Alexandra Carlton has an article in The Age this weekend, “The retro housewife” that proves it is just as possible to build a faux phenomenon in Australia around smart women dropping off the career ladder to become domestic over-achievers as it is to build that case in the United States, though this piece is more nuanced than others of its ilk. Pretty much all my thoughts on this faux trend are here in the article I wrote back in March for Daily Life so I won’t be repetitive, and for the record Carlton, herself, argues by the end of her piece that the trend is overblown; but I will pick up on two points from her article.
My first comment is that I truly hope Anne Summers, who I have always found to be very measured, isn’t quite as scathing about my generation of mothers as Carlton forecasts her to be in her forthcoming book.
Feminist and author Anne Summers is exasperated by the domestic revival. “If women want to quilt and craft and sort out their linen cupboards on a weekly basis that is their business. But don’t claim it is a superior way to live,” she says. In her book The Misogyny Factor, to be released next month, Summers writes scathingly of a new generation of middle-class “yummy mummies”: “How could it have come to this – and so quickly? Not even a generation after the women’s movement fought for the right for married women to keep their jobs, to have equal access to promotion, and to be paid the same as men, scores of women are walking away and saying, ‘We’d rather be Mummies.'”
Writer and feminist commentator Clementine Ford agrees, and adds that while cupcake baking in and of itself is a blameless pursuit, giving up everything to devote oneself to unpaid domestic work is “self-sabotage”.
And my second point also relates to the sentiment above, which becomes a concluding point made by Emily Matchar in the article:
But, she says, for the new domesticity to become more of a revolution than a regression, it needs to better build a base of equality – the day when it’s just as common to see a man cooking a meal from scratch or stirring a vat of jam while his wife brings in the primary income.
No.
We will know we’re living in a world of equality not when just as many men as women are staying home making jam and looking after babies but when women can talk about their life making jam and looking after babies without everyone freaking the fuck out.
When women can make observations about the sense of purpose and fulfillment they experience from being at home with their children, and when they can say that their desire to be with their babies feels different to that their male partner experiences, and when they can describe their children as needing to be with them – when they can do all that and we, as feminists, do not reach for the panic button? Then we will know we have finally found equality. It won’t be that men and women will necessarily be living the same lives with the same roles, though it may look like that, it will be equality because women’s passions, ambitions, choices and failures will be, like men’s, free of constant scrutiny and criticism.
Until then, as feminists, we are too often pandering to a neoliberal viewpoint that ultimately devalues care work and sees women acquiring legitimacy only through marketplace transactions. By all means fight for women’s place in the workforce, it’s vital activism and I’m a working-outside-the-home mother myself, but don’t for a minute think you’re really challenging the patriarchy until you’re questioning the way in which capitalism relies upon a framework of unpaid care. It is equally a mistake to see the desire to be at home with children as either essential or universal in women, but as feminists, it matters less whether you think it good or bad for women to feel this way, it is instead crucial for the movement that you accept that some women do feel this way and that it is an authentic and strongly held feeling for them. Some women might be flinching from complexities in their life by relying upon conservative gender roles to express their preferences but for many this drive is real. Maternal desire is real.
Accepting that this is the case is not some call for women to be free to ‘choose their choice’ – it is, rather, a time for reflecting upon the internalised misogyny that allows you to assume, without questioning, that self-actualisation cannot simultaneously include mothering.
Cross-posted at Hoyden About Town.
UPDATED: This is also a great reply from Amy Gray to “The retro housewife” article.
Carlton’s piece is interesting for the fact the retro wives mentioned who run blogs – some of whom, it could be argued, draw a limited or decent revenue or opportunities via that pursuit and thus aren’t strictly women who don’t work or are already very comfortable financially – and that the contemporary feminists interviewed are by chance without children. Though I am sure it is not a conscious choice, it does subconsciously set up a vaudeville battle between “the” feminists and “the” retro wives – no kids, kids; feminists, non-feminists without allowing for the fact that there can be and is considerable overlay.
Claps loudly. Well said Andie 🙂
This is amazing to me. I’ve been a feminist forever and have ALWAYS heard feminists saying it is about CHOICE. It was FEMINISTS who were saying, and writing, that the work of mother/homemaker is one of the most vitally important in the world! Riane Eisler, one of the most brilliant and generous contributors to feminist analysis and strategy of my generation, says it very well when she emphasizes that women staying home to care for children, home and family WORK. It’s a REAL, important job that requires far more strength and skill than is almost EVER acknowledged. Riane said, “If women at home didn’t work – we’d all be DEAD.” (Emphasis mine). I know there are a few women who make the egregious error of calling mothers “breeders” and sneer at this work. They are in the minority, thank Goddess. Feminism has always emphasized the incalculable value of women’s work at home!
thanks for that, i could go out to work, but choose to stay at home , we r not rich in any way but also we do not continally buy stuff or have sky tv etc,our riches r the times having dinner all together, bieng home when my children come home from school and spending time with them . it works well for us . iam not a femminist , iam a human bieng and stopped all the i want to be this or that at school . i have freinds who have 2 jobs and r exausted, job 1 go to work outside home, job2 go home to second job , cook clean, mother , wife and then to bed say 11.oopm, to get up again at 6.00to do it all again!.
You exemplify the problem right here, to my mind. Feminism is about choice – exactly that. But so many of us working mums have no choice whatsoever, and are forced to live the life you see your friends living – exhausted, trying hard to keep it together, in the face of ‘smug mummies’ who have the wealth – yes, wealth – to CHOOSE to stay at home. If I stayed at home, we would be homeless and starving – end of story. If only the stay at home mums would refrain from commenting on the drudgery of their friends’ lives whilst bigging up their own…. I too have no sky tv, no holidays, no luxuries. It doesn’t change the fact that I still have to work full time to make ends meet. When the debate stops being about ‘choice’ and everyone shuts the hell up and gets on with it, I will consider the battle won. But to be constantly droned at by people who have the endless luxury of choice makes my life even harder.
Same here! My understanding of feminism, which is pro-mother, pro-domestic labor, represented in books such as The Price of Motherhood, Why the Most Important Job in the World Is the Least Valued, seems like yours. However, I’ve noticed over the years that the prevailing feminist paradigm differs. Mainstream culture tends to define it as “acting like men”, which is interpreted as breadwinning by working outside the home and certainly not inside the home.
With an upcoming generation of children from dysfunctional households, it’s no wonder so many women would like to have the “luxury” (it’s pathetically sad how little American society cares about children as now socioeconomic forces have made it extremely difficult and in many cases impossible for a parent to stay at home) of being able to be a decent parent to her child(ren). Parenting takes time and a certain level of skill to be successful. But this is not how this culture sees it. At all.
Furthermore, I say that it’s women, and not men, clamoring for more parental time and for there to be a real choice, only because men’s roles really have not changed over the past four decades. Why? Because they have resisted letting go of the grips of male privileged power. If this has meant becoming man-children and allowing four out of ten households be lead by female main breadwinners who also do the vast majority of the “invisible” unpaid domestic work, the resounding response has been so-be-it.
The “prevailing mainstream paradigm differs” to define it as working outside the home because we have to work for pay was a central directive of Friedan’s. From Chapter 14, A New Life Plan for Women in The Feminine Mystique: [emphasis mine]
“But even if a woman does not have to work to eat, she can find identity only in work that is of real value to society—work for which, usually, our society pays.”
And a few pages later, a bit relevant to modern domestic feminists:
“The picture of the happy housewife doing creative work at home—painting, sculpting, writing—is one of the semi-delusions of the feminine mystique.”
Sure, choice rhetoric has been around for decades. The vocabulary of choice worked fine when young women made the feminist orthodox choices, which was easy before the desire for children hit. The conflict between choice and orthodoxy wasn’t a big deal until the first daughters of the Second Wave hit their (feminist-mandated delayed) childbearing years.
Take the tome cited, The Price of Motherhood. This conflict didn’t occur to Crittenden until she got to 40 and realized she “forgot to have children.” So it was with the furor about the unintentional child free and the opt out revolution. Just as we don’t feel the wind until we stand against it, we don’t feel orthodox feminist pressure until we want to choose domestic life.
So this comment doesn’t get tagged as spam with too many links, I will tweet a few relevant links to Andie after I post this.
As for the men, husbands’ roles have changed dramatically. Our husbands do far more than our fathers did, much less our grandfathers. What has changed dramatically is who has husbands or lives with their children’s father, mostly elite educated white women. Buried in those breadwinner stats that made the rounds is the rise of households headed by single mothers for whom discussions about more male involvement at home are more theoretical. The man in question doesn’t live in the same household and has less opportunity to share the load, even if he is so inclined.
The emphasis didn’t cut and paste. I had italicized “only” as in a woman can find identity only in work of real value to society.
Hmmmmmm. ..so husbands do 2 diapers instead of 1 and that’s twice as much… I’m not buying your assertion that husbands these days do much more than previously. Some more, but not all that much more. I have tons of citations to back this up.
Additionally, there are women who choose the home who ARE actually making an income, all from their domestic skills, be it knitting, canning, blogging, writing, etc. Shannon Hayes and Amanda Soule come to mind. Plus, what is often ignored is that embracing all things domestic, is pulling away from the dominate capitalist, patriarchal system that doesn’t support women, children or partners to begin with, and often the men in these partnerships get to leave cubicle cities, too. By keeping our household economies small and largely local, we can do with less but be all that much richer. A lot of us aren’t tethered to the 9-5 grind, school culture and its demands on the family (and its demand that the family is not together), cars, and keeping up with the Johnson’s. What feminism ignores is that there is immense freedom, economic, social and personal, in creating a life that is domestic and child or family-centered.
Great words.
wow, I really appreciate what you wrote here. I have felt frustrated with a few people in my life who hold women getting a higher education and well paying jobs (nothing wrong with this) so much higher than anything that has to do with children and who seem to look down on anyone who desires to have a family and be a mother. I have a deep desire to be a mother one day, and when someone makes me feel like i should put that aside and “live life” before i become a mother, I feel like i am not being true to myself and my beliefs of feminism.
But it is tricky, isn’t it, because it was only recently that women were prevented, if not strongly discouraged from getting a higher education and working. So people who support that shouldnt be condemned either.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
I have nothing to add except that we need to start paying women to look after their children, especially during the oh-so-crucial first 7 years. That's when the baby/toddler needs breast milk and it just doesn't make any sense for their mother to be away from them.
Some European countries pay all parents a monthly amount to care for their children. It's universal so there's no stigma. Let's consider it.
“giving up everything to devote oneself to unpaid domestic work is “self-sabotage” … or it’s a rational choice to step out of the work force for a time. I know that I’m giving up money/ retirement funds/ promotions/ future earnings while I stay home with my children, and I’m doing it *anyways*. I look forward to the day when people stop freaking the fuck out about it.
You know, if the people worried about women staying home and quilting or what not want to actually help bring about more equality, there are some concrete things I think they could work to bring about. We could restore funding for classroom aides, library aides (and librarians!), and other non-teacher functions at schools, so that our schools don’t have to rely on unpaid volunteers. They do real work that benefits all of us, they should be paid for it in more than warm fuzzies. We could develop programs to help parents who have taken time off from their careers get back into them when their kids are older. And we could stop having silly arguments about which way is “best” when both ways are good.
For what it’s worth, I went back to work when each of my babies were 4 months old. I would have liked a couple more months off and more time working part time (I took one month)- but if my choice is between what I had and the expectation verging on a requirement that I stay home for 1 or 2 years that I see in some other countries, I’m not sure I’d choose the longer leave. That always shocks some people, but I know from talking to some of my friends that I am not alone, so I like to remind people that there are some mothers who are reasonably happy to go back to work even while our children are quite young and consider day care and breast pumps godsends, not inferior options that we “have” to use.
There are different ways to be a mother, and they don’t have to be set up in competition with each other. Different mothers have different strengths and interests, and different kids have different needs. I think it is awesome that some women enjoy making jam and quilting. I personally enjoy baking. But I enjoy the work I do more, so I’ve chosen to keep my job. No doubt, their households run more smoothly than mine does, and their floors are almost certainly cleaner. That doesn’t make them better than me, or me better than them. Hopefully we are all just picking the things that matter most to us and spending our time on that.
In my ideal world, we would create real choice, so that families could find the arrangement that is best for them, instead of trying to ram all families down the same path, whether that is the “every mother should stay home” path or the “every mother should go back to work” path. Instead, we just keep setting people with very different priorities up in these faux fights, trying to find a one right way that does not exist, and will never exist.
“There are different ways to be a mother, and they don’t have to be set up in competition with each other.” Yes! So much this. I hope that this is what Summers is getting at when she says “But don’t claim it is a superior way to live”.
That is the thing that really irritates me about this whole Mummy wars rubbish. There is always some mother held up to be the pinnacle of mothering achievement whether is is the CEO of Google or one of the Mums in the article happy at home baking or crafting. While both of these women are obviously happy, the unwritten subtext is that if you are not just like one of these women you are doin it rong.
There doesn’t seem to be any room for the tired mother who hates the mess craft makes, or the mother who can’t afford a nanny or whose partner has the much less flexible job so she runs from pillar to post morning and night trying to hold together a job and childcare arrangements. That’s why this blog is such a lifeline because here real mothers talk about holding on by the skin of their teeth and everything isn’t always million dollar contracts or freshly baked cupcakes.
I love this comment, and in particular your last paragraph, so much. Exactly: most of us don’t fit either side of this fake dichotomy, and this is why most of these mummy wars/retro wives/can women have it all articles are so damn annoying!
I also find that lack of expectation to stay home for the first years liberating.
Agree that we shouldn’t set motherhood up as a competition but I do have genuine concern for mothers who give up their careers entirely (or never embark on one) in terms of their future vulnerability. That might just be a result of my upbringing – daughter of single mother who was abandoned by husband and basically left on poverty line. That sort of vulnerabity terrifies me.
I hear you Mindy about the mother with more flexible job having to do everything. I SO hear you on that. Especially today.
Thank you!!!! Feminism should be about women’s choices, not just changing the role imposed on women.
Thank you for this piece. I am always in admiration of your thoughtful writing, but this bit in particular truly is one I could shout from rooftops.
If after 50 years feminists haven’t made peace with women who want to stay home, might be helpful to consider why. (Power outage, limited juice, and 4 kids underfoot, so prose ability compromised. I will happily clarify anything later.)
The problem with no name that Betty Friedan discovered 50 years ago was the assumption, held by women, men, employers, and educators that a woman’s highest and only place was in the home. It was this assumption, the feminine mystique, that Friedan sought to destroy. One of her tactics she thought was necessary involved burning down the house, removing the possibility of aooeasment or retreat. She figured, in a very patronizing assumption, that women would not be motivated enough to move out of their comfort zone of home. Hence the rhetoric about comfortable concentration camps and insistence on paid employment–volunteer work was too easy to lean back from, in the current Sandberg parlance.
The assumption against women’s value outside the home has long since fallen–when conservative women refuse the label because feminism has accomplished its goal, this is essentially what the mean, that the evil assumption is dead–but many feminists are afraid that women will revert to the old mystique at first opportunity. They think women are that weak. This was the undcurrent of the elite educated women betray the sisterhood by opting out of work that I sent you last week, if the Harvard women won’t lead from the office, then women will revert to meek housewives.
You can expect more heated rhetoric from the older feminists. I was at an Ann Marie Slaghuter webcast last week. She sees a huge Boomer vs Millennial rift. When she was writing that Atlantic article, millenials told her she had to publish it, boomers that she can’t. She gets the cold shoulder often now.
The old guard think you are betraying them and the sisterhood. You won’t likely want to hear it, but your natural allies are conservative women like me. Contrary to popular slanders, we’ve long since enjoyed the intellectual encouragement and partner marriages needed. We just typically have more children and work in volunteer positions, so we are under the media radar. And if we pop up on the radar, well then we are just “corporate wives”, never worked a day in our lives, running the Red Cross isn’t like a real job, etc. all of which is the essentially the same problem domestic feminists face–the degradation of domestic life.
Thank you! I just had this fb discussion with someone who lamented the “trend” (which seemed to be contradicted by the statistics, but anyhow).
What struck me about the examples they chose is how extraordinary these women are. Not just terribly successful in the corporate parts of their lives, but in the domestic parts too (I would say unpaid but I suspect their blogs and other thing reap some sort of income). I’m not sure how to articulate it, but it’s something to do with privilege. Not everyone can choose things to be this way, whether coz their incomes don’t allow it or they haven’t the capital to set up this existence. They’ve picked untouchables in both spheres.
But yes, in the end my first though was “who the fuck cares?” – these women’s choices don’t diminish the need for current feminist causes, and don’t contradict them either. And it’s hardly antifeminist to go ahead and live your life the way you want. This suggestion that apron=antifeminist is frustratingly simple and wrong.
I agree that the article underplayed the warning potential of blogs. The women in the article are engaging in paid work, just a different and self directed kind.
Earning, not warning!
Yes, some bloggers do earn money. But it’s important to point out that blogging is mostly unpaid work. Very few bloggers make anything that could realistically put food on the table.
“Until then, as feminists, we are too often pandering to a neoliberal viewpoint that ultimately devalues care work and sees women acquiring legitimacy only through marketplace transactions.”
Speak for yourself. The feminists I know and associate with have never done this. Way to introduce division where it never existed.
I’m having trouble understanding where you’re coming from. I am a feminist and I love feminism – I am not trying to introduce division, I am calling for unity. Perhaps it is the title of this post? Feminism is a broad philosophy and I would readily acknowledge that maternal feminism has always existed within the movement. I’m not diminishing that some areas of feminism are getting it right but I think feminism is strong enough to manage some criticism within the movement, too, in fact I think it is vital for the movement to be able to do that. I chose the title of this post because it seem to get the point across as succinctly as possible.
I think I am pretty clear in the post that the article I’m writing about has some of this neoliberalism bias in it, do you not agree that it’s there? Have you read the links I gave in this post to other examples? If you’re still confused after that then maybe we can discuss it further.
I don’t know about RethinkThePink, but in my case, yes, it’s the title that got my hackles up. On reading the article, (and thinking of other posts you’ve written) it becomes obvious that you’re not really fooled by this corporate-media mummy-wars stuff.
So, whence the title?
Not only that, feminism needs to come to terms with noncustodial mothers (of which I am one). I haven’t encountered a single mother who lives with her children (either as a single mom or in a relationship) — much less a feminist one — who understands the choices I’ve made.
Every day, in various ways, I am judged for being a noncustodial mother and some of the harshest criticism I’ve received has been from women who identify themselves as feminists. When I’ve tried to get to the heart of the issue in certain instances, I’ve been told that I’m buying into patriarchy by identifying with “fathers’ rights” issues — most noncustodial parents are men — and “selling out” mothering.
I don’t understand why anyone is judged in any way in terms of parenting choices as long as their children are loved, safe, and being raised to be good people. If that happens when they’re living with two parents, one parent (of either gender), by relatives who’ve stepped in — regardless of whether ANY of those people work or don’t work (by choice or not) — who cares? [I do think at some point it comes down to a class issue, and it is a feminist concern when the mechanisms preventing women (or men) who WANT to stay home are indicative of institutional sexism, but that’s a separate issue from judging people who choose to do one thing or another given the resources they have at hand.]
So can I look forward to your next piece about stay-at-home moms bashing career women? Or does your ridiculous generalizing have a stopping point?
I think you will find in my writing that I’m not a fan of any group of women bashing another group of women. Does your ridiculous generalising have a stopping point?
I wonder how many of these mothers decided to give up work and stay at home because their part-time or full-time employer wasn’t supportive, because their partner couldn’t or wouldn’t cut back or stop working to take part in childcare, and because their working partner did not do an equal share of the childcare and household duties in non-working hours.
In my experience, the decision to have one or both parents at home or working from home, is mutual, desired and often, hard won.
But what are the reasons behind making that choice? Is it at least partly because of all the reasons I suggested?
southsidesocialist-My decision to stay home wasn’t for any of those reasons.
I easily could have gone part-time in a job I really loved (high school teacher), my husband could have gone part-time (teacher), and my incredible husband does far more childcare and household duties in non-working hours than I ever can or ever could. (Super-human energy levels & and super-human loveliness.)
Our decision was just based on me wanting to be there with and for my children.
Like Sara, I am at home with my kids until they’re in school… because I love it. My employer offered me part-time work and I worked from home most of the time, my partner is supportive. Our daughter was in daycare until my son was born. I missed her every single day. It felt wrong to drop her at someone else’s house. Not wrong like she’d be damaged, wrong like “I want to be with her”. And so we made it work. It has nothing to do with any outside forces. It has to do with the fact that this suits me. I love having this time with them, and I will enjoy going back to work when they are in school. I’m not sure why that’s so difficult for some people to understand.
I don’t think it is difficult to understand. I’m not denying that staying at home with the children is some women’s choice. What I’m questioning is whether some of those women might have chosen differently if the support around them had been different.
Stephanie Coontz’s point. (NYT about a month ago, if interested)
Yes, some women might have opted for the profession and early motherhood combo if they had better support options, but the reverse is true too. Many women would have opted to stay home if not for things like pressure from older Sandberg types, societal pressure not to “waste a degree”, advice that led them to budget house purchases assuming two incomes… The external pressure cuts both ways.
I do actually find it hard to understand. I am not trying to cause a fight and I try not to judge mothers who do stay at home, it is just I can’t understand it. I loved having maternity leave and I love the flexibility of my job that allows me to spend lots of quality time with my kids but if I had to be home full-time with them when they are beyond say one year old, I’d be suicidal. I genuinely find it hard to see what people enjoy about the full-time aspect. A couple of days a week and weekends and evenings is great but more than that I find myself depressed and medicating myself with food and alcohol. So I do find it hard to understand. Not in a judgmental way, more in a “please tell me what is so great about it, I am curious” way.
Jen – I guess some people find children more interesting than others 🙂 That’s okay – it takes all types to make the world an interesting place. I find my children fascinating. That doesn’t make me better or worse. Just different.
Oh totally agree. Definitely different strokes for different strokes. I find my kids fascinating too and absolutely adore them and their crazy antics. I just can’t look after them full-time. I hate it. So I am often intrigued by what other people enjoy about it as it just feels like slavery to me. Maybe if my employer treated me terribly they would seem much more pleasant in comparison though.
Jen, reading your comments made me smile, because I cannot understand the way you feel about it at all. 🙂 I find it fascinating how women can be such polar opposites, yet both totally adore their children!!
Like Juliette, It would just feel wrong to me to give my girls to someone else for the day, regularly, on my way to work. The thought of it actually makes me physically cringe… I think I’d spend all day at work crying! Ok, not really, I’m not that pathetic. 😉 But I just can’t imagine knowing they are learning about the world, and experiencing things in those early years without me being alongside them… not so much as protector (though partly that), but just because I love being there to share it, and help shape it, and see their joy, and be part of their joy, etc. I’d just miss them too much!
For me, being with them just feels 100% natural and right, and it just gets better all the time, the older they get. (side note: and I wasn’t one of the girls who always dreamed of having babies, and my baking skills totally suck, and I’m not a co-sleeper, 24/7 baby wearer, etc etc.)
I don’t love the tiredness and the hard work aspect, but I love sharing our days and cuddles and laughs and the running conversations I have with them all day long and the incredible closeness/ understanding/love/fun/security, etc, this brings.
And I guess I feel strongly that I want to be there for them, always, in these early years… I just want them to have a parent to comfort them, or even to laugh with them… I want them to have someone who really loves them and cherishes them deeply.
I’m definitely an extrovert, so the first year of having a bub I really grieved the school community I had worked at and I took my daughter in to visit my old students/colleague at least once a month for awhile there. I still miss talking to hundreds of people a day, and I do miss that “teacher” part of me, heaps! But still I love being at home every day so much more and I always knew I would.
Sorry for the long “insight”…. I didn’t intend for it to be this long!
* Just to clarify, when I said:
“I want them to have someone who really loves them and cherishes them deeply.”.. I meant that I want them to have someone who really loves and cherishes them deeply with them each day…
I know that working mums also love and cherish their children deeply!
I am with my children each day. And, yes, certainly love and cherish them.
But thanks for your insights as to why you enjoy being home full-time. Very interesting.
My children also go to a very good nursery that loves and cherishes them too. We are very fortunate. I don’t believe it is only the mother who can give that affection. In many ways my daughter is happier there during the day rather than with an exhausted, impatient, and strung-out mother.
“In many ways my daughter is happier there during the day rather than with an exhausted, impatient, and strung-out mother.” – That’s makes sense.
Being home every day would make you these things. Juggling part-time work and part-time home would make me these things, I reckon. (Especially ‘exhausted’.)
Real opposites. 🙂
I have always thought of feminism as each woman having the choice to determine her own life path. Being a stay at home mother is only bad when it is the only option available for a married woman. Society has no more right to condemn a woman for choosing to stay home and be with her children than it has to condemn a married mother for choosing to work and have a career.
I AM annoyed by people who say that staying home is a better life. It’s a better life FOR THEM. For others, working outside the home is a better life. And I’m equally annoyed by those who say that working outside the home is inherently better.
We shouldn’t be imposing any single life on everyone. We’re all different. Our lives will be, too.
Personally, I’d like to be able to work part time–maybe 15-20 hours per week–and have more time with my daughter. That wouldn’t work for everyone, either. In fact, it doesn’t work for us economically. But I’d love to be able to choose that for myself. Everyone else should be able to make their own choices, too.
I love this, completely. I think though what perhaps might have strengthened it is an analysis of the word “choice” – yes we are free(ish) to choose, but we cannot deny that culture has shaped our choices and influences them all, so until we have a culture which presents all choices equally, some choices for particular genders will be more equal than others
Thank you. It’s many years since I had children – I’m a grandma now – but I really enjoy reading your comments. My friends and I were saying some similar things 35 years ago. There has been some change, some for the better, some for the worse. There is more information about having and caring for children now, and much of it is better quality. Women do have more flexibility in combining paid work and caring for children. On the other hand the increasing rates of intervention in childbirth are worrying and symptomatic of deeper problems I think. As someone who has studied the history of maternity, the persistent failure of medicalised child care to provide well informed, consistent, personalised care in pregnancy and birth is a long standing problem.
Turning to your key point about the devaluing of care under neoliberal dominance, this is so important, even though I think many people, including some of those commenting, don’t yet fully understand it. We need a revolution in what we measure and value as a society – beyond monetary transactions and GDP – not just for women but for the future of our species. Good luck with your call. There is work being done on this so please keep up your advocacy also
Should have been “medical used maternity services ” ( not medical used child care) – sorry
“Medicalised” – damn spell check!
This is an excellent article. I was just talking with a friend about our conservative upbringings and that we were raised to be mothers and nothing else. It was assumed that we would get married, have babies and stay at home.
I didn’t fight the system too hard. I genuinely wanted to get married and be a mom. And after having 4 kids in 6 years, one with special needs, I realized that home was the place I needed (not just wanted) to be. Now that my youngest will be going to school full time in the fall I have the chance to follow my dreams beyond motherhood. I don’t regret waiting to go back to school to pursue a career. Its what worked best for me and my family. I also have a fantastic husband who sees the value in me beyond just mother/wife. You may not find him in the kitchen making dinner from scratch, but he does most of the laundry for our family of 6. (That’s a lot of laundry)
I realized a few years ago that feminism was not the villain that I had been taught to believe. Modern women have feminism to thank for so many things that we take for granted. I have friends who’ve stayed home with kids, some who’ve worked with kids and some who manage to be home and work. I make no judgments towards any of them because each person has to chose what is best for them. I’m happy to see that more women who were raised like me are exercising their right to chose. While many women who were raised in homes like mine chose to be stay at home moms, it doesn’t mean that feminism has failed us, or that we’ve failed feminism. We are valued beyond just motherhood by our husbands and have the chance to change our minds regarding work whenever we want. These stories will not show up in the statistics.
Too many women buy into the patriarchal ideals of success, which usually includes paid word or study or both. Patriarchal views have never acknowledge the value of caring work (something that would be highly valued in a matriarchal framework). Women who choose to define their primary role in terms of caring for children are no less feminist than those who choose (or must due to financial imperatives) to work. I agree, we will know we have achieved equality the day these conversations generate no emotional or intellectual intensity, as you say, when women’s choices are no longer under such scrutiny..
Yeah, I read the article on the weekend too. I have commented about Anne Summers on this blog before. After reading her book, The End of Equality, and seeing her speak about it, I concluded that she has a very narrow definition of equality; and it is one in which children or anything maternal do not get much of a say at all. So your hope that she is less scathing than this article suggests in her new book may be overly optimistic.
The other thing that I thought was salient about the article was the comment about women’s long term financial security. In an era where just about as many long term relationships break up as survive, women who stay out of the paid workforce do suffer financially due to having less superannuation etc. This is perhaps an issue that could be addressed structurally rather than individually, but at the moment it certainly isn’t.
THIS. “This is perhaps an issue that could be addressed structurally rather than individually, but at the moment it certainly isn’t.” THIS is what feminism needs to be concentrating on.
Yes, I do think there is something less than benign about these articles about ‘retro housewives’ and to quote myself extensively from that Daily Life article I wrote…
“We seem to have a vested interest in the decisions of these women who choose to stay home, why is that? Plenty of mothers don’t have a choice about it – they are either sufficiently dependent on their income so as to be forced to work or they earn too little to cover childcare and are forced to stay home. And yet it is this relatively small cohort of educated, professional women with their wealthy husbands who we are preoccupied with – we have decided they can sink or save feminism. It suggests, about this debate, that we put a lot of stock in the notion of trickle-down feminism. That women with the most advantages, if they can climb to the top jobs, will have the power and use it accordingly to change things for women with the least advantages. While there must be some truth to this, it none the less seems indulgent to focus so much of our attention on the most successful women and how to further their paths to achievement.
I suspect there’s something less well-meaning going on here, too. The overlap between feminism and neoliberal economics is surprisingly broad. We have long been split on the issue of mothers – whether we should concentrate on freeing women from the home so they can enter the workplace where their time will be valued, or whether we should ensure the work performed by women at home is valued instead. The answer is both, obviously. Few mothers stay at home their whole lives. Most dip in and out of paid work in various forms as their careers speed up and slow down for different life events, including the rearing of children. In fact, few of us committed to full-time careers will find ourselves working uninterrupted from graduation to retirement – there will be unexpected illnesses, career changes, retrenchments and retraining, moving countries, caring for elderly parents, and the sudden need to find ourselves. We would do well to be less divisive in this discussion and to be less extreme about it. The data suggests there isn’t really a flood of mothers shedding the gains of feminism and detouring back to tradition. The trajectories of our career paths need not be measured against the traditional path of men’s, and if there is any significant shift happening it is probably that young men’s career paths are starting to look more like women’s as more of them take an active role in parenting.
There have been several critical replies to the “Retro Wife” article, but they’ve either sought to make the argument that Makino is misrepresented or to make the argument that the trend is overblown, not that her sentiments about stay-at-home mothering, even the more gushing ones, could possibly be valid. There is a great tendency in us to see the desire to reach our potential as being in opposition to mothering. You can either be finding yourself and achieving your goals or you can be nurturing children. In this false binary either a woman’s energy is for herself or her baby, but in reality our lives and loves are more complicated than this. For me personally, many a time these drives have been in conflict, but in many more instances self-actualisation has included motherhood. When, in this world, we eventually come to value caring work more fully, we will understand that caring for others is also a form of caring for ourselves. Men and women, both, will find that it is one of our more profound drives as human beings, to have love and meaning in caring relationships.”
[…] the choices women make – once again, this is something a few of us in Australia have written before. That ‘housewives’ and ‘feminists’ are presented as natural adversaries is […]
I have been having a conversation over the course of weeks now, with a bunch of different people, about the this complexity: the pull to spend more time working at a paid job or with you child is all about the relationship between personalities. PEOPLE, children, men & women, interact in FAMILIES (that do not always include representatives of all 3 of those categories) and those relationships lead to complicated decisions about how everyone is going to spend time & money. My partner had a strong desire to leave one profession and start another; we have less money and stability. We are happier. This just happens! I want to be with my son for 10 hours out of every day, because that is what I want. I fail to see how I am letting down The Movement any more than my husband is letting down his family–more happy, satisfied, fulfilled people is our goal, no?
This feels like such a tired debate, especially when most women don’t actually have a choice between work or staying at home. More than a third of children are being raised by single parents, who obviously have to work outside the home (and that number increases when you step outside of white, middle class conversations). This debate is utterly alienating to those who don’t get to make “feminist” (whichever that direction may be) choices.
Agreed Gwen, most women have no real choice about this at all. It’s an argument riddled with privilege. Which is why i voiced concerns over the usage of the word “choice”
It is still a choice. I was fired from my job as a nanny for being pregnant and chose not to look for another. It’s almost a part-time job making sure that we have the right food stamps, medicaid, etc.
I understand that there’s a big gap and many families don’t qualify for aid on one income. But we’re not all privileged in the sense that we have a lot of money to spare.
Agreed. To me it feels like a made-up debate staged by the corporate media, paying writers to pretend that nothing has changed since Betty Friedan’s era.
exactly! omg. Seriously. Why do we all freak out like this about this stuff? And you’re so right on about: ‘Accepting that this is the case is not some call for women to be free to ‘choose their choice’ – it is, rather, a time for reflecting upon the internalised misogyny that allows you to assume, without questioning, that self-actualisation cannot simultaneously include mothering.’
[…] Some women want to stay home with children and feminism needs to make peace with that | blue milk. […]
What a wonderful article – yes claps, as some others have said. I just wanted to add that although Betty Friedan did talk about burning down houses etc in The Feminine Mystique, she later wrote a book called The Second Stage. This is such an amazing book and I highly recommend. Basically, she went away and had children…that was the major difference. It’s a lot harder to call on women to burn down their houses when you have had kids yourself. In this book she argues that the family is the ‘new feminist frontier’. This is a wonderful quote from the book:
“The right to choose is crucial to the personhood of woman. The right to choose has to mean not only the right to choose not to bring a child into the world…but also the right to have a child, joyously, without paying the price of isolation from the world if you would rather be a full time mother than enter the usual rewarded occupations.”
and another
“Part of the conflict over motherhood today – and part of the conflict feminists feel about the family and the younger women will feel about feminism, if its has to keep denying the power of the impulse to love motherhood – is a hang-over from the generations when too great a price was paid…the point is, the movement to equality of women isn’t finished until motherhood is a good enough choice.”
The funny thing is, when I read Anne Summers’ quote I feel the EXACT OPPOSITE. I have held senior positions in organisations before having a child and was the General Manager at one stage. I look back at those positions, and the meetings in which I would sit for hours, and the projects I used to obsess over and I think…’What the hell was I doing?’ ‘How did I think that that life was ever superior to being a mum?’ Because that was how I felt. I used to feel sorry for stay-at-home mums, not able to fully contribute to the outside world. Well…now I just feel stupid for feeling that way.
Now, when I have the rare obligation to sit in a meeting like that, I would much rather be at home quilting, because I at least feel as though I am producing something worth while, something beautiful for my family that will last generations. All I used to contribute at work were strategies that no one wanted to invest in and new ideas that used to make people angry.
xo
It doesn’t seem to be brought up in the comments above…
One of the reasons that there end up being two camps – stay-at-home moms and everyone else – is because when a woman leaves her career at the mid-point without much warning, it really does make it more difficult for younger or newer women in that field to move up.
It becomes assumed, just like it was 50 years ago, that you will also leave to have children, and so you are not given as many responsibilities or chances to become a leader. Women who have children and continue to work sometimes pull less of their share in the office because their priorities are now divided (for good reason) – but that trickles down to how all women are viewed.
Thinking about (“valuing”) childcare in a different way is important and necessary for change, but as a single woman without children who is affected by women constantly “dropping out”, it is hard to know what to feel sometimes. I have no solution to this problem, and I don’t think it was thought about very much in the 70s. It was assumed that women would choose to work.
that assumption, that one woman’s life choices predict anothers (and that this is purely a personal decision/failing with no structural pressures involved) is pure sexism – the assumption that all women have more similarities than differences. It’s the sexism that makes things difficult for younger women, not the woman who left.
It’s like if one person of color is a bad worker and managers think “Well those people are just bad workers and that’s why we don’t trust or promote them” is racism.
I don’t think the case is the same as racism. No one doubts your ability – but they do doubt your ability to stay focused on the job. It is true that a proportion of women change their mind about being working mothers when they have kid. Everyone here seems to be saying that this is okay – that you need time to be a mother. I agree.
But an employer needs the best employee they can get, and for the long haul. Hiring someone is an investment. It seems reasonable to favor the party that is more likely to stay.
If I had to choose between two male employees – one of which had a family in his home town where the company was, and another who had his family far away in another state – and they were both equal in talent, I would choose the more stable choice.
4 in 5 women have kids, and end up having to make these really hard choices. The choices do have an impact on the younger generations’ opportunities.
@tidewater – but just classing women as a group is sexist. Gender is not the best way to tell if a person is going to stick with your company for a long time. Driven people are less likely to stay (unless you offer them a clear means of advancement); so are people with a history of mental illness; so are people who have to move far away from their place of origin to take your job. All of those things are gender-neutral.
Also, as SarahF mentioned, men are often involved parents as well, and also subject to burnout, health issues, suddenly feeling that the grass is greener in another field, etc. But one man who decides to quit and become a kayaking instructor isn’t seen as a symptom that all men should be quizzed on their future career plans to make sure they intend to stick with the company forever.
Actually, my husband works in a ridiculous, cultlike, constant overwork corner of his field, and every single one of his original (male) coworkers has moved on to a more sane company as they got older, especially once they had children. And that’s even though the company has evolved to be much less cultlike over the last 15 years (when he started there, it was a tiny startup and some people worked for no pay when the venture capital ran out). Younger men are more likely to leave due to discontent than men in their 50s – yet there’s no hiring discrimination against youth (quite the opposite, in fact.)
I think that this is discussed in the post and links above – basically when more men are also demanding and taking more flexible employment options and employment structures change this will become a non-issue. Change to employment structures may also come about due to ageing populations and economies being no longer able to support nearly complete full time employment for everyone of working age. And many people who aren’t parents would like more flexibility in their working lives and career paths to give them the option to pursue other interests at various times. You might find after a few more years of climbing the corporate ladder (I assume that’s the kind of work you’re you’re talking about here?) that the effort you’ve put in hasn’t brought the rewards you expected and you’d like a bit more time to spend on more satisfying pursuits.
I hope you aren’t saying that unless I have children, I have not yet found my “more satisfying pursuits”. I work hard to make sure all the children everyone has will have enough clean water to drink. Someone has to be working on how to feed and have water for all these kids.
It definitely is rewarding – usually it’s everyone else who questions whether it is rewarding enough.
I don’t see many women who would like to let their husbands take care of the kids full time instead – so I’m not sure how fast the change you suggest with men will happen.
tidewater I am definitely not saying that unless you have children you won’t have found your more satisfying pursuits, I meant all sorts of things that people find more satisfying like travelling, immersing themselves in making art or craft, studying just out of interest in a subject, committing more time to altruistic activities like volunteering etc etc. The kinds of things that mean you need to have more time regularly, or be able to take chunks of time off paid work to do.
I’m glad that your job is rewarding in and of itself, however this is not the case for most people, which is probably why this work/life balance thing is such a hot topic.
Regarding men wanting to care for their children full time, that’s not what’s needed. We just need many more of them to want and demand to be able to share the caring work – more part time caring and paid working for men and women.
This all sounds great. Of course mothers and non-mothers and step-mothers and first mothers (ie all women) can be feminists. But if we don’t get the men on board, and show them what alternative we want, it just won’t work.
I stand by my idea that it is harmful to career women for women with kids, often whom others have significantly invested through training and education, to drop out. I hope that can change.
Good luck to everyone in figuring this all out.
Sorry, did not address your last point properly, don’t have time now but will try again later.
tidewater, it’s really, REALLY not the responsibility of women to change sexism and patriarchy all on our own. It is not my job to stay in a boring, competitive, soul-sucking career so that the men who run the world won’t be sexist and assume that all the young women who come after me will abandon the workplace. That is absurd on its face.
Hi TinFoilHattie,
It is not absurd. I disagree.
True, if the government didn’t pay for your higher education, if many many people weren’t involved in a woman’s training, if the woman wasn’t taking a spot that could go to someone who actually would use the training, then yes, I agree.
But the truth is – women take grants, funds, positions and then decide two years in that their calling is really to take care of the kids. Someone else invested in your education and career (usually).
It is not sexist for everyone in the workplace to have some concerns that the next woman might up and leave with not much notice.
A solution? Kinder care like the Europeans.
Tidewater, a “grant” or “scholarship” is a gift, not expected to be repaid. I don’t understand the point you are trying to make. Are you presuming that anyone who gets a college education “owes” something to society? Because I disagree with that, too. Or is it that if one went to college, one “must” work in a paying job? I am not clear on what you mean, so if you’d like to, would you help me understand that?
In my experience, most of the problem lies in the devaluing of so-called “women’s” or “mother’s” work, unpaid work without which no economy could function, but which is deliberately excluded from U.S. economic figures, at least. (If anyone is interested, you can read economist Anne Crittenden’s _The Price of Motherhood_ for an eye-opening look at this topic.)
I no more “owe” anyone the obligation to stay in a low-paying, dull, unfulfilling job (because then MEN – who run the corporations – will believe that all women workers are unreliable if I “stay home” – HA! – to care for my children) than I owe it to society not to be fat, or unathletic, or gray-haired, or bucktoothed. Society does NOT judge each man’s actions as a referendum on how “all” men behave, but certainly women are judged that way. I’m not going to fight patriarchy by complying to its absurd, sexist rules. We all must capitulate to a certain point, but I draw the line for myself at this option. I’ll struggle financially and live in a small home and do without luxuries, and work part-time at home – and maybe grow food! or make jam! – instead. Not everyone wants to do this. Great! I for one want to open our options.
PS: I received no public payment of any sort for my education. My parents and I paid for it, together.
This is great – in the work/motherhood debate the idea that paid employment is not the pinnacle of women’s emancipation is often overlooked. For me the problem is combining work and parenting when I have to go back to work after maternity leave – expensive child care, full time hours etc.
This article pissed me off so much I’ve been offline for a few days, the Clem Ford quote in particular. I just don’t want to play anymore. Who do they think is going to raise the next generation of feminists?
If having kids is self-sabotaging, then consider my womb like a grenade just waiting to go off.
Oh don’t worry, you’re allowed to have them – you just have to kind of pretend you don’t, after you have.
Ha! Exactly. “You had ’em, youndeal with ’em!” is society’s rallying cry.
Your blog’s thoughtful responses to these provocative ‘moments’ provide the most wonderful forum for people to discuss their beliefs and their lives. Amy Gray’s comment is excellent, as is southsidesocialist’s:
‘I wonder how many of these mothers decided to give up work and stay at home because their part-time or full-time employer wasn’t supportive, because their partner couldn’t or wouldn’t cut back or stop working to take part in childcare, and because their working partner did not do an equal share of the childcare and household duties in non-working hours.’
This is the reality for most women who care for children, this constant lack of support and expectation that the safety net is you. These compromises often involve all or nothing. SAHM or full-time work. Unpacking ‘this’ reality, not focusing on carefully branded labels such as Retro-Wives would resonate much more broadly for women.
The other issue that is ripe for discussion is this disconnect between the generations. The idea that ‘education’ and ‘opportunity’ would bring equality. That being well-educated and successful in your career would automatically remove the desire to care for your children/family. My mother genuinely believed this, and is shocked and dismayed (much the same as Anne Summers and Clem Ford are purported to be) that so many of this well-educated, hard-working generation of successful career women choose to quit their big jobs and raise their kids.
Explaining why this happens in a thoughtful, nuanced, intelligent way, without stupid photos of women in an apron hanging out washing, is so very necessary.
Danyum. Brilliant comment!
I think, also, that “being well-educated in your career” was not only supposed to remove the “desire” to care for your children, but also magically would remove the necessity of caring for them!
Great piece. Having had my second child recently, I’m grappling with my maternal desire more and more lately. I love being home with my children. I love my job too but staring down the barrel of the next 30 years in the paid workforce vs being at home doesn’t seem quite the no-brainer it used to be!
Who will be looking after the anti housewife feminists’ children and cleaning their houses? The feminists who believe women are letting the side down for staying at home? Yep you guessed it, working class women. I have done both of those jobs. I much prefer to look after my own home, family and children and now I have a choice this is exactly what I’m doing. Work is not always a satisfying emancipating thing. Not everyone is cut out to be a high flyer, regardless of their intelligence or education. The majority of people have ordinary, menial jobs. What is wrong with contentment and happiness?
Yes, you have said what I have wanted to say so clearly! Thank you! And it’s not just that not everyone is cut out for these high flying (high status, corporate) jobs, it’s that there are a finite number of these jobs available in a limited number of physical places and to a small pool of people (generally white educated men first, then white educated women). I look at what the people in the top positions earn and it is so out of proportion with the work done, and the responsibility taken, that I have no interest contributing by trying to climb their ladders. And like you said, most people do menial jobs. For many, if not most of us, paid work will not be intrinsically satisfying. It often seems to me that this is forgotten in these arguments.
Thinking about it, it should be ‘white, educated and connected men then women’. There a lots of educated people, plenty of white people, but I think it’s the well connected who dominate.
Dark skinned working class women, don’t forget that. In London, I always got particularly wary if some other mother made a mommy grapevine inquiry about finding a new Phillipino nanny. Many nationalities they’d seek for language skills, but if they wanted a Phillipino, they usually wanted cheap labor who they could overwork. Another American mom and I shared one housekeeper for a while just to give her enough income to leave her original employer, a family who treated her dreadfully.
More here, Atlantic article about surfdom and the women’s movement. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/03/how-serfdom-saved-the-women-s-movement/302892/
Just now, the similarity of the language around teen parenthood struck me – saying “doing this thing you do is self-sabotaging and so I should not help you do it, or focus on ways you can succeed after you do it. Or be nice to you” is very much like what we say to teen moms – this is a horrible choice and you are going to have to do it all on your own!
Where, if we stuck together and helped each other the negative effects would be less bad and the label of “self-sabotage” would be obviously ludicrous.
This deserves a standing ovation!
I do not mean tot offend anyone, but feminism is about women being separate from their children to put their careers first, it is about being, to put it bluntly, anti-family and anti-male. Why would it surprise anyone that the core political element of feminism would not support stay at home parenting, AP, unschooling, etc.? I will never identify as a feminist, because I find it is one of the most violent groups of people that considers themselves a “social justice” group. I am a humanitarian all the day- loving and caring about the rights, needs, suffering and equality of ALL humans!
Not sure where you got that view from Laurie but it is a strange one to put on the blog of a feminist AP mother who talks lovingly of her partner and son (and her lovely daughter). Pretty difficult to do that if you hate them. Sounds like you are thinking of a whole mish-mash of things including rad-fems – if you think we are rad-fems hanging out here then don’t go looking for the real rad-fems.
Well, I am a radical feminist, and I love this blog and I hang out here quite a bit.
‘Feminism is about women being separate from their children to put their careers first (…) anti family and anti male’.
Sorry, where did you get that definition of feminism? My feminism, and that of many feminists, is actually about supporting women to participate and excel in whatever they choose – career, family, childlessness, or a blend of any of these.
My feminism isn’t black and white Laurie!
I love this post. This is exactly what I feel and think but don’t have the words to put is so beautifully and so clearly. I am a feminist, raised by a feminist, and I like that I can have a public face, be in the work force – to have the opportunity and the capacity to earn my own money, and I like that I can be at home, look after my boys, make orange and purple playdough, make a construction-vehicle-themed quilt for the little fella’s big boy bed, argue and laugh with my husband about politics, talk with my dad about growing beans, and chat with mum about history…. drink wine with my brother, talk handbags and climate change with my sister. I have the confidence to do this because I feel that I can contribute, that I may contribute, that I have a place, that gender should not be a limiting factor. So thanks!
Reblogged this on inchio and commented:
agreed
Thank you My Dear Blue Milky Friend – this is huge and arrives in my mind at the right time (baby is 7 months, and wondering if I can go back to work – even parttime – at 11 months) and I’ll be reading it again and again to feel confident. Yippee!!!!
Reblogged this on A Little Person Doing Little Things and commented:
Good read for those of us interested in such topics.
http://www.womensagenda.com.au/talking-about/top-stories/retro-wives-whos-saying-what-about-the-so-called-trend/201304302071?utm_source=Women%27s+Agenda+List&utm_campaign=9aa622bb1e-Wed+01%2F05%2F2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f3750bae8d-9aa622bb1e-30596825
[…] the internalised misogyny that allows you to assume, without questioning, that self-actualisation cannot simultaneously include mothering.” | Early dialogue between parents, children stems teen smoking. | Is this the real reason […]
I am very wary of the idea that feminism is, or should be, about women having what’s euphemistically called ‘choices’. Maybe that’s a different movement? It sounds like the language of capitalism to me. It’s not that I don’t think that it would be nice for humans to have a far wider range of choices than we currently do. But capitalism stifles most choices. Being a stay at home mother, and only that, is a choice that capitalism stifles. Sure, women can do it, but until the world changes unimaginably, doing unpaid domestic labour over a number of years and having no public identity beyond that is a choice to step away from public equality. It forces a woman to become dependent in a long-term way on her partner. This is not a ‘feminist’ choice, since feminism’s fundamental goal is gender equality. I’m not sure that feminism is doing women much of a favour by telling them that all their choices are equally valid and OK. They might be by a whole lot of measures, but by the measure of equality, they aren’t. And they certainly don’t do anything to advance the cause of women. The fact is that most women who stay in the home wouldn’t identify as feminists. They know full well that they aren’t doing anything for women more generally. They don’t aspire to that. They aren’t providing progressive models for their children. So why are we bending over backwards to say that this choice is just as ‘feminist’ as any other?
Equally, I don’t think feminists should be wasting any time critiquing the choices of stay-at-home mothers. Let them get on with it. Getting women to fight with each other is one of the oldest strategies of people who want to preserve the patriarchal status quo. Anti-feminist women drain the energy of feminists by attacking us over these and other issues (challenging a woman’s right to abortion is a brilliant way of making us have to fight old battles again and again rather than moving on to dismantle other patriarchal constructs). What feminists should unify over is the idea that we won’t be drawn. We won’t criticise stay-at-home mothers, or even talk about the phenomenon. We will focus on more important issues.
Why do I need a “public identity”? What’s the value?
[…] Week 15: Dear Concerned Feminists by Sarah Jane Innes at Sarah’s World of Procrastination. Some women want to stay home with children and feminism needs to make peace with that by Andie at Blue […]
I mirror the first comment. It is FEMINISTS who have emphasized the worth of women’s work in the home. And it is feminists today (check out National Women’s Liberation) who are fighting for a “social wage” (such as is had in Europe) so that mothers can have access to affordable childcare, real single payer healthcare and a host of other programs that would SUPPORT motherhood and also make it easier for those women who do NOT want to choose between career and motherhood–and those mothers (who are the majority) who CANNOT AFFORD to stay home full time. We should be fighting together for these benefits, not fanning the flames of faux wars between women, which besides being largely based on fantasy, undercut our collective feminist struggle by making feminists, falsely, into “the enemy”. Enough already.
Hello! Okay so it occurred to me that my saying X is a lousy criteria is one of those deals where it would hurt the author’s feelings. Unfortunately, x IS a lousy criteria: “We will know we’re living in a world of equality not when just as many men as women are staying home making jam and looking after babies but when women can talk about their life making jam and looking after babies without everyone freaking the fuck out.”
People talked about women making jam a 1000 years ago “without freaking out”, and pretty sure women weren’t equal.
It’s not that “just as many men as women” have to be stay at home parents in order for women-staying-home to no longer be an issue, it’s that… we’ll know we’re in a place of equality when the subject is PARENTS-who-stay-home. In other words, gender will no longer matter when gender no longer matters. Pretending we’re already there doesn’t work for car trips either… 😛
And the more I have learned and considered and discarded over the years, the more inclined I am nowadays to notice that it is a certain type of person (of any gender) who keeps pushing sexist beliefs onto any children in their care, and/or makes zero effort to combat the sexist norms which the kid is soaking in. NEITHER gender gets a free pass in other words.
So in some ways, this article is just one more in a long line of same which claims “I will be as bimbo as I want, and you will call me a genuine feminist or else”. Most of the women writing such drivel are still bimbos pushing sexist norms onto their child. It’s a justification. “I’m a feminist, therefore I can’t be a rapist” defense. I don’t buy it when a dood says it, either…
I think you may have misunderstood the article. We all know we aren’t there yet, we were discussing what ‘there’ might look like.
Feminism is a broad church, if this blog isn’t your brand I’m sure you can find one that is.
A woman doing anything other than working full-time for pay qualifies as a “bimbo.”
I’d say, “I refer to other women as ‘bimbos,’ therefore I can’t be a feminist” is more apt than your “rapist” statement.
[…] have been suggesting I am not radical enough in my feminism in this post, where I argue that an internalised misogyny has led us to devalue mothering to such an extent that […]
[…] Which is not to say that you don’t mourn the loss of status that comes with falling into the love of motherhood and that you’re not scared of the danger this represents, but that there is something important about fighting for that love and for that impact to be recognised as valid in self-actualisation. These are very much the kinds of thoughts swirling around me here with posts like this of mine – “Some women want to stay home with children and feminism needs to make peace with that”. […]
So Anne summers thinks that stay at home mums have the time to “Quilt and craft and sort out their linen cupboards on a weekly basis”. This is certainly not the case when one stays at home to look after kids. It’s not just ignoring them while you do lots of ‘fun’, domestic stuff. it’s actually hard, tiring work with little space for a breather (and only an unpredictable one).
I was fortunate enough to have been a stay-at-home mother. I was in college during the early 1970’s. I didn’t get married until the early 1980’s. I had my first of three children at the age of 32 (which was considered, at the time, an older mother). After having been in the work force, and supported myself for 10 years, I felt a little lost, being at home. However, I also felt fortunate to have married a man, who didn’t care which direction I chose and was supportive of my choice to stay at home with my first child. As each child came along, I realized how much I really enjoyed being at home with them. We didn’t just sit around the house. We got out and traveled, went on field trips, and interacted with other moms and their children. As my children became older, I did a lot of volunteering in their classrooms and their activities.
Now that they’re all grown and out of college (all three graduated college), I have no regrets for the choice I made. I did work part-time jobs when my children became older and didn’t need me during the day time hours, as much. I was then fortunate enough to reenter the work force full time while my children were getting their college educations. I am now 61 years old. I never did work my way “up the ladder” in the corporate world or make a large income, but my children had their mother during the most important times of their childhood. I raised own children. I was the one to influence them, teach them, and love them. After all, they are YOUR children! No one is going to love your children and care about them as much as you do.
Yes, there are mothers who do not have a choice. They may not be as fortunate. They are either single parents, or their spouse does not make enough to support a family on his/her own salary. But, I have had friends and acquaintances who would prefered to work outside the home than be with their children. Which meant having to budget for the high cost of child care. If that is the case, then maybe they should work. I did have one friend, who told me, that the reason why she worked, was so she could afford to buy more clothes, etc. I felt very sorry for her. Several years later, she was killed in an automobile accident after being out and drinking with her co-workers. She was survived by a loving husband and two darling sons.
I am not saying that the path I chose is the only path. However, even though I never had a big “career” I have no regrets. My children are good and productive young adults. And, were raised by their mother. In this day and age, there seem to be a lot of lost and misdirected children. Many familes, now days, are separated with both parents working. The family unit is gone. Will it ever come back? And, will more mothers want to be at home to raise their children (not to clean, watch TV or eat Bon-bons — which is a misconception).
Did you delete the fool spam about finding a caretaker wife? Shoot. I collect crazy spam. I got jealous of somebody who got wizard spam. I got one that insulted my commenters. Can’t figure that one out. But the idiot coming here for a young woman slave is just priceless idiocy.
[…] https://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/some-women-want-to-stay-home-with-children-and-feminism-nee… […]
[…] Some women want to stay home with children and feminism needs to make peace with that […]
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[…] written a lot about maternal desire here and how poorly understood that motivation is.. but I’ve not […]
[…] the tough questions about why we hover over children exposes women to the whim of guilt. Fact is, feminism has yet to make peace with motherhood, and the longer we ignore the pull of motherhood and the needs of children, the longer we will […]
You had me at neoliberalism. Love this.
Aw thanks.
[…] found an absolute genius feminist at a blog called blue milk who said: “…as feminists, we are too often pandering to a neoliberal viewpoint that […]
it was nice to read
[…] I’ve come across individual exceptions to feminist dogma, such as this post calling for feminists to make peace with motherhood. More typical among the few feminists who notice the problem is this article from The Daily Beast: […]
I haven’t time to read all of the comments, so sorry if this has already been mentioned; however, I rarely see anyone bring up the artificial and of fairly recent origin, separation of the workplace and the home. The whole concept of housewife as someone who does not overtly contribute to the economy or bring in a cash income only came to be after the industrial revolution. Time was, both men and women were at home and fathers spent a good deal of time with their children, teaching them their trade or how to do agricultural work. Farm women in many Western cultures were responsible for the poultry and the kitchen garden while men worked the large crops in the fields.
In the past few years, I’ve seen a number of young families decide that both parents will work part time while the children are young. Sometimes grandparents also contribute to childcare. It is increasingly difficult for families to get by on one income and I’m quite impressed at how some generation Y families manage.
Interesting article.
I found it bizarre when one group of people, especially when discussing equality, sees fits to disagree with another for living their lives how they want to.
There isn’t one way of life fits all in equality.
[…] came home to see the always excellent Andie Fox (@bluemilk) retweeting an old post because the same old tired arguments about mothers keep […]
[…] came home to see the always excellent Andie Fox (@bluemilk) retweeting an old post because the same old tired arguments about mothers keep […]