This week, a post by Grown and Flown’s Lisa Endlich Heffernan enumerating why she regrets staying home with her children has caused quite a stir on my personal Facebook page (and beyond). I read the post when it first showed up on HuffPost Parents, but I refrained from sharing it myself because it seemed to evoke such strong reactions from my friends — either in very strong disagreement with Heffernan or in vocal assent — and I didn’t feel strongly enough about it myself to begin that conversation on my own page.
After reading the post and Heffernan’s responses in the comments, my personal opinion is that Heffernan regrets more the way she stayed home than the actual staying home part of her decision. She says now that she very much wishes that she had thought about working differently instead of not at all. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. She did go on to author three books, which would be a major feat for anyone, but she apparently keenly feels the loss of her first career now that her children are grown and she’s left facing her next chapter.
I think the strong reactions to Heffernan’s post stem from the fact that none of us live completely without regret, though it is a worthy aspiration, and we all have roads not taken. The choice to stay home with children has very real, tangible sacrifices inherent to it, including a loss of financial independence and a hit to any career trajectory. I also think that a tender, raw, personal choice such as the one parents make to work outside the home or stay at home with children is almost never impervious to doubt, and anytime someone pipes up and says, “this wasn’t a good choice for me,” sometimes it can sound as if that person is saying, “it’s the wrong choice for everyone.” I don’t believe that is what Heffernan intended, and I don’t believe it’s true.
I don’t know when we will put down our arms and acknowledge that parents are individuals, and there is no one right way — no one true path, as my friend Jenni says — to be a parent. There is no one true path to being a human being. There is no one true path to success or happiness or fulfillment. There is no one right way. The good news about that truth is that it also means there are actually many right ways to be a parent, to be a human being, and to find success, happiness, and fulfillment. It sounds like Heffernan feels like maybe she made choices — not just one choice, but many — that led her now to second guess the way she spent twenty years of her life. That’s unfortunate, but it does not translate to a judgment on staying home with children. It just means that maybe staying at home was not the right choice for her.
I have stayed home with my children now for eleven years, working for pay only for tiny parts of that time. I don’t regret a single minute of it, and I feel like that is a long enough period that I get to say so. Also? I was never going to be someone who worked as a Wall Street trader, like Heffernan was. I wouldn’t expect us to have the same wants or needs. I’m sure I will have regrets or “misgivings,” as Heffernan clarified on the Today show yesterday; I already do. But staying at home is not one of them.
I started to write a post answering Heffernan’s list of regrets point by point from my own perspective, but I soon realized that was silly. I’m not offended by what she wrote, and she is entitled to her own opinions and experiences. I respect her point to be thoughtful about how we stay at home if we choose to do so, and I think I have done a decent job of not letting myself become outdated, making sure my children know I have dimensions as a person outside of being their mother, and maintaining my confidence and my dreams, even if my dreams are different now than they were when I was 27 and conceived my first child.
However, one particular point on her list did stick in my craw. Heffernan wrote:
My world narrowed. During the years at home with my children, I made the most wonderful friends, women I hope to know all of my life. But living in the suburbs among women of shockingly similar backgrounds, interests and aspirations narrowed the scope of people with whom I interacted. In the workplace, my contacts and friends included both genders and people of every description, and I was better for it.
I disagree. My world is rich, layered, and huge. I live in suburbia, and yes, I have complained about the homogeneity here at times. But one of the biggest lessons I have learned from leaving Los Angeles and its diverse, creative, urban landscape for suburbia is that everyone has a story. People are so, so interesting and valuable, no matter where they live and no matter what they do, and the preschool parking lot is as full of life and the world as Times Square. At any given moment, you can watch the parents holding their charges’ tiny hands as they make their way into the school and see it all: the mother with a bandana wrapped around her head, recovering from her latest round of chemo; the musician dad who stays at home while his wife works; the mother packing heat, already dressed for her day job as a police officer; the grandmother whose son just committed suicide after a long bout with depression, taking her grandchildren into school in his stead. Waiting in line to pick my children up from school, I have seen women burst into spontaneous tears, hug in joy and in pain, reunite with kids after long work trips, shake their heads sadly at teachers to let them know that they had suffered miscarriages.
It’s true that I don’t come in contact with people who look as different from me as I did when I lived in New York and L.A., and that people settled in my community often have common interests or are at similar places in their lives. I don’t get to spend time with male friends as often as I once did. But even so, my life has not narrowed by staying home in suburbia. Life is richer and fuller for the amount of detail I have been able to absorb from the people around me. Instead of checking out at the end of the day as I did when I worked, I watch my neighbors’ stories unfold, marriages begin and end, children grow, and grandparents age. For everything else, I have the Internet. Social media has allowed me to maintain friendships and relationships with all the people I knew before I moved and before I stayed home too. I have the best of both worlds — and I feel I am better for it. Staying at home does not mean I don’t live every bit as much in the world as I ever did. In fact, I would say that in some cases, I see people and issues in more Technicolor because I see them where they really count: at home, in their children, in the details of their lives. If I worked, yes, I could still say the same. My point is not that staying home provides an advantage over working; my point is that staying at home has not narrowed my world.
I think that when our children leave home, every parent has a gut check in store. There will be regrets, misgivings, and doubts along with the satisfaction of having successfully delivered a grown human being (or four, in my case, fingers crossed) to the universe. I can say with confidence that my list will not look like Lisa Endlich Heffernan’s, and that’s okay. It doesn’t invalidate her feelings or mine. But along with appreciating Heffernan’s point to make our choices with thoughtful care and planning, I also want to make the point that our attitudes and our effort come into play when it comes to finding personal satisfaction, just as they would if we made the opposite decision. Parenting is complicated whether someone works outside the home or not; it creates challenges that affect our relationships, sometimes limit our ability to pursue dreams both career-oriented and personal, and force us to re-evaluate our priorities over and over again. Whether we parent from an office during the day or not, that doesn’t change. We all have to figure out our own winding path to parenting, to life, to happiness, and to our definitions of success, and we have to work — hard — to get to where we want to be. Either way.
I wish the answer to these issues was as easy as just the one decision to stay home or to work outside the home, but it’s not. Parenting is just hard, and it comes with trade-offs and sometimes difficult choices. Good thing it’s totally worth it.
Thank you for the most thoughtful, eloquent response I’ve yet read to the latest round of this (tired and yet timeless) debate. I appreciate the chance to sit with your words rather than react in knee-jerk fashion to this story as so many are still doing on my Facebook feed, as if this one woman’s honest sharing of her own story is an indictment of their own. You nailed how this question crawls under our deepest fears and guilt, so it always feel personal, and yet if we can’t share openly about the joys and regrets of whatever choices we cobble together, then we haven’t come very far as women and mothers, have we?
What a beautiful response! I have seen this story floating around all week and purposely avoided it. I am not a stay at home mom, but I do work from a home office and send my children to daycare everyday so that I can get my job done. Its the best of both worlds for me….more flexibility of schedule, less stress, but also less socialization and I left a much more high profile job. This section you wrote says it all!
“I also want to make the point that our attitudes and our effort come into play when it comes to finding personal satisfaction, just as they would if we made the opposite decision. Parenting is complicated whether someone works outside the home or not; it creates challenges that affect our relationships, sometimes limit our ability to pursue dreams both career-oriented and personal, and force us to re-evaluate our priorities over and over again.”
I love this thoughtful reaction, Allison. I think what you say about this being a raw, tender decision that cannot possibly be impervious to doubt or regret is absolutely at the crux. I also always have a strong reaction whenever I read pieces like this, that we are ALL so fortunate to even begin to feel torn at all. After all, most mothers in America don’t have any choice whatsoever. In some ways having that choice is both an enormous blessing and the fertile ground in which a wasp’s nest of complicated emotion can fester. Thanks for this piece. Made me think. xox
I think that we are all such different people from who we were when we first had our kids, and from who we were when we decided to stay home or work outside the home, that there is always going to be some second guessing, some “what ifs?” But, I agree that it is all about attitude, about how we choose to view it. I was young when I had my first child and still young when I decided to leave my teaching career to stay home with her. Some of what Lisa says resonates with me. But in the end, I am happy with my choices, mostly because I choose to be.
Very nice response to this controversial piece. I think the most important point you made is that there is no one right way to be a good parent and therefore we can’t think that Heffernan is speaking on behalf of all SAHMs and we should respect her individual opinion. Each woman will have her own journey, her own triumphs, and her own regrets. Sharing those publicly, as Heffernan did and you are here, allows those who identify with each of us to find their community and feel less alone on this journey.
Absolutely lovely. <3
I love your description of the pre-school parking lot- I met the most interesting a diverse people during those days of pick-ups and drop-offs, and the variety only expanded through elementary, middle and high school.
I loved Lisa’s piece (full disclosure – she’s a good friend of mine), but at the same time I feel no regret at all about having stayed home and raised my kids, and wrote about it on Huff Post earlier this year to very mixed comments – but that’s really besides the point.
What is difficult to understand while one is raising kids is how abruptly your job comes to an end when they leave the nest. Many of us at this stage do soul-searching and feel utterly useless if we’ve stayed home and haven’t worked in 20 years. For me, it took a year to find my way to blogging and now publishing and editing a website – but there was months of wondering what would happen next. Again, I don’t regret my choice – at all – but I do wish the transition to empty-nesting had been a little easier.
Allison,
I love your very thoughtful response. I did not know that I felt the way I do until I was watching my youngest son begin to look for colleges. I have missed work all along, but so loved being home with my boys that I put is aside, knowing everything we get in life has some compromise. As I face the empty nest (12 months from now!) I really miss the workplace and the stimulation that comes from being among colleagues all working towards a common goal. It is not that I miss Wall Street, I miss working. I am not for a minute saying that being at home is not working (I for one believe that it is much harder work), but I still miss the workplace. I feel that working part or full time would have been a source of real growth for me and therein lies the misgivings.
I tried so hard to make this my opinion, about my life, and nothing more. I would not begin to weigh in on other’s choices as every woman and every family is different. It is a blessing that there are choices and who are any of us to judge.
The post focused on what I gave up, but I gained so much spending wonderful years with the three people (along with my husband!) who I love most.
Thank you for such a considered response,
Lisa Heffernan
I hope for a day when mothers can stop the “who’s got it worst” game & be honest that parenting is hard no matter the circumstances. Supporting each other as mothers makes it better no matter where you ‘work’.
Wow, I saw this post and was like… wait, I know her. I worked with her when she was the board of my former hospital. She is brilliant and well respected in the community. And yes, um… 3 books! I’m only at year 1.5 of the downsizing of my career (and expansion into other areas, perhaps?), so I don’t feel like I have a right to say how I think I will feel in 11 years. I know I’m happy to be working part-time and writing on the side right now. That’s all I can say. Will I regret it later? Who knows.
(Also, the suburbs she lives in are pretty circumscribed. I completely understand her point in that regard.)
Anyway, I appreciated your thoughtful response.
I love this, Allison. xo
This was all so beautifully said, Allison. I just shared on my blog’s FB page. 🙂
This is a topic for which I feel passionate. I believe that we all make decisions that we feel are right for our families. It will never be the same for anyone. But what IS the same for ALL of us, is that we want the best for our families. And so with every decision, suddenly what comes into focus is the opposite of that decision. It feels easy to lament about the things that did not come to pass. It’s simple to point out all the things that are no longer there, those things are apparent. It’s more difficult to quantify what was gained, better, saved by making the decisions you made. Which leads me to my whole belief that the roads we choose are always the ones we NEED to go down for own own sake.
I can really empathize with both of your stories. I was never going to be a Wall Street trader either. But I understand her perspective about having regrets about the “career path not taken.” This was so eloquent and thoughtful. I hope lots of women get to read this. I’ve heard so much talk about this topic and Lisa’s post. I will do my best to share yours too!
I am loving reading all these thoughtful posts about the choices mothers make about our careers ~ I think the most important part of feminism is to honor all women’s choices, based on what is best for us and our families. I am a working-out-of-the-home mother (after nearly year-long maternity leaves with each child) and I am a much better mother when I also have my very satisfying career outside of the home. I don’t regret my choice, but I wouldn’t dare to presume my choice is what works for all mothers. Thanks for contributing to this dialogue…. and I think the next level of this conversation is to bring in the dads ~ why don’t we talk about their careers in terms of “choices”, and how do they feel about either being home or working, or both? So much to talk about!!
Thank you for this eloquent and compassionate post. Can I somehow require everyone to read it? 🙂
Lisa’s essay pushed some buttons for me, but overall I’m reminded how in debt I am to the women who came before me, for being able to make a choice about whether to work or work from home, and to be more aware that this 24/7 stage of mothering will change over time. I do believe the transition to “empty nest” will be difficult in different ways for everyone, but perhaps less of an unanticipated surprise for our generation.
To say that there are no regrets, is almost a lie. No matter what you do or who you are, regrets are as real as breathing. I like how you didn’t pounce on her like many has, for sharing her regrets. I truly moved your response to her complaint about world becoming narrow. I cannot agree enough, how my world has in fact become wider after staying at home with my kids. I feel the people I know now are so much real than those during my working days.
So much to take in, but it was all so beautifully said. I’ve been home with my kids for the past five years (having worked short contracts off and on, always returning to being a full-time mom because I felt I was missing out on things at home) but I can agree with Lisa in that I do also miss the workplace. I miss the collaboration towards a common goal and the satisfaction from hitting a tough career goal. Because of this, I’ve returned to my old goal-setting techniques I used to use when I was a recruiter, putting myself on deadlines and such, but even so, it’s not the same as holding myself accountable at a job. It’s hard being my own boss, and because of that, I miss the office. At the same time, I wouldn’t trade my decision to stay home for anything, and I firmly believe that every woman has to make that choice for herself. Only you know the right choice for you and your family and no one should judge you for what you decide.
Great post, Allison. You hit the nail on the head with your description of the preschool parking lot.