In Response to “Get Off Your Cloud”

Although neither a woman nor, by continuation, a concerned mother, I feel that this compelling instance of motherly nature necessitates a response. Marissa Mayer, who became, as the Times Article “Get Off Your Cloud” calls her, the “queen of the Yahoos” (President and CEO of Yahoo!) last summer, has given her feminist fanatics cause to question her status as their role model by taking only two weeks of maternity leave, building a nursery next to her office, and claiming that “the baby’s been way easier than everyone made it out to be.” Then, by forbidding her workers from working at home, she earned herself her new identity as the “Stalin of Silicon Valley.” Maureen Dowd, author of the article reporting all this concludes with her central, rhyming criticism, “Mayer has a nursery next to executive suite. But not everyone has it so sweet.”
The great criticisms of Mayer’s behavior are her trivialization of motherhood, her apparent lack of consideration for those who live less luxurious lifestyles than she does, and some of the harsher policy changes she has inflicted upon her worker population. What concerns me, however, is what seems to be a growing apathy towards traditional values, encapsulated by some of Marissa Mayer’s most recent actions. Playing off the struggles of early motherhood by calling it easy, Mayer insulted mothers. The implications that has for her disregard for her motherly responsibilities and her prioritization of the Yahoo! company, even granted the responsibilities she must maintain in exchange for her $117M, 5-year contract, is what comes as an insult to me.
Now, I’m not a mother and I’m not expecting to become a father any time soon, but I can’t comprehend how so many modern mothers and fathers manage to trivialize the lives of their babies. The tender, sweet, precious relationship between parent and child is supposed to be an embodiment of one of the most intrinsic and most natural qualities that makes us human: compassion. Traditionally, mothers and fathers nurture their babies into self-operating children, then teach them to behave as young men and women, before seeing them off into the turbulent but exciting world of higher education and career employment. In 2009, however, it was estimated by the NAF that approximately three-thousand, one-hundred, and fifty of these lives were being cut short every day.. and I think that rate has gone up. What’s going on in your head, America?