Posted on 08/30/2010 5:42:29 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Could politics end the mommy wars?
What mommy wars, you ask? One short answer is: the ones that make for awkward silences at cocktail parties when a woman is asked what she does and she responds that she raises her children. The feminist revolution would have us believe that’s undignified.
That’s bunk. It always has been.
With the increased media presence of women of all political stripes, especially in politics — as candidates, as tea-party players and participants — that lie is being exposed in a whole new mainstream way, crowding out the delusion of the lamestream (to borrow one woman’s word). Exposing that lie in a reasoned, well-researched, sober way was the goal of a panel presented by the Susan B. Anthony List in Manhattan on the 90th anniversary of the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the constitutional right to vote.
At the heart of the reasonableness of it all was, as moderator Helen Alvaré of George Mason University put it, “women’s lived experience.” You can only mess with reality — and the natural law — for so long before your feminist fantasy is revealed to be misery.
The event, billed as “A Conversation on Pro-Life Feminism,” was both a primer on its existence and an attempt to replace the conventional approach to so-called women’s issues. Women are not and never have been a monolith, period, never mind a monolithic voting bloc.
And it was a real conversation. One aiming for real answers about real life, embracing just that. Not life as Ms. and academy radicals portray it.
W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia got to the heart of this mythological mommy war pitting stay-at-home moms against so-called working moms (I say so-called because they are all actually working), continuing the discussion with me after: “Many in the media and academy think working women are one way, and that stay-at-home wives and mothers are another way. This overlooks the fact that many women who work outside the home would like to work less or not at all. That is, they are working because they feel they have to, not because they want to.
“This is particularly true for women who self-identify as gender traditionalists — who believe men and women are fundamentally different, and that men should focus more on breadwinning and women should focus more on homemaking — or maternalists — who believe that infants and toddlers do best when they are cared for by their mother. It is also more likely to be true for women who have children currently in the home.”
Where is he getting this alternative to the conventional media/political/cultural understanding of the world? Wilcox bases his analysis on the 2000 National Survey of Marriage and Family Life, which, he explains, “indicates that, among married mothers with children in the home under 18, only 18 percent of married mothers would prefer to work full-time; by contrast, 46 percent would prefer to work part-time, and 36 percent would prefer to stay at home. Clearly, the most popular option for married mothers is part-time work, whereas only about one-fifth of these mothers would prefer to work full time.”
If it becomes tolerable, even in supposedly sophisticated circles, to admit the obvious — that men and women are fundamentally different — those numbers may even increase.
Feminists claim to be all about choice, yet many women in our feminist paradise seem to be doing what they really wouldn’t choose to do, given other options. Most working women would like to work fewer hours and be home with their kids. According to Wilcox, “74 percent of married mothers who are working full-time would prefer to work fewer hours or not at all.”
About half of American women, says Wilcox, are “adaptive”: They “have interests in both work and family, and . . . they seek to scale back their work when they have children in the home — especially infants and toddlers. But when they don’t have children, or their children are older, adaptive women are often interested in working outside the home on a full-time basis. So their orientation to work and family shifts over the life course, and according to the needs of their children.” So they’re not stay-at-home moms or working moms: They’re women who do what’s best for them and their families at a given time. They “don’t fit the standard conservative stay-at-home model or the liberal full-time-working-woman model. For that reason, they are often invisible in media and academic debates about work and family.”
Neither political party, says Wilcox, addresses these issues in a clear way. “This is particularly unfortunate when it comes to poor and working-class families, who are more likely to have wives and mothers working many more hours than they would like to. . . . Poor and working-class families are much more likely to break up than are affluent families, where women have more choices when it comes to juggling work and family,” he says.
Like a woman who goes from the PTA to being mayor of Wasilla? Wilcox does see this adaptiveness in some of the women we’ve been seeing this cycle. He points to Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in South Dakota, and Michele Bachmann in Minnesota. “These are candidates who have pursued a variety of work-family strategies in their effort to realize their dual commitments to family and public life over the years. And they don’t fit neatly in any boxes,” he says.
Wilcox tells me that “both parties could do a lot more to make it easier for women to realize their ideal work-family strategies by promoting public policies that encourage flexible work arrangements, dramatically expand the child tax credit, and add more off-ramps and on-ramps for women who are seeking to move out of or into the workforce.”
Will this authentic view of womanhood usurp the old political archetypes of what women want? The conversation has begun to rise above self-identified feminists’ assertions as to women’s desires. May it continue and bear fruit. And, whoever wins or loses, this is a whole new playing field in politics, one that more accurately reflects who American women actually are and, yes, what they really want. The American woman wants to annihilate this idea that career is everything. She wants a life. She wants life. And she wants help in being adaptive, not pressure to be something she’s not.
Liberals are horrified.
i know what women are looking for ... i chose my screen name carefully
YAY I finally have a name “gender traditionalist”.
I got into it here with a FReeper who said his wife needed to work. He said she WANTED to work, but gave quotes from her that said the opposite.
It was sad.
First was my mother at her and my dad's 50th wedding anniversary. All of these women from the old neighborhood sitting around a table sharing photos of grand children, laughing, talking, and generally having the time of their life. I should mention that all of these women, “threw their lives away” according to the feminist by staying at home and being full time mothers.
The second was being almost run into a guard rail at 60 miles an hour by a mini-van. The lady in the front seat was leaning over to see the rear-view mirror so she could put on her makeup. In doing so she drifted left into my lane. As I frantically tried to get her attention I noticed a small boy strapped into a car seat in the back seat. Next to him was a pet carrier. I'm sure that was a list somewhere that said “daycare, vet, work” and probably a few other items.
When I got her attention, she shrugged her shoulders and gave me a “sorry” expression. I sped up to get some distance and in the rear view mirror I could see her leaning over again.
Somehow I doubt there is a day in her future when she and life long friends will joyously reminisce about kids, family, and good old times. But, she is, "having it all."
My wife works full-time, but is able to work from home usually once a week. Economic realities these days make her salary necessary. Living in Boston, one of the most liberal places in the country, you would think women want to have their power careers and put family second. I have never met a woman in my wive’s circle that doesn’t want to stay home with their kids. So even in Boston, these women feel guilty leavuing their kids in the morning. The mortgage however, has to be paid.
And please spare me the “just move then” posts. You don’t just up and quit your well-paying job and move in this economy. You make do. You spend all the time you can with your kids and family and get your work done. I’d love to play with my kids all day, but I can’t. Welcome to adulthood.
It drives me crazy when I see articles that say, as this one days, “The American woman wants this, the American woman wants that ...”. What’s wrong with the American woman, then? Why can’t she show some gumption and have or achieve what she wants, without someone’s having to make her a charity case?
Okay, there’s societal pressure to hold a paying job. Who says one has to give in, if that’s not what one wants? Stand up, “American Woman,” and redefine yourself as a person who is capable of deciding what she values and acting on her principles, instead of being Jell-o.
I do believe that Kathryn Jean Lopez agrees that it is not to be monolithic either way - only career or only stay at home. I think she’s attacking the liberal view that screams career only. Clearly, there is an economic need for both spouses to work in many families. That said, the work should never be the first priority.
With the exception of some well paid professionals, or successful female business owners who make as much (if not more) than their husbands, most of the women that I know who work have little choice in the matter. Their husbands simply don’t make enough money to support the family on his own.
This position will pick up a lot of steam as the baby boomers retire, and as the economy continues to be flat. The jobless recovery will create new single parent families first not by choice, but then by choice. Many of these at home parents will be men too, due to the difficulty in finding work.
Oh. You can just do that? For women? People will be surprised - a lot of them are looking for "on-ramps into the workforce" right about now.
I don’t have kids, but when I do, I absolutely want my wife to stay home with the kids both to nurture them in their youth and teach them from home as they grow. That is a job both infinitely frustrating and infinitely rewarding, and I personally believe women are better suited than men.
Why can’t we revert to the mindset of the post-war 1950s? Women were women, men were men, kids were disciplined but learned and grew. We live in some sort of time warp where women are men, men are feminine, and kids are allowed to make adult decisions at age 8.
If you'll look back at graphs of women entering the marketplace, you'll find the huge increases starting in the mid 60’s through the mid 80’s. New find a graph of the inflation rate, and you will see double digits for most of those years.
Families became two earner incomes about the same time that the price of everything doubled. The young two income family people that work for us are (in my opinion) under much more financial pressure than my single earner parents ever were.
A house is a house, a car is a car, food is food. When those things cost twice as much, two incomes just get people back to even. What was lost in this process was the time women had for kids, community, schools, PTA, etc. Unfortunately, society didn't get much for that lost time, and without some kind of major shift, that time will never be regained.
No, she seems to be talking about a variety of vocational options. However, she then goes on to imply that it's the responsibility of someone other than each individual woman to facilitate the woman's choices.
As soon as anyone, man or woman, says that he or she has "no choice" but to engage in some activity they don't wish to, that person has chosen to define himself as helpless, rather than functional. This is what the author is doing on behalf of "American woman" ... saying that "she" isn't capable of making decisions and taking responsibility.
I am going to get myself in trouble here, but ...
This article is in a small way more self-centered, gender-centric angst.
While I DO agree with much of what is written (in fact I read nothing to disagree with) I am struck that so many women “feel” the discussion (and the issue) is all about women. All the time. Someone please play Toby Keith’s “I wanna talk about me”.
I think the discussion would be more legitimate and more interesting if it was about PARENTS and not, like, OMG, ‘whats a mother to do?’
I would suggest, specifically, that folks on either side of this issue spend as much time and emotional energy on the role of men (i.e., DADS) as they do coffee-klatching over the roles and conflicts of women.
OK, I’m done. Have fun.
I was successful when I practiced that occupation. Now I’m a domestic goddess, with eight children at home and one in the Coast Guard. (But I still have the spirit of an accountant ;-).
LOL - excellent comment!
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