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In It. Goes. So. Fast., Mary Louise Kelly shares her struggles to balance work and family life. Although for Kelly there was never a question of whether or not to give up work permanently in favor of parenting, the difficulty of finding the balance she seeks makes that question a perennial topic of interest—and conflict—among mothers.
The "mommy wars," a concept of tension between working and stay-at-home mothers, became popular in the 1990s, driven in part by the claim that modern parents spent 40% less time with their children than earlier generations. The documentary news organization Retro Report shows that a careful reading of the sources has rendered this statistic questionable, but it became part of the cultural narrative at the time. One mother I spoke to confided that she moved to the United States when she was six months pregnant with her first child, and was relieved that she didn't have to justify herself to either group of friends—those who stayed ...
