I speak from hearing for years of my own mother's experience as a stay-at-home mom. She was at the end of the Baby Boomer generation, and many women in her age group were so strongly pro-career/anti-'old fashioned' roles that they snubbed women like her. Instead of women having the right to choose a path of their own accord, yet another path became socially acceptable over another.
It is sad to me that women must be questioned by men, themselves, and, in large part, other women when choosing a path in life (which, of course, presumes a choice, more a luxury of the upper, and, to an extent middle, classes). No matter what, we find ourselves in a catch-twenty-two. If we do not want children, there is something wrong with us; we are not 'women enough.' If we want children but no career, we are slaves to an old-establishment, old-fashioned and un-liberated. Somewhere in the midst of this it seems to have been lost on people, feminists included, that women are not all alike--we have different desires, goals, opportunities, etc. If we are lucky enough to be in a position to make a choice in our life, we may not all choose the same.
Just as it should not be wrong for men to choose stay-at-home parenting, as some have begun to do in more recent years, it should not be wrong for women to choose the same. The person who disdains a woman who chooses to be a homemaker is as anti-feminist as the person who disdains a woman for choosing a career, or, for that matter, for trying to juggle both.
6 comments:
It is true that women's choices when made freely should be respected. The problem is when gender roles force expectations and limit choice. Do we view it to be women's destiny to become mothers? To be defined by their husband's accomplishments? To have children, even if they might not wish to? And are men bound to expectations to work and provide even if they want to participate in active parenting? Can they choose to work less and be home more? Are there ways that political speech forces these expectations? And it is worth mentioning that many stay-at-home mothers found themselves vulnerable economically and socially. This can be addressed on a policy level but perhaps your mother's friends saw this possibility?
The economic vulnerability is, presumably, a problem any stay-at-home parent would face regardless of gender--and in a climate of gender-role biases, I would imagine it likely that a stay-at-home-father might find his social opportunities limited by a bias that questions his masculinity. This bias, to an extent, limits male choice as well as female choice in that sense.
If our country does, as politicians keep claiming, value families, then why do we not incentivize stay-at-home parents (of either gender)? We do not respect the work they do in the same way we respect the work of people outside of the homes, and the financial pitfalls are evidence of that.
I think you're absolutely right that there are still some views of biology as destiny involved. But how do we disentangle them?
In my mother's case, she was snubbed by her peers because she *chose* stay-at-home motherhood in a generation that saw staying at home as anti-feminist. And do we not, in some ways, still perpetuate that notion today when we look down at stay-at-home mothers, presuming their lifestyle was a matter of coercion rather than personal preference?
The problem, I think, is that we do not know how to reconcile our relatively newfound awareness that women have been oppressed by patriarchal structures with the fact that some women are happy being stay-at-home mothers. In some ways, we don't know how to disentangle motherhood and wivery from patriarchal oppression, because they were historically coerced and used against us. And is it possible, without a complete overhaul of our society, to guarantee that traditional gender ideas never play a part in our decisions? Surely not, for those are the gender scripts we are given to work within and push the boundaries. I simply think it is important that, in our zeal to guarantee women equality and opportunity in the workplace, we do not impart disdain on women who made the decision not to enter it because they had different priorities.
I did just have another thought regarding policy and economics...if parenting were a traditionally 'masculine' job, would we be paying parents for the work they do at home? Primary care-giving has been seen as traditionally 'women's work', and thus it has been devalued in some senses, just like other traditionally female jobs (like nursing and teaching). If parenting were valued as the full-time job it is, rather than a female duty, perhaps compensation would be given. And I suspect this would have been more likely to happen were it seen as a male job.
Raishel,
I really enjoyed reading your blog entry for this week because I think you not only discussed some valid issues but also brought in another personal dimension that really added to what you had to say. In addition to this I liked the way you brought up the idea of economic vulnerability, traditional gender bias influencing both women as well as men and the idea of rewarding economic incentives for stay at home parents. I feel that you raised a valid point in terms of awarding primary caregivers incentives for taking care of others but it would also be interesting to see even partial incentives to stay at home parents. Great ideas!
I would agree, this is a great post and set of comments to follow. As a dad who was one of the primary stay-at-home parents for the first five years of our children's lives, I can also attest to the difficulties one faces when making this choice. But even more problematic was the way in which being a stay-at-home dad was read by many as exceptional, or something to celebrate or fawn over. Even when my contributions to a family and home might have put me in an equally disenfranchises position, I was struck by how I was implicitly rewarded. It seems male privilege rears its ugly head in the most unexpected of places. (Of course, this is all complicated by being a gay father, but that's another whole issue ...)
But I would also agree with Professor Reich when she raises the issue of choice. Always a hard issue to tackle, especially when think about the tensions between indiviudal experience and more structural understandings of power. Not all women have the privilege or luxury of choosing. I think most of us would agree that all women should be afforded such choices, but I think there's a lot of work we have to do collectively to insure that such choices can actually be made with agency.
Post a Comment