~by Haley Lynn Gray~
One of my least favourite things anyone says: “I’m raising my own children.” Or its close cousin, “I don’t want my children raised by someone else.”
It’s always said in a particular tone, and everyone in earshot knows exactly who it’s aimed at.
I don’t stop being a mother at the office door
Let me put this plainly. My child having a nanny, or going to daycare, does not mean I stop being their mother when I go to work.
I don’t duck into a phone box and emerge as somebody else. I’m still their mother while they’re with someone else — thinking about them, responsible for them, and entirely on call.
Try ringing me at work with a genuine emergency involving one of my children and see how fast I move. Actually, don’t — I don’t need the heartburn. But the answer is: immediately, and decisively.
I love my children deeply. So does virtually every mother I’ve ever met, regardless of what her working arrangements look like.
The judgement runs in both directions
This is worth saying, because the mommy wars are not one-sided.
Mothers who work get told they’re outsourcing their children. Mothers at home get told they’ve wasted an education, or asked what they do “all day.” The scorn is remarkably evenly distributed, and it’s staggering how casually it’s handed out by people who’d be horrified to be called unkind.
Both versions rest on the same error: assuming that a visible arrangement tells you what someone values.
What it actually costs
These comments aren’t harmless. They land on women already carrying substantial guilt about a decision that was usually made under real constraints — money, health, career, the needs of a particular child.
Very few women arrive at their childcare arrangement from a menu of perfect options. Most are solving a problem with the resources they have.
The guilt is already there without help from anyone else. And research on working mothers hasn’t supported the idea that maternal employment damages children — a fact that circulates far less widely than the judgement does.
Why this matters in business
Because the same assumption shows up at work, wearing a suit.
It’s there when a mother is passed over for the demanding project because someone decided she wouldn’t want it. When her commitment is quietly questioned after she has a baby. When her leaving at five is noticed and a colleague’s is not.
It’s the same instinct: deciding what someone is like from what you can see of their circumstances, then acting on the conclusion.
If you employ people, the discipline is simple — judge the work. Not the hours, not the arrangements, not whether someone’s life looks like yours.
What to say instead
If another mother’s arrangement is different from yours, the entire correct response is: “How’s it working out?”
That’s it. Curiosity rather than comparison, and no implied ranking.
We are all raising our own children. Some of us have help doing it — as mothers have had, in every society, for the whole of human history.
