BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)

“You come along, tearing your shirt, yelling about Jesus. I want to know, what the hell you know about Jesus?”—Carl Sandburg’s “Billy Sunday”

My mom was a single mother at a time when couples simply didn’t get divorced. The only kids without dads lost them in the war. Involuntarily, she went from being a mother at home with three kids to finding an occupation to keep her family’s boat from sinking. She moved in with her mother, who had a large house of female boarders. And she chose teaching school as a way to make a living, all the while worrying about whether child welfare would come and take her kids away.

She worked for 35 years from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m., five days a week. As a child, I remember her coming home right around the time the soap opera Edge of Night was ending. As the TV show “edged” toward its dramatic climax, an always to-be-continued episode, the schmaltzy music and credits rolling signaled her entrance through the front door. Once home, she’d grab the kid baton from grandma, who worked as a seamstress at home and who provided us with no-cost day care, i.e., keeping us fed and out of juvenile detention.

I’ve been listening for decades to the endless opinions about working moms and mothers at home. I recall the sound bites from the women’s liberation screed excoriating mothers at home as mindless automatons. Later, post-lib females wondered aloud if there might actually be some benefit to staying at home with kids, particularly for the kids. I heard countless cases for and against home versus work, single moms versus married, breast versus bottle, two dads-no mom, or dad being mom. Most recently I’ve listened to the ridiculous back and forth around Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen pillorying Ann Romney, mother at home and wife of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as a “basketball wife.” Continue reading →