Watching the cheering after the judged reduced the verdict for au pair Louise Woodward and set her free, I found it hard not to take it personally.
To this working mother who hired full-time babysitters for eight years, the jubiliation felt like an attack.
Among Woodward’s supporters, faces beamed and hands applauded when they heard the news that she now stood convicted of manslaughter, not second-degree murder, and was sentenced to the 279 days she had already spent in jail.
But in my mind, a painful thought occurred: Was this how much some people hate working mothers?
Because on talk radio and on the Internet, it was Matthew Eappen’s parents, both physicians — and especially his mother — who came in for some of the harshest criticism.
They shouldn’t have hired a teenager with little formal training to care for two very young children. They should have been home more to check on their baby-sitter. They should have fired her as soon as they began arguing with her over curfews.
And why was the mother working anyway, when she could afford to stay home?
Woodward maintained her innocence. Prosecutors maintained her guilt. And we, the onlookers, chose up sides.
Maybe the furor in England can be laid to nationalism, although I would not reflexively defend an American baby-sitter similarly accused in England.
But in this country, Woodward had no presumptive bond of citizenship with her supporters. Our opinions were driven by gut reaction, as they are in all the high-profile trials in which the public has become deeply enmeshed. And in the airing of our opinions, some of our society’s guts were exposed.
Woodward’s supporters looked at a 19-year-old baby-sitter who police said had admitted to having been “a little rough” with the baby, and a mother and father whose child had been killed.
The baby-sitter got their sympathy; the parents, in many cases, their venom. Why?
Her appearance, for one. She was a white teenager with neat hair and a baby face. She just didn’t look like she could do such a terrible thing, one supporter outside the courtroom said.
But the other side of the support for Woodward was the condemnation of the parents. The radio and the Internet bristled with resentment.
Those who blamed the parents saw them as rich and selfish people who were willing to sacrifice their baby to their careers and materialism. The Eappens had enough money to afford an experienced, mature nanny. The mother could have stayed home. The mother should have stayed home.
That was what I saw in the cheering faces: judgment that my life could qualify as child endangerment.
It doesn’t take a baby-sitter convicted of manslaughter to prompt me to reexamine my own accommodations between my work and my children. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t.
Does anyone imagine that mothers who choose to work do so without agonizing over our children’s safety and welfare? We move heaven and earth to arrange creative balances of work and family, and then we agonize some more.
And when we hire the baby-sitters with whom we will entrust our beloved, defenseless children, our knuckles turn white with terror. We consult agencies, we interview, we check references.
Some of us are deeply fortunate to find warm, loving caregivers who become parts of our family. I gratefully include myself in that category.
A few of us, grievously but not negligently, are not.
Imagine other approaches to the tensions laid bare by the trial.
Like making it easier to find top-quality child care. Or raising the age limits for au pairs, or limiting their work hours. Or, instead of castigating mothers who work, eliminating the professional penalties if they stay home for a few years.
Most of all, consider the possibility of respecting the different choices made by mothers fortunate enough to have choices. All of them are hard; all involve sacrifice.
And while we’re cooling off from the frenzy of our reaction to the tragic death of a baby, maybe we can cool off our judgment of each other.
