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."
I believe it. It would be interesting to adjust these figures for home size. Our parents (and grandparents) made do with much smaller homes than the present generation. Now it seems that new home buyers want to jump right into mansions (or what would be considered mansions to prior generations.)
Actually I understand the point very well, it's: Don't forget the importance of family and friends in the pursuit of money. Okay? I get it.
I was trying to enlarge the point, because I do know people who get to the end of their lives with regrets that they did not do more with their talents and abilities. That's my point, accept it or not as you will.
My position exactly.
Making ends meet is not exactly easy, but being able to say 'Okay, I'll take care of it' when hubby calls and says he won't be home to take her to little league practice makes all the difference.
I have been an at-home-mom for over 20 years. Recently, my husband was diagnosed with cancer. He has disability (short and long term) but if we have to go to the LTD we will see a drastic reduction in our income. I will probably be returning to the workforce and the question now is as what? So, yes, our daughters need to have the education to be able to be self-sufficent if need be and I would also encourage everyone to check exactly what your disability coverage will be for your household. If you find your disability will only pay a portion of your income then you have to ask yourself, “ ... if I become disabled and go on disability will my household sustain itself on 50, 60 or 70 percent of my current income?” If the answer is no then you need a disability supplemental policy (something like AFLAC). Check your policies TODAY and get the coverage you need so that you won’t have to continue working if you have to say be on chemo or some other most unpleasant experience ...
Which is not the same as saying *I wish I had spent more time at work.*
The quote was:
Not one person in the entire history of the human race has found themselves on their deathbed, poring over the totality of their victories, defeats, prides and regrets in this life, struggling to get out the last summation of their life’s meaning, said anything even remotely like, “I wish I’d spent more time at work.”
That's not the same as forgetting the importance of friends and family. No one regrets not spending more time slaving away at a job when all is said and done. That's how that post reads.
I sure have, and the numbers really should e reversed, and actually are in reality. But we're not talking about people dealing with reality here, are we?
I didn’t work for 18 years and then went back there as a floater. I was hired full time a while later and worked there 28 years. I was able to be at home with my three sons until the youngest was 12. I’m glad I could do that.
Good for you. He certainly has taken care of me all these years. Bless you.
Dan, I know from the experience of friends that many men are shafted horribly in family court. But this isn’t always the case. In our state alimony and child support awards are generated by a formula a computer spits out, about one-third of the husband’s income. This is true no matter who is guilty in the divorce. If the husband conceals income or assets, the spurned wife can get one third of nothing.
My sister does get child support for their son, but while that helps, a few hundred dollars a month is not enough for anyone to live on.
My neighbor’s husband left her for a young girl recently. She is a pretty woman but has some serious chronic health problems and had not worked in many years. Frankly she looks like death. I recommended her for an opening in our office and she now works there, making $10 an hour before withholdings. This is considered a poverty-level income in our area. She rented a little room in someone’s townhouse. Her husband points to the fact that she had a good job 20 years ago so he shouldn’t have to pay spousal support out of his six-figure income, but her health problems and lack of work history make it tough for her to get a decent job again. The field has changed greatly since the last time she worked, and i don’t think she has the strength to get additional training anyway. She’s not seeing a penny in alimony and on $10 an hour she doesn’t have the funds to hire a lawyer. So you see, it’s not just men who get the shaft.
The average American house is not 3000 square feet. The average American family does not own two SUVs or take a cruise every year. It's a completely unjust generalizaton to say that "most working women" are working to pay for 4 TVs and a cruise every year. Since there are perhaps 100 million women working in this country now, are you seriously suggesting that "most" of them--what, sixty million? Seventy million?--take a cruise annually? That would be a lot of cruise ships.
Yeah, but sometimes to do more with your talent and abilities, you *do* have to spend more time at work. That pithy quote assumes that in the end, spending more time at work is fruitless and it brooks no argument to the contrary. I'm just saying that this is not as clear-cut as one would think and quite frankly that quote does have a bit of a condescending tone regarding the nobility of work -- or as we would say, "spending more time at the office."
my daughters, ages 12 and 18, both want to be stay at home moms when they grow up. and i fully support them in that, i told them i hope they find a spouse who will help them to be able to do that. but in the meantime, they are going to go to college and have some sort of career that they can fall back on, because you never know what can happen— husbands can leave, husbands can die and i also don’t want them to be in the position of NEEDING to stay with a man because they had no way to make it on their own.
Exactly. You are a smart lady. My daughter and my sister’s child are both in college now. The idea of not going to college was never considered. I told her also that if she wants to stay home with the kids she’d better marry a man who can bring in an income. Being a stay-at-home mother is probably not going to be an option if she marries an actor, a writer, a singer, etc.
I was on bedrest for 10 weeks when I was pregnant with my twins. We had to put my 2 year old son in daycare because I couldn’t take care of him. However, since I was a stay-at-home mom, we couldn’t write off the daycare expense. We called the IRS to see if there was an exception for when the mom had a disability, but no there were no exceptions.
There absolutely should be exceptions for cases such as yours.
That’s it. We make sure that we can take care of our families if something happens to our husband (lost job, illness, death, divorce). We also make sure we teach our daughters that they have to be able to take care of themselves if something happens to their husband.
Too many women don’t know how to handle the finances and don’t have many skills that could be transferred to the workforce.
I’ve already been offered jobs, but they just don’t pay enough for me to quit staying at home. I would take them if something happened to my husband.
I need to come back to this thread when I have more time for perusal...
You’re on it, m’dear!
i am a lawyer and have been lucky enough to be able to work part time ever since i had kids. had my employer insisted on full time, i would have quit. one of my best friends from law school had her first child at 6 mo. gestation, extreme preemie [she survived and is an honor student in college now, but it was touch and go 18 years ago]so she never went back to work and she kept my kids for me the 3 days that i went into the office. i truly think i had the best of both worlds because the flexibility of my schedule meant i never had to miss a field trip or school party etc. was a room mother for all three of their classes for years and years.
I want on please.
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