Having it all......the biggest feminine myth.

Women of the 50's and 60's knew that their role in the world was to stay home, manage the household, raise the children and look after all of her family's needs.

Women of the 70's and the 80's were "liberated"..or so we thought. Suddenly daycare drop-off was the hottest social scene in town. Women were interviewing in droves for high corporate power jobs, and for the first time in history, women were becoming bread winners for their family.
For a short while women in the 90's bought into the idea that they could "Have it all."

Then reality smacked us in the face.

Studies came out on the hazards of too much daycare, the aggressiveness of latch-key kids hit every news report and mothers everywhere began to panic.
April 20, 1999.
The Columbine School Massacre.
The number one question from the media..."Were the boy's mothers at home or working?" As though the answer to this question was the golden key to the deadliest school rage in U.S. history. Nobody asked if the father was home full time....just the mother, of course. Teachers began reporting the differences in the classroom between daycare kids and kids whose mother stayed home.

"Having it all" had become more and more of an out of reach dream, impossible to achieve with success.

And here we are in 2006....

Working mothers feel horribly guilty for time spent away from the kids...fearing that their children aren't blossoming intellectually or emotionally as well as they might be with a mom at home.
Stay at home mothers worry that they aren't "pulling their weight" with the finances. They yearn for adult conversation and the need to feel productive.

Lifestyles that we grew accustomed to when we were all D.I.N.K.S(DOUBLE INCOME NO KIDS)....suddenly are threatened when we become parents.
Brilliant, college educated women in this country no longer know where they fit, where they belong. We are groomed in this culture to become well educated, to make a difference, to matter and to contribute in the world. I doubt that there is a high school in America that is encouraging young women to skip college and go and get pregnant and stay home with their children....yet, when we finally do have children that is exactly what is expected of us.

"Having it all" is a fallacy. It isn't possible. The mother that works wants to be home...the mother that is home wants to work. Studies show that the happiest women of all are those who work part-time.
This is probably true. But most of these women are working in jobs that they were not trained to do...and have also made financial sacrifices and household sacrifices to make that arrangement work.
We are still giving something up.

Show me a woman that is eagerly and better yet, successfully raising her children, taking care of the home, taking care of herself physically and spiritually,being a loving and caring wife, managing the household, working a full time job she was trained in, that financially contributes to the household bottom line, making a significant mark at home and at work, and not feeling one ounce of guilt-or questioning her decisions on a weekly basis.....and I'll show you a woman in deep denial.
Having it all and doing it all well is the biggest myth we ever subscribed to-something always suffers.

So much for the Women's Liberation Movement. It really screwed us.