I recently saw a bumper sticker that read: "All Mothers are Working Mothers!"
This is going to be my new battle cry, my bumper sticker (well, if I were the bumper sticker type, which I'm not...)!
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I now realize that a lot of it was my own damn fault! On a lark, I bought and read this book. It was Valentine's Day, and my husband had been complaining about my complaining (I was doing way too much of it lately) and I thought I'd read it as a "gift" to him. I admit it, I thought it was a joke, that it would shut him up but not much more. How wrong I was because the person it shamed--the person it shut right up was ME.
I was buying into the bullshit perpetrated by the so-called "womens' libbers" that being a housewife is NOT a job, that I'm supposed to be out building a career, being all that a man can be, blah blah blah, and that to do any less is to sell-out, give up and become frumpy, stupid and dull. I mean, I never said out loud "I'm frumpy dull and not contributing to society," but I think deep down I felt that way, and the net effect was that I found myself complaining a LOT about the job I do have--being a stay-at-home and full time mommy and wife--just to make it seem harder than it actually is (and therfore somehow more "worthy" of respect).
I'm hereby OUTING myself for the fraud that I was. It's all crap, the whole thing. Yes, being a mom and wife is the hardest job I've ever had in some ways, but they are emotional ways, not physical really. I've resigned myself to the fact that my heart is walking around outside my body from now on, and it's scary, but let's face it, other than that, my life is pretty cushy. Let's take inventory shall we:
So what made me "invent" drama, trauma and chaos in my life? Peer pressure. The very thing I'm going to bust my hump to help my daughters avoid got me, and it got me good. Women don't really care about each other--not as a group anyway. Sure, women individually can be awesome, soul sisters, the best of friends, but as a collective? WE ARE BITCHES.
C'mon girls (and guys) you know I'm right. Groups of us (not including me, but whatever...) fight for "a woman's right to 'choose'" but when it comes to women who "choose" to stay home and raise their families and keep their homes and husbands happy? Ick, that's not a "choice," that's something to scoff at. We hear these same crusaders for "choice" mock women like me and use the (admit it, it's true) derisive term "soccer mom" to describe me. I'm a voting block, a demographic, but one that lobbyists and advertisers and program directors LAUGH AT, and saldy, the group doing the most laughing is often other women!
When's the last time you heard Hillary Clinton turn her shrill voice to the subject of my rights? When did she push an agenda that included getting tax credit for stay-at-home-moms, women who have "chosen" to do the job of raising their children themselves and NOT leaving it to the "village" Hillary imagines still exists (newsflash Hill, it doesn't)?
Do Senator Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and the other full-time bitches in Washington really "care" about women, REAL WOMEN, or do they just take us for granted the same way they take the black community for granted? Do they think that because we once were girls risking pregnancy every weekend in the backseat of our boyfriends' cars that we'll get behind their political agenda for us--that all that matters is the ability to kill a fetus, anytime, anyplace? What happens when we're married and actually KEEPING our babies? Do we cease to count?
Tax breaks for people like me are just the beginning of what's missing. What about Social Security? Are they OK with the "choice" I have to inherit my husband's share if he pre-deceases me, and that's that? Oh sure, I did work for a little while, and according to Social Security--if they are still solvent when I'm of age to collect (a dubious prospect at best)--I'll stand to get somewhere in the vacinity of $20K per year. Gee, if you factor in inflation, that means I'll be able to live in a cardboard box under the railroad tracks eating the stuff I can fish out of the trash. Yippee for me. That's the gratitude my nation will have for my "choosing" to raise decent, God-fearing, polite, educated law-abiding TAX PAYING, contributing members of our society. Nice, real nice.
It's about time that more of us stepped up and admitted that our lives ROCK! That we are LUCKY to be able to do what we do, that it IS valuable, and IS a major contribution. No, it's not curing cancer, but perhaps it's raising the person who someday WILL cure cancer. At the very least, it's a viable and valualbe CHOICE, and shame on me for allowing myself to be so convinced otherwise--by women I don't even like or respect no less--that I walked around bitching and moaning and nagging and--most importantly--WASTING the time the good Lord gave me these past three years.
From this point forward gentle reader, I am a HAPPY HOUSEWIFE and damn proud of it!
Posted by insomnomaniac at February 16, 2006 8:17 PM | TrackBack