On staying home, working and feminism.
This started out as a reply to a post on feministing.com, but soon became a post of its own:
I am in an unusual situation, myself. I quit my job and got pregnant that night (ha! Nice timing, me!) and couldn't get another job while pregnant. When my baby was about a year old, I was offered a temp job at my church as secretary. I jumped on it, on condition I could bring my kid with me. They said sure as long as I could do the work, they were happy. And it was only supposed to be 4 weeks or so. It's been 8 months now. I still bring my kid with me to work. And the reactions I get to this are PRICELESS.
Men (in general) say, "Wow! How perfect for you! You can earn money and not have to put the little guy into daycare!" Women (in general) look at me in horror and say, "OMG! How do you do both jobs at the same time?!" or they look at me skeptically and say, "Okay... I don't think *I* could manage that one".
Now, I like working because (a) I like being able to pay off my fucking massive student loans, (b) I like the conversations.
To (b), it's not that as a SAHM I can't have conversations. I can join baby groups and library groups and whatnot. But there's only so much of that I can stand. They tend to be women talking about their kids. *sigh* I want to talk about politics, religion, the news, etc. Not Little Billy's bout of constipation. At work, I get that.
As a SAHM, one thing that would help enormously would be time to do something just for me. Sports if I were into it (I'm not), a book club, I dunno. Something. So why don't I get out and do something like that? Well, in a nutshell, I feel like that'd put a burden on my husband. We both work all day, and then I go out and have social time? Hardly fair. It's also not unreasonable for me to expect that kind of support, I realize. But it's how I've been socialized.
The point of the original article, which struck me as "Women can be happy at work too", is an important point, as we're often told how women are happy at home, and only work because they have to (and are defective if they feel otherwise). And to say that this is an attack on SAHMs is just ridiculous. But I understand why SAHMs feel defensive. As someone who has it both ways, so to speak, I also get both sides of the criticism hurled at me (men say I have the best of both worlds, and I do, but I also have the worst of both worlds - I get drive-by mommied by both those who say I should work more and those who say I shouldn't work outside of the home at all). SAHMs get hit with a constant barrage of criticism for their choice (assuming it is one - Lots of moms can't find jobs). And employed moms get a constant barrage of criticism for not 'being there' for their kids. What we need to do is STOP criticising. Stop. Stop. Stop. There are pros and cons to both situations, and anyone who says differently is deluding him/herself in an attempt to validate his/her own decisions.
Ideally, men would share an equal responsibilty for child-rearing, and to be fair, more and more men are. But society hasn't caught up to that. Until it is a given that men must share an equal responsibility, we must stop punishing women for not being able to be employed full-time and look after their children full-time. We must stop telling women that they should be perfectly happy to be SAHMs, and that less than perfection is failure. And in the same light, we must stop telling women that they should be perfectly happy to work outside of the home. Society sets us up to fail. We are physically unable to do everything society wants of us (unless we're the magical WAHM who founds a Fortune 500 company during naptime, and keeps her house perfectly neat by following her children around picking up after them, and dusting, vaccuuming and the whole nine yards after the little one goes to sleep effortlessly at 7pm). So really, let's give up the quest for perfection, and work on making both situations happy, healthy choices. Let's support SAHMs with time for themselves, time to go out, time for intellectual development and a decided mortorium on the 'leeching of their husbands' attitude. Let's support employed mothers with subidized daycare, flexible hours, and an end to the 'you're failing your children by not being with them 24 hours a day' attitude.
I am in an unusual situation, myself. I quit my job and got pregnant that night (ha! Nice timing, me!) and couldn't get another job while pregnant. When my baby was about a year old, I was offered a temp job at my church as secretary. I jumped on it, on condition I could bring my kid with me. They said sure as long as I could do the work, they were happy. And it was only supposed to be 4 weeks or so. It's been 8 months now. I still bring my kid with me to work. And the reactions I get to this are PRICELESS.
Men (in general) say, "Wow! How perfect for you! You can earn money and not have to put the little guy into daycare!" Women (in general) look at me in horror and say, "OMG! How do you do both jobs at the same time?!" or they look at me skeptically and say, "Okay... I don't think *I* could manage that one".
Now, I like working because (a) I like being able to pay off my fucking massive student loans, (b) I like the conversations.
To (b), it's not that as a SAHM I can't have conversations. I can join baby groups and library groups and whatnot. But there's only so much of that I can stand. They tend to be women talking about their kids. *sigh* I want to talk about politics, religion, the news, etc. Not Little Billy's bout of constipation. At work, I get that.
As a SAHM, one thing that would help enormously would be time to do something just for me. Sports if I were into it (I'm not), a book club, I dunno. Something. So why don't I get out and do something like that? Well, in a nutshell, I feel like that'd put a burden on my husband. We both work all day, and then I go out and have social time? Hardly fair. It's also not unreasonable for me to expect that kind of support, I realize. But it's how I've been socialized.
The point of the original article, which struck me as "Women can be happy at work too", is an important point, as we're often told how women are happy at home, and only work because they have to (and are defective if they feel otherwise). And to say that this is an attack on SAHMs is just ridiculous. But I understand why SAHMs feel defensive. As someone who has it both ways, so to speak, I also get both sides of the criticism hurled at me (men say I have the best of both worlds, and I do, but I also have the worst of both worlds - I get drive-by mommied by both those who say I should work more and those who say I shouldn't work outside of the home at all). SAHMs get hit with a constant barrage of criticism for their choice (assuming it is one - Lots of moms can't find jobs). And employed moms get a constant barrage of criticism for not 'being there' for their kids. What we need to do is STOP criticising. Stop. Stop. Stop. There are pros and cons to both situations, and anyone who says differently is deluding him/herself in an attempt to validate his/her own decisions.
Ideally, men would share an equal responsibilty for child-rearing, and to be fair, more and more men are. But society hasn't caught up to that. Until it is a given that men must share an equal responsibility, we must stop punishing women for not being able to be employed full-time and look after their children full-time. We must stop telling women that they should be perfectly happy to be SAHMs, and that less than perfection is failure. And in the same light, we must stop telling women that they should be perfectly happy to work outside of the home. Society sets us up to fail. We are physically unable to do everything society wants of us (unless we're the magical WAHM who founds a Fortune 500 company during naptime, and keeps her house perfectly neat by following her children around picking up after them, and dusting, vaccuuming and the whole nine yards after the little one goes to sleep effortlessly at 7pm). So really, let's give up the quest for perfection, and work on making both situations happy, healthy choices. Let's support SAHMs with time for themselves, time to go out, time for intellectual development and a decided mortorium on the 'leeching of their husbands' attitude. Let's support employed mothers with subidized daycare, flexible hours, and an end to the 'you're failing your children by not being with them 24 hours a day' attitude.