Karen I. writes in response to the previous post about the “amazing” progress women have made since the 1960s:

Born in 1971, I was a member of one of the first generations of children whose mothers routinely left their children to outside care so they could go to work full time. My father had a good, not great, job but one a family could live on and my mother chose to work so they could have more material possessions. When I was small, I used to forget where I was supposed to go after school because caregivers included my grandparents, my mother sometimes, a neighbor, my mother’s workplace (where I would sit quietly for two hours and wait for her to take us home), or an after-school program. My mother sometimes used all these options in one school week, so there was no consistency. Every caregiver, including my mother and grandmother, acted like we were a burden and I remember my poor grandmother lying down in the middle of the day, exhausted from long days of caring (for no pay at all) for the small children of her three successful working daughters’ children.

Several years, I won “awards” at school for perfect attendance, but I recall being given medication and being sent to school sick those and other years. Sometimes, I would wait a long time in the nurse’s office for my mother to come and get me when she did not get away with sending me sick. 

At 12, I was left home after school for hours on end to care alone for two younger siblings, one of whom had ADD with a lot of behavior problems. My childhood, what there was of it, ended that year as responsibilities were heaped on me. Homework was seldom done as I realized no one cared if I brought a book home at all. It was better if I did not, as I could then work on making the house “spotless” (her word) as she liked me to do. I wanted her attention more than I wanted to do well in school. I could “get away” with anything because no one was there to supervise, and I was incredibly lonely on the school bus ride home, knowing I was going home to a cold house with no mother in it for hours. I left home at eighteen to live alone in an apartment but I was so unsupervised, I could have done the same at fifteen.

 I will never leave my children in the care of anyone else to go to work! Now my mother sees me home and makes snide comments. She talks about her home and possessions. She sees we are sacrificing financially for me to stay home and she wants to justify her decisions.  She says she “worked her a__ off” and never acknowledges the part my grandmother played in allowing her to profit from her work by providing free daycare for years. She never mentions the sacrifice her children had to make for her nice house and possessions, her retirement account, her pension. In her eyes, she did it all herself and she expects a pat on the back for it. Her sisters expect the same and brag about their advanced educations and impressive job titles, downplaying the fact they rarely see their grown children. Most of my cousins are like me and play a big role in their children’s lives. The one who became a doctor decided not to have any children, not wanting to leave children in care the way we were left.

 From what I can see, nothing at all has changed from when I was a child and working mothers are still fooling themselves if they think their children are enjoying their lifestyle. Children would rather come home to an apartment and a mother that cares for them as mine do than a big empty home as I did. A child wants their own mother, and no matter how much talk there is about the “village” raising children, as one who was raised by a “village” I do not agree with that philosophy at all. I am certain I am not alone in this and I admire your willingness to speak the truth. It is an unpopular stance we take, but we are right to take it.

Michael S. writes:

I hope that Karen’s story is an extreme one. She, and others like her, are in my prayers.

Laura writes:

I know Karen’s experience is very common. Many mothers refuse to see it as neglect because they receive encouragement and praise for their accomplishments. They find it hard to believe that anything so lucrative or so good for them could be hurting their children. A mother who neglects her children out of necessity often has a way of making it easier for children by constantly expressing regret that they are not cared for. But a mother who does it out of self-interest typically pretends nothing is wrong and thus makes things worse. She denies her children’s loneliness and their desire for order and consistency at home. Where I live, many children return to empty houses at the end of the day. They go right to their computers or televisions for company.

Hannon writes:

I was moved directly back to childhood memories by Karen I.’s letter. She indicates a conscious evolution of absentee parenting and the sacrifice of “self” to realize a better (if selfish) material existence. However, I think you will agree that many women are simply unequipped or ill-prepared by their own parents to undertake sensible parenting. It is a sort of reproductive naivete that society seems to regard lightly. I believe you have written about this before and I think it is worth expounding upon more extensively: how many young women lack any substantial source of these essential skills, from dealing with men (boys) to motherhood. Because of the erosion of traditional life, every generation feels a need to reinvent some radically re-designed wheel of relations between the sexes.

My mother worked as a single parent also. What did they call us, latchkey kids? There were other complications but except in the very early years no extended family was there to help out. I was lucky enough to grow up in a locale with access to natural areas that functioned as a sort of escape zone. I cannot imagine having only electronic devices to come home to. Those were the days parents let their kids out until twilight without undue fear. This has changed also, even where I was brought up.

As with many young males, I learned almost exclusively from my peers about the complimentary (not opposite!) sex. Net result: not learning about relationship abilities at all, rather than learning warped ones, though that was a factor as well. We know things are demonstrably worse nowadays. Yet men seem to still have key things to fall back on, like better camaraderie with other males, a more natural fit in the workforce, physical roles that most women eschew (toolbox stuff), etc. I have a woman friend I respect greatly, my age, and her view is that modern women are generally a mess psychologically and socially, and they cannot see it let alone see a way out of it. Men are not of much help here. It is women that need to help other women in this regard and I suspect “feminism” has harmed relations among females more than it has the relations between men and women.

So long as society allows this dysfunction to grow, by law and convention, and glamorizes it through consumerism and TV, we will lose more of our personal and collective sanity. The self-realized individual is no consolation. Once we have lost sight of the fact that we have even lost anything (a stage rapidly approaching) then liberalism will have completed its task or there will be revolution, for no natural system can sustain unchecked deviation from a relatively stable– and familiar– way of life.

Laura writes:

Even those who have been raised without traditional wisdom can sense what is missing and work their way back. The moral sense cannot be obliterated by poor uprbinging and education. This fundamental sense of what is good and true leads women such as Karen who have never been encouraged to find their way and resist the influence of everyone around them to do what is right. They are not working alone but with their heritage. There are not enough of them and the disaster you mention may be unavoidable, but every person who resists is a small miracle and a sign of health.

Women have always experienced a certain amount of competition and strife in their friendships, but now it is worse. They are more estranged from each other. They don’t share the same way of life and don’t have time to interact outside the shrill, hedonistic gilfriend culture promoted in Sex and the City, a caricature of true girlfriend culture which occurs in the natural context of neighborhood and home.

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