The peanut gallery strikes again.

I wonder what the criteria is for being included in "HuffPost's signature lineup of contributors"? I was going to make a huffing paint joke here but I thought better of it, not because I am worried about their feelings, but rather because that made me think of a serious encounter I had the other day; while in Wal-Mart there was a young guy in front of me buying spray paint.  I was torn between taking the can of spray paint and knocking him out with it, and making googly eyes at the cash register clerk in an effort to say, "What the heck?!?! Are you blind?!?  Are you REALLY going to ignore the spray paint all over his hands and nose and sell him his next fix?!?!?"  I did the later, it didn't work, she sold it to him without a word.  I digress.

Did any of you catch the article, actually it started out as an article but then made the news and morning talk shows, titled, "I Regret Being A Stay-At-Home Mom"?  Here is the link if you'd like to lose your breakfast: Why I Regret Being a Stay at Home Mom

Now, I have pipped in before when I've heard stories that rub me the wrong way, so this won't be the first time I've shared my humble opinion with you all.  There was another story a couple years ago where they started offering a college degree to women in homemaking and some women seemed to feel as if that option was setting the equal rights fight for women back 50 years. If you're not speed reading through this and never heard about that bit of news and want to check that (My View From the Peanut Gallery) out feel free, it kind of sets the tone for my response to this sad story.

Occasionally I come across stories and despite the headache I've given myself from all the eye rolling and scoffing under my breath I did during the read I don't feel compelled to voice my opinion. Then there are times, such as this obviously, where I feel the urge to verbally (through text I suppose) slap the face of the author of such an off-putting article.  I kind of don't even know where to begin to be honest. It seems so common sense that this women needs massive doses of counseling and STAT. I almost... ALMOST... feel sorry for her. Could you imagine spending a majority of your life tirelessly devoted to raising the most precious of gifts and building a home and a family with your blood, sweat, and tears only to regret it?  And to regret it based on what you feel you lost in monetary value and workplace status.  So, here is my contribution to the HuffPost, and to any other mother's who felt they had made the best decisions for their families and then read her article and had a momentary twinge in which they questioned whether they shouldn't have.

"One Reason I Wouldn't Change Being a Stay at Home Mom For All the Money and Career Status In the World"

1) What is best for my children is worth more than any prospect of employment, any paycheck no matter the value, and whatever skills of mine that may or may not have been refined along the way are not worth more than producing children who can be productive, successful, responsible, caring members of a society in which apparently all that matters is how valuable you are in the job market.

This is not to say that if there is a need in your family structure that you work and contribute financially to your household that you are shirking your duties as a parent.  I am a single mother of five, going to nursing school full-time, I work part-time jobs when I can in order to make ends meet, so I am far from an official stay-at-home-mom.  However, I was for a long while and my beef is with the claim that regret should stem from that privilege, and moreover the reasons for the regret are beyond superficial.


My job isn't to honor "those that came before me" and paved the way for women to dream and accomplish things equal to men; my job is to not let down the children and the women who come after me. Those women who are in the grave would probably roll over if they knew you were using them as an excuse to compare the value of raising a child to the value of job security.

Your degree is just a piece of paper.  You're really shortchanging your children if you compare a short 6-year-stint in an educational facility to your ability to drive them to their doctors appointments, their first baseball practice, or pick them up from school when they're sick in the middle of the day.

If your kids think you did "nothing" then you should feel hugely responsible for failing them in that lesson.  My children know the value of having a clean uniform when we get home from a game at 8:30 p.m. and they need to take it to school in the morning cause they have another game the following day.  They understand that I stayed up late and WORKED on laundry so that when they leave for school they have a clean, smell-good uniform in their bag.  They say thank-you without fail when I WORK to prepare a healthy meal for them or have snacks ready when they get home from school. My kids see first hand how much hard work it takes to run a home and raise children and grow a family and they would NEVER think I didn't have a job or that my job wasn't what a real job "looked like" - and that's because they know my job is the most important one on the face of this planet.

To be honest, I am not going to address every one of her nine reasons cause it makes me nauseous: she didn't get recognized or rewarded for her volunteer work?!?!?!  She became outdated? If her world narrowed it was because she was too narrow-minded to see the wonderful opportunities she had on the daily and in almost every encounter she had with people in her suburban world.  I don't buy her last paragraph in which she tries to claim she should have chosen to do both, let's face it, with an outlook like hers she would have failed at both.  The massive trading floor of the London bank she used to work at didn't miss her, it didn't suffer, and one cannot say in the same sentence you are grateful for time that you regret you had.  I will pray her boys' future wives have a more loving outlook on the value of raising children without the proverbial pat on the back she seems to need from a career.