Marilyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard was reported as saying, "It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: When we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" in response to a New York Times expose by Louise Story which revealed that 60 percent of 138 interviewed Yale coeds expect to cut back on work or stay at home once they become mothers [1]. Do we live in a world wherein intellectual and social liberation come at the cost of Motherhood? Are they mutually exclusive?
Granted, I am not Yale bred, nor was I steps away from a position wherein my work and opinions could have changed the climate of my country’s politics, I am and was a teacher. I left teaching in the middle of my pregnancy to be…pregnant. I felt it was a time in my life that may never come again, and a crucial time in the melding of my child’s being, a time that required my total energy, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. I am neither wasting my talents nor choosing to be ignorant in my choice to stay at home and raise my daughter. Nor does my decision indicate that the money and political force that went into securing me the right, as a woman, to quality education is lost.
In my days as an educator in inner city Los Angeles, I geared my efforts to the teaching of emotional intelligence. In a sense, I nurtured my students into being. I felt that no amount of grammar instruction was going to save my students’ lives, but critical thinking could, and would in fact liberate them from the cycles of violence and oppression. The ability to empathize, to react compassionately, to be a spiritual energy first and a human energy second, these were the tools by which they, we, could change the world. Thus, my role as an educator was also the role of a mother, for I lent to the growth of my students’ character, helping them turn away from addiction, violence, and crime. I was then, just as I am now, in the business of raising conscious human beings and this is not merely a job, but a higher calling…productivity unquantifiable.
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