Obama's Amazing Speech Supporting Moms

(full disclosure, I consider myself a centrist, and have never voted for Obama)

Apparently there's a big crazy drama over Obama's latest speech where he talks about women in education and the workplace and the struggles and obstacles they face in balancing the demands of family and a job.   Many people are taking one sentence out of context and turning into outrage clickbait.   I have a question to you outraged reposters:  have you read the full speech?  Here it is, included a transcript word-for-word, from which I copied: 

And sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that's not a choice we want Americans to make.

Guess what?  He's talking about my life!  And I agree with him 100%.  When I was pregnant with Ellie I left my dream job with Agassi Charitable Foundation so that I could stay home with her.  When she was 3 I started looking for part-time work to help make ends meet, and for the next four years I worked part-time in my field keeping my skills up to date.  Soon we moved and I *needed* to work full-time, me staying home was not an option.  Do you know what I found out about finding work after being home with a child?  Employers valued my education and experience less than  a newly minted graduate with a 4 year degree.  And when I finally did find work (Thank you, God) it was in an entry-level position at a wage less than what I had made 9 years earlier right out of college.  

It's a fact: taking a break to raise kids is devastating to your career.  A woman has to choose between working (and barely being able to afford insurance and daycare) or staying home and permanently handicapping your career if you ever need to work again.  And I agree with Obama:

"that's not a choice we want Americans to make."

I don't see how anyone can disagree with that. I was a SAHM and I loved to have the option, it was a luxury we were able to make work.  But not everyone is so fortunate.  The rest of the policies President Obama spoke about are family-friendly workplace policies, such as:

1. Higher quality pre-school programs available to those who need it most
2. Raise the minimum wage, the average mw earner is 35 and many are mothers supporting families.
3. Equal pay for men and women
4. Changing attitudes about employing mothers, such as:
• JetBlue's flexible work-at-home positions
• Google's 5-month paid parental leave
• Investing in programs to help women enter higher-paid traditionally male careers (engineering, STEM, etc.)  

Now, I 100% believe that you can disagree with his policy ideas, in politics you can find statistics to support either side of an argument.  That's okay to disagree with his thoughts about equal pay or minimum wage.  But there is no logical or rational way you can interpret his statements to be against SAHMs.  Let's get that straight. In fact, I think we should give the guy credit for understanding the challenges women have to face probably more than most men:

I was raised by a single mom, and know what it was like for her to raise two kids and go to work at the same time, and try to piece things together without a lot of support. And my grandmother, who never graduated from college but worked her way up to become vice president of a bank, I know what it was like for her to hit the glass ceiling, and to see herself passed over for promotions by people that she had trained. And so some of this is personal, but some of it is also what we know about our economy, which is it's changing in profound ways, and in many ways for the better because of the participation of women more fully in our economy.


One last thought from a recently divorced, single parent friend:
I just want to share that I'm thankful for anyone (even if it's a politician I didn't vote for) who recognizes the situation Obama described (I recommend reading a more complete version of his remarks that changes the interpretation significantly, I believe) because it describes where I'm at right now: a young (read: still developing professionally and slowly because I've been doing the SAHM thing until 3 months ago) woman who is in the process of divorce and is making hard choices about career development and child care, particularly in the context of my current salary (and benefits which I'm so blessed to have) not covering ANY level of child care, let alone child care that I would feel comfortable leaving my kids in. I'm completely dependent on the child support payments of my stbx who lives in a foreign country with which the US government does not have an enforcement agreement. So I sure hope he keeps paying so I can keep my job and my kids can stay in their fabulous day care situation which will allow me to over time, make up some of the lag I've experienced professionally as a SAHM that will ultimately make me less depending on child support. I'm not trying to get pity here, or whine. I just want to share that women are in lots of different situations, but the penalty we face in the workforce for prioritizing quality child care for our children (whether we provide it or pay through the nose for someone else to) is real. And I feel that is what Obama was commenting on---I do not feel his full remarks can be reasonably interpreted as a slam against anyone's choice to be a stay at home parent.

That One Time CES Didn't Hire Us Because I was "Different"

This is also a cross-post over at Modern Mormon Men, a great group blog

Once upon a time I was a newlywed - a newlywed with a husband trying to be a Seminary teacher.  Back in the Ricks College days that had an East Idaho Pre-Seminary (OPT) training program.  So I took Rel 370, Intro to Teaching, in Fall 2001 along with my husband.  I forget all the details back in the day, but we progressed through the program to where he was teaching seminary part time at Madison, Sugar City, and Mud Lake High Schools.  We were in our final semester where you are up for hire and it's pretty intense and down to the wire.  I remember this last semester there are a few things they do to screen applicants:

1. Lots of in class evaluations by OPT area supervisor
2. Spouse survey
3. Meeting with CES hierarchy, if you pass middle mgt interview I think there may have been a GA interview at the end right before hire

We had a few things going against us

1. The OPT area supervisor didn't like my husband.  My husband didn't like him.  They both thought that the other had a too high opinion of themselves and constantly tried to take each other down a notch.  In retrospect it was entertaining.  
2. I don't like being manipulated and I have a strong personality.  

The CES middle manager came to interview us as a couple and leave the survey for me to take.  I remember him liking us and being friendly.  I remember sitting down to read and fill out the spouse survey.  It was a few pages long, multiple choice, and it was a joke.  It was filled with loaded questions, in which it was obvious there was only one right answer that you could choose.  And, really, I was offended.  What kind of automaton did they think I was?  I had a brain and could use it.  There was so little complexity it was laughable.  I remember overthinking it wondering if it's a test - would the wife just fill in the correct blanks and follow with no questions?  Or Did they want to see an exercise of originality and someone who was comfortable being a little different?  It was so obvious which answer they wanted, is this reverse psychology somehow?  Welp, I refused to auto-fill the answers and probably snarkily made sure mine was honest but offbeat.

A few weeks later we got a phone call from the CES middle manager about some concerns he had that he'd like to talk to us in person about.  I remember sitting in our front room at Aspen (Ghetto) Village as he delivered the  news: we passed all the middle manager screenings except the spouse survey.  They were enough anomolies there to be extremely concerning that I wouldn't be a good fit in CES.  He said if Darik passed the rest of the hiring process they would relook at me again, but for us to know this was enough of a red flag to put his hire in jeopardy.

You would have had to know me back then, I would have been a founding member of Mormon Women Stand.  No questions, no rule breaking, no R rated movies.  Straight shooters we were - straighter than most (like 99%).  We were a bit baffled.

In the end it didn't matter as much since the area OPT trainer basically told my husband to hit the road and drop out before the end because there was no way in heck he'd ever hire him.  Darik always wondered if he was good enough or if it was just a personal problem with the hiring overlord.  When he taught seminary in Las Vegas he was disappointed to have the CES area guy observe and tell him he couldn't fathom why CES passed on him, as he was one of the best he'd observed.

And in the end?  I'm glad.  It reminds me of something my friend told me when I was applying for a job on campus at BYUI and I tried to cover my social media tracks:

"If someplace doesn't want you for who you are, and what your strengths and what you can bring to their organization - it's their loss.  Don't change who you are for people who don't want you there in the first place."

Wise words, and good riddance. :)

Calling a Truce to the Mommy Wars

Recently Matt Walsh, a popular conservative Christian blogger, authored a viral post: he defended stay-at-home-moms (SAHMs), and lit up a firestorm of controversy.  Matt, welcome to the Mommy Wars: the she-should-be-at-home/what-do-you-do-all-day female judgment-apalooza.

src: radicalhousewife.com

He is truly baffled by the criticism he's receiving, because it's true: SAHMs need more props.  The problem, when you defend them in a way that holds it up as the one true way things should be done?  Yeah, you might ruffle a few feathers.  A few short years ago I would have agreed with him.  That's how I was raised.  Good mothers stay home.  Mothers who choose to work and doing irreparable damage to children.  They are choosing to work for unnecessary extravagances of life. Of course if you have to work, you have no choice, so that's your out.  Pages and pages of quotes from leaders in my church can be found over the last few decades echoing the sentiment.

Yet I have found my experience to be different.  I feel I have some authority to speak in this area, as I've worked full-time, part-time, and been a SAHM as well.  I will tell you that being home full-time is so psychologically draining sometimes I just wanted to stab myself with a spoon to make it stop.  It is very, very hard with little ones and messes and potty training, etc.  Just learning how to manage the tornado of life with little ones afoot is a sheer act of superpower. 

I also just finished working-full time while my daughter was in first and second grades.  It was a completely different kind of stress.  It is a very different kind of hard, a very different kind of not-one-moment-for-yourself and burdened by the needs and expectations of everyone in your life.  The amount of time we had to do the important things was extremely condensed . . . and yet I still fit in the important things. 

I have also worked part-time and I must admit it is entirely preferable.  In a perfect world I would have would still be an Asset Management Analyst for 30 hours a week.  I know Sheryl Sandberg would be disappointed with my brand of Leaning In, but it truly would have provided a perfect work/home balance.  Kids and moms need a break from each other.  There is such a thing as too much kid time and not taking care of yourself, and there's such a thing as kids having moms meet their needs too much. 

While I was working I attended training in Cincinnati the week my daughter started second grade.  It was a tortuous decision for me to go.  Guilt laden.  And you know what?  My daughter was better for it.  She didn't need her mom that day: her dad curled her hair and got her ready and pulled me up on Skype so I could say goodbye and watch her get on the bus.  There were times she had to attend day care.  It was good for her.  My daughter relies far too much on me, and getting out of the car and going to day care where she didn't know anyone was a hard thing.  She had to learn how to do a hard thing.  And she was better for it.  Part of my job as a good parent is to slowly teach my child that they do not need me, so that by the time they are 18 they have all the tools to be successful without me.

While I was working I was surrounded by other working mothers.  Their kids were loving and obedient and smart, their marriages were happy, and they have found a balance that truly worked for their families.  They were good moms with good kids.  I finally came to a realization:  there are good mothers who work and good mothers who stay-at-home.  There are also really crappy mothers that work and really crappy mothers who stay-at-home.  The home/work split is not where the definition of 'good mother' is found.  As another woman discovered as she researched the principles of biblical womanhood, if you want to be a woman of valor, it is found in your character, not in your role. 

So why this either or dichotomy?

src: 123rf.com

I know mostly it was how I was raised.  When I was home it made me feel like I was making the right choice when others were wrong about theirs.  It reinforced my decision and made me feel better in all the hard moments - like the day when I was covered with three different body fluids from three different children.  I felt better when I thought what I was doing was the one right way, but I figured something out.  There is not one right way to be or live your life or manage your family.

I have a friend who teaches the online Family Proclamation class for BYUI while her husband stays at home.  Recently Segullah, an online literary journal for LDS women, ran a series about working mothers, their stories, and how the Spirit prompted them into the workforce.  One woman is a cancer nurse, another an engineer. The engineer ended her story with this advice, "If there was one piece of advice I could give a young woman it would be to follow the Spirit. No matter what you think your life should be, no matter your dreams, always be willing to follow promptings of the Spirit. They will lead to happiness and usually something better than you have dreamed for yourself."

If personal revelation to do what is best for you and your family has been the answer all along, what about all those quotes over the past five decades from the prophets?  Has there been a time in the past where it was okay for women to work outside the home without destroying the family?  I decided to do some research (my favorite thing).  Brigham Young was a conundrum - at times portrayed as feminist and sometimes anti-feminist.  In the 1978 study "A Woman's Place in Brigham Young's World", the author shows that both are correct.  He taught that men are to be masters over their wives because the curse that came upon women in the Garden of Eden for them to be dependent upon men (yikes).  But later on he turned out to be a champion of female education and women working outside the home to build the kingdom.  Granted, after the end of the Civil War in the 1860s the telegraph and transcontinental railroad came to Utah, as well as non-members with a promise to settle and overwhelm the Mormons at the ballot box.  So when gentile doctors and accountants showed up in Utah, he felt compelled to provide those things within our own community as a form of self-reliance.

“I do not know how long it will be before we call upon the brethren and sisters to enter upon business in an entirely different way from what they have done,” Young postulated at April conference in 1867.  The following December he announced, “We have sisters now engaged in several of our telegraph offices, and we wish them to learn not only to act as operators but to keep the books of our offices.”

Brigham Young was a particularly strong advocate of women's education. "We have sisters here who, if they had the privilege of studying, would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed," he said. "We believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or [medicine], or become good book-keepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large" (Journal of Discourses, [London: Latter-day Saints' Book Depot, 1854–86], vol. 13, p. 61).

In 1873 Bathsheba Smith reported that “the President had suggested to her that three women from each ward be chosen to form a class for studying physiology and obstetrics.” A few weeks later Eliza R. Snow declared that “President Young is requiring the sisters to get students of Medicine. He wants a good many to get a classical education, and then get a degree for Medicine. . . . If they cannot meet their own expenses, we have means of doing so.” For several years Young had been teaching that women should attend to the health of their sex. With the influx of educated gentile doctors following the Civil War and the coming of the railroad, Young realized the Latter-day Saints would need professional doctors in order to remain self-sustaining. Romania Bunnell Pratt, the first Mormon woman to get professional training under this program, returned to Utah from the Woman’s Medical College in New York after her freshman year there. Her finances were depleted and so she paid a visit to President Young who instructed Eliza R Snow to “see to it that the Relief Societies furnish Sister Pratt with the necessary money to complete her studies.” This encouragement came in spite of the fact that Romania had to leave her young children with her own mother in order to complete the training. “We need her here,” said Young, “and her talents will be of great use to this people.”

So if Brigham Young built the Kingdom by having women work, what to do about the gender roles we are currently taught?   I find it instructive that two years ago in Conference Elder Packer called the Family Proclamation a "revelation from God", but in the text released from the Church, they reworded his description to "a guide that members of the Church would do well to read and follow.”  It's a guide, and if we follow the Spirit, Heavenly Father will guide us on a path that we are supposed to follow, regardless of whether it fits into "how things are supposed to be done."  How are things supposed to be done in my life?  I'll tell you I have no idea.  I know I'm doing my best to follow the Spirit.  I feel like I had been so converted in my life to the teachings of gender roles and what I was supposed to be doing - Heavenly Father had to smack a brick up the side of my head to get me to go to school and finish my degree.   I've felt the most peace when I wasn't trying to have a baby.  Recently I received an impression based on some things in my Patriarchal Blessing that I should get a job so I can help prepare for the future.  So, this week I start a new part-time job: I can be reached at kanderson@searlehart.com.  I feel like Heavenly Father's had a plan and a path for me this whole time, and He's frustrated I haven't been open to other possibilities other than the 'ideal'. 

So for the love of all things beautiful, I call truce.   

We need to stop.  Stop the mommy wars.  All mothers need support.  All good mothers need praise.  This is the problem: judging.  When we feel judged we want to lash right back.  And it's not just about whether we stay at home or work, we also receive judgment about a million other things. We don’t need to go around devaluing others based on our own choices.  It’s a simple matter of appreciating everyone…every parent who contributes to the proper raising of a child to the very best of their abilities. If you find that you get some contentment out of putting down others based on their life decisions; I would suggest therapy.  Because I have a secret, everyone is doing the best they can in this beautiful, messy thing we call life.

src: debiehive.blogspot.com