Mom Like Me?

Will a Daughter Respect Her Mom's Choices?

By Suzanne Goldsmith-Hirsch


"I don't want to be a girl," announced my four-year-old daughter. "I don't want a baby to come out of me and my tummy to get fat. I want to be a ballerina."

My firstborn is constantly lobbing these little grenades: unanswerable questions, embarrassing comments, disturbing pronouncements. They are often fascinating and always challenging. This announcement offered plenty of openings for discussion. We could talk about how girls today can decide if and when they want to have babies. Or about how women can have children and careers. Or about how having a baby only makes one’s tummy fat while the baby is inside.

These are all lessons I want my daughter to learn. The problem is that I’m not exactly teaching by example. When I finally found the right guy and married him at the ripe age of 36, I had almost given up on having kids. Now that I have two pre-school-age children, my career is a distant memory. And don’t even ask about my tummy.

When I decided to leave the paid workforce and become a stay-at-home mom, I felt I was making a bold post-feminist statement. I had enough self-confidence, I was saying, to sacrifice money, status and intellectual stimulation for the good of my children. I didn't consider that my children might not see my choice as admirable or worthy of emulation.

But there it was. My daughter was saying—or so I felt at that cold moment—that she didn't want to turn out like me.

And why should she? I thought. She only knows one facet of who I am. She has never seen the professional me, who used to wear sleek suits and work in a shiny office building. Nor does she know the adventurous me, who nearly floated out to sea on a broken windsurfer. She hasn’t met the idealistic me, who worked with inner-city youth, or the literary me, who was feted at book release parties.

Instead, she knows the maternal me, who washes dishes but does not always wash her hair. The me she knows has more opinions about naps and choking risks than about social policy. The biggest risk she’s seen me take was letting my not-yet-potty-trained son run naked across the living room carpet.

I am pleased that my daughter wants more for herself than slicing hot dogs and wiping bottoms. And it's okay if she chooses not to have children. But I hope she won’t make that choice because she thinks childrearing is not compatible with ambition, or accomplishment, or self-respect.

Yet what else is she to learn from me if what she sees is, at best, a warm, nurturing and self-sacrificing mom, and at worst, a bored housewife? Of course, she doesn’t really see me that way; I do. That’s the problem. My old, career-oriented self is not entirely respectful of my new way of life.

Yet I know it is right for me to spend these precious years of early childhood at home with my children. It is a gift for me to see the world anew each day through their unjaded eyes and watch them develop from helpless babies into complex and independent beings. And it’s not just for me; I believe that my consistent and loving presence is good for the children. Beneath all the doubts, I am proud of the path I have chosen.

The options that mothers have today, brought to us by years of struggle, carry with them an awful burden. Since society will no longer tell us what to do, we have to take responsibility for our own choices. I will be a better role model, I have decided, if I embrace my pride rather than my doubts.

I’m also trying to make sure my daughter knows that her mother has some interests besides reading Madeline and picking bits of broccoli out of the carpet. These days, I make sure I get time each week for writing, research and other pursuits that have nothing to do with raising children.

I think my efforts are paying off: last week while making a little book about herself, my daughter addressed the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” by drawing two pictures. One she identified as a ballerina. The other, she said, was a mommy.

So I’ve stopped apologizing when I leave the kids with a babysitter while I go out to spend a few hours writing. When I also stop apologizing to myself, I sometimes actually accomplish something in those stolen -- no, necessary -- hours.

Then, when I return and my daughter flings herself upon me, crying "Mommy! I missed you!" I don't feel guilty. It’s important for her to learn, and for me to believe, that moms can be other things as well: writers, and perhaps, even ballerinas.

Of course, whether they can also have firm tummies remains to be seen.

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Copyright 2004 Suzanne Goldsmith-Hirsch

Suzanne Goldsmith-Hirsch is the author of the nonfiction book, A City Year: On the Streets and in the Neighborhoods with Twelve Young Community Service Volunteers, published by the New Press in 1993. She has also published articles in Parents, Columnbus Parents, The Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, and other journals, magazines, and newspapers.