Via Pandagon, I read another article that heaps hate on women with kids. She’s outraged that a periodical is geared to women of a certain economic background. Who’s reading Maxim, for God’s sake? She’s also outraged about other things, but I couldn’t finish reading it. Too much hate going on.
I just don’t get what is going on right now. Why all the gross characterizations, slurs, and anger? Why are we segmenting ourselves into these different subgroups of women based on our work and childbirth status? I would prefer to find commonalities, rather than beating each other up over who’s a better person while making sanctimonious statements about one’s own virtues.
Strange times.
Apt. 11d 
I saw this too and was absolutely disgusted. Rebecca Traister has “issues” surrounding women and moms. It’s really sad that this is what Salon’s incredible (and still missed) “Mothers Who Think” series has devolved too.
I actually don’t find the anger that hard to understand, though. Working conditions for most people are just horrid, as bad as I can remember in my lifetime. A lot of people — not just moms with kids — would like to get out. But since most Americans don’t want to admit how unhappy they are, anger gets directed not at the institutions responsible for our collective misery, but at those who manage some form of escape. And when those people are generally perceived to be wealthy, verging on middle-aged women with financial resources — well, let’s just say you’ve hit a trifecta in terms of resentment. Misogyny lives.
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A terrible article. Traister seems to be entirely humor and irony impaired. On the other hand, the magazine sounds kind of awful, too. No winners, here.
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Jen at MUBAR had an interesting post on this magazine just before Linda Hirshmangate: http://tomama.blogs.com/mubar/2005/11/the_national_po.html
I have to say I’m a little revolted by the anti-intellectualism I saw at http://www.darlashine.com (has anyone read Happy Housewives – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060859202/qid=1133892147/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0322943-3474540?n=507846&s=books&v=glance ?) From browsing it at amazon, it looks like a 12-step program for becoming a Stepford Wife. I think I’ll stick with Brain, Child magazine.
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Does this have something to do with living in a post-birth control world? The pill came out en force in what, 1965? So one theory would be that for the first time a sizable proportions of Americans have actively chosen to be or not to be parents.
My sense is that in the past there were plenty of parents who weren’t that thrilled about being parents and so didn’t make it a central part of their identity. That seems less the case these days, since parenthood is such a purposeful decision for so many. The result could be a larger cultural gap between the two groups than we’ve seen previously.
Just a theory. But I totally agree with Ellen as well, that I think it has a lot to do with crappy working conditions too.
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FWIW, I read all of the Salon article, and what the author wrote really spoke to me, as someone who doesn’t have kids. One of the things that the Salon author found horrifying, which I did too, was the degree to which the magazine lets men get away with not being involved in housework, childrearing, and so on. For instance,
In a feature called “Gettin’ CHOey,” the Total 180! ladies write that “We needed to validate, support and reassure one another. Lord knows our husbands can’t do that for us, and we shouldn’t expect them to — that’s what girlfriends are for.” Why is there no expectation of validation, support or reassurance from the husbands whose dinners they’re cooking? Did they all marry the Great Santini?
Yeah, why isn’t there? I think my husband would be pissed at the idea that he can’t validate, support, and reassure me.
I grant you that the Salon article author has some issues with motherhood etc., but when she’s interviewing the magazine founder, and the latter says that she thinks things were better in the past, that we need to put families first again, it’s kind of scary. Example:
Magazine founder: It seems like there’s a lot more weird stuff going on in society than there used to be.
Salon: Are you blaming the weird stuff on the feminist movement?
Magazine founder: No, not really. But you’ve got a lot of moms who tried to have it all and you’re seeing the results of that in that children were not getting as much dedicated attention as they were before when you had June Cleavers. I heard on TV recently that kids in grade school were giving oral sex to people for a dollar. I don’t know if that went on in the 1950s but I sure didn’t hear about it. I wasn’t around in the ’50s but you know what I mean. Why is that happening now?
Eesh. Now, granted, Salon author may be slanting this, I don’t know. But I actually had some sympathy for the author’s reaction.
But like I said, I’m not a mom. I just had to speak up for why something like this article made sense to me (parts of it, at least).
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The traditional family unit is a flawed set up for many reasons. Staying at home with kids is certainly not for everyone. The isolation and boredom is huge. It’s risky financially. Despite these problems, a lot of people end up in that situation either because they have few other employment options or because they have strong opinions about raising their children.
There are ways to work through an imperfect situation to increase the primary breadwinner’s involvement in homelife and to increase the childtender’s economic security. Letting the guys coast isn’t a great idea. But it happens (not around here). Partially the problem is that the spouses are working so many hours, they are NEVER at home. I have a friend who only sees her husband on weekends, because he gets in at 9 or 10 every night.
Why are housewives giving up on feminism? Ha. They probably read that they were gender traitors and cancelled their checks to planned parenthood. The feminists kicked them out of the movement, so the housewives are trying to find a time when they were appreciated.
That magazine does sound dreadful. I can’t imagine that it’s going to do well, but I also can’t believe that Fear Factor is still on television.
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Well Rebecca Traistor says she has no kids, and she sure sounds like it. I’m a tiny bit sympathetic. Self-righteous as she sounds, I don’t know that I would have “got” the black humor of Total 180 (which actually sounds like a pretty dreadful read to me) or, better, something like Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions until I had kids of my own.
I hope she’s misreading the “let out” idea. In my house, nobody makes evening plans without everyone’s approval. I check with my wife and my wife checks with me. When you’ve got kids to take care of, someone is always on the hook.
Both Traistor and Klett sound pretty clueless about poor women (like they’ve read about them in books). There’s actually a strong economic case for one parent in a working class family to stay home when contrasted against the cost of childcare and loss of the kind of home economies that a full-time parent can create.
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Yeah, Laura, I think my sympathy with the article is more based on my negative reaction to the magazine as described (not the existence of such a magazine, but the way it’s described) than sympathy with Traistor’s perspective per se – the magazine and its founders really turned me off. I definitely recognize that sometimes one spouse (in this scenario, the husband) is let off the hook at home because of necessity (not being home b/c they’re at work all the time, for instance), but given Henry’s point above about how both Traistor and the magazine founder sound pretty clueless about poor women, I doubt that’s necessarily what the magazine is thinking about.
I guess the difference in how I read the article, too, is that when Traistor asks, “Are you blaming the weird stuff on feminism?” I see her asking that one specific woman, who happens to be a housewife, about her view of feminism, and not arguing that housewives per se have given up on feminism.
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I just don’t get what is going on right now. Why all the gross characterizations, slurs, and anger? Why are we segmenting ourselves into these different subgroups of women based on our work and childbirth status? I would prefer to find commonalities, rather than beating each other up over who’s a better person while making sanctimonious statements about one’s own virtues.
What is a woman who says this:
“I heard on TV recently that kids in grade school were giving oral sex to people for a dollar. I don’t know if that went on in the 1950s but I sure didn’t hear about it. I wasn’t around in the ’50s but you know what I mean. Why is that happening now?”
in response to a question about feminism and working mothers doing, then? And it’s Traister who has issues?
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Can they both have issues?
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I also don’t get it.
My question — why the hell can’t people just be comfortable with their individual choices and why do they have to frame them in universal terms? I don’t think that women who stay home with their kids are betraying the feminist revolution like Hirshman says….and by the same token, I don’t think that staying home means that you should be glorified by yourself or others because you are creating these fabulously nurtured human beings who are going to contribute to society far more than the neglected kids whose moms go to work.
Forget commonalities — what about healthy acceptance of differences. Why are women so afraid that what other women do somehow reflects on their own choices? We’re not lemmings. We all have very different taste in clothes and television shows. Why can’t we acknowledge that everyone has a different approach to raising kids and running a household and move one?
I think that feminism happened because women didn’t want to be told that their only option was to stay home and cook and clean and nurture. And I think the anti-feminist backlash is happening because women with kids want to be told that they have return to work full-time after they have kids or they’re worthless “Desperate Housewives.”
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Go Allison!
I don’t want to have to go back to read that article, so I don’t want to spend too much time talking about what the author and interviewee said. From my quick skim, it seemed that author had a chip on her shoulder and the interviewee wasn’t that polished and didn’t really have a clear picture of her journal. She also trying to make light of problems that opting-out mothers face. I didn’t pick up that she was making any judgements about working women, but I don’t want to have to watch another Salon ad to check it out.
(I also don’t want to turn this blog into a single interest blog, so I am going to switch topics in a couple of days.)
I just don’t think that feminism has to mean working full time. (Elizabeth had a great post a few days about about litmus-test feminism.) Feminist goals can be won on many different fronts. Can we find a place in the feminist tent for women who don’t work full time? It makes sense politically to try to bring in as many women as possible, instead of restricting oneselves to such a small subset of women. It also makes sense philosophically. Who wants to send more women to be chewed up by capitalism? I believe to be fulfilled one has to has to be well rounded and not consumed by money and power.
Allison, I wish I had an answer to this question of yours: what about healthy acceptance of differences. Why are women so afraid that what other women do somehow reflects on their own choices? We’re not lemmings. We all have very different taste in clothes and television shows. Why can’t we acknowledge that everyone has a different approach to raising kids and running a household and move one?
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Salon gets all the blame from me.
You don’t commission a woman who is neither married nor a mother to assess a magazine for married mothers.
The Salon concept is so tired, it doesn’t even have any cute faux-naif value.
As a book editor (and ex-newspaper hack) I could also think of TEN articles off the top of my head that would be funnier/more germane to a decent magazine for defensive stay-at-homes than any of those mentioned.
Okay,well maybe five….:)
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Anne Lamott is even one of Salon’s columnists. Why didn’t they ask her to do the interview? I suspect it would have been more scathing and certainly much funnier, but far less clueless.
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here’s an interesting post by a guy who is trying to help his college students get a view of the road ahead, and family formation:
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=16201378&postID=113387472288101181
he’s trying, it looks to me, to get them to a position where young couples can think together about how they want to make it work
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I agree with the person who said Salon should have asked someone else to do the interview. I’m sure Rebecca Traister does a fine job of covering some things, but her utter cluelessness about what it’s like to be the mother of a family (staying home or working outside the home) made her entire anlysis completely hollow and senseless.
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