Maybe getting married IS the cornerstone of happiness…

Not a day goes by that somebody doesn’t write some extremely contentious article on the internet. Sometimes it’s a really valid strong point of view, sometimes it’s an attempt to get people to talk about and share the article so that numbers go up the site attracts more advertising dollars and sometimes you write something with the most noble of intentions and it just goes feral.

Parenting and feminism are real big push button subjects. No one really likes to be told how to think, especially in areas where there are clearly so many shades of nuance.

Last week Susan Patton, a “Princeton Tiger Mum” wrote an article published in The Wall Street Journal suggesting that single women should hurry up and find a partner so that they can get married. She puts the emphasis on finding a partner before finding a career. Perhaps it was with one of her opening sentences that the internet seemed to implode with angry women.  She writes “Despite all of the focus on professional advancement, for most of you the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry…But chances are that you haven’t been investing nearly as much energy in planning for your personal happiness as you are planning for your next promotion at work. What are you waiting for? You’re not getting any younger, but the competition for the men you’d be interested in marrying most definitely is. ”

Gah! Wouldn’t it be great if people could tell you how they feel without insisting that you feel the same way? In her defence she’s trying to strike a chord because she has a book entitled Marry Smart: Advice for Finding ‘The One” coming out in March and clearly she wants her name out there so that when you see a copy you buy it .

But perhaps, for Susan Patton getting married was the cornerstone of her happiness. Maybe she thinks that everyone should be as lucky as her and find such happiness in another person.

Team Internet didn’t seem to feel that way at all.  Opinion pieces sprang up in all the usual places decrying the “antiquated values” of Susan Patton and accusing her of being responsible for gender discrimination “because articles like this set women back to Victorian ages.” As always there were some very strident reactions and some vicious abuse slung at Ms Patton for having an opinion that the majority didn’t seem to agree on.

I understand the reaction in some way because nobody wants to be told how to think or how to behave. Although mostly we behave in exactly the way that their peers and society expect from us. Like sheep in sheep’s clothing we follow the status quo, we listen to and see what is expected from us and we don’t just sit on our own little patch of soft,green grass and say “I’m happy here, I’ve thought about it and I’m not following you anywhere.”

Now, it’s absolutely a much better thing that we are being told that as women who want equal rights to men we are automatically feminists, that we should have big careers with huge salaries, that we should get our little girls interested in engineering and wearing blue pants instead of playing with dolls and wearing pink tutus. Of course that is better than not being able to vote, earning lesser salaries, having limited choices and being forced into the kitchen. Not even debating that one because I think it’s clear as day.

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Sometimes we are so busy fighting to be independent and screaming for equality and banging our fists about feminism that we forget to allow some individuality of thought.

When I had my baby there was nothing  I wanted to do more than mother him. I wanted to be a mother with every fibre of my being. I wanted to be the best mother in the world, I wanted to be a career mother. I also wanted to cook for my husband, have a beautiful (neat) home and be there to change every single one of my son’s nappies. Hardy the creed of a career feminist. But it was (and still is) my truth.

Sure parenting was hard. It still is. There have been days that I have wanted to run away, days that I believed I would rather stick needles in my eyes than read another story/wash another load of clothes/listen to another set of spelling words. But I haven’t changed my mind about what I wanted to do. I have done other things in between,  I worked out of the home part time, I worked full time. But my heart was always in being a parent full time.

I don’t expect everyone to love parenting as much as I do, I don’t think that I am right and anyone else with a different experience is wrong, but I also don’t think there should be any shame in saying I don’t want a big, high-paying career – I want to be a mother. And I consider myself blessed every single day that I can do with my life what I want to do.

To those who tell me I will regret not having “other” interests when I am older, that I should not peg all my happiness on one person I tell you I would rather regret being a mother than being absent from mothering. I also say “to each their own”.  I respect your decisions and I ask that you respect mine.

So if you don’t want what you are expected to want, if you want to be an artist or a road worker or a doctor or mother or a father, if you want to paint walls or lead business, if you want to write books or blogs or recipes or shopping lists – don’t think you have to follow the trend. Don’t let other people tell you what to think and and for God’s sake don’t listen to the hysteria when someone disagrees with an article written by a person with an alternate opinion.