From the very beginning I have said to myself “I’m going to be good at this. If I could get through 11 months in Iraq, pregnancy and delivery should be a breeze; painful I’m sure, but at least nothing will be blowing up around me!” I just reached the half-way point, 20 weeks down, 20 weeks to go. The first trimester was easy; somehow I bypassed all of the negative symptoms spewed throughout the first three chapters of every pregnancy book. I continue to laugh at the “Whoaaa, Dairy Queen” and “Moooo-ve over” jokes. Even the food and beverage restrictions, weight gain, emotional breakdowns and fatigue haven’t been too bad. What I have been struggling with is the fact that I have to go back to work three months after the baby is born. I imagine that will be more emotionally taxing than getting on the C-130 to Iraq.
As I lugged the ruck sack onto the plane back in 2003, I was leaving my family and friends, who of course enjoy my company, but can survive without seeing me for awhile. This time I will be lugging a diaper bag and leaving, although only for eight hours a day, an infant who depends completely on me for its survival. Two questions continuously roll through my head: “What happened to the stay-at-home mom, the June Cleavers of the world?” and “What happened to the importance of raising your child within your own home?” I know the answer to that is very complex – the political, social and economic factors that created the dual-income household that so many people maintain today.
Suddenly I have a vision of the Iraqi family that lived outside of Camp Freedom. I would often entertain myself during my four-hour guard shift pretending I was watching an Iraqi reality TV show. The cast of characters included a husband, a wife, a sister or perhaps a second wife, and eight children, ranging in age from about 2 to 16. The children were usually doing chores or roughhousing and playing outdoors. They weren’t playing video games on a hi-definition flat screen TV, there was no S.U.V. parked in the driveway, and they weren’t rushing off to gymnastics, soccer, or baseball practice, but they did have one thing that I think is often missing in our society: they were part of a strong family unit, a family that played together, ate together, and grew together.
The family unit in Iraq is exactly what many women in the United States have protested and fought to get away from. Their view is that if the woman stays home with the children and tends to the house, she in a sense becomes a slave to the man because he earns the money. But, personally, I see another side of it: I actually envy the opportunity that these women have to stay home and take care of their families. That is something that I feel few American women have the opportunity to do.
On the other side of the spectrum I think of how shocking the role of women and the family structure in our culture is to the Iraqis. I remember a conversation I had with Noaman, our Iraqi translator; he couldn’t understand why a young, unwed woman would ever leave her family. The thought of a woman surviving on her own, without the family unit, or without a man was inconceivable. He was a 30-year-old unwed man, and he hadn’t left his family. He asked why I would want to move all the way across the country on my own (of course I was in the military, so I wasn’t really on my own). I replied, “I can always go back to the east coast; my family will always be there. I want to explore our vast nation and the world — how lucky that as American women we are free to do just that.”
Of course it is by choice that I live in California, while my family is in New York, Utah, and Tennessee, but lately this seed inside of me creates a longing for my family. It’s almost as though I have a yearning to return to the 1950s, or to adopt the Iraqi ways where the women stay with their children, a place where raising a family holds a higher value in the work world and within society as a whole. Our push to be this imperialist nation, to mass-produce, to globalize, and to conquer seems to be pushing us farther and farther away from our families.
Honestly, I want to have the best of both worlds. I want to live on the coast in California, but have it be affordable. I want to explore the world with my child, have the same freedoms as men, but also have our society shift back to allowing one-income families; whether it is the man or woman who stays home, allowing one of the parents to raise the child. I truly am grateful that women in my past fought bravely to allow me the right to sit here and write thoughts that will be shared throughout the world, yet right now I feel I would be willing to trade a bit of this freedom for the luxury of a few more months or years at home with my child.
Source : http://homefires.blogs.nytimes.com
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