Comments on: Yesterday was a bad day

By: Felicity

Felicity — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 13:04:45 +0000

Hey, it’s me. One thing I do have is lots of experience doing lots of things…I’ve been a mother for 15 years now and renewed that license six years ago. I’ve been broke enough to be disenfranchised. I’ve been part of the upper middle class, financially…I’ve stayed home with my kids, and I’ve worked.
I’m interested in the oting-out debate going on recently but more from an intellectual stimulation position than from seeing it as something that affects me personally.
Somewhere I read this quote and I kind of have used it as my guiding parenting principle and even that has been MY choice. Other people do it their way. Maybe it’s age that makes us more accepting of ourselves and others’ choices?
Here is the quote: “Your kids are either the center of your life, or they’re not. The rest is commentary.”

By: Lisa V

Lisa V — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 06:38:50 +0000

I always have considered it such a luxury that I was able to make my primary occupation be the nurturing of my daughters. Now when I feel like working some, that is what I do. Both were my choices.

My obsessions- TTC, miscarriage, adoption, education and now I think middle age will be next.

By: afrindiemum

afrindiemum — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 03:50:21 +0000

i’m so right there with you. i was all feminist this, gender that for six some years. i’m done trying to be the ideal feminist. i’m me. i’m a mom. i want to stay at home. ain’t nothing not feminist about that.

i’m on the verge of being done with being all over adoption after about four years. i mean, i’m always all over adoption. but i’m done with so many pieces these days.

By: Kim

Kim — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 23:50:36 +0000

This isn’t totally related, but it is. One of my clients recently launched a site and is launching a print magazine called Lifestyle CEO (http://www.lifestyleceo.com/). She never uses the word “feminism,” but much of what she does is about empowering women in home and business, and by business, she means working for yourself. I’m not very good at explaining it, but she is, if you visit the site.

And it just now came to me that she’s probably looking for writers.

By: Tiny Coconut

Tiny Coconut — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 23:50:17 +0000

Heh. What cracks me up about debates like this (”cracks me up” being a nice way of saying “makes me want to learn how to use an automatic rifle”) is how they have absofreakingnothing to do with the real world. And I come out on the “right” side of this one–looking all feminist-ish and fighting the good fight and all that, because I am the primary (read: most of the time, sole) breadwinner in my family. Hooray for me! Except, of course, for the fact that it makes me miserable to go to work every day, and that I don’t WANT to be the only one responsible for our family’s upkeep, and that I take truckloads of psychotropic drugs on a regular basis to stop my brain from totally leaping out of my head in rebellion.

What is all this crap about whether what any person–male, female, young, old–wants is RIGHT or WRONG in some larger global sense? My lesbian friends argue over who will get to stay home with their daughter–does that make them traitors to the cause? Or is that OK because they’re not cowtowing to “the man.” I don’t get it. I really don’t. It’s like some kind of social autoimmune disease, these women who judge other women based on how they find their happiness and the passion.