Posted on 04/06/2007 2:22:32 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
NEW YORK — "Something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives," the late Betty Friedan wrote in "The Feminine Mystique," her groundbreaking 1963 book attacking the idea that a husband and children were all a woman needed for fulfillment.
That book effectively launched the modern women's movement. But more than four decades later, writer Leslie Bennetts is trying to sound a very similar message. In "The Feminine Mistake" — the title's no accident — she argues that many young mothers have forgotten Friedan's message, embracing a 21st-century version of the 1950s stay-at-home ideal that could imperil their economic future as well as their happiness.
Needless to say, the book isn't going down smoothly with everyone — especially mothers who've chosen to stay home with their children.
"She's stereotyping stay-at-home moms," says an annoyed Debbie Newcomer, mother of a 14-month-old baby in Richmond, Texas. "This is my personal decision. I'm a better mom by staying at home."
Bennetts says she never intended to issue the latest salvo in the "Mommy Wars" — that long-running, angst- and guilt-ridden debate over whether mothers should stay home with their children. And she says she's surprised by the reaction.
"The stay-at-home moms are burning up the blogosphere denouncing me," she mused over coffee this week. "They're saying I must be divorced, childless, bitter, lonely and angry to be writing this." (Bennetts, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, has two children with her husband, a fellow journalist.) "Clearly, I've struck a nerve."
Bennetts says she merely wanted to present factual evidence that there are great risks involved when a woman gives up economic self-sufficiency — risks she may not be thinking of during those early years of blissful, exhausting parenting.
Divorce. A husband losing his job. A husband dying. All of those, Bennetts warns, could be catastrophic for a woman and her children. And if the woman decides she'll get back to her career later, once the kids are ready? Stop dreaming, Bennetts says — a woman takes a huge salary hit after a relatively short time of being absent from the work force — that is, if she can get back in at all.
The author's arguments ring true to Anita Jevne, a mother in Eau Claire, Wis. A medical technologist who's worked for the past 28 years, Jevne says she's tried to stress to her daughters, now 16 and 19, that they need to be financially independent: "You can't assume a man is going to take care of you."
When Jevne's husband was hurt four years ago at the salvage yard where he'd worked since he was 16, the family had to depend on Anita's income while he recovered and worked toward getting a new job. "If I hadn't gone to school and gotten a degree, if I had stayed home, we would have been in big trouble," she says.
Beyond the financial necessity, Jevne always enjoyed having a world outside the home to be part of. "You're part of a community," she says. "You're giving something." That's the second message Bennetts says she's trying to impart — that there's a crucial sense of self-worth to be gained outside the home.
Some women find her views condescending, saying they deny the value of childcare in the home and assume that stay-at-home mothers haven't put enough thought into their decisions.
"I objected to her saying we haven't thought it out," says Newcomer, the Texas mother who saw Bennetts interviewed on NBC's "Today" this week, but hasn't read the book.
A college graduate and a former financial analyst for a casino, she said she's certainly considered the consequences of staying home with her daughter, and has made contingency financial plans. "And I completely understand that when I go back, it's going to be a lot harder to get a job," she says. "I know I'll have to start from the ground up."
Newcomer doesn't buy Bennetts' contention that because children are young for so short a time, it's foolish to give up an entire career in exchange for, at most, 15 years at home.
"I look at it the other way," says Newcomer. "They're only young once. So, how much time can I spend with them and make them better for society?"
When Cara Boswell watched the "Today" interview along with her husband, they discussed it for a long time afterwards. "I found it kind of insulting," she said.
Boswell, 30, of Lakeland, Fla., was in college when she became pregnant with the first of her four children. "I feel they need me now," she says. But she's optimistic she'll have options in the work force down the road. "I don't feel panicked," she says. "I really feel the author was too bleak."
One point Bennetts illustrates in her book is how money plays a role in the "opt-out" phenomenon (women choosing to leave the work force): some affluent, highly educated women are doing it because, essentially, they can — it's a sign of wealth.
But Bennetts has also been criticized for speaking only about this small percentage of affluent women.
"The author and the writers who cover the book brand at-home moms as a bunch of Pilates-class taking, regular pedicure planning women with nothing else to do but pick out window treatments," wrote Jen Singer on her blog for stay-at-home moms, MommaSaid.
Bennetts says her book is about all women — those who work at McDonald's as well as those with Harvard law degrees. "The benefits of work were really clear at all levels," she says.
She's disappointed by how difficult it is to write anything these days about women's lives. "Women are so defensive about their choices that many seem to have closed their minds entirely," she says.
But Singer, of the MommaSaid blog, acknowledged the book has a point. "Too many at-home moms don't have financial backup," she wrote. "A friend of mine cashed in everything that was in her name to put into a home renovation. So if hubby leaves her, she's got no liquid funds in her name to fall back on."
Yet she added: "Why is there a 'wrong' and a 'right' way to mother in the U.S.? I will pick up the book and read it ... but I'll probably curse a lot."
Let me clarify: Most of the “working” Moms I know.
My daughter is 15. A month ago she got her first "real" boyfriend.
All thoughts I had about doing something outside the home flew out of my head. Right now I am her confidant, her adviser, her guardian... at the very least, I'm a *presence* that holds her accountable.
She's a very good girl, but I don't trust any teenager. I feel that she needs me now more than ever.
That's fabulous. My mom was a SAHM and was the absolute LAST person on earth I would have talked to at that age, I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 17, and still wouldn't have talked to her.
I agree completely. And I am now doing the hardest work I have ever done, bar none. Raising children.
“You have to add in some of our extravagences to the equation.”
Toys and entertainment has actually gotten cheaper over the years. It’s housing that is the killer.
The average home in 1950 was 3.3 times the average income, in 2000 it was 4.2 times and in 2005 it was 6.7 times.
The average new car in 1950 was 58% of the average annual income, in 2000, 66% and it hasn’t moved much since.
Entertainment and communication are now dirt cheap. An average television in 1950 was 19% of the average annual salary. In 2000, a good television cost just 3% of the average salary, and a good computer cost just 7%. You could buy 13 average televisions today for the price of one in 1950. A 10-minute phone call from New York to LA in 1950 would cost $51 in today’s dollars.
That’s what it sounded like to me, too.
I am 33 male, married with no kids. For the most part, my friends who have wives that are stay at home mom's fit the above quote. All of my friends complain that their wives expect not to have to cook or clean (the have cleaning ladies and go out to dinner or order in), are either fat or have personal trainers, and run up thousands of dollars on credit cards shopping for designer clothes or things they want to decorate the house. Basically, they live a life of luxury, expect to do no work and do not, in any way, fit the traditional role of house wife.
My mom was a stay at home mom and the only thing my dad had to do was go to work and mow the lawn. My mom ran the house and took care of everything else. A woman who does that adds tremendous value to a family. A stay at home mom that feels she is entitled to a life of luxury does not. I think most stay at home moms in my generation do not earn their keep.
Just an anecdote: I walked away from a “career path” to go home and raise my babies when they were 2 & 3 years old
A relative of ours did the same thing. Somewhat by accident she subsequently created a business that grew like topsy while she was raising her kids and she always was able to structure her hours around her kids. Her decision to ‘walk away from’ what seemed like a career resulted in a much better financial reward as well as many great memories of time with her kids when they were small.
” what used to take a father some 40 hours a week (back in the 1950’s) to support a family now takes a mother and a father working some 60-70 hours plus each week just to maintain the same economic level.”
I agree that taxes are too high, but the other problem are expectations of what constitutes a middle class life. In the 1950’s the average family lived in a 1,200 square foot house, kids shared bedrooms, had one car, might have had one TV, and felt lucky to take a vacation where they drove a few hours and camped once every three years.
Now people expect to live in a 3,000 square foot houses where every kid has their own rooms, they have 4 TV’s and everyone has a cell phone, drive two SUV’s, and take a cruise every year. I expect that most working women are working to pay for that excess.
“Women are so defensive about their choices that many seem to have closed their minds entirely,” she says.
I don’t think it’s that our minds are closed...it’s that so MANY of us eventually figured out that the NOW Hags and the Code Pink freaks and Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, et al were/are basically full of sh*t!
I’m a firm believer that a woman (or a man) CAN have it all...just not all at once! I had an awesome military career, but then I settled down to Motherhood in my mid-30’s when I was centered and ready for it.
Some women are ready at 20. Some are never ready. Some put career above all else, and if that works for them, fine.
We have a WEALTH of choices, Ladies. As modern, American women, we have the world by the tail! :)
Divorce. A husband losing his job. A husband dying. All of those, Bennetts warns, could be catastrophic for a woman and her children. And if the woman decides she'll get back to her career later, once the kids are ready? Stop dreaming, Bennetts says — a woman takes a huge salary hit after a relatively short time of being absent from the work force — that is, if she can get back in at all.
Blissful? Clearly this female has no clue what life is really about.
As far as some catastrophe causing a woman to need a job and she won't be prepared by not working; I should worry about something that's not likely to happen to me? Those are lousy reasons for insisting a woman go out into the workplace.
There's so much wrong with her thinking that it's unreal.
You really missed the point of that one.
Then quit telling me that my choice is substandard. I'm doing what I want and enjoying it. That's not good enough? You don't like the way I'm being fulfilled? Too bad.
She's closed he mind entirely to the possibility that someone might want something other than what she thinks they should do.
Put me on, please.
Divorce. A husband losing his job. A husband dying. All of those, Bennetts warns, could be catastrophic for a woman and her children. And if the woman decides she'll get back to her career later, once the kids are ready? Stop dreaming, Bennetts says — a woman takes a huge salary hit after a relatively short time of being absent from the work force — that is, if she can get back in at all.
This author raises a very good point. Girls who either fail to receive an adequate education, or let their marketable skills decline, will have a very tough time re-entering the workplace if they need or wish to. I've told the girls in my high school Sunday School class that they need to be able to be self-reliant, and able to support a family in the event their husbands cannot.
At the same time, there are some careers that are tough to manage if you take time off. I wouldn't recommend someone who really wants to stay at home with her kids go to law school, for instance. Law is tough to stop and pick up again.
Thoughts?
Great!!!
I would LOVE to live in a 1,200 sqaure foot house.
Granted, mine is not much less than that, but my “garden” is more than 5 times that size.
**snicker** I love zapping them along with you Gabz. A masters from UVA opens many doors and shuts many mouths. :)
Unfortunatley, as I said, there are those on both sides that will condemn us no matter the choice we make.
But there is no denying how correct you are, we do have our choices, and for that I will always be thankful to the original movers and shakers of the "women's movemtn" no matter how much I disagree with the turn they have now taken.
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