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There is something about the phrase "Mommy Wars" that makes me want to gouge out my own eyeballs with a fork, rather than have to read it ever again. It is anathema to every thinking mother I know -- don't we have enough to deal with in life without some manufactured "war" amongst our very ranks?
And so most of the time you can find me blithely skipping along, fingers plugging my ears, singing "Lalalalala I can't heeeeeear you!" when the topic comes up. Haven't we been over this? Once, twice, ten, a hundred times? It seems like we have. And yet, the topic simply will not fade into obscurity. This week it became even harder to ignore.
Let's start with what happened over at Work It, Mom!. Leslie Bennetts wrote an article for the site titled 10 Reasons Working Moms Should Feel Great About Themselves (Reason Number One: Working Women Are Happier). Now, if you didn't know who Leslie Bennetts was -- or if she didn't refer to her book The Feminine Mistake multiple times in her piece -- you'd probably read it as a heartening pick-me-up for the often guilt-ridden working mom. Working is good for you! You're doing a great job! And this is, after all, a site for working moms, where her article was published. No problem, right?
Well, wrong. Bennetts' reputation as a stay-at-home-mom-basher precedes her, and although this piece is tame by comparison to many of her more inflammatory forays into this topic, by and large the members of Work It, Mom! weren't exactly warm in their reception of her.
Work It, Mom!'s CEO Nataly Kogan followed up with a piece on her blog, titled Why we published Leslie Bennetts' article and why I am surprised by the reaction. In it, she says:
I am going to refrain entirely from saying how I feel about the article — I’ve not commented on the other 500+ member articles we’ve published on the site or any posts from our bloggers and I don’t see it as my place to do that. The reason I decided to write this post is because several members have suggested — both in their comments on the article and in their personal emails to me — that Work It, Mom! should not have published or featured such an article. A few members have told me that they are now leaving the community because we published the piece.
To be completely honest, this baffled me. In every interaction I’ve had with members on the site — and you guys know that I stay pretty active and involved and ask for feedback non-stop — what I’ve heard over and over is that we all want an open community rather than an editorial magazine. We want to hear from real moms through their real voices and we want a place where we can discuss things openly, express our opinions, and share support and advice with each other. While I know that the opinions of several members don’t represent the entire community their implication that Work It, Mom! should be editing or filtering what type of content we publish and feature gave me significant pause.
It's a credit to the community there, I think, that the discussion in comments on both Bennetts' article and Nataly's blog -- while spirited and of strong opinions, yes -- has remained civil and well-articulated. In particular, one part of a comment from Shannon on Nataly's post really stuck out, for me:
I admit I did groan inwardly a bit when I saw that Ms. Bennetts was featured on this site, because what bothers me (and I assume others) about Ms. Bennetts’ stance on this issue is that it feels patronizing and reductionistic; how can she (or anyone else) know what’s best for me, and my own heart and soul, when it comes to work vs. being with my babies? Can’t I be an educated, informed, intelligent, accomplished woman with a stellar career who understands the financial risks of staying home with my babies, but STILL finds it untenable to leave them each day to go to work? Can’t I be an at-home mom and still be incredibly happy?
And that, of course, brings us back to the crux of why so many people find Bennetts so unpalatable -- she (often) insists that her way is the only way.
Well, you needn't do much more than look around to know that there are plenty of ways for families to make their lives
