FSB Author Article
Mothers of Contention and the Money Wars
By Meg Wolitzer,
Author of The Ten Year Nap: A Novel
What will become of the mommy wars in the flailing economy? My
fantasy (and it is just a fantasy) is that they will eventually fade
into obscurity like, say, the Punic Wars -- relics from a past that
seems to have taken place a very long time ago. The idea of
working mothers pitted against non-working mothers in a sort of
mud-wrestling championship -- in which the winner gets what, exactly?
-- has a kind of luxury about it that many people, whether they work or
not, suddenly no longer feel. While motherhood and work
questions have special urgency and relevance in this crisis -- What
happens when women leave the workforce to stay home with their
kids? What are the financial implications down the line? etc. --
the rush to judgment is something for fatter, softer times. I
haven't seen an appreciable increase in hostility or smugness on
anyone's part. And I haven't heard about the publication of a
new, lacerating non-fiction book called Ha Ha I was Right, or
one called Even If I'd Been Working All This Time I Might Have Been
Laid Off Like My Husband.
Maybe, instead -- and a girl can dream -- a kind of tolerance is taking
over, fueled by the sense that the family of the woman who works and
the family of the one who doesn't are both in trouble. A friend
of mine says that she's been paying attention at drop-off at her
daughter's school, trying to figure out whether or not different
parents are working, and what their stories are, based on how they're
dressed and other cues. The formerly suited-up man in his early
thirties who now appears every weekday morning on the sidewalk in front
of the school in casualwear: did he lose his job, or is he
working from home? And the woman who until very recently spent
hours volunteering at the school library, and who now hurries into the
subway: has she traded Laura Ingalls Wilder for, say, Morgan
Stanley? Or is she just out there looking? It's really hard
to know what's going on in the enclosed world of anyone else's family,
unless they're willing to talk.
And many people, right now, are talking. There's a new jabber in
the atmosphere. You barely have to say anything at all, on a
street corner or on line at the bakery or in a phone conversation, and
the other person immediately knows what you're talking about:
"Yes, things are terrifying," and "I know, I know." The financial
crisis belongs to one-income and two-income families, as well to the
families of the suddenly unemployed, who all share ownership of this
strange new thing they don't yet understand.
Though the mommy wars have addressed real and powerful questions, even
dipping lightly into those conversations could leave you shaking and
defensive. It's still true that, even now, there isn't only one
definitively right way to have a life. Regardless of this crisis
and its cautionary-tale elements (of which there are many), I think
it's a given that people still want to find some way to make their own
individual decisions about work and home and motherhood.
Women who work full-time or part-time and those who stay home with
their kids (as well as those who now spend their days answering help
wanted ads on craigslist) may not experience Helen Reddy
solidarity. It may be way too soon to speak about the mommy wars
in the past tense, for no one has solved the problem of ambivalence
about staying home versus working, or the lack of good, cheap daycare;
and no one has found a way for some women not to feel they're damned if
they do, and damned if they don't. Maybe not even the
full-scale meltdown of the economy can keep these particular, familiar
wars from raging. But it can try.
©2009 Meg Wolitzer, author of The Ten Year Nap: A Novel
Author Bio
Meg Wolitzer is the author of
seven previous novels, including The
Position and The Wife.
Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and
The Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City.