Letters to the Editor

• Time to get over it already

  [Read the article: "The Feminine Mistake"]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Whether women want to acknowledge the truth or not, the only way to have any kind of real security in this world is to be willing and able to work. It doesn't have to be glamorous or interesting or even challenging. It doesn't have to be a glorious career. It means being able to feed yourself and your family, keep a roof over your head, pay for necessities like clothes and medicine and maybe even grant you a little leasure fun. No where in the rule book says that you have to be fulfilled by your job.

  Yes, raising your children is important, but we seem to have gotten to a point where children have become fetish symbols that need to be doted on every waking moment of their lives. I have nothing against women make the decision to take a few years off from work, or to give up work entirely to focus on their children, but they have to accept that they are playing some pretty steep odds.

  Look at my ex-sister-in-law. When she married my brother, she worked in publishing and was able to afford her own apartment, travel and had a pretty nice independant life. After their daughter was born, she quit working and became a full time stay at home mom. All well and good until my brother was out of work for sometimes months at a stretch and they had nothing to fall back on. It fell to my parent and me to help support them. Then after being married for 10 years, the marriage finally broke up under what had been years of stress. Aside from a few part-time jobs here and there, my former sister-in-law had been out of the work force for nearly a decade. She works 2 part time jobs now and goes to school in the hope that maybe by this time next year she can get her teaching certification, but otherwise she is barely scraping by now.

  Then you have my best friend who is also a stay at home mom with two children. Her husband is in the Naval reserves and has just been called up for duty in Iraq. While she will be able to manage financially while he is on duty, she is terrified over what might happen if he is injured or killed there. She has a master's degree but hasn't worked outside the home since her son was born six years ago.

  I like my job, but I would hardly consider it my dream career. But as a single woman, I don't have the luxury of deciding to let someone else take care of me. I have to pay my bills, pay a mortgage and look to my own security when I retire. I don't have a choice in the matter.

  Some of the women I've heard have become such babies about things - that if they aren't in love with their job every second of the day that it's not worth keeping or that if they work they might miss those "precious milestones" of their child's life. You just want to tell them what will mean more - being there for little Jimmy's first step or being able to pay for Jimmy's shoes, food and college if your husband is suddenly killed in a head on collision? No one ever said that life gets to be perfect and that you can always make the choices that make you happy. Unless you have a few million dollars stashed away in your mattress, it is foolish to be so completely and utterly dependant on one single person for your entire financial well-being.

  I'm sure that there are plenty of women out there who have stable marriages who feel that they have all the security that they need and can take that kind of chance, but I've seen too many cases of women who's husbands leave them, lose what had been good paying jobs, get sick or die. These women are an auto accident away from losing what security they have. This author has done them an enormous service in reminding them that nothing in life is guarenteed. It's a shame that so many women don't take that lesson to heart.

  Permalink Friday, April 6, 2007 10:19 AM