#7 The Unspoken Inheritance
How does motherhood get passed on from one generation to the next?
I love narratives that do at least one of two things: 1. provide a broad, textual snapshot at a given moment in time, and/or 2. showcase a longitudinal look at a character and the forces that influence them. The best, most thoughtful stories do both.
And that’s why I’ve started this content venture. Especially at the intersection of women/mothers and work, we are hungry for stories that look at the full breadth of a woman and her endeavors, and study the historical factors that led her to this moment, which in turn influence what comes next.
On this latter point I sometimes second-guess my decision to be the primary caregiver for my kids, as I discussed at length last week. If I’m the one who is mostly at home, doing school pickup, and being the default parent for all things related to school and activities, and Dad is the default one who “goes to work”, how much are we perpetuating gender norms on to our daughters and sons? For our daughters especially, are they more likely to feel pressure to “stay at home” with the kids when they’re grown, simply because I modeled that for them?
How does our childhood experience of motherhood and fatherhood influence the way we craft our own journey as mothers and fathers?
When we focus this question squarely on motherhood and “work”, I think there are three variables that shape our intergenerational narratives: 1) whether the mother primarily stayed at home or worked outside the home, 2) one’s perception of whether or not that was good for mom, and 3) one’s perception of whether or not that was good for oneself as the child. The matrix may look something like this:
A necessary disclaimer here: “good” and “bad” don’t adequately capture the full breadth of feelings we may have towards anything, much less something as layered as this. And some may genuinely feel apathetic and/or neutral about it. But as a first-order exercise, it’s a simple way to organize our thoughts. Let’s explore all of these in turn.
1.1 My mom stayed at home: I perceived it to be good for her and for me. My hunch is that this category, as well as 2.1, serves as the default for many. I think a lot of us tend to believe that their moms were happy and fulfilled, and therefore, we were happy and fulfilled. When I think about some friends who fall into this bucket, some were not influenced at all by their moms when it came to deciding whether or not to work outside the home. But there are a few who did feel some moral pressure to also be home full time, precisely because they had such a positive experience one generation prior.
1.2 My mom stayed at home: I perceived it to be bad for her, but good for me. This is me. I always knew that my mom wanted to work and earn a living outside the home, but partly because of engrained gender norms, partly because of the language barrier after we immigrated, and partly because she didn’t have the structural supports to enable her to work outside the home, she was a skilled but uneasy homemaker. But I believe I reaped certain benefits from having her home.
1.3 My mom stayed at home: I think it was good for her, but my childhood experience of it was bad. I would think this is an unlikely scenario because most young kids would probably choose to see more of their mother. But I could also be completely misinformed.
1.4 My mom stayed at home: I think it was bad for her and for me. This would be a really fascinating perspective.
2.1 My mom worked outside the home: I perceived it to be good for her and for me. This is a fairly common narrative for a lot of women who have pursued traditional careers. They grew up seeing their moms going to work and pursuing things outside of caring for the home and family. They didn’t perceive any significant disadvantage to themselves growing up. It was the norm for them to grow up with a mother who “went to work.” I think it’s fair to say that in many circles, there is a normative push towards this narrative. There’s this notion that being a “working mother” encourages their daughters to do the same… and that’s a good, progressive thing for women and society.
2.2 My mom worked outside the home: I perceived it to be bad for her, but good for me. This sounds like an unlikely scenario as well. But I’m curious.
2.3 My mom worked outside the home: I perceived it to be good for her, but my childhood experience of it was negative. The most common narrative here is one where the mother worked outside the home and the child felt like they missed out, whether it was not having their mom at the school functions, or being sad to be the last one picked up from daycare, or generally feeling like they wanted more of their mom, who was less available.
2.4 My mom worked outside the home: I perceived it to be bad for her and for me. The narrative here may be similar to 2.3, but perhaps the mother really struggled while working outside the home. Perhaps it was out of necessity, not choice. Perhaps it was counter to what the child perceived as their mother’s true calling.
As I start having conversations with women about how they’re building their lives, I am putting this matrix to the test, and infusing it with actual human stories. How do these childhood perceptions inform what we want for our own motherhood journeys?
There is genuinely no agenda in exploring this theme except to reveal the stories. I approach this question with curiosity and openness, and I hope others do the same.
Why do we care?
I wish there were real social scientists who were conducting legit studies on this (and if anyone knows of any, please let me know!). But my hope is that by thoughtfully exploring this question, we can find more space between the models set by our mothers’ decisions or circumstances, and our decisions in building our own lives.
The intergenerational forces in parenting are strong. We talk a lot about pendulum parenting, where we, as parents, overcompensate to correct our perceived deficiencies that we experienced from our own parents. And when it comes to promoting women and work, it is vital to actually say out loud what we have inherited from our own parents. It may very well be that what we have inherited from our parents is so engrained in us that it is inseparable from who we are.
What I inherited and why I own it.
I personally fit into 1.2. My mom stayed home to raise us while my dad worked outside the home. In the early years when we were still in Korea, my dad’s work required long trips overseas. My mom raised my brother and me pretty much alone for those first few years. After we immigrated to Canada, my dad started a small business as many immigrants do. My mom was a homemaker and caregiver, even though she always wished to earn a living. The language and cultural barrier was significant, and she had no education or training in Canada that could help her build a career there.
So I perceived her role as full-time caregiver as something she accepted with reluctance, something that was expected of her as the woman. But my childhood experience of having her home and caring for me had an immeasurable impact on me that I only realized later once I became a mother.
Every morning, my mom packed us lunch and snacks for school. I came home to homemade snacks. On days when I forgot something like an umbrella or raincoat, my mom dropped them off at school so I wouldn’t get wet walking home. I never really felt my mom’s absence because she was always there, ready to receive me. I experienced abundance — of attention, nourishment, and facetime. That abundance gave me a feeling of privilege that I could not derive from my race, class, or other societal circumstances. So it was a true gift.
As an adult, I’ve come to recognize that in many ways, it’s quite a burden and responsibility to do what she did… to the extent that she did it. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t shake the feeling that that is the mother I am as well. My childhood experience of her mothering has imprinted in me a version of motherhood that I feel a need to recreate for myself. There is zero pressure coming from my parents or my spouse. It is an internal compass that I simply cannot escape. Instead of running away from it, I’ve chosen to embrace it and live it out on my own terms.
It’s important to point out that I take no moral high ground; I know that my kids are not objectively better off with pizza packed by mom versus pizza from the cafeteria. But I know what feels true to me, and honoring what I inherited from my own upbringing allows me to be… me. And modeling that practice of being unapologetically me feels paramount.
I’d love to know what bucket you fall in and if/how it has impacted your life decisions or worldview… leave a comment (0;
I love this line of inquiry and your approach. I want to add that mothers working from home complicates the equation of “mom at home = mom doesn’t work.
I worked office jobs for most of my career, but in between kid 1 and kid 2 began a work from home consulting job. Since the pandemic, my husband works from home too, but it seems to me that my kids (2 boys) see us totally differently, as though dad works, mom doesn’t. Or that mom’s job isn’t important. The boys barely react when their dad leaves to work from his home office and they never interrupt him. When I go to my home office, they have meltdowns and barge in all the time.
When my oldest was 3, his teachers asked what his parents did. He said “dad works for [company], mom hangs out with me.”
I have no idea whether I’ll work from home for the rest of my professional life, but I think the “moms who from home” dynamic is interesting to explore, precisely because we’d don’t know how the next generation will process it or how it will affect their choices. Or really, how it affects our choices and our self-perception as mothers.
I do not know mothering without labor. My mother immigrated to the U.S. without her mother and siblings around the age of 13/14 and worked. She came her in the 1960s from a predominantly Black country to Westchester (NY) in the 1960s. It was not diverse. She worked her entire life until she retired, from 14 to 63. Whether it was babysitting, working in an antique shop, as a nursery school teacher, and eventually a registered nurse, she worked. She gave birth to a child at 16, went to college and nursing school, had another child and got married. But she always worked (excluding maternity breaks. She even worked two jobs when I was in elementary school.)
I do remember being very excited when she was off when I was off and it wasn't a weekend. It felt like an adventure. I remember going with her to her aerobics class and running errands on the days she had off. I remember her coming home from the hospital late at night and taking me to the 24 hr supermarket to get groceries just to spend time together. Even as I got older I was always with her: dropping something off at a friend's home, visiting an elderly person from church, going to the hairdresser with her, going to Macy's when she got paid, etc. Back then we didn't have the internet and my dad wasn't going to let me watch TV all evening, so I chose to tag along with her well into my teenage years. I just wanted to spend time with her.
But unlike most of us my mother also had extended biological family in the same town to care for me. The school bus would pick me up from my maternal grandmother who lived in an apartment around the corner from ours. A few years later I would stay at my paternal grandmother's house after school and my great grandmother would teach me to sew and make farina. My dad was always there at 4:30. My school had early dismissal on Fridays and he would pick me up and drive me to my grandmother during his lunch break. My mother did the same when I was in middle school. She would take lunch at 2:45 so she could pick me up, drive me home and go back to work! She was home by 5:30 and dinner was ready by 6. ALWAYS.
She job never more than 20 minutes away by car, by contrast it takes me 45 minutes to commute home from midtown. I am RARELY home before 6 pm and my husband cooks dinner most nights. As much as I have complained about WFH (my son turned 3 right before NYC locked down) I am really grateful we had a chance to spend so much time together. He went from going to nursery 5 days a week to school closing to me sending him only 3 days a week. Even now with him back every day I still make sure I can do pickups and dropoffs twice a week because my office has a hybrid schedule.
I cannot imagine not working. (I am working right now after midnight on a Friday because from 3-9 pm I was with my son.) I had my first job at 17 and many different part time jobs during college. I worked full time, while attending graduate school. M my relationship with labor and money is extremely complicated because of my mother's choices, her mother's choices, and so forth. Both of my grandmothers worked and had 5 children each with men who were not the best husbands. I think that has informed how my mother manages her finances, which she in turn passed on to me. Generations of Black women labored for free without freedom. The idea of not having my own income frightens me. So I dream of ways I can earn more without taking time away from my child and without feeling burdened.