The Price Tag of Life

I am not someone quick to anger. But very occasionally I do get cross, especially when I read quotes from people who pour scorn on being a stay at home mother.Yesterday, I read this article at The Daily Telegraph featuring novelist Joanna Trollope who suggests that stay at home mothers produce callous children. Here's what she says;

"I remember when my daughters were at boarding school and there was a girl at the school, and they were always telling me that she had this wonderful mother who was always at home, making home-made bread and willing to drop everything to play rounders....It was their big tease to me that she was this perfect mother...And recently I met this girl, now grown up, and there was this callousness about her. This idyll she had grown up in had detached her from society...My own belief, having worked absolutely all my life, is that it's healthy to work. It's extremely good for all our senses. So I would think that as a general rule - and I'm a novelist, not a psychotherapist, so I may be entirely wrong - but to be a working woman gives you a sense of balance in a great many areas of human relationships."

I am disappointed in Joanna. For someone who spends her life writing about families and relationships she clearly has some very judgemental opinions about what is the correct way to bring up children. And to suggest that stay at home mothers do not have an understanding about human relationships is, frankly, a preposterous statement.

Why do some people value stay at home mothers so little? As I get older, I am inclined to believe it is because many people view success (in whatever way you look at it) as being defined by how much money you earn. Everything seems to have a price tag these days. Sometimes even love.

Is that a preposterous statement? I don't think so.