If you’ve ever read the children’s book the Rainbow Fish, you’ll know it follows the most beautiful fish in the sea who has many rainbow scales. In the story, the Rainbow Fish gives away all of her colorful scales to the other fish in an effort to appease them. While talking to my mother, she made the connection that the rainbow fish is kind of like a mother in that she makes sacrifices for others at her own expense (Beckstead). After all this though, people still have such strong opinions on how women are supposed to raise their children. There has been a precedent set that women are expected to put their children first before everything. Sacrificing their time, their energy, and for some their careers- mothers make drastic changes in their lives to secure happiness for their kids. I, myself, am not a mother, but the recent birth of my nephew has sparked many conversations in my house about the role of one. From the example of my own mom, to the experience of my sister as a new
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one, to the mothers from church I have exchanges with day to day, I’ve seen that every mom performs her role in a different and individual way. When thinking of who could give me perspective on this topic, someone came to mind
“...just portions of you out in the world”
immediately. Kathy Lyon, a close family friend and mother of four, related to me the idea that mothers give all of themselves to the job. She explained that, “You just get divided by how many kids you have and there are just portions of you out in the world”(Lyon). By this, I think Kathy meant that mothers will spend so much time guiding their children and helping them grow that it can
stretch moms pretty thin. Sitting in Kathy’s family room looking around her house, I thought that the world could do with more parts of Kathy in it. With her uncle’s picturesque landscapes hung on the walls and her daughter Libby’s latest cardboard creation lying on the floor, you can tell that Kathy’s home is filled with love, family, and fun. Using a word straight out of her own vocabulary, Kathy has created a “lovely” life for herself and her children. Before starting her family, Kathy studied social work at the University of Utah and received the highest degree in licensure in that field. After having her first child, Kathy and her husband moved to the Bay Area where her license in social work was no longer valid. Put in the position of having to become licensed all over again in a new state with a brand new baby, Kathy made to stay the decision at home with her son.
When asked if she would have made her decisions differently, Kathy insisted that she would never change the outcome that her decisions led her to. Her only changes would to have stayed more active in regards to her career. She said, “I think there’s something really valuable about keeping your foot in the water and feeling like I could step back in and still feel relevant.” She continued, “I think one of the dangers, and I think this happens to women all of the time, is that they find themselves 10 years out and they think, ‘I haven’t worked in 10 years and now I’m not relevant anymore or I’ve missed out on a cycle of skills and I’m
behind on things’ and they feel less confident”(Lyon). Hearing Kathy talk about the struggle of being out of the game helped me realize that no part of being a mom is easy. Her reasoning for putting her career on hold was nothing short of noble,
her mom to be there. Naturally, she wanted to replicate that support in her own household. Another part of wanting to be such an active presence in her children’s lives most likely stems from her membership in the of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints where family is a huge focus. A Proclamation of the Family, for example, is a text that many members of the church have used in raising their families. It states: “Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another”(Hinckley). This
“I think there’s something valuable about keeping your foot in the water” but that doesn’t mean that that the decision was any less difficult. In her own childhood, Kathy had been the youngest child by a few years and so she couldn’t always count on her siblings to be at every softball game or clarinet recital. Instead, Kathy always knew that she could rely on
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text encourages parents to be equal partners in raising their children to be good people. Growing up, Kathy received many positive ideals like this one, but that’s not to say that all the messages given were as positive. She would sometimes hear in church classes that an education was only necessary for girls in case their husbands died or for some reason couldn’t be the sole breadwinner. Kathy has never stood behind this attitude and has tried to send the message that women should be getting an education for themselves, not as something to use as a last resort. Kathy currently is the president of the Young Women’s program in the Los Altos church building. She and the other women in her presidency plan activities for girls to participate in, teach lessons on Sundays, and overall provide a leading example for the young women. In this position she is given the opportunity to teach young girls that they have more of a purpose in life other than simply serving as compliments to their male counterparts. As being one of Kathy’s mentees, she has made a huge impact not only on the way I view women in general, but also how I view women in the church, and how I view myself. Another message that Kathy shared with me is that no woman has it all. The stay-at-home moms get to spend more time with their children and see them grow and develop right before their eyes, but can lose their grasp on their own individuality. Working mothers, on the other hand, can feel confident in their role as a provider for their 4
family and in turn lead that example for her kids, but also can miss out on a lot of milestones. Finally, there are the moms who work part time who in a sense have the “best of both worlds”, but really can’t give 100% to either role because while at work they’re thinking of their child and when with their child, they’re pulled back by work. Katie Bugbee, creator of Care.com, put it best when she said, “We really want to be super mom. We want to be excellent at our jobs; we want to be excellent in our relationships; we want to be an excellent friend, an excellent wife or partner; and we want to be an excellent mom. On top of that, we want to have an amazing home that’s beautiful and clean. It’s a ton of pressure.”(Adams). Motherhood is the ultimate juggling act that can take years to find the right balance for. Newcomers to the job can find the task pretty intimidating. For my sister, Heidi Monson who recently had her first child, navigating this
new world has not been easy, but she’s been doing a great job. After taking her maternity leave, she decided that putting her baby in day-care and returning to work was the best option for her family. Heidi, being LDS as well, received a lot of different responses to her decision from family, coworkers, and church friends. My family and I, knowing the kind of person Heidi is, were not surprised by her decision to continue working because through her high school and college years, she was always extremely goal oriented and organized. Others outside of her family may not have understood this. A few were close minded in
her decision, sometimes even going as far as to brazenly ask if she was only working because her husband couldn’t support their family. Receiving criticism from others wasn’t the only obstacle Heidi had to overcome. She was also nervous about the move back to work with her baby in someone else’s care. She comments on her transition, “I had watched two coworkers come back to work the year before and when they came back they started crying and so I just had to remind myself that it was going to be really hard... knowing that it’s a normal thing to be emotional about and that it’s going to be hard, I felt like I was less emotional as I probably could have been”(Monson). Through this experience, Heidi has had to learn what kind of mom she wants
to be and be able to own that. I don’t think that anyone had the right to question Heidi’s reasons for returning to work. The mother always has the child in mind and shouldn’t be questioned for her decisions. Another great mom is my life is my own. Kevin Beckstead, has always said that the role of a parent is the hardest job out there. One she doesn’t get enough credit for. When asked what she thought that the best thing a mom can do for her kid she replied, “ I think an overriding value of a mother is to be nurturing to children. I don’t think that has to take up your whole day...I think that is the most important value of a mother with children is that the child has to feel like the mother loves the child and wants
the best for the child”(Beckstead). By this she means that it doesn’t take a mom alone to raise a great kid. Through speaking with all these moms, it was interesting to me that even though they were all women who were raised in the same faith, they still had their different outlooks and strategies.When it comes to motherhood, everyone is going to have a different approach and that that is their right and the mom, like the rainbow fish is going to want to please everyone. This just isn’t possible. To put it simply, “There are lots of different kinds of moms. But really, there is only one. The mom who loves her kids more than anything in the world and would do anything to make them happy”(Atkinson). Moms need some of their own scales.
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Works Cited Adams, Rebecca. “A Quarter Of Working Moms Cry Once A Week, But There Are Solutions.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Oct.-Nov. 2014. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. Atkinson, Aimee. “A Mom Is A Mom Is A Mom.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 May 2015. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. Beckstead, Kevin. Personal Interview. 25 March, 2016. Hinckley, Gordon B. “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” The Family: A Proclamation to the World. 23 Sept. 1995. Web. 21 Apr. 2016. Lyon, Kathy. Personal Interview, 8 March, 2016. Monson, Heidi. Personal Interview. 25 March, 2016.
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