Can We Be Done with This?

The Matron knows this book is a couple of years old; she picked it up anyway, wondering what in the world was left to say on this subject.

After reading several of these essays -- all penned by reporters or editors or novelists working for or in 'mom-retirement' from venues like Publisher's Weekly, The Washington Post, Time Magazine and The New York Times -- the Matron's previously vague analysis of "The Mommy Wars" has sharpened into something crystalline.

The wars between working and stay-at-home mothers is a completely fictive enterprise; it is a narrative created by self-reflective mothers who work in the media industry. Good for them! She bet this narrative has paid some hefty private tuition bills and funded good shoe shopping.

The truth? All mothers on this planet--let's get real, folks -- work and raise babies. And most of the 'work' she's talking about is back or heartbreaking: searching for food, raising food, hauling water, sewing, pushing down the lever in the factory, baking bread, mining, collecting firewood, waiting tables, washing dishes, loading garbage, collecting recycling, husking corn, picking apples or any of the truly endless tasks that constitute the lot of the worker.

There is a percentage of the global population -- and she's not sure what this number is, but she knows it's not the biggest slice of the populace pie -- who live from time to time (or permanently) without the economic imperative to earn money. These women who are mothers still labor and toil, but get to choose whether or not to take on one more job -- for pay.

So when the Matron reads a book about "The Mommy Wars" or hears media discussion about the dissent between the 'stay at home' (what? like in house arrest?) and 'working' mothers she wishes the narrative would clarify that this is a story about rifts between women who come from a specific shared demographic and has nothing to do with the majority of women, who (like many working class men she knows) would love to give up their day job: but can't. Even imagine. Because if they don't earn a paycheck, there's no food, rent or gas -- or even less, in some parts of the world.

She wishes twice as much attention were paid to the real problems faced by most mothers: food, shelter, water, safety, school. No dissent there, people. No royalty money, either.