Transitioning: Not supermom

I have to say I am changing my tune about the whole “mommy wars” thing. While I have said time and again that I think it’s best to stay home with a baby, I fully intend to be working more when my child is in school. I'm faced with having to contrast that with those mothers who decide to be full-on stay-at-home moms, forever, and then homeschool, too…well, I can’t "compete" with that. I used to think I was doing the greatest thing for my kid, staying home before she was school age—oh, the dedication, oh, the love—but here’s this person who is clearly going to do so. much. more….but something I could never do. I am beginning to understand the inferiority moms feel when they use daycare and others blast them for doing so, and then the feeling of picking yourself up and saying, no, I am just doing what’s right for my family…and so, everyone has their own journey and their own threshold of what they can do and what they can give…that's what I'm going to do, albeit on a different time table.

I believe that if you give your baby and young child a firm foundation, you gradually let them go over the years, and to me, this means sending them to school when they're school age (I am not against homeschooling and I think it's cool for many, but it is not for me, and my husband would definitely not be on board, first and foremost). It's funny now, because I have so much pride (not haughty pride, like when the Bible talks about it as a sin, but healthy pride, if you can believe in that) in staying home with my kid as a baby and young child, and now I wonder, am I going to be ashamed or feel some weird competition that I'm not doing enough if I don't stay home FOREVER. At the same time, having only one child and having them in school the better part of the day, it doesn't make sense for me NOT to work when she is older. My goal is to achieve a good work-life balance so that I can be there for her after school, not make her go to the after school programs at least til she is older and into the school groove for a few years, not as a kindergartner or first grader...but I do think I need to do some kind of work for money as she gets older (at least what I do now, very likely more). Anyway, I am now beginning to feel some of the defensiveness of moms who send their babies to daycare when I compare myself with other moms who are never going to work at all. BUT, the key, really, will be the work-life balance. Making it real, not just some vague catch phrase.