From the home front

My wife's been home now, away from work, for a week and a half, and it's really been an eye-opener.

She quit her job as a teacher's aide at the end of the last school year, deciding she'd had enough and wanted to be more available to the kids. She was with them there for 10 years (9 total for my daughter), so we were always very lucky to have her around them anyway, but with my daughter now in high school and my son heading into junior high next year, it was time to move on. Plus, there was pressure from the school to devote time there, instead of with the kids.

It was a difficult decision, one not lightly taken. The money will be tight, I'm sure there will be more than a little boredom. But it's just as important to her to make the house a home, which is a big goal now.

It's been funny for her when she's taken our son to school, dropping him off and visiting with other moms and staff. I guess most of them didn't know why she wasn't around until she told them, because no announcement was made. A lot of the women who work there are very supportive of her and seem almost intrigued by the idea of leaving work! My wife's afraid she's going to set off an exodus of teachers and aides quitting! When I left the newspaper in El Paso for Phoenix, a similar thing happened to the copy desk there, when they found out that you could get pretty good pay elsewhere! A year later, about half the desk was gone!

My wife got the feeling that at least some of the women at the school work because they have to, or because they're expected to or their husbands want them to. When she and I were talking about quitting, she asked me what I preferred she do. I told her that I was never against her working, and I would not be against her NOT working, but that I thought it would be better for her to be home. She told me later that what I said made it a lot easier for her to leave.

I remember reading an article, in Time, about younger women leaving the workforce for home, raising kids, etc. Seems a lot of them grew up in daycare or as latch-key kids, and don't want their kids being raised the same way.

The article was interesting because of the feedback it generated. Feminists wrote back saying that women who leave work are betraying the "movement" or are less valuable now than women who work. Some were inimating that women SHOULD work to prove their worth. I thought the goal was to give women the choice to work (or not), not to force women to work. It would be the same as forcing women NOT to work.

Anyhoo, we've only just begun (cue Carpenters music here), but I think we've made the right choice. At least, until the bills pile up! ;)

-Zube.