Eye Rolling and Sighing while I Type

In general, I don’t give a crap what other people want to do with their lives. My philosophy is ‘just don’t bother me’. Don’t preach to me, don’t proselytize, don’t lecture. My mother could tell you about how from a very early age I was very bad at the listening.

So when I linked over to Linda Hirshman’s article: I’m not sure what I was expecting.

“women who quit their jobs to stay home with their children were making a mistake.”

“the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing were not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings.”

Naturally, a lot of college educated women, of the mommy blogger genre, got royally pissed about this book and this article. I’m looking dead on at my own plan to go part time and then quit work to stay home and raise children. I feel guilty about this when I think of the money I could be bringing in, and then I remember that I pretty much hate my job.

I’ve struggled with the quitting thing, but then I spend time with my son and at home and realize how lucky I am to get that option. Is it going to stop my advancement to upper management? Possibly. But I’ve been working for about seven years now, and if I didn’t want to stay home for awhile, I’d be looking to make a career change. Does it mean that I will never go back to work? That my days will be filled with only butt-wiping and vacuuming? Assuredly not. I am looking into degree programs and ways to garner experience outside of my field (which I don’t like) while I “Stay At Home”.

I’d like to think that I’m more enlightened than the masses (please don’t disabuse me of this notion) in that I realize that we all end up dead. Those of us in Generation X are told that our retirement is being pushed back further and further, in order to maintain the balance we’re going to have to work until we’re 70 anyway. So really, it’s wrong to take 5-8 years “off” now? I’m old enough to know that if you don’t take chances when you can, you don’t get them again.

And the statement that got me the most:
“I'm a philosopher, and it's a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives.”

Where do I sign up for this ‘philosophy’ stuff? I got some people I want to tell how to live their lives, but it goes against my policy of ‘live and let live’, so it seems if I sign up for philosophy, I can drop that policy?