Lots of discussion below my reprint of this old post.
My point in the original was not to elevate “stay-at-home motherhood” above other choices a young woman might want to make. Of course, when college-age women express a desire to “stay home with (their) kids”, those of us who are feminists are right to dig a bit deeper to discover the roots of that longing. As we’ve all pointed out eighteen times before, choices are always exercised inside of a cultural construct that teaches us that some choices are better than others. (This is why, for example, lots of women get their noses made smaller and very few get them made bigger — cosmetic surgery is in some sense a choice, but it is a choice heavily influenced by a lot of cruel and often racist aesthetic standards.) And when a young woman who has grown up hearing “mothers who work outside the home when their kids are small are selfish” says “I don’t want to be one of those selfish working women”, feminists are right to start up a discussion lickety-split!
But of course, it infantilizes women to say that the gal who longs to be a wife and a mother rather than an independent businesswoman is victimized by a patriarchal understanding of gender roles. There are choices that are made in order to please others, and there are choices we make out of our own deep desires (perhaps so deep that they are below the level that is influenced by culture). And while social conservatives often elevate the “stay-at-home wife” above all other roles for women (think of Dr. Laura’s tiresome “I am my kids’ mom”), progressives are sometimes unwilling to accept the desire to stay at home and be the primary caregiver as a legitimate want. (Think of the huge proliferation of guilt-inducing books about working and motherhood that have appeared just within the past two years!)
And of course, a significant component of the feminist project lies in liberating men to have far better relationships with their children than they may have had in earlier eras. The “separate spheres” ideology of the nineteenth century (it isn’t older, contrary to popular opinion) placed child-rearing solely in women’s hands, and earning solely in men’s. And while of course many women worked for money (in and out of the home) while raising their own children, historically far fewer working men took on an equal share of childcare.
If I’ve given the impression that I encourage stay-at-home motherhood while not also encouraging men to consider taking on the role of primary caregiver, I’m sorry. A key aspect of pro-feminist men’s work is encouraging young men to rethink the role of “father”. Many guys I work with do (when they feel they’re in a safe space) admit that they’ve fantasized about “staying home with the kids” while their partners worked outside the home. Of course, some of these lads haven’t the foggiest idea how much backbreaking work is involved in child-rearing. But some — often those who grew up in single-parent households — have a very clear idea of how much work and care is involved, and they still believe that they’re up to the task. It’s important for feminists to encourage men to develop and explore this often-atrophied capacity to nurture. And it’s important that we work to dispel the stigma society still attaches to a man who longs to be a “house husband.”
In a two-parent household — something that remains for many the ideal — women’s freedom to “stay home” is, of course, contingent on male reliability. While there are far fewer two-parent households where wives work outside the home while the men provide childcare, the reverse is true in those instances. It’s not a stretch to say that “staying home” without a steady independent income places one in a vulnerable position. Traditionally, it’s been women who’ve been in that vulnerable place — and that lack of autonomy has often meant women were not able to escape abusive or philandering husbands. Equal access to financial resources is a defense against being trapped. Anecdotally, I’d say one whopping reason why so many of my students don’t want to “stay home” is because of that justifiable fear of being unable to leave a disastrous marriage.
Does this mean that I’m returning to the tired old line that “all feminism is rooted in a disappointment in men”? No. Even if every man were willing and eager to be a devoted and faithful husband and father (and even if our economy permitted a working-class father to support an entire family on his salary), I don’t believe that the majority of women would gleefully abandon all of their public ambitions for the bliss of diapers and casseroles. Women’s desire for a public role is not a singular response to a frustration with unreliable men. But there’s no question that fears about male reliability play a part in some women’s decision-making about when and whether to marry, or whether to have children without a male partner with whom to raise them. Feminists thus do well to focus both on women’s liberation and male transformation.
My wife and I are both committed to raising our future children together. We both have flexible schedules, nearby relatives, and the resources to have some help. How the division of labor will break down when a child arrives remains to be seen, but I have every intention of being a competent and enthusiastic care-giver, wiper of vomit, changer of diapers. And how fatherhood and its responsibilities impacts my views will surely be a subject of a future blog post!
Note: This post is open for commenting only for those who are feminist-friendly.
I think in the modern age a desire to be a stay at home parent is shared by many, but the expectation of being able to be one is an expression of phenomenal privilege. Few households can actually afford to survive on one income and calling that ability “reliablity” is kind of insensitive. Being rich and being reliable aren’t the same thing.
We need to win back some of the workplace rights we’ve lost before this kind of equality is even an issue for many. Most parents I know both work, not because of feminism, but out of neccesity.
In our family, it was important to us to have a stay at home parent, at first it was me, and now it is my husband. Raising a family of four on one relatively small salary doesn’t make us rich - but it does make us make decisions I don’t see my peers making. We won’t be going to Disney World, or replacing a 10 year old car. I feel guilty thinking about buying a new skirt to beef up my fall wardrobe, even though it is only $10.00 from Target.
I believe that my husband’s choice to be a stay at home father was a far more politically charged choice than mine was to return to work, especially in our very blue collar environment.
As a feminist, what bothers me most about this never ending conversation is that the actual task of raising children is a job. And many of us are willing to pay other people to do it, but when one of us choses to do it ourselves, we are seen as selling out the sisterhood. If anything, I think that devalues the women (and men) who chose child care professions and keeps their wages so low.
Over at the Biblical Womanhood Blog, Crytal wrote that men who wish to be stay-at-home dads are “sissies.” Although I am all for being a stay-at-home wife and mother, I found that really insulting. Even my own dad thinks it is “cool” that one of my friends’ dad stays at home while his wife worked as a principal at a local middle school. He said something about how men should not feel like “lesser men” for staying at home. And for my dad to say something like that is, well, rare and downright amazing.
Great minds think alike. I posted yesterday about being a playdate shuttle pilot, gassing up my minivan with assorted children in the back, and noticing a fairly nicely-dressed woman in the middle of a construction site giving instructions to two backhoe/loader operators before climbing into the cab of her semi-truck-sized dump truck and driving off. What still really gets me is that the juxtaposition seemed so routine I didn’t get the full impact till *I* was driving away — you might have seen one or the other when I was a boy but to put the two together on opposite sides of the same street would have sounded too implausible even for a screwball comedy!
This post brings out another reasons I’m not crazy about calling myself a feminist man or even “pro-feminist” and that’s that picking one label or another preconditions us to see only one side or the other. Special note though: Hugo, since your *academic field* is women’s studies it’s neither surprising nor problematic that you’d look harder at implications of women choosing to stay at home than at men making the same choice.
figleaf
It really bugs me when people claim staying home is “just as feminist.” Because it “just” isn’t. It’s got several strikes against it already– reinforcement of traditional gender roles, and fewer women in the workplace and having high earning capacity. One could compensate for those problems in some way, but in isolation it just doesn’t do as much to advance the feminist project. Of course there are lots of other valid reasons to stay home, one doesn’t have to make every decision on the sole basis of feminism, but let’s call a spade a spade here… traditional gender roles.
You can delete that if you want, Hugo– when I looked back I see that it doesn’t really relate to the post. Sorry.
….women’s freedom to “stay home”, is, of course, contingent on male reliability.”
This, said by the same guy who mentioned a few posts ago how rare it was for a forty-year-old to have the same job for twenty years? How about this—that for either parent to “stay home” is contingent on employer reliability. Both parents have to have the confidence that the one working outside the home will have steady, uninterrupted work. That’s pretty damn unlikely in this economy, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
It’s a risky venture for most people—riskier than the alternative of continuing to work outside the home. I think that has a lot more to do with the lukewarm reception of young women who voice that they’d prefer to stay home. Right now, I’m watching my parents struggle on a retirement income, and both of them worked throughout their lives. My father’s pension is larger (despite the fact my mother earned more) because she took an “early-out” (as a canceer survivor, she wasn’t willing to wait for the glory days of full retirement) and the lion’s share of her pension goes to health insurance (taken out of her check first). My dad took a part-time job because he’s still able, and he wants to set money aside—something they couldn’t do on their pensions alone. Hey, even when you’re retired, the roof still needs replacement, the car still needs work, etc.
See, my folks never had the same job throughout their working lives. We moved a lot when I was a kid, and both my parents put money into retirement systems they never put enough years into to get vested. They didn’t get their “permanent” jobs until they were in their mid-thirties. That’s not as common for folks their age—but it sure as hell will be for the generation behind me—the constant job shifting, and not being able to put money back during the prime-time early years of adulthood (kids! listen to the old fogies and financial planners! pay yourself first with a 401k or IRA, and don’t touch the money, ever! you’ll thank me later!!).
But of course, it infantilizes women to say that the gal who longs to be a wife and a mother rather than an independent businesswoman is victimized by a patriarchal understanding of gender roles.
Um, Hugo? You just suggested that a woman who isn’t a a SAHM is not a “wife and mother”. Tip your hand much?
The point some of us are wearing our fingers out trying to get you to stop dodging is this: the choice is presented to women as motherhood OR career, family OR work. Nobody scolds men for foolishly trying to have it all. Nobody suggests that a man must choose between being “a husband and a father” or an independent businessman; it’s assume that he’ll seamlessly blend career and family, because his wife will handle all that troublesome childcare stuff.
“Nobody scolds men for foolishly trying to have it all. Nobody suggests that a man must choose between being “a husband and a father” or an independent businessman; it’s assume that he’ll seamlessly blend career and family, because his wife will handle all that troublesome childcare stuff.”
I never thought about it that way. I think that, ideally, someone should be home with the kids, at least when they’re small. I realize that’s not always possible when money is tight. And for me, it looks like money will always be tight.
Still, it seems like whoever stays home will get flack regardless of their gender. Men who stay home are burdened with a stigma: according to most people, stay-at-home-dads are lazy sissies and should be “bringing home the bacon.” If a woman stays home, the feminist movement wonders if her choice was made in a vacuum. That is a good and accurate critique, of course, but saying you are a SAHM either comes with a bit of suspicion, or is glorified as a almost every woman’s “God-given role” at places like Biblical Womanhood. It’s hard, as a Christian feminist, to make a choice like this: is this what God wants me to do with my life, or am I doing it because that’s what women “should do” according to society when they have kids?
It’s not a stretch to say that “staying home” without a steady independent income places one in a vulnerable position.
Well, vulnerable and degrading. Any woman with a trust fund who wants to be a SAHM can knock herself out. Why not? She’s choosing to work for herself — to run her own small business, if you will. Those of us who aren’t so lucky have to consider whether SAHM-hood is really worth having our paychecks signed by our husbands. Most men have the tact not to refer to their wives’ money as their “allowance” anymore, but more genteel language only does so much to mask the reality. There’s a reason people are discouraged from dating their bosses, and even when they are both feminist, the financial relationship of working husband to SAH-wife is that of employer to employee. No amount of sincerity about “our money” and equal partnerships can erase the fact that the money flows from the husband’s employer, to the husband, and from there to the wife. In exactly the proportions he chooses. If he is kind, or fair, or feminist, he may choose to put his money into a shared account she has full power to draw from. And she has that power, if she has it, because he gave it to her.
And all this ugliness has nothing to do with how reliable or trustworthy a man is as an individual. It has nothing to do with how well-prepared a woman should be for divorce or abandonment. It doesn’t even have anything to do with whether a woman has any desire for participation in public life or ambition for a career. You could have no such ambitions, you could know with absolute certainty that your husband was a feminist prince who would never leave you, and the fact would still remain that except for whatever assets you brought into the marriage, all the money you have came from him. People talk about being a SAHM as a job, and a job it certainly is. It’s a job whose salary has nothing at all to do with how hard you work or how much, or how well, but purely on how much money your husband has.
So, until SAHMs start drawing a salary from some source other than the men they’re married to, which is not likely to happen soon, if at all, it is going to be a big huge ugly mess for feminist women.
Still, it seems like whoever stays home will get flack regardless of their gender.
Sure. That’s because childrearing is, y’know, Women’s Work and good enough for the ladies, but if a man does it, he’s lazy, unmanly or both. Conservative who claim to respect SAHM are, essentially, doing the same thing you or I would do in praising a five-year-old for doing an especially colorful fingerpainting: it’s wonderful for their level of ability and maturity, but we sure wouldn’t be lavishly praising a fifteen-year-old for doing it.
As for feminists insisting women not stay home, I was pretty sure it was all those crazy crypto-Marxist feminazi types who were agitating for flextime, shared jobs, childcare at work, etc.
Hi Hugo,
Will you visit my blog and give me feedback?
Thanks,
Dan
I think what I am most perplexed about in this discussion is what is a pretty main element to staying at home…the child. Children are biologically programmed to be close to their mothers during the first minimum year of life. The mothers produce the milk that is vital to having a thriving immune system (because though one can survive on formula, thriving would be a large stretch, as formula is dead and breastmilk changes every feeding). Most other western societies recognise this, in Canada you get a year’s paid maternity leave.
I also think talking about this in “theory” is a lot different than giving birth and given the amazing responsibility of raising another human being. For me, it wasn’t much of a “choice”, my child was born and I continued to work a couple of days a week until even that became incredibly difficult to sustain. So I left the work force and I have SAHMed ever since. I frankly get really annoyed at the implication that I didn’t know what I was doing. No, I know full well what I am doing. I know that if my husband and I were to divorce, because apparently I am his “employee” , there is a very significant chance that I would end up close to the poverty line, because that is where most single mom’s are. and I would be lying to say that doesn’t scare me. But right now, I am making the best choice for my family and myself that I will not regret. Besides, I think a woman like myself would take my former husband “to the mattresses” if I had to to fight for myself and my children. I am not trying to be a martyr here, nor do I consider myself to be enmeshed with my children, but my life is no longer about *me* and my worth is not determined by how much money I am capable or not of making. Just because child rearing is not valued in our society does not mean it lacks value.
That being said, had I had a high paying career, and had my children later in life, this might be a conversation played out completely differently in my life. I am not sure. I am not one to sit there and think WOHM’s are terrible and selfish either. In fact, I think they are pretty amazing. the Preschool/baby days are incredibly draining, and those that can balance both have my utmost respect.
Candice, if we were doing what is “biologically mandated”, women would show up at the office with their babies in slings. The idea of staying home instead of doing something economically productive for the family, or not bringing children along for the day’s work, is a very new one.
I never thought about it that way.
Well, that is really the point–not that it’s wrong or foolish for you to be SAHM, but if you’ve never thought about other choices, or how you have to make choices that men aren’t expected to, then “it’s my own free choice” is not the whole story.
I know that if my husband and I were to divorce, because apparently I am his “employee” , there is a very significant chance that I would end up close to the poverty line, because that is where most single mom’s are.
This, I think, is critical. You knew what you were doing and were willing to take the risk. A 22 year old just out of college or an 18 year old just out of high school and feeling all romantic about taking care of her husband and babies may not have considered the issue as thoroughly. I continue to assert that any man or woman who wants to spend his or her time as an unpaid caretaker, whether for partner, children, parents, or any combination of the above, should know the risks before making any committments and that society has a responsibility to minimize those risks as far as is possible. Nor should we as a a society be encouraging people to take excessive risks, i.e. by glorifying SAHM. Beyond that, well, what business is it of mine or anyone else’s what you want to do with your life? I’m glad things worked out for you.
Incidently, I breast fed my child exclusively for about 8 months and altogether for 3 years, although I started going back to work within 6 weeks of her birth. I’m not sure if I’m unusual that way or not, but anecdotally, returning to work doesn’t mean ending breast feeding. At least not if you have a good breast pump and a mother in law who is willing to bring the baby to you at work periodically.
Well actually I think bringing babies to work is a marvelous idea :) in fact, I have even seen some information touting its benefits. the children actually fare really well and can come as long as they are not walking. this is an office environment of course, but I would push for it if I had to work in an office setting. and I still do think that its a biological mandate that babies be near their mothers. I am aware this does not sit well with some feminists, but I am not one to say that women need to be like men in order to succeed. we have different needs, one of which is taking care of small children. can fathers do everything else? absolutely. I don’t think women have the “corner” on infant care exclusively. however, science has borne out over and over that breastmilk is the standard that babies should be fed. and this society sorely lacks practical help for mothers and their children. for all of their talk of being a “family friendly” society i think that is total crap personally. If it was family friendly there would actually be laws governing family friendliness.
And just one more comment on the employee relationship issue. It is not to say that my husband and I don’t ever have issues, but unlike many of my counterparts who embrace patriarchy, we do not come at it from a power grabbing standpoint. at least I hope we don’t. we try and strive for unity in our decisions together. So though there is never conflict, no one holds the “trump” card in our relationship by fact that he is male. I would like to think that I married with thoughtfulness and that I chose well and that even if we *did* divorce (our five year anniversary today in fact :) ) that he would behave like the kind human being I know him to be. Which is why I picked him ;)
I am aware this does not sit well with some feminists, but I am not one to say that women need to be like men in order to succeed.
What doesn’t sit well is defining material success and a paid career as “male” or childrearing (which goes well beyond breastfeeding) as “female”.
Well we are definitely in heated agreement on that one. It just bugs me that as a society we have devalued the things that *are* uniquely feminine and relegated them to things that need to be controlled by men. or at least by a paternalistic thought process, even if that person is female. I am thinking mostly of childbirth and the lack of empowerment that females have when it comes to a very defining moment in their lives. not the only, but no matter who you talk to, childbirth is a big deal. and the medical model is one of control, which only leads to more problems. but that is a whole different soap box.
but I completely agree that childrearing is not an exclusively female thing. and I don’t believe that I said that. but I still stand by the statement that both biologically and developmentally babies are designed to be with their mothers and that as a society, it needs to be supported.
thanks for the discussion :)