There are a lot of wonderful things about Ma. She’d taught us about self-decision making, self-responsibility, and gaining independence. She said: “Good grades in school are for you, not for me or your Dad. Not even for your teachers. Aren’t you happy when you know you can study well?”
Ma wanted her three kids – her two daughters and son, no gender exceptions – to be independent and able to take care of themselves well. She never told my sister and me: “Don’t get pregnant before marriage or you’ll shame Dad and me.” She only said: “Whatever you do, even without my knowledge or Dad’s – God knows everything. Don’t do it if you’re not ready for the consequences.”
To people who had harshly judged her and the way she was raising us, Ma simply told them this:
“We can’t always keep our children safe, even by locking them up at home at night. We have to teach them how to identify danger out there, assess the situation, and protect themselves from harm.”
Of course, not all would accept her arguments easily, even after certain proofs. Tragedy had struck two of the critics. One had a daughter who was addicted to drugs, treated at a rehab, and instead got pregnant with her mentor’s baby. Then she’d run off with him and their baby – and still aren’t heard from again. Another also had a daughter who had often snuck out at night (when her mother thought she was always ‘a stay-at-home good girl’), got herself in trouble a lot at school, and sadly...met the same fate: dealing with pregnancy she was never ready for. Both girls had stay-at-home moms who once told Ma that ‘something’ might have happened to my sister or me if we went out, especially with boys and at night, a lot.
Then it hit me:
If a child makes a mistake, it is not because their mother isn’t at home or taking care of them well. It doesn’t matter if the mother is a housewife or an office staff, but it’s always easier to blame everything on the mom, eh? The child, especially old enough to know ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, could copy Dad’s bad habits and behaviour or from someone else’s they know. Even if they have already got the most attentive stay-at-home mom in the world, anything can still happen. A child can still make their own mistakes and THAT has nothing to do with their mother’s choice of career. It’s the kid’s bad decisions. Be fair and responsible for once!
By the way, being a housewife or a stay-at-home mom is also a career choice, so why do you still need to exclude it this way?
I’m not saying that one is better than the other and vice versa. It’s their personal choice and hopefully they embrace it happily and not because others expect them to do so or because they want to prove a point. As for this, Ma also told me:
“The day you no longer feel the need to explain everything you do to anybody out there is the day you set yourself free.”
It’s true, but I still have a word or two for the out-of-home, career-mom haters out there:
