The Struggle for Work/Life Balance

It seems like every time I turn around, there's something in the news about the "mommy wars" the supposed conflict between women who work out of the home and women who are stay-at-home moms.

I have to tell you, as the mom of a 2.5-year-old, trying to combine paid work with caring for my child, I just don't see that conflict in the real world. I don't get it from my friends (who run the gamut from stay-at-home, to working-out-of-the-home, to childless), I don't get it from my coworkers, and I don't even really see it in the volatile online mom community.

We may be jealous of one another- the out-of-the-home mom wishes she could be home with her children, the at-home mom wishes she could get out of the house and have her work valued, the work-from-home mom wishes she could focus on either work or child exclusively- but I don't see the put-downs and the infighting that the media portrays.

What I do see is a lot of women who are struggling.

Women who are fighting every day to have enough money for basic needs, to have enough time with their families and for themselves, to have enough energy to even get the laundry done.

When women are being told that laws giving us equality are bad for us, that there are certain jobs we just shouldn't take, and when the pay gap still remains, there's clearly still a lot of work to be done.

Maybe the answer isn't trying to promote conflict between struggling women, but for us to get some real equality. What about equal paternity leave time to bring father's into the childcare equation? What about creating work/life policies for the modern world? What about equalizing housework responsibilities to reduce women's second shift?

Here's one place we can start: stop Senate Republicans from filibustering equal pay.