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Yon Leos / Sep 18 2011

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Elenia / Oct 16 2010

I love your writing. I. MEAN. IT.

Masumi / May 7 2010

I loved your article published in the Wall Street Journal today. Keep writing articles like that for moms who feel so blessed to be mothers but yet have moments of weakness, doubting our value to our children and the society!

Sue Schafer / May 7 2010

Loved your column in the Wall Street Journal today. I’m the mother of four, ages 19-26. I spent about 12 years at home, working part time most of the time, but also doing in home day care and generally doing whatever I could to prevent my mind from atrophying.

My training is as a teacher and I have always worked with tough kids, gang youth, kids with substance abuse issues, kids who’ve been terribly damaged by life on the fringes. Despite the challenges of that work, parenting was and is the toughest job I’ve ever had.

I really related to the mom who would rather be identified as the nanny than as the stay at home mom. In the 80′s I was one of the few moms in my neighborhood who stayed home. It was very alienating and I did my best to find ways to avoid the inevitable struggles regarding who was the “better” mom. I was the cookie mom, the mom on the school emergency cards, and our house was a magnet for neighborhood kids.

I hosted an informal cocktail party almost every Friday night for moms who came by to pick up their kids. It was my way of staying connected. Moms brought munchies and wine, Dads showed up as they arrived home and the kids ran all over the house and yard. The neighborhood joke was that folks could drop their kids off at our house and it might be a couple days before I noticed that they hadn’t gone home.

My own sister, who had her first child at age 38, told me while she was pregnant that she was going back to work as quickly as possible after her child was born because she wanted her child to grow up with a “work ethic”. At the time I was still at home and her comment stung, BADLY!

Imagine my shameful schadenfreude when she called me three months after she returned to work to see if I would travel 1800 miles cross-country, leave my four kids, then 7-14; to care for her four month old who already had chronic ear infections and couldn’t be in day care for a month. She was furious with me when I said I couldn’t! To this day I haven’t pointed out the irony. Maybe someday over a couple tequilas I’ll tell her.

We all do the very best we can and we all have our stories. As much as we roll our eyes at the folks who are making “mistakes” we have to admit our own. Somehow moms have this inherent, genetic glitch that causes us to second guess ourselves constantly. It’s hard to be a strong, confident mom in our society, it’s almost oxymoronic.

Every time we think we have the right answer, some expert somewhere comes up with a reason why it’s the wrong answer. Going with your gut seems to be the best way to function, but man, it’s a tough slog.

Perspective helps. My kids have turned out well – and I measure this by their happiness and well being and by the fact that I really love their company. That they are all mostly off the parent payroll helps too! Seeing their successes and joy validates the work I’ve done to help them become wonderful adults. And it was work and it wasn’t always fun and I didn’t always get what I wanted. So I guess they helped me grow up too!

PS: my only gripe with your column goes to the closing quote from Chesterton: we moms don’t just make men. Perhaps our toughest job is to do exactly what you’re trying to do with your daughter- help our daughters find their perfect place in this SO confusing world.

Good luck. At 5, my 26 year old wanted to be Vanna White. My friends were positively appalled. For months I watched Katie pretend to turn letters by the TV every evening and cheered her on. Turns out she was way more interested in spelling and grammar than she was in modeling. I think knowing that I would support and listen to any and all dreams and ideas went a long way to helping my kids feel like they could do anything. And that’s probably the thing that makes me proudest of my mothering.

So that’s where your column took me today. Thanks for getting me thinking about what mothering means to me. Good luck in your own journey.