wow. this is an amazing article. it is not sugarcoated, and it's hard to read, especially if some of the women in your life are or were stay at home feminist moms. (hi mom! i love you!)
but this is words for why i never considered staying at home. this is words for why whenever someone tells me they are a stay at home mom i smile politely, chat about it some, change the subject, and am either sad or angry for them.
i used to be married, and i wanted kids. i was married to a sweet pro-feminist man who loved me. but for various reasons, i did most of the second shift work in the relationship. and i wasn't expecting that to get any better, for him to do any more of the second shift work if we did have kids. that was just the way it was.
i'd like it if my kid ended up with a better set of expectations than that, and a better reality, too.
American Prospect Online - Homeward Bound:
Great as liberal feminism was, once it retreated to choice the movement had no language to use on the gendered ideology of the family. Feminists could not say, 'Housekeeping and child-rearing in the nuclear family is not interesting and not socially validated. Justice requires that it not be assigned to women on the basis of their gender and at the sacrifice of their access to money, power, and honor.'
The 50 percent of census answerers and the 62 percent of Harvard MBAs and the 85 percent of my brides of the Times all think they are "choosing" their gendered lives. They don't know that feminism, in collusion with traditional society, just passed the gendered family on to them to choose. Even with all the day care in the world, the personal is still political. Much of the rest is the opt-out revolution.
III. What Is to Be Done?
Here's the feminist moral analysis that choice avoided: The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, 'A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.'
2 Comments:
i replied on your LJ feed, cuz i hatesss blogger, preciousss.
-pleonastic piranha
Wow. That article made me totally and completely frothy.
“Housekeeping and child-rearing in the nuclear family is not interesting and not socially validated. Justice requires that it not be assigned to women on the basis of their gender and at the sacrifice of their access to money, power, and honor.”
THAT. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. Denigrating childcare as uninteresting and not valuable, as scut work that should be pushed off on someone, anyone other than educated elites.
Also totally creepy was the "marry down" advice. So, to preserve our feminist ability to work, we should exploit the powerlessness of others, just because they happen to be male?
But mostly, I am distressed that the only marker of success in the world is money and winning at corporate life. I don't think that's true. If I did think it was true, I would have management-tracked myself, and I would be a PM, and I would have writers under me by now (with my disdained liberal arts degree supplemented by a business degree). But I think that it's valuable to show my children that I can work, and I can be their mother. And I think it's valuable that their daddy will be home with them most of the time before school, and once they get to school, we'll both work.
But seriously, who, if given the economic ability not to have a high-stress job would have one anyway? "Gee, I could work 70-hour weeks, or I could go do what I want. I think I'll take the lack of sleep, please!".
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