Youโd think that since itโs the year 2017, our schools would be teaching children equality of the sexes. The very last thing youโd expect is to find out that your childโs school was shaming and guilt-tripping women for being working moms.
Especially in a day in age where itโs often financially necessary for both parents to bring in incomes.
To one Queens motherโs dismay, this was not the case.
Lynne Polvino was exhausted after a long day of work and was struggling as she was cooking dinner, helping her 6-year-old daughter Hazel with her homework, and answering her 4-year-old son Jasperโs rapid fire questions at the same time.
But when she picked up her daughterโs homework sheet, she became enraged.
โI was already feeling pretty frazzled, and when I read the assignment, I almost lost it,โ Polvino told TODAY Parents.
The worksheet discussed a story called โBack to Workโ where first graders were asked to choose words to fill in the blanks about a story about a girl named Lisa who was unhappy that her mother had to go back to work.
The story shows the entire family being in a rush to get out the door in the morning and her fatherโs inadequacies at making a decent breakfast in place of her mom.
The story did, however, have a happy ending which shows the motherโs new job allowing her to get home before Lisa returned from school.
It hit home for Polvino, who works as a childrenโs book editor in Manhattan, and made her livid.
โMy shock and dismay quickly turned to outrage. I mean, what decade are we in, anyway?โ Polvino asks. โIn this day and age, weโre going to tell kids that mothers working outside the home makes their children and families unhappy? That fathers donโt normally do things like cook and wash the dishes?โ
The story didnโt seem to bother Hazel, but what about the other kids in her class?
Would they start to feel unhappy about having a working mom, Polvino wondered.
โWhat message was this sending to them? What message was it sending to little girls who dream of having careers and families?โ she said. โAnd what about all the other working moms โ did they feel, as I did, like theyโd been punched in the gut when they read this?โ
Polvino wasnโt about to take this lying down. So, she made a few edits of her own.
Actually, she re-wrote the entire story in a way that reflects the type of world she wants to live in and the values she believes should be taught to out children.
โThe morning was wonderful,โ Polvinoโs rewrite stated. โLisa had to get to school on time. Her mother had to get to work on time. Her father was home on his paid paternity leave, caring for Lisaโs younger brother and contributing equally to the running of the household. No one was in a rush because Dad had things firmly under control.โ
She didnโt send her version of the story to Hazelโs teacher, but she did post it on Facebook where itโs was shared more than 3,000 times:
โThe man as the leader of the house? thatโs a bit sexist,โ said Derrick Pirrotta on Facebook. โAnd its wrong to assume that the because the women works that children are confused. you must be living in the 1950โs.โ
She did, however, send an email to the teacher who agreed that the worksheet was a little old fashioned and vowed to pay closer attention to homework assignments and the messages they are sending to her students.
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