On Saturday, I flipped through an edition of USA Weekend, and my eyes fell on this article: “15 Things You Must Do For Your Baby.” Of course I was interested, as I held my youngest on my hip. I skimmed the headings out loud for my other children, laughing through topics like “Visit the Dentist by Age 1.” (Our baby has no teeth yet — what would the dentist say? My, what nice gums you have, my dear.”)

But when I read #15, I had to stop reading out loud because I couldn’t believe it. There must have been smoke coming out of my ears. Listen to this:

#15 Working parents: Skip the Guilt.

The number of hours Mom spends with Baby makes little difference in the child’s intellectual or social development, according to a recent study from the University of Texas. What’s more important is how often Mom engages Baby in play or talks to her. The study of more than 1,000 children up to age 3 also found that working moms spent less time on average with their children, but the difference was much smaller than researchers expected. Working moms compensated for lost time by spending more time with Baby on weekends and ditching other activities. In fact, working moms spent a slightly higher proportion of their time with their babies on purely social activities like playing and talking than non-working moms did.

I could not disagree more!

I won’t even begin to enter into the topic of working v. non-working moms. What is a working mom? Who is NOT a working mom? (Grrr…)

According to the views in this article, I’m not needed as I stay home with my children. The village can raise my kids just fine without me. I can spend 15 minutes a day playing Peek-a-boo, and then spend the rest of my waking hours flying around the planet in some high-power career and not feel a twinge of remorse. No regrets.

Well, I know a lot of really smart, really social adults who have totally messed up their lives because they didn’t have a mother at home to teach them what really matters: character. Who cares if someone grows up brilliant and popular if they get addicted to alcohol? Or they can’t commit to finishing school, staying married, or sticking out a career?

This morning, my two-year-old son was sitting in a chair while I helped get his shoes on.

“Is this an old chair?” he asked me.

“Yes, that’s an old chair that used to belong to your Papa.”

“Who’s Papa?” He wanted to know.

I fought back a surge of tears. He’ll never get to know my grandfather, who slipped away into eternity the very same day this little boy learned to crawl. “Papa was Nana’s Daddy. Now he lives in heaven. With Jesus.”

“He lives in heaven? With Jesus?” He looked at me intently, then looked outside at the sky. “Oh, he lives in heaven. With Jesus.”

Later that morning, he said to me again, “Papa lives in heaven. With Jesus. I know that.”

So, I was there. In the brief time it took to tie a shoe, I taught a small boy about one of the finest individuals who ever lived, his great-grandfather. I linked him to his past. And I began helping him understand the lifelong journey he will take toward heaven…teaching him gently, slowly, that heaven is where Jesus lives. This is my faith…that I’m passing on to him.

Will this conversation show up on some study? An intellectual or social test of some sort? I don’t think so.

The world may say that children don’t need their moms around. But I beg to differ. Nobody needs me more than my family.