Reading about this controversy over the "Ann Romney never worked a day in her life," has hit home with me. First of all, no one is saying that staying home is not work, rather there are varying degrees of that work, as well as the fact that millions of women would love to stay home, but simply cannot afford to stay home.
And there is another darker issue that is being glossed over, one that is sorely missing and needs to be pointed out. Women who do stay home with their children end up on the losing end of employment if they seek to go back to work when their children are older. I know this because I have experienced this myself, as well as have many women.
This must read article by Katy Read exposes the reality of staying at home and trying to return to work. For instance, Read says:
My attempt to find work could hardly be more ill-timed, with unemployment near 10 percent, with the newspaper industry that once employed me seemingly going the way of blacksmithing. And though I have tried to scrub age-revealing details from my resume, let’s just say my work history is long enough to be a liability, making me simultaneously overqualified and underqualified.
But my biggest handicap may be my history of spending daylight hours in the company of my own kids.
The "choice" to stay home with your kids is not a viable choice for millions of women, and many middle class women who do stay home are shocked to learn that their time off is not considered an asset when they seek to return to the job market.
I choose to stay home with my kids, and it wasn't easy. My husband was not making a huge sum of money, as a matter of fact we were well below the medium income for our area. Yet, we did make it work, but there were sacrifices.
One wonders if Ann Romney had to make any of the sacrifices my family made. No cleaning lady (I did all the cleaning ), no expensive summer camps for the kids (we did manage to afford one here and there, but they were local and no over night camps), vacations were once every five years (we did staycations most of the time.)
Our children wore hand me downs, we did not buy new cars, and for years only had one car (my husband took transit to work). We we lucky enough to have a home, our young daughter and son shared a bedroom and we all shared the one bathroom. Our children went to local public schools, they were involved with sports programs which were affordable.
During my time home I was involved with the local PTA's, as well as the community, founded a neighborhood association and also returned to school (which, if the costs were as they are today would not have been possible), was involved with many local organizations and causes.
Eventually I needed to work part time to help ends meet and found retail work in the evenings and on the weekends.
As my children grew older and I sought full time employment I was unpleasantly surprised to find that employers placed no value on the things I did as a stay at home Mom. Budgeting, coordinating events, marketing, communications, Public Relations, and more, none of the things I had done with the organizations and groups seemed to be of any value to employers.
When a woman stays home they are not making just a choice to be with their children, they are also gravely effecting their future employment opportunities. Ann Romney will never know what that means, she never needed to go to work once her children were grown, she has no idea of what it means to try to find work after staying home.
So, my two cents, for what it is worth: Staying home with kids is real work, and it is MORE WORK if you don't have the money to provide your children with the extras, it is MORE WORK if you have to do everything for yourself and not be able to hire gardeners, accountants, babysitters, cleaning people, cooks and so on.
And staying home impacts the earning potential of women who re-enter the workforce. We already know that women make less than men, staying home makes that disparity worse.
Let us not forget the millions of single Mom's who have no choice to stay home, they must work to provide the basics for their families. I was lucky to have the ability to stay home, had I not been married to someone who could provide a decent living I would NOT have been allowed to make that choice.
There is no choice for most women, and even those of us who have made that choice have harmed our future earning potential. For women who find themselves single after spending time at home, the loss of earning potential can mean poverty for the rest of their life.
Ann Romney, like her husband, just doesn't understand the reality of staying at home, yes she "worked" while at home, but she also did not face the hurdles that millions of other women have faced who have stayed home.
Once again the reality for the Romney's is out of touch with the reality for the rest of us.