Wednesday, March 31, 2010

To work or not to work...

Today I read this sentence on a website:

E' stato affrontato il tema dell'impatto che l'arrivo di un bambino provoca sull'attività lavorativa delle donne, evidenziando un dato davvero preoccupante: il 27% delle donne abbandona il lavoro alla nascita del primo figlio.

What's wrong with that? I mean, is it so impossible that a woman might feel gratified enough with her baby? Isn't growing a baby the hardest work ever? Why should they feel deprived?

That reminds me that some years ago I saw a big poster for the incoming general election, which said "families don't grow without day nurseries". Why doesn't anybody, at least here in Italy, ever says "families don't grow without a concrete help"? The monthly fee for a day nursery is about the average salary, why should a mother work all day, without seeing her baby - who by the way is tossed around all day since he's two or three months old - just to pay for the day nursery?

Well, many people are forced to. But I always happen to talk to people who earn two or three times as much as I do (and they don't have a mortgage they'll finish to pay when hell freezes over like I do) that complain because they "have" to go to work because money is never enough. I just think they find that being a full time mother is too much for them: my own wife has been a housewife for the last six years or so herself and we've got three beautiful kids, despite all the economic difficulties we might have faced or will have to face. By the way, we need to buy a bigger car, does anybody want to contribute?

Of course I don't think people who make this choice are bad eggs: I'm not against them, nor I judge them. I only don't understand them.

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