Middle-Class Mommy Talk

I don't usually concern myself with mommy squabbles. Partially because I'm not a mother and partially because I'm always severely annoyed by the massive amounts of classism and racism I find circulating in the arguments. Today in The Huffington Post, Wendy Sachs declared a temporary ceasefire in "The Mommy Wars." Citing the economic recession as the cause, Sachs asserts:

Maybe there's one piece of good news to come out of the recession - it's killed The Mommy Wars. With the unemployment rate hovering at nine and a half percent, having a job feels like a privilege not a choice. . . Modern mommyhood comes loaded with criticism and judgment. Whether you're a breast feeder or a bottle feeder, grow an organic garden or feed your kid Big Macs, use biodegradable diapers or landfill clogging Pampers, circumcise, vaccinate, nanny or daycare, home school or
private school, wear a sling or push a Bugaboo, the smorgasbord of personal choices and decisions seem to invite contempt. But one thing is off the changing table - at least for now - whether a "good mom" chooses to work.

Though I find myself chuckling at her acknowledgment of the absurd debates that characterize mothering discussions in the U.S., this passage highlights the blind spots that also characterize those discussions. That the relationship of employment to quality of parenting is removed from the foreground is not a bad thing by any means, discourses surrounding it still exhibit a general lack of sensitivity regarding motherhood and child-rearing. The "opting out" argument and the others alluded to by Sachs are not the issues that characterize parenting decisions for many Americans. "The luxury of choosing not to work" that Sachs describes as a casualty of the recession was never on the map for millions of single moms and the working poor. This daunting reality hovers around these discussions yet is rarely acknowledged. It just really seems that it's about time for analyses of mommy-hood to begin more regularly discussing the realities of mommy-hood beyond those applying to the white middle class. Seeeeeriously.