Opinion | Stay-at-home mums are not 'freeloaders'
Kelly Yang says decisions about how to juggle work and child-rearing are for each woman to make, and no one answer is right for all
Two years ago, I was doing research for my TEDxWomen talk and I asked a 17-year-old student whether he thought his future wife would work. Having been raised by a strong, successful single mother, he replied "yes" without skipping a beat. His next words have stuck with me: "Of course women should work. No one likes a freeloader."
I was astounded by the word "freeloader". Is this how our children really feel about stay-at-home mums? The very mothers who gave up their careers so they could spend more time with their children?
In a city where only 53 per cent of women work, this word has haunted me. I think about it when I pick up my son from school and see the other mums happily taking their children home while I drag mine back to my office.
My student would shake his head at these women. Yet, they are irreplaceable assets in their children's lives. These are the mums whose children I marvel at - wonderful, well-adjusted and happy. Why is not working a bad thing if it produces wonderful kids?
Because the world would be a better place if more women worked, says Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook and the author of the forthcoming book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, a call for action for women to get more aggressive about their careers. Her main point is not entirely different from my student's - don't stop working, not even a little bit.
That's easy for Sandberg to say, who, in addition to making US$30 million a year at Facebook, is also married to a successful entrepreneur. But what about the rest of us and, more specifically, what about the children? What's going to happen to them if we're all too busy leaning in?