Motherhood: Career II

What's wrong with looking at motherhood (even if fathers decide this route) as a job. Being a parent isn't dropping a child off somewhere and going off to the "prime" career. At least, it's not that for a child. Their job as a child is to be with a mother person who is there most of the time and the two of them will see and hear and feel and need each other for the next intense six years until the child wants its peers. Can't afford it? That's a choice these days, but if you make it your "job", yes you should be paid. Our governments should do it. Instead of money flying off to babysitting, play schools, early ed factories, and medications for stressed working mothers, why not pay the moms to enjoy their wonderful opportunity as role models, care givers and lovers of children, their own creations. All the stress apparently associated with motherhood may then disappear. A woman doesn't have to prove herself to  do it all.  A mother taking a break from her profession to have a child, isn't on a break, and children aren't break fodder. They are a heritage, a future and a responsibility, not a "break". Nor are children simply  a side trip because your time clock thinks is time to do it. Children are a serious career. If you have that career as your work, it doesn't mean being a super muffin-decorating mom, but a woman who learns what her body is great for - other things too, but this one is the biggie.  When I left my career of six years, and made the decision to be at home and stay a mother for six years, it was a big decision but every second of that wonderful time was rewarding and so full of love it chokes me to think about how it felt to have a two year old little baby boy run to me and jump up to give me the biggest hug in the world. When I went back to work, my son and I were  two thirds of our family and that love and attachment we three had made together, lasted all of our lives. We supported ourselves and each other and our growing extended other loving people, without guilt or stress, regardless of what some other folks talked about. Now that I am alone with only memories, it remains and I believe it to be the greatest treasure there is in life.