Nearly a decade ago, I created “Please Take My Children to Work Day,” a holiday for at-home moms. It was an excuse for at-home mothers to take a day off from their 24/7 responsibilities and put their feet up.
I created it because too many mothers who stay home with the kids felt they had no right to take a little time for themselves, even though they really could have used a couple of hours — maybe even an entire day — where they didn’t have to disarm a temper tantrum or sing about cows to just make it through the supermarket with kids in tow to buy a gallon of milk.
Some people were not amused.
Some of them chased me across the Internet, claiming that my holiday was somehow a slap in the face to moms who work outside (or inside) the home, even though I had been the latter for many years. One even called me a F–k Trophy. (I still don’t know what that means, but I admire the creativity.)
Over the years, about a dozen states officially declared the holiday with actual proclamations adorned with fancy gold stamps. CBS News even put me on TV to talk about it, though I hate looking at the segment because I had dark, curly post-chemo hair and extra prednisone weight and didn’t look like me. Also Harry Smith called me a dutiful, homeschooling mom, which was news to me.
I said it back then, and I’ll say it again:
“The title is tongue-in-cheek, people. Colorado declares it ‘Stay-at-Home Mother Day.’ That’s all it is. Eight or so hours off from the daily chores and responsibilities. Not a slap in the face to working moms any more than Father’s Day is a slap in the face to mothers, or Arbor Day disses low-lying vegetation.”
I created Please Take My Children to Work Day because at-home moms didn’t have a voice. And now, I’m going to retire it.
On June 25, 2012, MommaSaid will mark the 10th annual Please Take My Children to Work Day, and then promptly end the holiday. Why? Because it’s time to end the Mommy Wars. And the first step in ending the Mommy Wars is to recognize that we all work hard, and we all need a day off and we all could stand to spend an afternoon eating cake at the movies by ourselves, just like Tina Fey.
How about we all stop arguing over which mom works harder and whether or not Ann Romney worked at all and who bakes a better cookie, Hillary Clinton or Barbara Bush?
I’ve been a SAHM and a WAHM and soon, a divorced, working mom, and you know what? They’re all hard, and yet, sometimes they’re easy. Like kids, they change — sometimes hourly. Why fight over it?
So I will raise a glass to a decade of celebrating at-home moms and call it a day, (even while Yahoo calls it “Weird June holidays.”)
The Mommy War is over, people. Prepare for the cease fire.
People have too much free time if they’re chasing you across the interwebs to destroy your recognition of moms who work at home (I think I prefer that to SAHM). Those creative moms who stay at home to tend to the children as a full time job rarely (if ever) get a break. And i’m not talking about those with full time nannies and housekeepers. Why not? What’s it to the rest of the mothers out there? Too much bitterness!! Everyone deserves a day.
So true! I’ve been both – a WAHM, a SAHM and a soon to be…..uh, I need a new term for a mom that sometimes works at home and sometimes works at work. Anyway, the one thing I have found from my experience as well as my friends’ experiences it that there is guilt regardless of your decision!!! We all feel we aren’t doing enough or doing it well enough. But like said above, it all full time.
I love what you wrote about all parents being full-time parents: http://deniseschipani.com/we-are-all-mothers-can-hilary-rosen-ann-romney-and-everyone-else-stop-stoking-the-mommy-wars/
I thought it was just a media issue, too, until I was attacked online by an angry mob of moms.
I surrendered years ago. Thanks Denise!
Yay! But, Jen, if ONLY you declaring a cease-fire would mean the end of it. It’s like Afghanistan, these Mommy Wars, and not because of the US’s 10-year-entanglement there, but because that besieged, embattled country actually has something called a “fighting season.”
I’m tired of the war, too — which I wrote about last week on Mean Moms Rule — but I also believe it’s not fought all that much on the ground between or among moms, but is whipped up by the media and, in this lovely presidential season, politicians.
Enough already!
I have been both a stay at home mom and working mom and I don’t see a difference between the two. A few years back, I read “The Second Shift,” by Arlie Hochschild and she commented in the book that the difference in time that a working mom spends doing housework vs. the time spent by a stay at home mom is 10 minutes. The fact is that both are busy with children, housework, families, responsibilities, etc. I always say to my sisters that while I work outside the home and they don’t have a break from the parenting part like I do. For eight hours, I get to be someone besides “Mom,” and for that reason, I don’t envy stay at homes mom and I know that they are lucky if they get even a half hour of adult time. Anyway, the term working mom is redundant, isn’t it? Aren’t all moms working regardless of whether they are stay at home moms or not?