Mom would say ... #9 Your life at home

Older career women are bemoaning the attrition of young women from careers to home management and raising children. Somehow we didn't think the choice of "stay at home" was a good one in the 70s-90s. After all, women won the right to leave the home for a career.

But their daughters ... the kids shuttled off to daycare and babysitters ... the ones who hardly saw their parents? Those gals are choosing to stay home.

"Your life matters," my mom would tell me when I was drowning in diapers and baby food. "Being at home with your children shapes a whole generation. You may have more influence by loving and caring for these few precious ones than you may ever experience by fulfilling your job description elsewhere."

We can't all stay home. And we don't all choose to. But let's give a hurrah today for those stay-at-home moms who pick up the slack for those of us who "go to work" each day.

Many of them:

• provide an alternative to the "you have to work to be significant" propaganda targeted at women
• make us all smarter by using their education and skills to interact with neighbors, friends, and children
• keep our neighborhoods safe when they go for walks and notice friends and strangers
• keep our schools going by volunteering in the classroom and on the playground
• shop during the day, giving worker bees jobs!
• cook homemade food, staving off junk-food diets that will cost us billions in healthcare as we age
• provide a nurturing space for their children and their friends
• keep our kids safe by providing a friend's home  as a hangout before or after school

If you're doing all or some of these things, please recognize your role at home as a significant one. You are part of the glue that holds society together.

Some of us have to work outside the home. There's no guilt or condemnation for that! But if you can stay home, you're one of the lucky ones. Your influence will shape the next generation.

Mom would say, "Do the best job you can! and be content with your privileged life."

What part of staying at home do you love the most?

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