Donna decided to stay home with her son, and Naomi went back to work. And there our paths diverged -- or so we thought. As it turns out, our society approves neither of women who stay home with their children nor of mothers who work outside the home. Our struggles -- coping with the demands of daily life, slaying the demons of self-doubt, and unexpectedly, enduring the criticism of others, especially other women -- remain remarkably similar.

"...Not a day goes by that I don't hear voices, real or imagined, questioning my choice."

After my son was born, I remembered a conversation I'd had with my roommates sophomore year at Princeton, 15 years before, in 1980. We were sitting around in our living room one rainy afternoon during fall break discussing motherhood, especially the unimaginable horrors of pregnancy and childbirth. The talk eventually moved on to what we would do with our babies once they were born. We were all vaguely aware that child care was a problem for working women -- and we all planned to continue to work at our undoubtedly glamorous jobs -- but we were confident that the problem would be solved by the time we were ready to have children. After all, barely 10 years before our conversation, women hadn't even been admitted to Princeton. We assumed the next decade would see the dawn of a new social order in which career and motherhood could coexist harmoniously for women of ambition and talent.

We were wrong. Of course, we were overly optimistic about the speed at which changes would occur in the workplace to accommodate the demands of parenthood. More importantly, what we didn't realize as we sat on our decrepit dorm furniture sipping Tabs, what I didn't even realize as a pregnant college instructor looking for daycare close to campus, is that the question of how parents combine work with raising children has a human face. (My son, Grant, has a small, round-cheeked face with my husband's eyes, my nostrils, and a grin that melts my heart.) Thus, when the rhetorical baby became real, the choice of whether to be a working or a stay-at-home mother took on more complexity than I had ever imagined. I was even more surprised to discover how this decision divides mothers themselves into two antagonistic camps, in which each side defends its own position by casting the other's choice as somehow "wrong." Yet neither group seems immune from self-doubts that are nourished by contradictory messages all women receive from family, friends, bosses, and the media reflecting our culture's ambivalence about mothers and work.

I have spent some time on both sides of this great divide. I was a working mother myself for five months during my son's infancy, when I taught two classes at a university. I agreed to continue with the job before the baby was born, assuming that any educated woman would be dying to get out of the house for some mental stimulation. I did actually enjoy the teaching, but the first day I left my tiny, three-month-old son at daycare, I walked around numb, feeling as if my heart had been ripped from my body. Out of guilt, I minimized his hours at daycare, ran to nurse him during lunch, corrected papers over him while he nursed at home, and typed lecture notes while my husband, James, whom I rarely saw, watched the baby. Dinners were prepackaged or take-out. I'm not sure how any of those other tasks of daily life got done. I have a vague memory of cleaning the toilet once and feeling inordinately proud of myself.

I also remember that I spent most of those four months sneezing and sniffling in front of class from colds I caught from Grant. Worse, each one of those colds turned into a new ear infection for him. He had eight altogether that year. By the end of the semester, his pediatrician strongly suggested we take him out of group care. If I were to continue in my position the following year, my extremely modest earnings would barely cover the cost of an in-home baby sitter. Certainly if my career were better established and the salary higher, I might have explored other child-care alternatives. My choice was made much easier by the fact that my husband's salary was enough to support us without a second income. When I did stop working outside the house, my son's ear infections dwindled. Suddenly, with no papers to grade and no shopping to squeeze in on the way home, I felt like I could breathe.

Still, I did approach my new life with some trepidation. I was raised on the image of the bored, downtrodden "mad housewife." Ironically, my own Ph.D. dissertation dealt in part with the Japanese version of Betty Friedan's "problem with no name" -- although my real housewife friends in Japan always seemed enviably untroubled about the importance of their work. Much to my surprise, however, I enjoy my life as a stay-at-home mother. I meet with other interesting and intelligent mothers -- and the occasional father -- through play groups, and have a social life richer than I'd had since Princeton. Yes, we talk about how to deal with temper tantrums, but we also talk about politics and gender roles, we discuss popular culture and analyze novels. The days are busy, but there is time for long reading sessions with my son, for games of peek-a-boo, horsy, and eat-the-Play-Doh. During nap time, I give priority to my own writing and reading, an exciting change from a decade of academic paper-writing and translation.

The other often-mentioned warning about stay-at-home motherhood -- that I will dominate my son's life at the expense of my husband's parental involvement -- has proved unfounded. In fact, I feel much more comfortable turning over the main caregiving duties to Daddy when he comes home than I did when I worked. So, without really being aware of it, I found myself switching loyalties from the working-mother camp to the stay-at-home camp. I've become more attuned to the benefits of quantity time, to the leisurely intimacy I have with my child. It is much like the difference between a whirlwind tour of a foreign city and living there for a year to enjoy its seasonal rhythms.

Still, not a day goes by that I don't hear voices, real or imagined, questioning my choice. My mother once implied that women with advanced degrees who are at home full-time with their children are wasting their education. My sister suggested, in the most caring way, of course, that I was lazy and unambitious. She cited examples of women who'd achieved prominence in politics, academia, and the arts while raising a family, though I reminded her this was due to the help of the right nanny. A working friend's glowing reports of the daycare her son attends touches a sore spot, especially on days when I've been a short-tempered and unimaginative caregiver myself. Recently I overheard a conversation between two working mothers: both admitted they considered staying home, but in the end they just couldn't see themselves doing it. "It's nice to have a life," one said, and she laughed dismissively. Other voices are my own. I wonder about the example I am setting for my own child. When he's older, will he compare me unfavorably to friends' mothers with "important" jobs?

The "Invisible Syllabus"

fter years of a career-in-waiting as a graduate student -- not vice-president of an investment-banking firm, but acceptably interesting for cocktail-party chatter -- my identity as a Princeton alumna is in crisis. I find myself examining the expectations of the Princeton woman that I must have absorbed from a course we all took, though it doesn't show up on our transcripts. This is what was on that invisible syllabus: a woman of intelligence does not stay home and raise her child, our society's lip service to motherhood notwithstanding. She must, of course, devote some quality time to her family, but otherwise, it is fitting that someone else take care of her child's needs. If she's not turning her education into fortune and/or fame, then what was the point of her going to Princeton anyway?

I am still trying to free myself of these ingrained ideas and of the overblown burden I've placed on myself to justify coeducation at Princeton. After all, staying home with my child for a few years does not mean I will never "use" my education in the future as I have in the past. And it doesn't mean I'm not "using" my education now. In fact, I can enlist the critical thinking I learned at Princeton to question these impossible expectations to "have it all" at the same time, to challenge the assumption that taking care of a child full-time means sacrificing my intelligence and my sanity. While I am profoundly committed to the idea that each parent must have the right and opportunity to make his or her own decision about how to combine family and work, I see my education as a foundation upon which to make my own decision to redirect a public teaching career and become the private teacher of a very important child.

Recently I was offered the chance to teach courses at the same university where I worked before, but I turned the job down with no qualms whatsoever. With this decision, I realized how much I'd changed in the past year, not to mention the past 15 since that rainy afternoon at Princeton. My idea of what constitutes "success" was altered by the birth of my child. I don't know what the future will bring in my professional life, but for now, on most days, I am confident I have made the right decision for my situation. After all, few people have expressed on their deathbeds the wish that they had spent less time with the people they love.

Donna George Storey '83 lives and writes in Berkeley, California.

Naomi

"Why is it that some people seem hell-bent on persuading me that I'm a terrible mother?"

It never occurred to me not to work after becoming a mother. Like most working mothers in America, I have no choice about working or staying at home, as my income is indispensable to keeping the family afloat financially. But it's not just the money. I love my job as a magazine production manager and looked forward to going back after my maternity leave. As luck would have it (and many working mothers are not so fortunate), my employers have been very accommodating about family needs.

When my son, Julian, was born two years ago, the editors at the magazine where I then worked gave me six months off. Then they bent over backward to allow me to work part-time: just half-time for my first two months, and three-quarter-time thereafter. This required hiring extra staff to cover my days off, but the magazine got two heads working on most problems and very complete coverage of the job, as my assistant and I filled in for each other on vacation and sick days.

Last spring I was offered a more lucrative job at another magazine, but initially turned it down because the production editor wanted someone full-time. "I'm more of a mom than a production manager right now," I told her. "Call me back in three or four years." She called five hours later and offered me a four-day work week; she too committed to hiring additional staff so I could work part-time. I took the job. My husband, Dan, and I now make just enough to pay all our bills and set aside a modest amount for the future.

Meanwhile, Julian spends four days a week at a charming family daycare in our neighborhood. He loves being with the other children, and he adores the proprietor, Elsa, a marvelous, warm woman with many years of child-care experience. For my husband and me, Elsa is a trusted partner in the challenges and joys of raising our child.

Our situation is not without conflict, of course. His first year in daycare, Julian got sick all the time, a common problem for kids in group care who spend time in close quarters with other kids. Dan and I had occasionally tense negotiations trying to decide whose workday was less critical and could be spent at home with our sick boy. We frequently caught the colds and flus Julian brought home.

Julian isn't sick very often these days, but even in good health, the juggling act of getting one squirmy toddler to daycare and two adults to their downtown desks on time every morning, followed by the evening routines of dinner, bath, bedtime, and household tasks, is exhausting. And of course we miss Julian when we're away from him. My new job has required overtime every week; occasionally I haven't come home until after dinner. This does not feel right to me, and I've had to create efficiencies in my day and be clearer about my limits. "Quality time" is all very well, but there's an awful lot to be said for "quantity time." I'm grateful that for now, at least, I can remain a less-well-compensated part-timer. I treasure the days I have uninterrupted and alone with Julian. But I also enjoy my days at work, and know that I am doing the right thing for our family.

So why is it that some people seem hell-bent on persuading me that I'm a terrible mother? I've puzzled over this since I had Julian and became aware of the tiresome battle waged between working and stay-at-home mothers.

The barbs traded back and forth are standard fare at "support" groups for new mothers, play groups (some exclude kids with nannies), and the letters pages of parenting magazines. Working mothers tend to think they have a monopoly on parenting-related stress, and that at-home moms are lazy. At-home mothers, on the other hand, often accuse working moms of being self-centered, materialistic, and unwilling to make sacrifices to be with their children. Working mothers can be smug about how they're keeping up in the marketplace and investing in their families' futures; at-home moms retort that there's no more important investment than time with your own children. Even terminology is a problem. Motherhood is work, assert at-home moms, who quite rightly resent the implication that what they do isn't. And working moms take issue with "full-time mothers," as if they stop being mothers when away from their kids.

Women on both sides of this divide are quick to seize on any evidence, however unreliable or anecdotal in nature, to bolster their choice. For every at-home mom horrified by seeing a listless child looked after half-heartedly by an uninvolved baby sitter, there's a working mom who feels better when she witnesses a crying infant being ignored by a mom who's bored and frustrated by motherhood. Working mothers are relieved to read of studies proving that children in daycare do just as well as children at home with their mothers; these same studies are dismissed by at-home moms. Working moms need to believe their children are thriving in daycare, developing social and linguistic skills, while at-home moms insist their children are healthier, happier, and quicker to reach developmental milestones.

I stumbled into this fray as soon as I announced my pregnancy. Many people asked whether I was planning to quit my job when the baby came, and expressed pity or disapproval when I replied that I was not. I defended myself by declaring that I couldn't afford not to work. This wasn't the whole truth, of course, but it didn't seem okay to say that I loved my job and actually wanted to continue working. I've seen this desire to work decried by stay-at-home advocates as a selfish need for personal fulfillment on the part of working moms, as if our happiness or sanity were irrelevant now that we are mothers.

Of course, most working mothers keep their jobs out of economic necessity. In our case, "necessity" doesn't mean Club Med vacations or live-in nannies or the whole fall line-up of Baby Gap clothes. My husband and I would simply not be able to pay for the basics without my paycheck. "It's just wrong not to be home with your children," a perfect stranger told me one day at the public library, unaware that I was a working mom enjoying a day off with her baby. "You don't need money -- children just need love," she glibly asserted. I wanted to ask her if she knew of a grocery store where I could trade in some love for Enfamil.

"Can't you guys just cut some expenses so you can stay home?" asked one friend, then an at-home mom who's since found a part-time job. I'm galled by the sexist assumption that my salary is nothing more than spare change for some frivolous "extras" we could easily do without, whereas it's my husband's only moderately larger salary that actually counts.

Fathers are rarely embroiled in this controversy, and this is part of the problem. No one questions my husband's right to have a public and private life, or asks him how having a child has affected his career. The responsibilities of parenting still sit primarily on women's shoulders. When I was pregnant, my husband and I talked with our families about our post-baby professional plans, and they were alarmed by my mentioning that we were both considering part-time schedules. "But then Dan would be on the mommy track!" one horrified relative protested. It was expected that my career might be scaled back, but never his.

Mothers unite

had hoped that becoming a mother would bring me closer to other women, and in many ways it has. But I am saddened by the pointless divisiveness generated by the issue of whether or not mothers of young children should work. Mothers have so much more in common than not, yet differences over this issue often erode that bond. At-home moms probably hesitate before they complain to a working mom about a particularly tiresome day at home with Junior. "I'd go nuts if I had to be home with them all day," is not a helpful response. Conversely, I found that some of my friends who are at-home moms positively gloated when Julian first started daycare and spent the first two months with one illness after another. "Maybe you'll just have to quit your job," was the unsympathetic response from more than one person, including (ouch) my own mother.

I believe this antagonism comes from a combination of insecurity and envy on both sides. Our society is not in the habit of making women feel good -- about anything, and our parenting/work decisions are no exception. Most women end up feeling ambivalent, guilty, or judged no matter what they do, and it's human nature to demonize the alternative in order to keep one's own misgivings at bay. Envy is just the other side of this coin, of course. What working mother doesn't wince when passing a mother and child on their way to the playground on a weekday morning? And I suspect that many at-home mothers envy their working friends' broader interaction with the world at large.

In a society that truly valued women -- women who become mothers, women who work, women who (dare I say it?) choose not to become mothers -- we would have better choices, and the controversy would be considerably less charged. Stable living wages, more family-friendly workplaces and child-positive laws, greater openness to flexible schedules and job-sharing, affordable health-care for everyone, real involvement from men -- all these things would change the terms of this debate. Meanwhile, I challenge women, wherever they are with motherhood and work, to stop attacking other women and turn their energies toward working together to give our children the best possible start in life.

Naomi Williams '87 lives in San Francisco.