What Do Children Want?

My sister and me with our stay-at-home-mom, c. 1955

First, let me say that I have no axe to grind about whether mothers should stay at home or be employed.  I'm not a mother.  I never had to struggle with that.

But I am a former child, and today when I saw this video on the blog of a (militantly) stay-at-home-mom, I thought, yes, it's moving, but there's more to it than this.

See what you think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=85027636&v=EQ3ePGr8Q7k&x-yt-ts=1422503916

When I finished watching, I thought, If someone had handed me a pencil and a piece of paper when I was, say, eight, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have written what those children did, asking for more attention.

I would have asked my mother for consistency, that she never switch without warning between cloying affection and anger, that she always love me.  She was a SAHM mom, and I could have done with way less of her kind of attention.

I would have asked my father for acceptance, that he stop judging how I looked and whether or not the last drawing I did meant I would be a famous artist.  Less scrutiny of that kind,  please!

Working mothers who see the video on this particular blog could extrapolate only that they were being judged for not being at home. It wouldn't have been an endearing video but an accusatory one, trust me. And it's not fair, Mrs. SAHM Blogger!  Staying home does not necessarily make you a good mother.  It's way more complicated than that.

Isn't it disheartening that the Mommy Wars drag on?  So much insecurity and anger.  Isn't life--for parents and children--hard enough?

Of course, the SAHM readers of that blog probably derived Major Validation, and it's unlikely that working mothers would be masochistic enough to follow it.  And why am I reading it?  Sigh.  More time-consuming lurking.














.