Real Simple, if only it were...

My daughter got me a subscription to the magazine "Real Simple' which is the new, younger generation's version of Good Housekeeping or Redbook I am surmising. It is thick with lots of ads as well as articles (although most of the articles are about stuff you can buy). When I was in Junior High we had a project where we got our favorite magazine (mine was probably Seventeen) and we were told to paste paper over all the advertisements. It was a good illustration of the huge percentage that any magzine devotes to ads and the very little bit of information articles for the money you spend. But, I digress.

My daughter makes lots of money ( I am guessing about $9o,000 or $100,000 when you add bonuses. She has only been working about four years! Her husband makes a little more.) Those golden handcuffs are hard to give up. She is planning on going back to work in three months, but I already see the pain in her eyes when this is brought lightly into the conversation. We live in an area where a standard three bedroom house is about $400,000. There is lots of pressure to work. I wish that I was going to be living nearby as this would make the decision easier, but I am not.

In the May issue of Real Simple it is fortuitous (maybe) that there was an article titled "What's a Mother to do?" It covers the debate over whether a woman should return to work or stay at home after the birth of a child. They interview four women with their grown daughters and each have chosen different paths. I find this article so interesting because it really touches a sensitive cord with me. I stayed at home with both children until the youngest was ten. I was not rich, but I was also NOT poor. I didn't have to work. We didn't eat out, go to movies, and I only had two outfits for church. But these were not sacrifices in my mind.

The sacrifices for me were falling behind in my career and never really making the better salary, spending time without adults for endless days which is really hard, missing out on a creative side of my self that I had to shelve and the long hours - working seven days a week. The good stuff was knowing my children were being raised by someone who would die for them, someone who was close to their gene pool and therefore understood them, and getting to see all that wonderful special stuff that children show as they reach each new challenge.

There are no good choices. The magazine article seems to make it appear that there is no wrong way. But I think that oversimplifies. There is really no right way either. Whichever road you choose, you make important and long-term sacrifices. And the idiocy in this debate is that most women do not have a choice!