New mothers with husbands in the top 20 percent of earnings work least, the report notes. As Ernest Hemingway said, the rich do have more money. So they also have more freedom to leave their jobs. But why do they take the option? It’s easier in the short term, sure, but it’s easier to forgo lots of things, like going to college or having children at all. People don’t — nor should they — always do the easier thing.
What an insulting, ignorant remark. The easier thing? When I get home at the end of most days, no matter how difficult a time I've had at the office, it's not been as demanding as my wife has had raising three small children and taking care of the house. In what sense do stay-at-home moms take the "easier" route? They, and their families, give up the extra income, as well as the personal satisfaction obtainable through office work. They also give up the security of having built a career to fall back on if something were to happen to their husbands, leaving them the sole breadwinner. They invite the scorn of many in their generation who, like Linda Hirshman, denigrate homemaking.
And for what? For the sake of putting their children first, and not handing them off to strangers to raise.
Everybody gets pissy about this issue, because women on both sides feel judged by the other side. I don't want to get into that fight. I know mothers who work because they choose to, and I know mothers who work because they have to to make ends meet. Julie and I chose the stay-at-home option because we believe it's the right thing to do, but also because we are fortunate enough to be able to afford it. Contra Linda Hirshman, it was in no way an easy decision to make.
Hirshman again:
Should we care if women leave the work force? Yes, because participation in public life allows women to use their talents and to powerfully affect society. And once they leave, they usually cannot regain the income or status they had.
Yes, because you see, children raised with the emotional security and character-building opportunities that come with having their mothers fully available to them at home, their mothers aren't using their talents "to powerfully affect society." Because in Hirshman World, the only measures that count are income and professional status. What elitist nonsense.
Hirshman:
That the most educated have opted out the most should raise questions about how our society allocates scarce educational resources. The next generation of girls will have a greatly reduced pool of role models.
In Hirshman World, education is only useful if it can be applied to salaried work. None of the liberal education that my children's mother received at university could possibly be of use in forming the character and the intellect of our three. We have a little girl, actually, and I think her mother and the other intelligent, well-educated women we know who have chosen to put family over career are exemplary role models for her, even if she ultimately chooses to become a career woman (and I'm grateful that our girlchild has that path open to her).
Hirshman:
Labor statistics are always couched in such dry language, but it reveals a powerful reality: working mothers, rich and poor, struggle with their competing commitments. Now that we have seen the reality, it is time to address it.
Here's a powerful reality: women struggle with their competing commitments because they can't have it all. I'd be in favor of changing laws or the tax code to help working women -- many of whom have no choice but to work, given our economy -- better balance the demands made on them. But what I strongly reject is the idea that there is nothing lost to children of two-income families who spend a lot of time being raised by strangers in childcare. If that's the choice you make, Linda, own it. Don't try to make yourself feel better about the choice you made by putting down women who have made the difficult and countercultural choice to be a traditional mom.
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Well, that's the whole old-school feminist thinking that women should act exactly like men, and that traditionally female roles like motherhood are obviously inferior to traditionally male roles like breadwinner. I would venture that THAT mindset is much more damaging to young girls growing up (Sweetie, you don't matter AT ALL unless you are behaving exactly like men, who by the way are all pigs!) than to daughters being raised by stay-at-home or minimally-employed mothers -- who, might I add, usually are very involved in school, church and community and thus powerfully affect society, at the grass-roots level.
That being said, six-and-half years of stay-at-home momness to three small children very nearly put me over the brink! It was a relief to find a part-time job when they were of school and preschool ages. Perhaps if I was one of the wealthy Wall Street women the author referenced, I could hire a full-time nanny for the little darlings while I played tennis and got facials; I cannot think of any other scenario in which staying home with the kids is "easier" than working!
Salamander, far be it from this man to suggest to a woman how she should view feminism... but I'm 51, and my older sisters and mother waxed derisive to anyone, man or woman, who suggested in their presence that women should act exactly like men. I wonder if you had a restricted exposure to feminism. In my experience, only men who have an anti-feminist agenda insist the feminists want to do away with [fill-in-the-blank]. They cannot justify their opposition to things like equal pay or removing other forms of gender discrimination, so they resort to scare tactics.
MPS, I don't know if you're going to read this, but THANK YOU for your extended discussion of "porchfront therapy" and stay-at-home (SAH moms.) What you say has been totally true in my experience. I am personally convinced that women are not generally not "designed" to raise small children alone, in isolation. I have three grown and almost-grown children that I raised at home and (mostly) homeschooled. We live on one income. Many people move to cheaper areas, as MPS describes. This helps with the mortgage, but often takes them away from family/old friend networks. Many of us who have lived in the same community for 25 years can also find that SAH moms are essentially alone all day on a deserted street, depending on where they live. Of course they besiege their husband when he comes home (with consequent problems.) I don't have an answer. The cycle of continuity between generations has been broken by overemphasis on careers, upward mobility, and relocation at the drop of a hat. Perhaps the first step is to simply stay where one lives and treat any existing networks as more valuable than the financial rewards of relocation.
Perhaps living in the same place is the essential beginning for cultivating a "sense of place." Re: the article. The noblesse oblige argument made me laugh - You went to an Ivy? How can you WASTE it? You have a DUTY! Yadda yadda. It's also entirely untrue that one has to be "rich" to have a mom at home. However, what a family does need is medical insurance. That's the big divider. I tell young couples what a wiser, older woman told me 25 years ago - live on the larger of two incomes; save the lower. Buy a house that has a mortgage you can pay on one income. Get used to it. Ironically, her sage advice has been echoed in a book by a Harvard bankruptcy lawyer called The Two-Income Trap - very good discussion from a financial standpoint (no culture wars rhetoric.)
If we would be content with smaller houses and smaller less-expensive cars, less clothing in our closets, basically less of every materialistic thing, then women of every income level could stay home if they wanted to do so! But we are so hung up on having the biggest and the best and the most that we make it impossible for women to stay home. "Two Income Trap"
I deal with woman like her all the time.
Now that my children are teen people ask me even more if I will go back to work now. I just tell them no my children need my guidance now more than ever!
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