Oh Hell No

...is the answer to this tagline from a recent Salon.com article: "Today, are women who choose to stay home betraying feminism?"

Seriously, did Salon.com turn into Newsweek when I wasn't looking? I mean, I love how they segretate all the "women's issues" into Broadsheet now (because, you know, women aren't also people, and we wouldn't want to trouble the dudes with all our handwringing about that Alito guy), but yeesh.

No, that's not fair of me. The article in question ultimately turns out to be decent, although the Broadsheet thing still bugs me (yes, it has resulted in more "women's issues" appearing in Salon, but how about we call them what they really are: political issues. Do I need to point out that there's no "men's issues" section? Do I need to point out that that's because all issues other than "women's issues" are perceived to be "men's issues"?). But that tagline! What the deuce?

The current issue of Bitch features a primer on feminism through the years, and I'm archiving it for our future homeschooling shenanigans because it's a great starting place. I highly recommend getting a copy, even if you're all like, "Yeah, I'm a feminist, I know," and especially if you're like, "I'm not a feminist! Because I don't hate men!" In the latter case I'm not entirely sure why you're reading my blog (though I'm glad of it), but we'll get to that in a future post.

So again, the question is: Are women who stay home betraying feminism? To which I must say, If you even have to ask, you capitalist oppressor, clearly you have drunk deeply of the consumption economy Kool-Aid, and your thinking is terminally clouded.

I mean, no, they're not betraying feminism.

Seriously, betraying feminism? First off, that presumes a monolithic entity of FEMINISTS, you know, humorless hairy-pitted emasculators who burn bras and eat little boys. Not that there isn't a unifying principle of feminism, because there is: women and men are people of equal value.

It also assumes, and probably rightly, that most of America tuned out on feminism in the early '70s (because it's been dead ever since then, don't you know, ERA and all that). Back then, as we all know, the sole aim of feminists was to put a woman in the White House (as president, you dirty birdies!) and in every boardroom. Oh, and to destroy marriage. Career gals! That's all they've ever wanted -- jobs! Men's jobs!

You know, it'd be nice to have more female CEOs and elected officials. But I'd settle for a takedown of the entire economic system and government.

Ahem.

But why aren't those of us who remain outside the institutional paid workforce betraying feminism? Why isn't it a problem to drop out of the paid workforce when so many women fought -- and are still fighting -- to be taken seriously in the work arena? Why isn't it a terminal waste of our hard-won educatios when some of us turn our energies toward child-raising?

Well, for one, feminism evolves constantly. Work was never the only issue (Hi! Voting!), although the fight to break out of the limits of housewife/teacher/nurse was and is an important, necessary one. The central drive of feminism is for women to be recognized as equal in value to men -- to be recognized as people, period.

And now we've got what is derided as "choice" feminism: whatever a woman chooses to do, that's her choice, and we must all applaud her. No judging! Everything okay! Obviously this can be played out to ridiculous extremes which render the concept of feminism meaningless: I choose to submit to my husband and leave all important and financial decisions up to him, therefore I am a feminist because I chose it! And that's bullshit, but the bullshit does not all originate from extreme practitioners of this "choice" feminism (whom I have yet to encounter in real life). Its critics are full of it too. They miss a certain central point, upon which hinges the entire argument of what, exactly, women ought to be doing.

Hang on, I'm getting to it.

It puts me in mind of the constant call for subsidized childcare -- usually from feminists -- as the answer to women's woes. Subsidized childcare -- that erases the Mommy Track phenomenon, where women who take time off to have children take a career hit. That solves the problem of how to balance work and family life. We should be like fill-in-the-Scandinavian-country, and provide a long maternity leave and then state-supported childcare! Why, in those countries, most women are able to have careers and families! That fixes everything! It's a feminist revolution!

Except it really doesn't. Subsidized childcare, and longer maternity leaves, while potentially laudable offerings from a government and ones I would very much love to see here, are a Band-Aid, a teeny little Band-Aid on a gaping wound. They don't address the fundamental problem in our culture today, which is (here we go, finally) the assumption that work outside the home -- career -- is more valuable to society than work "inside" the home, particularly child-rearing (I'll explain the quotes in a minute), and the desirable path for every male and female in our culture. It is the culmination of education and adulthood. It is the most important thing there is.

And I'm here to tell you, it ain't so.

 

It's really easy -- hey, politicians do it all the time -- to say, "Family is the most important thing! Nobody ever said on their deathbed they wish they'd spent more time at work!" It's painfully obvious that it's all lip service, though. It's meaningless in the context of a culture that rewards mothering -- that noble, expensive hobby -- with zero in the way of financial support. I don't mean hourly wage for parenting, I mean Social Security. Recommended reading here: The Price of Motherhood, by Ann Crittenden. Who I am mostly paraphrasing. Anyway.

Apart from the fiscal hit of remaining outside the institutional machine, there's the deeper problem of our beliefs. It's obvious from the brouhaha that ensues whenever issues of staying at home vs. going to work come up in groups of women -- we're all raw nerve there, many of us, because we get it coming and going. Stay at home and waste your life; go to work and abandon your children.

It's all bullshit. All of it.

Raising children is work. Sometimes it's drudgery and sometimes it requires leaps of genius; in that it's comparable to any other career-type job. What often gets overlooked is that it's meaningful: to us as parents, to the children themselves, and to society at large. (Obviously the market disagrees, since we pay childcare workers and most teachers a pittance, and treat them with condescension. But hey, the market is often full of shit.) Raising children is indescribably important to parents, children, and society; it makes us whole people, rather than interchangeable capital-generating units. It forms community. It does something above and beyond contributing to the gross national product (although of course it does that too), and that is something that our society does not take into account, excepting the occasional spurt of political lip service.

(Tangent time: Why is raising children called "staying at home"? Most of the mothers I know who aren't working for an institution spend their days out and about with their children, engaged in the community [when possible; we have made that hard to do without a lot of driving in most of the country], and alternately maintaining their homes. Which is no small feat; it's hard work, raising children, and maintaining the domestic consciousness is a huge job, as evidenced by the explosion of products it takes to replace a person, and here I'm talking about everything from disposable Clorox wipes to Uncrustables to the fifty million dinner-in-a-box or -bag products that glut the Superfresh. The way homes operate has changed hugely over the past century and a half, much for the better since housekeeping entailed a lot of backbreaking labor, but a lot of the art has gone out of it. That's a whole other post, how keeping house has changed, and the resurgence of certain traditionally feminine work like fiber arts and home canning), and consequently what little respect there was for it has dried up. Hey, it was only woman's work to begin with.)

So: Raising children is meaningful work. Being "at home" (which really is just shorthand for "out of the institutional framework", since other than naps I could spend the whole day running around town) is not a waste of an education any more than being a lawyer is a waste of all those science classes, or being a scientist is a waste of those English Lit classes. It contributes to society in every way possible. And it is treated as something without value, because our culture doesn't value women and work that has traditionally fallen to women, our culture doesn't value children outside of their role as either nostalgic cherubs or consumers, and our culture doesn't value things that fall outside the realm of capitalism. Take your pick, or pick 'em all. In that framework, not only is "staying home" with kids a deeply feminist choice, it's a radical choice. Unfortunately it's one that comes with punishment, from Social Security losses to social disapproval. But hey, that's what radicals have to contend with.

But I work, you say. I have to. Otherwise we can't make the bills, and talk all you want about frugal living, it just isn't enough. To which I say: yeah. That's true, for more and more families, and it sucks. And it's just another symptom of our whacked-out society. It puts the lie to all the president's "Things are better than ever!" rhetoric, it exposes the stinking pit under the pretty little outhouse of our present economic system. It proves that system is unsustainable. This is what I'm talking about when I call subsidized child care a Band-Aid: yes, it would help deal with things day-to-day, but it doesn't do anything about the deeper problem. The shitty thing is that there's no choice here, and that this is the way it is for most of the country.

Well, I work because I like to, another one of you might say. I like my career. It's meaningful to me, it's rewarding, I'd go nuts at home. So, what, am I abandoning my kids? You think I'm a bad mom? And here I say, dude, no way. No way, because that right there is what so many women fought -- and are still fighting -- for: the right to have a career, to be taken seriously in the workplace, to use our brains however we see fit. This is where subsidized child care is helpful, as in pick-your-European-country: it allows women not to be trapped by staying home when that's not what they want to do. Working is a deeply feminist choice too.

To sum up: Working doesn't mean you've turned your back on mothering, just as not working doesn't mean you've turned your back on thinking. Both are potentially feminist, radical choices (oooh, there's that word); both are also potential traps, as we've seen historically, and as we see today. What we need is the freedom to make choices, and have available social support for all options. We need a way to serve the needs of all family members. There are so many creative solutions here, fathers who do the majority of the child-rearing (although of course then they take the Social Security hit), nontraditional working arrangments like job-sharing, work outside of the institutional framework, subsidized child care, subsidized stay-at-home parenting -- wouldn't it be great, if those who wanted to work could count on quality child care, and those who didn't could count on a subsidy or tax break to allow them (one parent of a two-parent family, or one single parent) to stay home? And Social Security too? -- oh, while we're at it, maybe subsidized health care to offset some of the costs that force parents back to work before they want to go. And, see, if more parents were able to stay home, then that increases the base of potential small-scale child-care providers, and then...oh, my little over-educated head is just spinning.*

See? See how big and deep the problem is? It all boils down to valuing human lives, inner as well as economic-sphere. Female as well as male, child as well as adult. And there's plenty of talk, but one only has to watch our society's actions to see what we -- or at least those in power -- really believe. Don't buy it! Don't buy the idea that having a career necessarily means shortchanging your children and is unbecoming to you as a woman! Don't buy the idea that staying out of the workforce to raise your children is the anti-intellectual, anti-feminist option and worthy of ridicule and dismissal! Don't buy the idea that if you have to work because you can't otherwise keep up, it's because of some flaw on your part!

This stay-at-home versus work debate, whether posed as a question of feminism or of what's best for the economy or what's best for the children, is a red herring. It's there to distract us, to keep us from deconstructing the systematic inequities -- the ultimate untenability -- of the current economy.

It's working really, really well.

*All this talk of subsidized whatnot makes it sound like I'm a big old socialist. I kind of am, in that I loathe exclusively private health care and an unfettered free market, but then I'm a civil libertarian who doesn't believe in compulsory schooling. Haven't quite sorted it all out yet. Also, I'm aware that Social Security is not to be counted on in my old age.

Comments

[wix]

yes.

[nate]

Wow, oh wow.
How do you think so clearly w/ a little baby around?

Please, please, try to publish this. This is so well-crafted, and addresses all the addresses so clearly. Submit it to Salon, to the NYTimes as an op-ed (boy, could they use some of this real-world thinking, rather than the "gee, Yale women might want to stay home" pseudo-research), or submit it to Mothering. It's really wonderful.

[liz]

I second nate's comment. Please please please send this off to Salon and NYTimes and every major publication you can think of. There's no hope for change if all of us who agree with you don't go out there raise the issue and start the debate with those who don't.

[Shal]

Jo? You're fabulous; I think the fact that you can write this so eloquently echoes all the points you make. Please don't let stupid Old Navy get you down when you try on pants (I know, easy for me to say), but clearly you have such a marvelous talent and brain, and I hate that such a woman would feel bad because of ill-fitting pants, you know? You say everything I think, me who quit a job in the sciences with a graduate degree because I LOVE being a "stay at home" parent. I absolutely cringed when I read in Salon.com the other day that I shouldn't let 'mother love' get to me, and should keep on track with my career, because clearly it's more important that society have me in the workforce than for me to think of myself and my child's happiness first. Bah. Please, please, send this to Salon, because the women like me who are not so articulate as you *need* you!

[dish]

"Working doesn't mean you've turned your back on mothering, just as not working doesn't mean you've turned your back on thinking."

Thank you, Jo, for putting this out there in words. In bold, no less. I happen to be on the working side of the equation, and I feel the guilt of the working mom. But I also know that I have gone out of my way to make sure he is in the best daycare in the city, with my mom for two days (to throw in the family angle), and spend my whole weekend engaged in activities with him at my side to make up for "lost" time. And I have never heard anything but praise for how well adjusted he is for an 8-month old.

But I still give you a big wet sloppy one for posting such a well-written piece on the matter for all to digest and discuss.

[Carla Hinkle]

Why is it that you are the only one I have ever seen who points out that "more child care!" is not the solution to all women's ills. That point alone made the article for me.

Good God. That is fantastic. Please, please try to get it published somewhere.

[parodie]

Hey, I totally agree, and this seems to be a pretty commonly advocated position. I fully support you.

But... ok, I am here, I'm ready to do what it takes, I even can find some spare time (incredible!). What do I do? Where do I turn? How in the world do I turn beautiful ideals like this into reality? That is where I see the problem/disconnect: the philosophy is beautiful, but we need concrete steps that can be taken to acheive it.

[tessence]

The thing that I learned about Scandinavia's set-up from Crittendon's book that impressed me the most? The 6-hour work day for male or female parents while the kids are in school. Wow. Wow. And the stats that like, half the people in their legislature have young children at home.

We've got such a "perfect" system here. As all jobs demand more and more maniacal devotion and long hours, it's easy to keep all these annoying "family" issues out of the public discourse. Anyone in charge of a small child either wouldn't have time to work, or wouldn't have time to parent, and CERTAINLY doesn't have time to advocate.

[DoctorMama]

I told you I'd agree.

I think where people get really hung up is this: "Obviously this can be played out to ridiculous extremes which render the concept of feminism meaningless: I choose to submit to my husband and leave all important and financial decisions up to him, therefore I am a feminist because I chose it! And that's bullshit."

Problem is, where is the line of ridiculousness? When is the concept of feminism rendered meaningless? I think that's what a lot of people end up arguing about. For example, I find it ridiculous when someone who does not enjoy/is not particularly good at spending the day with small children "chooses" to do so because of some ideal of motherhood, but I know that point of view ticks some folks off.

[Melanie]

I think you're my hero. ;o)

Sing it, sister!

Seriously, you keep posting all these things I'm thinking about, except saying them so much better than I would.

[meghan]

You know, I just got an email from my former boss who thinks that the fact that I am still at home is 'an affront to all that her generation did for us.' I have yet to tell her that I plan on staying home until we get to the bottom of my son's potentially serious illness, but whatever. Perhaps I will send her to you instead of silently fuming here in the corner!

Kudos to some fine writing!

[Lut C.]

Great essay, fabulous!

I live in pick-a-European-country and am very grateful for it. Health care is excellent, so is education. Though I am not counting solely on the state pension either. Of course taxes are steep. But over all, I feel it's value for money.
Whenever I visit the U.S., I get the distinct feeling that I live in a slightly less dog eat dog world.

I don't know what you're implying when you say you might sound like a socialist. Around here that isn't a bad thing. Nor why this might conflict with believing in civil liberties. I'm assuming that's what you mean when you call yourself a civil libertarian.

I hope you'll post someday on why you don't believe in compulsary schooling. You mean kids should be allowed to receive home education? Not, no education at all. After today's post, I'd find that hard to believe.

Well, back to lurking.

[Jen]

Thanks for writing this--I am so tired of hearing women pitted against each other in this so-called "debate." In bits and pieces, we're seeing more fathers want to shift their priorities from work and spend more time childrearing, but it's still overwhelmingly the mothers who are taking that on, because of all the societal issues (women make less, childrearing is not valued, etc etc). That's what sucks to me--for me, the ideal would be every parent can have the option to work part-time, full-time, whatever, and get the support they need to do that.

[Amy]

I loved this, Jo. I worry that our culture seems to view both working mothers and mothers who take time off to raise children in a negative way. On some days, it seems there is no winning.

I would be interested in your thoughts on "stay-at-home" Dads. That is our plan if we are ever able to finally have children. A lot of what you say seems to apply to either parent raising children.

Of course, not being a mother myself, I sometimes feel I don't even have a right to weigh in on this. (How many times I have heard, "you won't know how you really feel until you have a baby...") But I really appreciated your thoughts, and you can be sure I will refer to them in the future.

[Emmie]

Great post! My favorite line:
"Working doesn't mean you've turned your back on mothering, just as not working doesn't mean you've turned your back on thinking."
Sums it up beautifully.
I have troulbe articulating this stuff sometimes, because I feeled pulled in two directions. I work part-time, and I really like it that way. I wasn't particularly happy being a SAHM (thought I was dealing with twins as a first-time mom, and a fair bit of post-traumatic whatever). But you know, I wouldn't be all that happy doing a whole lot of things (including working full time, and I'm lucky enough not to have to), because that's just me, and "me" is not a prescription for the universe. Nor does it mean that I think being a SAHM is anything less than important, legitimate work.

[Denise]

Great post. I wrote on a similar topic just a few days ago and have been thinking about it a lot. I agree that it seems to work better--more equally--if we try to make men's options more like women's (part-time work, more acceptance for stay-at-home dads, more flexible work) than to make women's options more like traditional men's (60 hour workweeks).

I do agree with DoctorMama that it's hard to draw the line, though, in judging "choice" feminism. It's like saying you can't be a feminist because you've "chosen" to be a cashier instead of a rocket scientist. Becoming a cashier may be a combination of choice, opportunities, finances, expediency, aptitude, etc. The same thing applies to being a stay-at-home mom vs. a working mom. Hell, some people even become mothers by surprise (not I, but I've heard of this phenomenon).

[Jo]

parodie, I wish I knew. I think this basic consciousness-raising, wherein we inject our thinking into the public discourse, is a step in the right direction. But there's always, always more to do. Ideas, folks? Suggestions? Websites? Blogs? Books?

We in our family take little steps away from a corporate-driven lifestyle, and y'all know I'm here making a lot of noise about everything we do. But I want to be doing more.

DoctorMama, yeah, that's an issue -- eventually someone has to draw a line somewhere or everything is meaningless, right? But. But but but everything you said.

It does seem to me, though, that people/the media/whatever are more interested in haggling over fine distinctions than stepping back to look at the big picture.

Lut C., I don't consider being a socialist a bad thing at all! And you're right, it isn't incompatible with civil liberties. But it's just not an accurate and complete characterization of how I'm thinking these days, and I find lately I'm trying to figure out how to strike a good balance toward the sort of free-market attitude toward, say, education that John Taylor Gatto talks about in Dumbing Us Down, and the need for broad social programs. How do you balance community and collective with mind-your-own-business individuality? Tough, especially in this country, where things are...how to put this nicely? FUBAR.

Anyway, I just didn't want people to be shocked when I started ranting about other things.

Stay-at-home dads: well, I can think of a few bloggers to whom that might apply. If any of them should happen to pop in and post links in the comments section, well, that'd be neato.

[Jo]

One more thing on choice feminism, because I so don't want to get bogged down there: I chose my example (of choosing utter submission) precisely because it was so ridiculous. Maybe a better example would be Ann Coulter claming to be a radical feminist...anyway, I think the greater burden rests on those who deride "choice" feminism, to explain why their judgment isn't, say, classist, or itself antifeminist. Besides, to some degree, it's just another straw man.

"Choice" is up for debate only inasmuch as choice operates. And here we get into the economic discussion again: the idea that anyone can just "choose" to become a rocket scientist is a fallacy held very dear in our society. (I know that's not what you were saying, Denise.)

Mmm. Class warfare. Okay, back to the previous topic.

[cack]

Femininism shmeminism. That's what I say. It has nothing to do with working outside the home vs. not. I work and I work because a) it makes things easier for my family, b) because it probably makes things easier for my sanity and c) most importantly because my employer makes it easy for me to enjoy the best of both worlds. Forget about longer maternity leaves and state-subsidized childcare in the U.S. I aint ever going to happen. How about more employers recognizing that to keep valuable female employees, they need to offer them the flexibility to enjoy their families as they work, albeit though job sharing, flex time, working at home, etc. It's starting but we have got a long way.

[afrindiemum]

what about sahds? i got one hubby at home right now. whatcha wanna know?

[Meredith]

Great post, and great comments!

While cack has a point that employers need to take care of their female employees, simple economics will tell any employer: why give a woman "extra" if you can hire a man and NOT give them any of those options? (Because everyone knows that men don't have kids, now do they?)

The only way for change to happen is when men start playing an equal role in childrearing and asking for the same flexibility in the workplace. And face it, while a few men will do this of their own initiative because they recognize what they're losing out on by not spending time with their family, the average guy is too busy getting through life to question gender roles and doesn't want to draw negative attention by doing anything nontraditional. There are two options: individual women can make it happen by expecting it of their male partners, and/or we can legislate it into place.

I highly doubt that legislation like this will happen in the U.S. anytime soon, but sometimes it's the only way to make things happen. I experienced this when I had my first child in pick-a-European-country: despite a paid parental leave that could theoretically be taken by either parent, basically no man took more than two weeks of vacation time. The law was changed so that there was a dedicated block of time for the father that could not be transferred to the mother - and lo and behold, 4 years later now all the men in the country talk about what a wonderful thing this is and how they'd never give that time up in all the world. At first a lot of men made fun of the law, but once enough men had experienced it, the general public saw the value of it.

My own husband was one of the first dads to go through it, and he was nervous about the response at his workplace when he requested, not the minimum leave for fathers, but several months in addition; I really feel that if he hadn't been the primary parent for those months, his level of involvement in childrearing would be much less today. As a result, we are now both planning on working part-time when we're finally done with our education -- which means negotiating these positions into existence, because very few employers would choose to offer part-time work of their own volition.

Until employers can stop stereotyping applicants by seeing "wants flexible hours or work from home/will miss work when her kids are sick/will likely end up taking maternity leave" whenever a woman of childbearing age walks in, until the majority of fathers with young children make these same demands, women's work will continue to be devalued -- in both spheres. And one way to get there, at least while the political situation is what it is, is for individual women to ask the men in their lives to step up and make those demands.

[Debbie]

Unfortunately, many intangibles in our society are undervalued. Unless you can assign a dollar value to the benfit derived from a particular product or service, it tends to not be viewed equally with a product or service where you can compute a bottom line value--so education, police, parenting and the like are undervalued, even though most people place a high level of importance on these functions.

It's a capitalist mentality, but it isn't smart and it hurts us all. This is where government is supposed to step in and make the tough decisions that benefit society as a whole. And this is where the system has broken down. It will only improve when people pay more attention to civic/legislative issues by communicating with their politicians and most importantly voting.

As for feminism specifically, while we've come a long way baby, many of those old feminist struggles are still front and center, along with the more evolved and nuanced issues you describe. As an example, the other day my 4 1/2 year old daughter stated to me that only men are doctors, women are nurses. WTF! She didn't pick that up at home.

[CT]

I think Meredith is right on. Obviously there are many complexities to this problem, but I'm going to stick with the ones most meaningful to me.
Whenever I think about how to raise any children I might have I think about the massive loss of power that *can* come with not having paid work. I know it's not true of everyone, but it is true of people in my life like my mother and sister. And in both cases the father is much less engaged with the kids. And the mother would be screwed if anything happened to the dad (sickness, death, divorce). I would be afraid to stay home without a job, frankly. Self-sufficiency is too important to my psychological make-up.
I grew up in a trad mother-at-home-father-at-work household and for a long time have mourned the lack of relationship with my dad. It made things especially difficult in the teen years. And even now I'm a little bit jealous of my nephews and how much attention they get from him. I think it's important to have a relationship with both parents - and Meredith's right, one way to ensure that is to cut back on the work week entirely. To make it a parenting issue, not a mothering issue.
Writing this makes me wonder if it also reflects the lack of value in the US on actual family (as opposed to those 'family values' we keep hearing about) and the low status of women in general that employers don't want to retain women enough to do anything about this. Speaking as a non-US born person, I was shocked when I came here and discovered how gendered women are here. And how people (mainly men but not always) are openly sexist in a way I'd never experienced.

[The Aitch]

Wow, you have a lot of time on your hands.

On the other hand, You said, "...Not that there isn't a unifying principle of feminism, because there is: women and men are people of equal value."

I do believe that is wrong. That has never been their unifying principle. It has always been men and women are exactly alike, therefor "whatever he gets I get" and that is simply and biologically untrue.

[Jo]

Aitch, you couldn't be farther off. If you'll check your history, I believe you'll find that the first incarnation of feminism claimed as its focus "woman's right to participate as full citizens: to hold property, keep their own wages, have guardianship of their children, and yes, vote" ("Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Feminism..., Rachel Fudge, Bitch issue 31). Later incarnations include cultural feminism, which maintains that women are innately different and therefore better at things like parenting and peacemaking.

The only place feminism posits that men and women are exactly alike is in the minds of right-wing conservatives, and in the offal that issues from their mouths.

CT, are you who I think you are?