A Mother of a Fossil

I have read lately that woman are realizing that they can't have it all. All that stress, burnout, and non-fulfillment was not anticipated when the early feminists exhorted women to leave home and march to future greatness. Some, of course, like old relics from the past, never left the mothering field to begin with, and slogged their way for decades through the minefields of full-time motherhood. While their sisters reached for higher things, these women always seemed to be reaching for lower things, or lost things, or mushy things. While some sisters strived to stand next to the boss and be among the Highly Compensated Ones, others walked among little people and got chronic backaches ministering to their needs. Interestingly, as the naysayers of motherhood left to work, those who stayed behind suddenly received requests to work for no pay: "Can Johnny wait here for the bus? Can Suzy walk home from school with your Sarah? We'll pick her up by 6 (which turned into 7). Can you take Tyler to the dance with your Mike...we have plans." Often kids asked behind their absent parents' backs: "Can I sleep over? Can you tie my tie? Can I hang out at your house and play with your dog." Here's a true story: two little girls came home from school one day to find themselves locked out. They asked the stay-at-home neighbor lady, "Do you know where our parents are?" She took them in even though she had other things to do, and she baked them cookies and played games with the kids, who weren't hers, and did it all amid the remembered, belittling side glances of her employed sisters. On top of that, because she was a full-time mother, there were times when other women assumed that she only had a high school education. That must have been a low point. She must have thought: "What am I, an educated person, doing in a non-paying, non-stock option, non-benefit job like this? Hmmm. Maybe I could write a book about a time when caretaking was valued and mothers roamed the streets to the delight and benefit of children everywhere? No, it would probably be burned, and I'd be asked to clean it up. Hmmm. Maybe some modern-day anthropologist would want to study me, as the last remaining full-time mom? No, then I'd have to offer her space in my house, and wash her sheets and (shudder) grocery shop and cook for her. Maybe I just need therapy? Or maybe, just maybe, kids still need moms and women still want to be moms first--right on, girl!