-walk home, rip off my business suit and pantyhose, and pull on yoga pants and my Merrell Jungle Slides just in time to grab our two-year-old and pick up the older kids from school. But the truth is I feel like a hybridneither working mom nor true stay-at-home mom.

I dont understand moms who find happiness staying home all the time, without work and their own incomes (however large or small). I cant fathom why some working moms stay stuck in too-demanding jobs or careers that they openly resent because of the quality (and quantity) time they miss with their kids. But what I know for certain, because I see it almost every day from each side of the battlefield, is that the two groups misunderstand and envy each other in the corrosive, fake-smiling way we women have perfected over the eons.

Before I tackle how this book came to be, let me explain my own choices. Three observations during childhood convinced me early on to combine work and motherhood:

I loved children madly and knew I wanted several of my own one day.

My father, a lawyer, was immeasurably rewarded for his work (he got to buy nice ties, choose whether or not our family went to Florida for spring break, decide when to divorce my mother, et cetera).

My mom, a Radcliffe graduate and one of the smartest women I know, sipped rum and Coke from a little glass starting at 5 P.M . every day, threw shoes at us from across the living room, and at times became unhinged by the frustrations of staying home raising four children.

During my early childhood, I wore my mothers unhappiness like an invisible cloak. I brought her handpicked daisies on May Day, tried to bring her breakfast in bed on Mothers Day (she refused to stay put long enough), bought a trio of garish painted parrots for her birthday, cooked dinners and made my bed every day, brought home report cards filled with As, and took care of my youngest sister to lighten Moms child-care load. As I grew up, I abandoned my campaign to make her happy; I grew dismissive of her flaws and determined to never, ever, repeat the sacrifices that seemed to lead to her inescapable unhappiness as our mother.

Nothing was going to stop me, an optimistic Harvard student in the 1980s, from cherry-picking the best of my mom and dads worlds. My senior year, Judsen Culbreth, mother of two and editor in chief of Working Mother magazine, spoke on campus about the benefits of working motherhood. The most important factor in a childs life is a happy mom, she said. Her advice flashed like a traffic light turning green; work would be my Route 66 to happiness, freedom, and good motherhood. I could and would have it all.

After graduating, I got a job in New York City at Seventeen magazine. My salary, though significantly less than a years college tuition, covered the rent on a shabby-chic basement apartment in Chelsea, the subway uptown to Seventeens offices, and five-dollar dinners at the Indian and Israeli restaurants lining St. Marks Place. I was deliriously happy. School was out for good. I was finally workingand at a ridiculously fun, engaging job writing and editing a publication every woman in America has read at least once in her life.

After two years love intervened. I fell (hard) for a brilliant young man I met on the New York subway, a man from a welfare family who dreamed of blue-chip business success. I knew exactly where he could get it. In college Id organized alumni reunions for Harvard Business School and met dozens of graduates at all stages of their careers. All of them seemed more in control of their lives than any other adults I knew. I secretly wanted to get an M.B.A. too, despite feeling like a traitor to my literary ambitions. My lover figured this out and convinced me to leave the job and city I adored to run off to business school with him.

Despite my Ivy League background, in my world the feminine Holy Grail, no matter a womans IQ or accomplishments, was attracting men. As a child, Id watched my mom in the space of one afternoon transform herself from a tear-stained, dirty-apron-clad wretch into a ravishing cocktail-party hostess in full makeup, gleaming black hair, and gorgeous halter dress greeting partners from my fathers law firm at our front door. Presenting a perfect front to the outside world of men clearly mattered tremendously. My primary quest had always been getting men to notice my legs, staying skinny, looking pretty at parties, in class, and on subway trains.