I was very much looking forward to this new TV show, “The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom” on TLC. I was happy to see that there was finally going to be a show that addressed what so many moms are going through. What a HUGE disappointment the show was…where do I start?

I will start with the one positive thing…the comment the husband made about not being able to give is wife that “completeness”. This hits exactly on the issue that I think so many stay at home moms face. While I love my kids and am thankful for the time I get to spend with them, at the end of the day I need to feel like I did something for me. I need to spend a little time doing something that I am passionate about that makes me feel like a little more than a chef, house-cleaner, chauffeur, referee, etc,. That is what feeds my desire to someday go back to work.

I hate that the show is promoted as asking what a mother “gave up” to be a stay at home mom. All that kind of thinking does is bring up the dreaded “mommy wars”. I kind of feel like this has been a non issue lately, but am sure this show is once again stirring the pot. It brings us back to the discussion that moms who stay home gave up a chance for a successful career and set the feminists back a few years and working moms are not making the right decision in doing what is best for their family. Give me a break, that is just wrong. Women make the decisions that are right for them and their family and how dare the media continue to add fuel to this fire that one choice is “better” than the other. It is hard enough being a mom (working outside the home or not) we don’t need to constant media influences to make us second guess the decisions we make.

I know this is a TV show and it is for entertainment purposes, but TLC usually seems a bit more on track. The huge black “SLSM” van…like mom was off being a secret agent…well that was just plain silly. I admit it, I like reality shows. I find a show like The Real Housewives of Orange County very entertaining. The lifestyle of these moms is just so far from the reality of moms out there that it makes for very good entertainment. I don’t watch that show to learn anything that relates to my lifestyle, I watch it for fun. The Secret Life of A Soccer Mom was not exactly entertaining and did not teach me anything; all it did was make me angry.

Here is where I think the show really missed the mark. This mom was not living at her house for the week that she was working. She was not trying to get kids up, feeding them, dressing them, getting them out the door and then getting to work on time and then doing it all again in the evening. She was getting a full nights sleep, something she probably had not had in YEARS and knew the children were “safe” at home with their dad. That is not the reality of a working mom, is it?! Sure, that once again makes for good TV, but isn’t it more important to show what it is really like for a working mom.

And here was got my blood boiling the most about the show… I get that the show editing has to be done in a way to make it interesting to watch so will not even talk about the fact that she was forced to make the decision to go back to work in a few hours without having any discussions about salary, schedule, childcare, etc,. I have to believe that these conversations did happen, but would not make for good TV. But here is what could have almost redeemed the entire show for me. I would have liked to see the mom have a discussion with her employer about working part time. Couldn’t she be a successful fashion designer 3 days a week? I would have liked to see the show focus more on the idea that moms can have it all. Wouldn’t it be nice if the show worked with companies that do offer flexible schedules where the “job” of a mom is respected? Why continue with this idea that it has to be either or. Why do we have to make a choice?

Michelle runs SantaCruzMoms.com

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I tuck my three children into their own beds, in their own rooms, every night. A few hours later Max, Morgan or Tallie usually make their way to my side of the mattress, each solemnly poking me to announce his or her arrival. The last thing I need is to have my sleep interrupted by kicks and squirms. But to be so close to my children, at the one time of day when they are too bleary to fight with each other, is priceless to me.

My husband is always on the far side of the bed, lying still as a corpse, hoping the children will not notice he is there.

In the dark of night (and many times during the day) it makes no difference whether I’m a working or stay-at-home mom. Like all mothers, I have undergone a spiritual metamorphosis as powerful as adolescence and menopause. The Velveteen Rabbit gets me every time with that paragraph about becoming Real. “Here she goes!” my son laughs as I start to sniff and tear up.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. It takes a long, long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to toys that break easily, or who have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. When a child REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

This is the beautiful side of motherhood, whether one works or not.

Unfortunately motherhood is not always so pretty.

Talking with hundreds of women about the tension between working and stay-at-home mothers during the three years I worked on this book taught me quite a lot about myself and the struggles between moms today.

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First and most undeniable: the Mommy Wars are not really between different cliques of women over what kind of motherhood is superior. The real battles rage inside each mother’s head as she struggles to make peace with her choices.

Second: whether you work or not has no bearing on whether you are a good mom.

Period.

Is Dawn Drzal, author of “Guilty,” a better mom than her New York City neighbor Ann Sarnoff, COO of the WNBA, because Dawn gave up her career as an editor while Ann kept on working? Do Terri Minsky’s string of hit tv shows make her a better (or worse) mother than Inda Schaenen, the radical feminist stay-at-home mom? Each woman has high standards, impossible standards, for what kind of mother she strives to be. Our fanatical, soul-changing love for our children makes us all want to be the best mothers we can be. We have this much in common.

Third, I found that some women don’t experience tension between working and stay-at-home moms—or at least nothing they’d call a “war.” But even these moms agree that we all struggle to feel good about our own unique brand of motherhood.

An innocent desire, but one that makes us vulnerable. Politicians and the media exploit stereotyped images of “soccer moms” and “welfare moms,” because they know women want to be classified as “good” and “bad” on some level. Worst of all, this need to feel good makes us very, very critical of each other and ourselves.

Positive messages for mothers in 21st century American society are harder to find than swim diapers at Target in August. When was the last time you told another woman, “You’re a good mom”? How about the last newspaper or magazine article that said: relax, you’re not perfect but since you love your kid deeply, it’s all going to turn out okay in the long run? Even if you don’t breastfeed for at least six months, don’t devote 24 hours a day to developing your kid’s IQ, and occasionally down a glass of wine before 6 pm because the kids are driving you crazy.

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Love for our children, and the immense task of caring for them, burns up large portions of our pre-mom selves. Think of Leslie Lehr, Monica Buckley-Price and Catherine Clifford, who gave up work they cherished to stay home with their children. Some of us pay dearly with our careers, our bodies, our marriages, our relationships with friends, our closeness with our parents and siblings, our very selves. Then, after years spent diapering babies and fixing school lunches, we look up and find little to no sincere affirmation from our friends, our families, or greater society that we’ve done an admirable job rearing our children. The only moms who do feel genuinely proud are women with rock solid self-esteem in this area. All two of them. So how then can the rest of us feel like good moms?

When you want to feel good about yourself, and cannot despite repeated attempts, the next best thing is to feel better than others. Ask any seventh grade girl. Starting when I was 11 or 12, the goddesses in my life—older girls—trained me in the ancient art of comparing and ranking females endlessly on the traits that mattered then: fat in wrong places, hair color, breast size, butt shape, nose prominence, stomach flatness, appeal to the opposite sex, and so on. Most of this indoctrination took place in locker rooms, girls’ bathrooms, classrooms and hallways emptied of boys and teachers.

I’ve never been happy plying this trade. This competitiveness of the female tribe led me to a teenage bout with anorexia, endless hours wasted trying to get a 360° view of my butt in the mirror, and four years at Harvard proving that I was smart even if I’d failed in my quest to be physically perfect. It’s not the kind of interior monologue that makes one feel particularly fine about the fairer sex. But I’ve never been able to rid myself of this need to judge women, including—perhaps most of all—myself.

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When I became a mother, this ability to classify myself vis-à-vis other women slammed me headfirst into a stone-and-mortar wall. Who ranks as best mom? How can I win the potty-training round? The talking-first round? The I’d-do-anything-for-my-kids round? On my most insecure days, I’d trade my diamond stud earrings to know on an absolute and indisputable scale who is a better or worse mother than I am, to line up every mom in the world from best to worst, myself somewhere in the front-to-middle.

I want to know. I need to know. I will never know.

There’s no divining who’s best when it comes to motherhood. We are all completely unprepared for the job; our mothers lived in such a different world they seem as baffled by motherhood today as we are. We do the best we can with our decisions on work and family. As Beth Brophy wrote, we are all trying to convince ourselves we are good enough.

Whether to work or not after having kids is a profound choice; it splits women into two groups with publicly distinct theories about motherhood. Our internal monologue about whether we are good mothers morphs into an external catfight disparaging other mothers. We’re talking age old “us. vs. them” rivalries: the Capulets vs. the Montagues, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm…Working vs. Stay-at-Home moms.

Not coincidentally, all of these rivalries end badly.

* * *

When I lived in New York after college, I interviewed a female Freudian psychiatrist for an article on eating disorders. During the interview I asked why people came to see her. She paused to gather her thoughts.

“They come to change the past,” she told me.

Long after the article was published, I remembered her words.

It’s no coincidence that so many women in this book wrote about their mothers and their childhoods. As mothers, we all, to various extents, carry the baggage of our pasts; we all try to recreate the good facets of our childhoods and to compensate for the painful ones. The memory of what we did and did not receive as children shapes—some would say warps–our approach to motherhood. We try to give our children (and by proxy, to give ourselves) what we lacked as children. For some, it’s financial security, a nice house, an unending supply of beautiful clothes and toys. Others give guidance and boundaries, a focus on goals and achievement. Still others want to give laxity and permissiveness and unconditional love.

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What I most want to give my children is the one thing I didn’t have in a childhood filled with pets, books, barefoot summers in New Hampshire and a pony when I turned 13. I want to—I need to—give my children a happy mom. And for me, being happy means working.

Before tackling this book, I had no idea why some moms stayed home. I had no clue what they were doing there. I didn’t know if they were faking happiness or were truly content without work and a paycheck in their lives. And I had no inkling why I raged against them so bitterly at times. I know these women now—and I see that their decisions differ only slightly from my own.

I never hated other mothers. My anger came from years of competitiveness with other women, and my own internal agony of seeing, in stay-at-home moms, what I was missing at home when I was at work; and in ambitious working moms, the career sacrifices I was making by working part-time. It’s clear to me now that comparing myself to other moms is pointless. It’s also clear that other moms’ choices suit them and my choices are (mostly) right for me and my kids, which is not the same as perfect. But I’m not out to be perfect. I’m out to be better than perfect, as Anne Feld writes. I’m out to be happy. And that’s a personal quest no one but I can judge, fulfill, imitate or envy.

We all need other moms regardless of our personal decisions about working or staying home. That’s why I needed this book. The stories I pored over that you’ve read on these pages made me laugh, and cry, and regret a few things, and analyze—yet again—my decisions about how much of my life to devote to my work and my children and myself.

There are no easy answers. But I no longer feel alone in my struggle to balance work and family. There are millions of women in America keeping me company as I fight my internal mommy war, and very good company you are.

—Leslie

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When I was 32, three years into my blessedly peaceful second marriage, 16 months into the motherhood gig, five months pregnant with our second child, I sat on the floor of our New York apartment in stunned silence. My husband had just come home from work. He stood in the middle of the living room explaining that he’d been offered the presidency of a hot Internet start-up. For context, this was amid the late 1990s dotcom frenzy—20-year-old Internet millionaires, triple-digit stock price increases, companies with funny names like Google and iVillage and paymybills.com springing up like mushrooms. One teeny problem: the company offering Perry the job was in Minneapolis. Since we’d been married he’d changed jobs frequently. In less than four years I’d moved four times for him.

Soon I was lying on the parquet floor of our two-bedroom, rent-controlled Manhattan apartment, trying not to weep. Within a ten minute walk lay my son’s favorite playground, my sister’s apartment, my in-laws’ condo, Gymboree, a pediatrician as kindly as Sesame Street’s Big Bird, five or six Starbucks, the Reebok gym and at least a dozen museums. I pounded the floor with my fists, arguing that we couldn’t possibly move again, even for his dream job.

My husband calmly explained we were very lucky and really had to go. Millions of dollars in stock options, he said. Besides the money, I heard in his voice that he wanted this job more than he’d ever wanted anything—except perhaps how much he’d wanted me. This job will make my career, he said. It was going to cost us, big time, in terms of my career and quality of life for our kids. But I knew we had to go.

Johnson & Johnson, bless them, let me work long-distance, part-time, from our Minneapolis apartment overlooking Lake Calhoun, which seemed frozen 10 months of the year. My salary barely covered the kids’ daycare. I worked and tried to build a temporary life for us while my husband stayed at his office until the darkness of the Midwestern winter threatened to swallow me whole.

I’d promised to go to the arctic tundra for two years. Day after day of working at home, alone, bundling two toddlers into and out of snowsuits four times a day, calling frantically in from business trips to remind Perry not to miss the 6 pm daycare pickup, convincing the kids that Omi, Pop-Pop, Aunt Perri and Grams were human people, not just voices on the telephone. After a year and a half, I resigned from J&J—long distance, part-time work with no benefits and a miniscule hourly salary weren’t worth it any longer. For the next six months, I was kind of okay. I volunteered at the kids’ school. I started writing a book about my first marriage. I brought up moving back East.

“Oh no,” said the man with whom I’d borne two children, given up my job and the Upper West Side, abandoned my kids’ world class daycare center, walked away from a big salary and stock options of my own. “I earn more money than you, and I think we should stay a few more years,” he told me.

More money than me? A few more years? Every single day in Minnesota had felt like exile, a sacrifice for his happiness. I thought of the mornings I cried in the shower so that the kids wouldn’t hear me. The evenings I’d begged my husband to come home in time to read the kids a bedtime story and he’d replied he couldn’t because of a meeting with “someone really important” (as if we weren’t). The time, just a few weeks before, I had been in a terrifying head-on collision with our daughter in the back seat; when I called to tell my husband we were okay he asked if he could finish up some paperwork before he came to get us. It was suddenly, horribly clear that he was oblivious to the reality of my life and what I’d given up for him. And I’d helped create this monster, by moving for him, by keeping quiet when he worked late month after month, by playing the role of supportive wife just like…my mother.

I was so furious that for the first time in our marriage I was speechless. I didn’t sleep that night. I lay stiff as a board next to him, listening to the wind howl off Lake Calhoun.

The next morning, my friend Jodi met me for breakfast during our kids’ swim lesson. A few years older with an MBA from the University of Chicago, Jodi started out when women MBAs wore floppy white ties and bulky suits like armor. Happily married for several years, Jodi was an institutional saleswoman at a large Minneapolis investment bank. She’d paid for her mother’s breast cancer treatments, bought her a mink coat when she recovered, and taught her three daughters to water ski barefoot on a Wisconsin lake where she’d bought a cabin—all with money she’d earned herself.

“This is what you do,” she began with a Mona Lisa smile, cradling a mug of steaming coffee.

I knew something dreadful was coming. Something along the lines of what I imagined wives told each other at moments of marital stress: time to accept the worldly art of feminine subservience. Visit a therapist. Start going to church once a week. Charge a piece of jewelry to his credit card. I wasn’t sure I could stomach this kind of retro advice, especially from her.

“Move back,” Jodi told me instead. “Tell him – - nicely—that you understand he may need to stay longer. Tell him you and the kids will welcome him back East whenever he’s ready.”

Later that day I checked my Johnson & Johnson stock fund. If I sold all the shares I’d earned over eight years I’d have enough to move, rent an apartment large enough for the kids, pay for daycare. Barely enough. What if I hadn’t saved that money?

During our talks (and fights) about where to settle longterm, Perry and I had decided on my hometown of Washington, DC, so I sent my resume to the paper I grew up with, The Washington Post. Three weeks later, the publisher called to tell me of an opening at the Sunday magazine. My dream job this time, a chance to combine what I’d learned at business school and J&J with my passion for publishing.

I didn’t break all our china or stage a three-hour fight. I told my husband it was his turn to move for me. And then I shut up.

I think few things frighten a man as much as an opinionated wife who suddenly falls quiet. One morning at breakfast Perry cleared his throat and said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said about moving back home. I guess you’re right. I’ll start looking in DC right away.”

We left Minnesota in February.

* * *

Washington welcomed us with pink and yellow springtime fireworks—sunshine that made us lift our faces skyward, daffodils and cherry blossoms lining the streets like our own tickertape parade. Perry and I bought a house less than two miles from my childhood home, settled into our new jobs, decided to have a third baby and got pregnant on the first try. He had moved for me. I carried that fact around like a kid with a new puppy at the end of a leash. Perry also promised we’d never have to move again. I tried to believe him.

A happy ending.

But those white-knuckled weeks of fury in Minnesota had hacked a new pathway in my working mom psyche. The job at the Post required full-time work, at least at first. The hours away from my kids were worth the leverage my job would bring. Not just worth it to me, but worth it for the kids. Repeated moves for a parent’s career do not make an idyllic childhood. Max had never had two consecutive birthdays in the same state. In four years he and Morgan had been in five different nursery schools, had been terrified by shots and exams by four different pediatricians, had gotten attached to and detached from countless different babysitters. The tradeoff I faced as a mother was crystal clear: work, earn money, have a voice in where and how my family lived; or depend on Perry 100% financially and give up our right to protest his career choices despite the short and long-term emotional costs. Going back to full-time work was the road I had to take.

But along the way to renewing this commitment to working motherhood, ironically I also learned to swim in an ocean of sympathy for stay-at-home moms who feel they can’t object when told they have to move to (or stay in) places they or their children hate. However, I still didn’t understand these moms and their lives. We all started out kind of the same. School. Work. Marriage. Babies. (Not always in that order.) How—and why—do some moms know to stay home? How do others decide not to?

I’ve struggled to find my own balance. One crisp October morning, my car key wouldn’t turn in the ignition. My reaction was to sob for four hours, which made it difficult to go to the office. Once I stopped crying, I thought hard about my life. I’d been working full-time running The Washington Post Magazine for nearly two years, clocking long (and admittedly thrilling) hours and sleeping even less than usual. I’d moved into an old house that we were renovating, cared for our two toddlers, and gotten pregnant. I was moving so fast I could hardly slow down to snuggle my children in bed.

No wonder I couldn’t stop crying. That day I resolved to cut back at work, and a few months later, I reduced my hours (and my salary) by 50%, although I’m happy to say I kept the parts of my job that continue to thrill me.

But finding your own balance between work and family can be a torturous task. The easy divining rod—financial need—only explains a portion of working mom choices. On my block there’s a family who cannot afford for the mom to stay home. But they rent a small apartment, go without a car, and send their children to a mediocre public high school so she can. Two houses up the hill lives one of DC’s most successful realtors, a mom with two small kids, a cell phone permanently attached to her ear, and a very rich husband who could easily support a stay-at-home wife. Both women (and their kids) seem happy to me. The fundamental question remains: why are some moms still ardently working and some so happily not?

The far more troubling query: why is there this catfight between working mothers and stay-at-home ones? Despite the snarls most of us witness at times (and can display ourselves), aren’t moms ultimately united in our quest to stay sane, raise good kids, provide each other with succor and support, and protect humankind from the overly aggressive, overly logical male half of the species?

The evidence, unfortunately, does not support a united sisterhood among women. Just a week or so ago, dressed for the office at 8 am, I (somewhat) frantically dropped my kids off at their schools while my husband sat on a plane to Atlanta (I think—could have been Chicago or Vegas or anywhere not here). In the space of twenty minutes on the playground, three different stay-at-home moms lobbed greetings that felt like sly, wholly unwarranted commentary on my life:

Mom #1: Oooh, pantyhose! I’ve forgotten what those feel like!

What I heard: I haven’t had to work in so long. Aren’t you jealous?

Mom #2: Oh, don’t bother slowing down! You are always rushing somewhere!

What I felt like retorting: Yes I’m in a rush! My husband is out of town—again. I’ve been up since 5am feeding, dressing and cajoling three savage small people. I didn’t even have time to brush my hair. Now I’ve got to go to the office when I already feel I’ve worked a whole day! And you expect me to chat?!

Mom #3: I don’t know how you do it. (Accompanied by patronizing smile.)

Translation: I don’t know why you do it. You must be in really desperate need of money or self esteem that you are willing to neglect your children in order to work. Not me—I love my children more and am clearly the superior mother.

But at least the stay-at-home moms talked to me.

Later that day I was dressed in sweats, sitting on the floor at the kids’ weekly computer enrichment class, trying desperately to a) stay awake and b) amuse our toddler for an entire hour with props from my purse. A slew of working moms rushed in to pick up their kids, clad in child-unfriendly leather skirts and high heel boots (quite similar to the ones I had recently peeled off), impatient for their children to finish up. They glanced at me on the floor as if I were an oversized rodent. In lieu of a greeting to their children each spit out a version of “Hurry up—We’ve got to be…” One just rapped on the glass door to get her kid’s attention.

Maybe she didn’t remember her kid’s name. (Strike that: way too bitchy.) In one day, I rocketed from damning the holier than thou stay-at-home moms (no one loves their children more than I love mine!) to damning those snotty working moms (what makes them think their contributions to the world are more valuable than mine?).

There is no good reason for working moms to treat stay-at-home mothers like dirt (invisible dirt, but dirt nonetheless). Working moms might conceivably be grateful to moms who stay home and run our schools, our communities, a good chunk of our kids’ worlds. And stay-at-homes might arguably appreciate the working moms staying late to get the big promotions, fighting to increase women’s presence on company boards and the front page of The Wall Street Journal, campaigning to win elections. Without the money, the power and the loudspeaker successful careers bring, women will never have the collective bargaining power to make the world better for ourselves, our children, and all the women who can’t leave abusive husbands, the ones who wear veils, the moms who earn less than minimum wage cleaning houses and don’t have choices about birth control or prenatal care or any other kind of care.

That same morning on the playground, right after the stay-at-home moms had had their verbal way with me on the blacktop and I was scurrying out of the schoolyard, my daughter’s pre-k teacher beckoned me with one finger.

“Shit,” I thought. “I don’t have time to talk to her.” But my inner mom voice prevailed—she must have something important to say about my daughter. So I went to her.

She had on one of her 33-year-old son’s old Redskins t-shirts, pulled down over a faded purple Indian batik skirt. Her long white hair hung to her elbows. Her red lipstick was on crooked. If you put a pink crown and shimmery dress on her, she’d look just like an aged Good Witch Glenda headed for the Wizard of Oz nursing home. The other parents and I call her the Goddess of Pre-K. In a city renown for its expensive, elite private preschool programs, this public school teacher, who’s been in the same classroom for 26 years, rules with an imaginary golden wand, turning a crop of tearful, terrified four-year-olds into calm, well-behaved, curious five-year-olds who love going to school each day.

She gently but firmed grabbed my elbow, exactly as I’d seen her do to my daughter on Morgan’s bossiest days. She’d overheard those stay-at-home mom comments. Wisdom radiated from her green eyes.

“Did anyone ever tell you how beautiful you are?” Mrs. Rahim whispered so that the swirling crowd of stay-at-home moms, lingering by the school door, couldn’t hear. ”You are a happy mom. Your face glows with it. That’s what matters most to your kids. I think you should have ten more children. Now go to work.” I could tell she wanted to pat my Liz Claiborne-clad tush as I walked away, smiling as if she’d tied a pink balloon to my wrist.

—Leslie

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