The Mommy Wars Can End Right Here

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

I am a generally positive person -- friendly to new acquaintances, quick to think the best of people. When I started a new school in third grade, one of the girls in my class asked, "Why do you smile all the time?" She became my best friend despite the fact that I couldn't answer her question. Cheerful just seems to be my default setting.

So I've always carried on with life thinking that other people would assume the best of me and like me at initial meeting. When I decided to keep working after having a baby, I figured that was the end of it. I know so many mothers who have cycled in and out of the work force -- personally and in my six years' covering the workplace as a journalist -- that I figured it's a personal choice and each parent will make the decision that works best for his or her family at the time. I dismissed the "mommy wars" -- between stay-at-home moms and working moms -- as an overhyped media creation, devised by journalists not as principled as myself who were out to sell papers.

How wrong I was.

As a full-time working mom I was shielded from the negative stereotypes that some non-working moms have about mothers who work for pay and leave their children to be cared for by others during the work day. They spotted me a mile away and kept their opinions to themselves. (Thanks, by the way.)

Now that I'm working from home as a freelance writer, I find that many at-home moms assume I'm my children's full-time caregiver and merely working around their naps. We'll be engaged in a rollicking conversation until they say, "How do you get any work done with two little ones underfoot?" When I answer that they're in daycare, it usually leads to a horrified look, long awkward pause and the end of the chat.

So I'm here to tell you that the mommy wars are real. Perhaps not as an outright battle, but as a low-boil conflict that lives in the silent pauses and judgments in conversation between two mothers about their lives. It lives in the way two moms meeting for the first time dance around the topic of working outside the home, until one brave soul confesses her status.

The divide can be breached, certainly. Two of my best friends are stay-at-home moms and we share the good, bad and ugly about our lives. We use each other as a sounding board when we're rethinking our lives and as a cheerleader when we decide to make a big change.

That's what I'd like to do, here on Work Wednesday at MomSpa.net. I see this space as belonging to all mothers, whether you're currently working for pay or not. Almost every mom I know has worked at some point in her life and will probably return to the workforce after the children are grown.

Let's drop the labels and simply talk openly. Let's discuss what work means to us, why we love it, why we hate it and where it fits into our lives and our experience of motherhood. Let's identify the challenges all moms face and perhaps, some of the solutions. I can't wait to hear your stories!