Mommy Wars: Do Moms Who Work Part-Time Have It All?

Discussions of the “mommy wars” often focus on Working Moms and Stay-at-Home-Moms (SAHMs). But, there is an emerging group of moms who fall in between the two: moms who choose to work outside the home part-time.

When my first child was born, I was lucky enough to be able to choose to work part-time. I thought I had the best of both worlds: I would be able to spend gobs of time with my kids, but would still be able to continue with my career. I thought I would fit in with both Mommy camps, setting up playdates during the week with my SAHM friends and talking shop with my working mom friends.

What has emerged five years later is a different story. What I have found is that my closest friendships have developed with other part-time working moms. My vision of closing the mommy war gap, or somehow being the middle ground that would fit in everywhere, has not come to pass. Instead, I have found myself in an often unrecognized, often revered, third group: Part-Time Working Moms.

A common response to hearing that I work part-time is: “How wonderful! That’s the best of both worlds!” I have always nodded and smiled, but with a bit of unease that I could not explain.

Then, one day someone responded, “Ugh! Poor thing. Working part-time is the WORST of both worlds!” Without meaning to, I let out a sigh of relief. Somehow, that reaction was a validation of the conflict I had always felt in trying to keep up a career in half the time as many of my colleagues while also trying to be a super mom, engaging in fun activities with my kids, being highly involved in their schools, and running the household. Somehow people telling me I had it so good, suggested that I had it easy and invalidated my struggles as a mom who works outside the home.

In many ways women who work outside the home part-time do have it good. We get to spend more time with our children than women who work full-time, and we also get to advance our careers.

At the same time, even as we stay connected to our professions, our careers often stagnate or advance more slowly than those of our full-time working mom counterparts. On the home front, we get to spend more time with our children, but we are often also the default caregiver when childcare falls through, a child is sick, or we need to meet with teachers to discuss a problem, often at the expense of our jobs.

As I look around and see that most of my close friends also work part-time, I wonder why this is the case. What draws us together? As I’ve gotten to know my fellow part-time working moms, I see that we face similar issues and struggles in our lives, careers, and relationships.

Working part-time is not the only factor, but it is an important one in determining how we operate in the world as mothers, wives, and friends. Childcare issues, succeeding in the workforce, finding time and energy to maintain our homes and relationships, and wanting to have it all makes us masters at examining and reexamining our situation. After all, in many cases, we chose this. Shouldn’t we feel settled and happy?

Women today have a super-abundance of choices. This is an amazing advance in our society and a wonderful thing. But, it also leaves many women wondering whether they have made the right choices for themselves and their families. We are often left looking at others with resentment or envy, seeing what they have and wishing we could have it too.

The bottom line is, no matter what professional lives women choose, most of us are in some level of conflict with our decisions. For better or worse, this personal conflict fuels conflict amongst us. We all have made our own choices for individual reasons (financial, professional, cultural), and we all struggle with the realities of modern motherhood. In that, at least, we are all in it together.