I’ll never understand what mainstream liberals have against feminism.
Which brings us to “Raising Hell,” by Philip Longman, the cover story of this week’s Washington Monthly. Here’s a sample:
All of us benefit hugely from such parental investment. What could you buy with your Social Security check, or your I.R.A.s for that matter, if everyone else in your generation had simply forgotten to have children or had failed to invest in them? Yet parents do not receive any greater pensions than non-parents for the sacrifices they make to raise and educate the future workers upon whom we will all depend in old age.
We also live in an increasingly knowledge-based economy in which the formation of human capital becomes increasingly essential to all sectors. Yet again, we leave the cost of amassing this human capital primarily in the hands of individual parents and low-paid caregivers and educators, nearly all of whom could vastly increase their incomes simply by getting out of the “nurturing business.” […]
These two trends–the mounting costs of caring for a growing elderly population and the increasing importance of human capital to the economy–have fundamentally altered the economics of family life. To put it bluntly, childrearing is fast becoming a sucker’s game.
I very much agree with Mr. Longman here. Of course, it’s all pretty familiar; there’s next-to-nothing here that isn’t cribbed from feminist books like Nancy Folbre’s The Invisible Heart and Who Pays for the Kids, and Ann Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood. (Longman even quotes Folbre directly at one point, without mentioning that she’s a prominent feminist). If you look in the academic literature, the feminist writings similar to what Longman writes here go back many years. Still, it’s good that this idea – that raising children should be understood as a public good – is spreading.
Of course, after spending most of an essay discussing feminist ideas as if he made them up out of thin air, Longman names the villains who have prevented pro-caregiver reforms from taking place: conservatives and feminists.
Since then, Friedan’s argument that over-mothering was causing male homosexuality to spread “like murky smog over the American landscape” has lost resonance on the Left. But her general critique, that motherhood should not be a woman’s highest calling or priority, has not lost its following. And so the preoccupations of modern feminism, and of the Left in general for the last generation, have been with issues of personal liberation, birth control, abortion, and access to the market economy.
Friedan’s homophobia was appalling – but it was also thirty years ago, and has long been repudiated by feminists. To suggest that Betty Friedan’s decades-ago homophobia shows that current-day feminists don’t support caregivers is bizarre and incoherent.
Longman’s basic policy prescription is a cut in payroll taxes for working parents; is there a single policy-oriented feminist or feminist economist who opposes such a program? Are feminist legislators like Nina Lowrey (who proposes Social Security credits for caregivers) the hold-up? How about organizations like MOTHERS (founded by feminists Naomi Wolf and Ann Crittenden) – are they opposing such policies?
Get real. As far as I can tell, virtually all the people who have been working for economic support and security for caregivers (not just parents, but other caregivers, such as people caring for elderly relatives) are feminists.
Do feminists say “motherhood should not be a woman’s highest calling or priority?” Perhaps some do, somewhere (although Longman doesn’t provide any evidence to support this stereotype). That’s certainly not what some feminists Longman has read – such as Nancy Folbre – say about motherhood. What the feminists I know say is that motherhood shouldn’t be women’s only socially acceptable calling – being a mother is fine, but so is not being a mother – and that fathers should take a fair share of the caregiving load, too.
It’s true that over the last generation, feminists have worked for reproductive rights, equal access to decent-paying jobs, and (horrors!) personal liberation; surely The Washington Monthly isn’t saying that feminists should have ignored these issues?
What Longman doesn’t acknowledge is that feminists have also been working on helping working parents, through lobbying for child care, for family leave, and through advocating the sorts of policies Longman is talking about – as well as policies he isn’t talking about, such as Social Security credit for caregivers.
To claim that feminists are blocking such legislation is a bizarre, anti-feminist lie – made even more bizarre by the fact that most of the ideas this article recycles were developed by feminists. While I support much of the analysis in this article, I find it disappointing that the Washington Monthly thinks feminists are as much to blame as Republicans for opposing pro-caregiver policies – when feminists have actually been far more supportive of such policies than anyone else in the Democratic coaltion.
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UPDATE: There is part of Longman’s policy that I don’t think I support. He suggests that parents whose children don’t graduate from high school should be penalized by getting less social security than other parents.
There’s an economic logic there, in that parents of children who graduate high school have, in a sense, “created more value” and should be rewarded for it. But the possible injustices of this policy are bothersome. My cousin died accidentally at age sixteen; the idea of penalizing her parents financially for that tragedy is repulsive. How about parents of mentally disabled children who cannot be fairly expected to graduate? For that matter, given how strongly dropping out is related to poverty and race, there’s something disturbing about economically punishing families of drop-outs – don’t they have enough economic problems?
There’s also a bizarre sort of discrimination against parenting in Longman’s proposal. Parents should get Social Security credit for parenting because what they do is work – and socially important work. But other workers don’t get Social Security depending on whether or not society likes the outcome of their labor. We don’t, for instance, deny folks who have been working at Enron their Social Security for that time – even though, on the whole, Enron has been a net drain on society and on the economy.
Justice issues aside, there are practical problems. What do we do with families that have two children, only one of whom graduates? How will the Social Security Administration keep track of whose children have graduated? The federal goverment doesn’t currently keep a list of who has and hasn’t graduated – and Longman claims his plan won’t require a vast new bureaucracy – so I don’t know where the SSA is going to get that information.
Finally, I wonder if increasing Social Security payments for parents of high school graduates actually would increase graduation rates. Is the reason some kids don’t graduate really that their parents lack financial motive? That doesn’t make much sense – parents would be awfully short-sighted not to see possible benefits in their children prospering. And if they really are that short-sighted, will reducing their future Social Secuirty payments actually change their behavior?.
As a feminist, I object pretty strenuously to the notion that motherhood is a woman’s highest calling.
I do not object, however, to the notion that parenthood is a person’s highest calling.
(That said, I don’t want to be the person who says someone who spends a childfree life working for humanitarian causes hasn’t found as high a calling. But my own skepticism about the notion doesn’t mean I’m entirely convinced it’s wrong or that I object to people espousing it per se.)
Ahem.
The author also seems to blame feminism because it keeps women from caring for children by allowing them to do things like hold jobs and limit their childbearing. Why can’t we solve the childcare crisis, in part, by accepting that both parents, where applicable, have to pitch in?
Maybe different callings are the best, or “highest” thing for different people?
That’s what I believe, Kasasagi. Furthermore, while I haven’t read The Feminine Mystique (it’s on my list, I swear), I suspect Longman has forgotten a key word in Friedan’s “general critique” — Motherhood should not necessarily be a woman’s highest calling or priority.
Penalizing parents whose children don’t graduate from high school would also affect the incentives for adopting special needs children.
There as also many other normal reason’s that a person would not graduate high school. My wife dropped out due to chronic depression.
And unfortunately, whether or not your child graduates, the parent will still have incurred the $200,000 cost of raising the child. Which is why Mr. Longman desired the increased social security in the first place. To penalize someone at the end of their investment, would be nasty to the couple.
Mr. Longman, a little credit already!
Why can’t we solve the childcare crisis, in part, by accepting that both parents, where applicable, have to pitch in?
I agree in principle, but in reality it’s harder than that. My wife and I are equal contributors to the raising of our son. Without getting into the details of our household chores (okay, I don’t cook dinner, but that’s cuz I suck at cooking; I make up for it in doing the dishes, taking out the garbage, etc.), and sticking to the economic side, we are both full time workers. So we need daycare. That’s costing us $725 a month—$8700 a year! (My breath catches every time I see that total; tis best to think in monthly terms only). This stretches us economically, although our consumer debt doesn’t help either. But my point is that even for comfortably middle class yobs like us, child-rearing is expensive. For the poor, it’s obviously much harder.
Yet what would help poor and middle class alike are certain long-standing items on the feminist agenda like universal health care, pay equity between the sexes, a greater valuation of traditionally female-dominated professions (teaching, nursing—which is currently doing well thanks to the labor shortage) and well-run state-sponsored day care. The Social Security idea is a new one to me, but it’s intriguing; yet I think these other proposals will have more immediate and longer-lasting benefits for not only women, but for their children and their spouses/partners.
“Longman’s basic policy prescription is a cut in payroll taxes for working parents…”
As a parent, I already get tax benefits not available to those who don’t have children. I guess I don’t see Longman’s point — is he trying to make childcare more affordable for working parents? And I find the thought of punishing people economically for their children’s high school performance nonsensical.
Kevin: I feel your pain, I do. After three years of paying for daycare, my family was able to downsize economically so we could get by on my job alone. But that was more luck than anything else.
I wonder what do for parents of kids who drop out of high school, get GED’s and then go to college and get Bachelor’s degrees? (I have a few friends who have done that, one of whom is currently in law school) Surely by Longman’s logic surely these people contribute more to society than people who graduate from high school but don’t go to college.
In any case I strongly oppose the notion that people who graduate high school in uniformly or even commonly contribute more to society than those that don’t, even if we restrict our outlook to those who don’t go on to college.
A voice of dissent, maybe, from the chorus of agreement:
There is more to holding opinions than just holding them — there is also prioritizing them.
Many recent laws have been passed to help women.
The Family and Medical Leave Act helps working women (and men) who need to take time off to have a baby or care for a sick parent or child.
The childcare tax credit allows working women (and men) who need to place their children in childcare to do so with pre-tax money.
The list goes on. They have one thing is common, though. They expend social capital to provide assistance to working women (and men), but don’t really provide any tangible benefit to the stay-at-home mom (or dad).
It’s one thing to say, “Liberals and feminists support these issues that benefit to stay at home parent.” It another thing to look at what liberals and feminists have actually done when they had the opportunity — the provided benefits that disproportionately favored the working parents over families where a parent stays home.
A $100 social security bonus, say, for good parents (however, defined, it need not be a “penalty” for bad parents) would apply to all parents equally, and not favor working parents over stay-at-home parents.
There may be a moral difference between the Conservative who wants to oppress women, and the feminist who strongly favors the stay-at-home mom, but only after her 17 higher priorities for working moms have been met, but to the actual woman the results are the same.
How could one help stay-at-home parents (beyond the social security bonus)? They don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on childcare. They don’t need medical leave to care for their children. They don’t need to worry about spending too little time with their children. I’m not saying there aren’t ways that feminists can support stay-at-home parents; I’m just not entirely sure how we’d do so. I’m not aware of many laws or regulations related to stay-at-home parenting…
I’ve been reading this blog for quite a while but never really wanted to say anything — it’s all been said and better. :) However, I might as well make a stab.
On the recommendation of someone here several weeks ago, I tracked down Hrdy’s book on mother nature and one thing that really stands out is her tenet that a child is simply too costly for any one person to raise and that mothers have always had other things to do, whether it’s being economically active[1], doing unpaid but necessary work or taking care of other children (or such). The notion of mothers staying at home to do nothing else but childcare is a recent invention and not one that works very well. Childcare has always needed to be subsidised by others, whether it’s older children, grandparents, husbands, paid (or unpaid where people can get away with it) carers — children aren’t fussy, so long as they get the care they need — and denying that reality has got to be one of the most damaging things that modern society has done.
Now, it’s also true that people do consider their options and tend to choose what they feel to be in their best interests, so if raising children is perceived to be a disadvantageous thing, then it’s easy for birth rates to drop precipitously as many countries have already found to their cost. I know some people think that the ‘natural’ desire to have children should override all considerations of whether it’s individually worthwhile to have them, but that’s just not reality.
Just my one cent (and you get change!)
Dei.
[1]I know that some social conservatives love to bang on about the role of the woman in the home as Biblically ordained and I get a laugh out of it. It’s fun to contrast their attitude with Proverbs 31, which lists the qualities of the ideal wife: industriousnes, business acumen, wisdom, confidence, strength, dignity, financial independence (that she shares with her family *permit self a leetle eye-roll* but then again if you have a good relationship…) and the respect of all. Hardly the meek, mild, doing everything-the-husband-says ideal they claim…
Well, that’s exacly the point.
Look, I’m all for having lots of options. Cheap childcare for women who have to work is probably a really important need.
Here’s the other side, though.
In the 1970s gobs and gobs of women joined the workforce. Also, in the 1970s, inflation caused the prices of most stuff to just about double (coincidence?) The result was that it now took two working people to maintain the standard of living that Ward Cleaver used to maintain all by himself.
By 1980 we’re in the situation where instead of women being forced to stay home by the patriarchy, they’re being forced to work by the economy.
Neither situation is good, of course. We want to live in a world where women can choose to stay home or work — whichever they choose.
Now, we’re in a world where (most) women have to work. Most laws supported by feminists that have made it easier for working women. This is fine. But it only improves the financial situation of the woman who has to work anyway — it doesn’t really increase her options.
But if the goal is really to give women the broadest range of opportunities, shouldn’t we be devoting our energy instead into areas that actually increase choice?
Instead of giving a $2000 tax deduction each year for child care, why not cash payments to each set of parents of $1000 that they can either use to pay for child care (if they chose) or to help live on while the other parent works (if they chose).
The social security bump for stay-at-home parents is another option.
Have feminists asked stay-at-home moms what would make their lives easier, and then moved that issue to the top of their agendas? Here’s one idea:
There’s a relatively new concept out there called “emergency child care”. Instead of paying $750 per month for full time day care, you pay $500, say, and receive 10 “days” of childcare that you can use any time in the year. It is aimed mainly at the wealthier working mom, who has a nanny, but would have to call in sick if the nanny couldn’t make it one day.
This would be a great benefit for stay-at-home moms with young children, who could drop the kids off if an emergency came up without having to work out some sort of system with neighbors and friends, most of whom are probably at work during the day. The problem is (a) they are very rare, so there’s probably not one near you, and (b) even if there is, it’s not tax deductible, because you only get the deduction if both parents are working. Perhaps a government program to encourage the creation of these back-ups for stayathomes.
Well, that’s three ideas I thought of today. Imagine what a real group of stay-at-home moms could think of if anyone bothered to ask them!
Rv Agnos:
First of all, I’m all for helping SAHP (fathers as well as mothers). And some of the feminist proposals already suggested by feminists – such as social security benefits for caretakers, or such as tax cuts or credits (such as the EITC) for working parents, actually would (or do) help SAHP. (When a SAHP’s working spouse gets tax help, that helps the entire family, at least in theory).
So I don’t think it’s true, or fair, to claim that feminists have never shown any interest in, or ever listened to, SAHMs.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s realistic or fair to expect feminists to be interested in helping SAHMs exclusively. Working moms and non-moms have value too, and it’s not fair to criticize feminism because not every feminist policy is aimed at SAHMs.
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Rv Agnos, you’re mistaken about your economic history. There was no huge upsurge of women entering the workforce in the 1970s; except for a spike around WW2, women’s entry into paid, acknowleged work is a pretty steady tread over the course of the 20th century.
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That said, I for one am extremely interested in what you’re suggesting; and although I don’t think feminism is as bad as you seem to believe (on the whole, it’s been – and remains – an enourmous force for justice), of course I don’t think it’s perfect either. So please do carry on.
Actually, feminists have done a lot for stay-at-home mothers. Just like Betty Friedan’s opinions being taken for somehow THE feminist view on all things in the article that ampersand discusses, we tend to just ASSUME that feminists only do the things that we happen to have heard about.
I don’t have my references here, but off the top of my head I can think of lots of things that feminists have contributed to:
1. The proper valuation of housework and child-rearing in national statistics. These nonmarket services are currently not measured in money terms, which means that all the work women do outside the paid labor force is really counted as leisure time. Feminist economists write about this and do research into the monetary value of stay-at-home mothers’ and fathers’ work.
2. Feminists have written a lot on the treatment of women who have not been in paid employment in Social Security, and have won some changes in this. For example, that IRA contributions are allowed for members of the family who do not get paid wor their work is due to feminists.
3. Feminists were the ones who criticized the way the traditional divorce payments left the wife who had not been in paid employment essentially stranded, and how her share of the assets (the alimony) was based on only what the court thought that she ‘needed’, not on what her actual contributions to the assets had been.
In fact, I have a book published in the 1970s which blames the feminist movement for having done too much for the housewives at the expense of working women!
I really believe that the right-wing ‘myth’ of feminism as something that selfish, uppity, greedy career women do has taken hold everywhere.
Better look at the facts first.
OOPS! Amp already said most of the things I said. Sorry. I also wanted to agree with him that there was no inexplicable upsurge in the seventies in women’s employment numbers; actually what’s a little bit more true is that the 1950s had an inexplicable slump in these numbers, if one looks at the longer term trends in employment.
It has rarely ever been true for most people that the family would survive only on one member’s paid work. Traditionally farms were run by the whole family, and artisan businesses were family affairs as well. Only the upper classes of the Victorian society in the Anglo-Saxon countries invented a system where this became traditional.
So if one adopts a long-term view of history, what’s really curious is that there was a short time when both parents didn’t have to work in such a large number of American families.
My own preference in an ideal world would be for parents of young children to have more options, one of them being for both to work part-time for some years.
My point was not that feminists should only focus on stay-at-homes. Rather, that in a world of limited resources, it’s a question of priorities. The priorities to date have been to focus on working parents. That is fine, but it should be recognized, and perhaps reconsidered in the light of the progress that has been made on that front, disproportionate to the gains for stay-at-homes. And perhaps it could be asked further whether the most recent gains for working parents haven’t been earned a little too much at the expense of the others.
You’re right about the steady rise of working women. My mother-in-law tells me about reading Betty Friedan as a young woman, and laughing out loud. Women were trapped at home unable to work? Maybe rich women like Betty, but my mother-in-law was putting in 12 hour shifts at the Rohm & Haas plant in Philadelphia out of economic necessity.
The 1970s, though, were a tipping point as far as expectations went. The Betty Friedans were no longer expected to marry right out of college — or if they were they were expected to have a “career” too. 1971 was the year the Supreme Court ruled that you couldn’t discriminate based on sex in most parts of life where it was permitted in 1970. Women would become partners in big law firms for the first time. They would start getting advanced degrees in larger numbers . . . Perhaps saying women joined the workforce is too strong. But in the 1970s, more women chose to have “careers”, above those who were forced to take “jobs.”
(As a side note, even today, where women are supposed to have a choice, you don’t hear anyone say, “I’m a housewife” anymore. “Stay-at-home mom” is permitted, but it strikes people as bizarre to think that a modern woman would just be at home without kids. While not too long ago, in some places, that was the norm.)
I didn’t graduate from high school becuase I got accepted at Caltech after my junior year. I would hate for my mother to be penalized.
Also, I lost the tiny social security benefit that I did have for raising 3 kids–the spousal benefit–when my husband moved out, leaving me with 3 children (8, 5, and 10 months). Since I eventually remarried, I won’t get any credit for raising kids for the first guy.
Rv. Agnos – it seems to me that it would benefit you greatly to learn more about the position you claim to be in opposition to. If you did, you would find that most of your arguments don’t really fly. You seem to make a lot of assumptions about what the feminist movement is doing, has done, and what it’s “priorities” are — but none of those assumptions is based on facts, because any real look into what feminists are doing (and not just what the mass media claims they are/are not doing) would show that feminists have been on the forefront of not only helping mothers who work outside the home, but also mothers who stay at home.
Beyond what bean, Echidne, and Ampersand said, I think the reason I personally (and of course I don’t represent all feminists) am more concerned with issues affecting working parents is that parents who stay at home already have the luxury to make that choice.
So while I completely support stay-at-home parents, I prefer to focus on making it possible for a family to live on one income or share part-time incomes, as Echidne suggested–by, among other things, increasing the minimum wage and funding for education–and also by increasing the value of the work of caring for children. That way, women (and men) who are currently working but would prefer to stay home at least some of the time would be able to do so. (I’d also like to eliminate the belief that women who work don’t care as much about their children as women who stay home, but that’s a different battle.)
In the meantime, it makes sense to make it easier for working parents to have more time with their children; hence family and medical leave, and partially-subsidized child care.
Perhaps extending the child care tax break to one working parent from all families, whether or not they pay for child care, would be a more viable option than a $1000 check.
I really like the idea of an “emergency” babysitting service, and also “emergency” time off–ten days would be great–for working parents. That way, the stay-at-home parent could just call his or her spouse, who could come home for the day or half-day or whatever. A lot of my co-workers have to use their vacation and sick days when their children are ill (which isn’t the same kind of emergency, but I think it still applies–and it seems like children get ill a lot).
PS. My mom was a “domestic engineer” (the term she prefers). She doesn’t regret not working while my siblings and I lived at home, and neither do I. And she must have enjoyed being with us kids; now she works at a preschool.
As a feminist, I object pretty strenuously to the notion that motherhood is a woman’s highest calling.
I do not object, however, to the notion that parenthood is a person’s highest calling.
What she said.
I’m a strict believer in “it takes a villiage to raise a child.” IMHO, the ruling asses only care about the kiddies when they go on a censorship rampage (during the rock censorship wars of the 80’s and 90’s, as well as now after Janet Jackson’s boob eruption), or try to justify sending folks (all poor people and people of color)and, of course, to bash feminism.
But Amp—it ain’t just liberal men, it’s also so-called “radical ” men—-y’know, the guys who sneer at liberals as being as much The Enemy as right-wingers…..
Oh, BTW, I do not in any way, shape or form consider Freidan to be a feminist (she strikes me as being the Katie Rophie/Christina Hoff Summers of her day), although many in the women’s movement consider her a pioneer. And her “lavender menace” heterosexism only confirms my opinion.
But then again, I don’t consider Elvis Presley to be real rock & roll—despite what the white male rock canon says….
I’m not familiar enough with Friedan to posit an opinion, but I will say amen about Elvis.
There are 2 criticisms generally lobbed at Betty Friedan: 1)she’s homophobic and 2)she’s racist/classist and only cares about rich white women. As to the first charge, well, it’s true — at least, it was at one time. I can’t (and won’t) defend the arguments she (and other feminists) were making at the time, but historical context is important when thinking of what she has said in the past.
As to the second charge — this is usually lobbed by people who, at best, read The Feminine Mystique absent the context of time and never bothered to learn much about Friedan beyond what she wrote in that book. When one does a little more research into Friedan’s own life and work, one finds that the argument doesn’t hold much water. Ruth Rosen wrote about this in The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed the World:
One may question her choice of pragmatism over politics, but there is little doubt that had she published her earlier, more radical, drafts, The Feminine Mystique would not have become the best-seller it did, it would not have reached millions of women who were, in fact, suffering from “problem that has no name.” There is little doubt that this book had a huge impact on the early days of the Second Wave, and was a huge driving force behind the rising tide of that Second Wave.
Thanks, bean!
I knew about Friedan’s heavily political past, but had never thought about it in the context of McCarthyism. I learned something today.
(As a side note, even today, where women are supposed to have a choice, you don’t hear anyone say, “I’m a housewife” anymore. “Stay-at-home mom” is permitted, but it strikes people as bizarre to think that a modern woman would just be at home without kids. While not too long ago, in some places, that was the norm.)
1) This is not “not too long ago” in “some places.” This is here and now. Not too long ago in the US, Jim Crow was also the norm. Being a “houswife” is something that very much depends on class. Even if the housewife in question didn’t work 12 hour shifts in a factory and thus laugh at Betty Freidan, she was most likely performing a lot of labor in the family farm, the family business, or doing some sort of piecework at home.
2) While the idea of not having to work has a certain appeal (for everyone, not just women), the idea of being economically vulnerable does not. Being a “housewife” was fine in the time when your livelihood depended on your marriage, and your occupation depended on your class. You didn’t see any working-class women as housewives, because they couldn’t afford it. That was a so-called “occupation” that gave an upper-class man satisfaction–his wife didn’t “have” to work, because he was a good provider and a success.
And frankly, I think the idea of leave, etc. should be extended to all people. I think it’s great that working parents can take leave to focus on their newborn/newly adopted children (in some instances, again, if you are a member of the working poor, that isn’t to be). I think it should be extended to people who also must act as caretakers for a sick and/or aging relative (especially people in the “sandwich generation”), and who are caught in other circumstances.
The whole “just a housewife” attitude came from traditionalists and anti-feminists. They scoffed at the idea that housework and childrearing had any monetary value (lots of value in terms of platitutes, yay). They devalued the opinions and feelings of women, who were “just housewives”.
This whole thing is about power. Women choosing to work and make money and have other interests are a threat. So we get lots of rhetoric about how awful it is that women don’t stay home “anymore” (even though it was only a small segment of the population that ever did), and that “Motherhood is a woman’s highest calling.” Have you ever heard anyone say, “Fatherhood is a man’s highest calling”? No, because men aren’t held to the standards we are. It isn’t selfish for a man to want to work, take satisfaction in his career, and have a life outside of the house. Women have to justify it out of economic need, which is ridiculous. If you are lucky enough to have access to a good education and intriguing career options, chances are, you’ll want to take them. And if you don’t, no feminist is going to deride you. But if you do take them, plenty of anti-feminists will trash you as a horrible, selfish, overly-ambitious harridian.
We also hear “women can’t have it all”. Yet we never hear “men can’t have it all”–because apparently, they can.
And frankly, I think the idea of leave, etc. should be extended to all people. I think it’s great that working parents can take leave to focus on their newborn/newly adopted children (in some instances, again, if you are a member of the working poor, that isn’t to be). I think it should be extended to people who also must act as caretakers for a sick and/or aging relative (especially people in the “sandwich generation”), and who are caught in other circumstances.
The Family Medical Leave Act does provide this option. The FMLA is not only for parents, but also for children of elderly parents and spouses of sick family members, as well as adults who are sick themselves.
Of course, there are limits — it’s not a paid leave, it simply guarantees that your position will be there when you get back to work and you cannot be fired. And, since not replacing a worker would be a hardship on small companies, companies with under a certain number of employees (50?) are exempt from FMLA.
Hey, Shamhat! Long time no see. :) Hope you are doing well. Peace. Love, Ananna
Two more points in response to Rv. Agnos:
“In the 1970s gobs and gobs of women joined the workforce. Also, in the 1970s, inflation caused the prices of most stuff to just about double (coincidence?) The result was that it now took two working people to maintain the standard of living that Ward Cleaver used to maintain all by himself.”
The short answer is — yes, it was a coincidence. The long answer is that one of the major advances in the macroeconomic consensus over the past couple decades has been the recognition that changes in the demographics of the workforce DON’T cause overall inflation. (They may cause price changes for *certain* goods in the economy; but the rise in prices for those goods — the goods that become more scarce as labor is shifted — are offset by drops in prices for other goods — the goods that become more plentiful due to the fact that **lots more people** are working…)
What caused the runaway inflation of the 1970s was not women entering the workforce, but rather central banking policy. For a decade the Fed was pressured by various Presidents to follow a loose-money policy in an attempt to revitalize the sagging economy; what they got instead was stagnation and inflation–the famous “staglation” that forced the macroeconomic consensus to revise its views. I don’t know; maybe the Fed board of governors has some sinister connection to the feminist movement that I don’t know about. But barring that hypothesis, it just was a coincidence that inflation skyrocketed at the same time as many women were entering the labor market.
And:
“By 1980 we’re in the situation where instead of women being forced to stay home by the patriarchy, they’re being forced to work by the economy.”
I don’t understand the contrast that’s intended here. Since the major seats of power for exercising disproportionate control over what happens in “the economy” — viz. corporate executives, on the one hand, and government bureaucrats and legislators on the other — are overwhelmingly occupied by men, and given the long-standing, on-going, systematic inequality between the economic situations in which men and women find themselves (due to sex-based differences in childcare burdens, pay, etc.) … how is “the economy” a separate causal agent from “the patriarchy”? It seems pretty obvious to me that “the economy” is just one more field in which patriarchal forces act themselves out.