I spent hours this week fending off attacks from spammers, so I’m going to plant a little bomb and get reaction from you all. I’ll let you do the heavy lifting today.
Flanagan writes in Time magazine that despite having all the liberal credentials — voting Democratic, pro-choice, pro-environment — she finds no love from the Democratic party.
But despite all that, there is apparently no room for me in the Democratic Party. In fact, I have spent much of the past week on a forced march to the G.O.P. And the bayonet at my back isn’t in the hands of the Republicans; the Democrats are the bullyboys. Such lions of the left as Barbara Ehrenreich, the writers at Salon and much of the Upper West Side of Manhattan have made it abundantly clear to me that I ought to start packing my bags. I’m not leaving, but sometimes I wonder: When did I sign up to be the beaten wife of the Democratic Party?
Here’s why they’re after me: I have made a lifestyle choice that they can’t stand, and I’m not cowering in the closet because of it. I’m out, and I’m proud. I am a happy member of an exceedingly “traditional” family. I’m in charge of the house and the kids, my husband is in charge of the finances and the car maintenance, and we all go to church every Sunday.
I’ve read other bloggers scoff at this statement (links when I have time). They say that Flanagan is being judged harshly because she judges others harshly. They also say that it is natural to assume that Flanagan is a Republican, because she never writes about the environment or abortion.
Well, to be fair to Flanagan, she isn’t the first one to say this. While single women are highly likely to vote Democratic, married women seesaw between the two parties. Church going women in traditional relationships say don’t feel they fit in. They say that they are being sneered at.
If liberals are supposed to be non-judgy about lifestyle choices, shouldn’t liberals accept women who want to appoint their husbands as head of the household? (Tangent — You know the IRS made me declare that Steve was the head of the household. I really let my poor, 80 year old accountant get an earful.)
Should the Democratic party bring the housewife into the party tent? Does the Democratic party have a PR problem with the mommies? Can you have traditional family values and still vote for Kerry n’ Crew? Or is Flanagan being too sensitive?
(Thanks, Jeremy.)
Apt. 11d 
Liberals don’t hate Flanagan because of the lifestyle choice she made; they hate her because of her judgment of other (mostly working) mothers. Heck, I am a stay-at-home mom in a traditional family and no one would ever mistake me for a Republican, even when I talk about traditional values, because I don’t blame crazy liberals and modern society for all of the nation’s woes.
That being said, the Democratic party could do a better job of approaching cultural issues (especially related to sex) or religion that many traditional families feel strongly about when it comes to raising kids in a good environment.
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Let me get this straight, she’s writer who is published in Time magazine and she wants to be considered a housewife in a “traditional” relationship. What tradition is that?
I think people need to get over themselves.
She is a working mom with the luxury of defining herself as “traditional” because she is the one creating the definitions by virtue of the many ears she fills with her opinions disguised as “fact”.
I’m about to abandon the Democratic party meself because I don’t think they’re doing enough to stop the steamroll of the last 6 years, but that is another story.
(Long-time reader…I always enjoy your comments and links and stories Ms. 11d. Thanks for giving me something good to read!)
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Kim already said it, but I don’t think the Democratic Party as an institution is hostile to women who are SAHM. Flanagan has been riding a wave of publicity by flogging a message that *all* women *should* be housewives and that they *should* be happy doing that (while at the same time hiring a nanny to take care of her own kids). That strikes many people as more congruous with the social conservatism of the Republican Party. I mean, she told Stephen Colbert that a woman is better off being dependent on a man even the man is abusive. Yes, I know he ambushed her with it, but he gave her the opportunity to back off and she reaffirmed it, rather than acknowledging the contradiction in her position, especially at the extremes.
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IMHO Flanagan’s not really talking about the Democratic party. She seems shocked that others are taking her to task for her wild rantings in the media. This makes me wonder if she really believes what she writes, or if she’s just adopted a specific persona to sell her work? Did anyone read the Elle piece on Flanagan, where she dishes dirt on her very close friends, and her close friends blow it off? Maybe it’s all just posturing.
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Given everything Caitlin Flanagan has told us about herself and her past (father on Berkeley faculty, mom deep into boycotts and activism, lives in California, is a former teacher) and her approving use of quotes from Ehrenreich, the fact that she self-identifies as a liberal Democrat is not huge surprise.
I think Flanagan is at a very dangerous place in her career, and is at some risk of turning into a female Democratic version of Andrew Sullivan. For a while Sullivan combined a number of apparently contradictory roles (gay Catholic Republican), wrote beautifully and engagingly, did very original work, and won a hearing for his views from many people who would not normally have had any sympathy for them. Unfortunately, as one note has started to predominate over the others, he has lost his cross-over appeal, while at the same time enjoying more (if I’m not mistaken) worldly success than he did as a more conflicted writer. I’m afraid something analogous may be happening to Flanagan
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Jen, I’ve wondered the same thing. no answers.
I’ve read all the criticisms of flanagan, and believe me, she deserves much of it. But you know, the critics never say “even though Flanagan is out to lunch, there is nothing wrong with being a housewife. Housewives perform vital services for the community, and their contributions are vastly underappreciated by society. It would be nice if more people had the opportunity to pick their kids up from the bus stop at 3:30.”
A little political correctness wouldn’t hurt the cause.
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Laura, do you feel that critiques of Flanagan are to a certain extent critiques of anyone staying home? That she’s somehow advocating for something that’s not valid?
My problems with Flanagan are very long-running and they have to do with her hypocrisy. She is not a true stay-home mom. She is a person with a large personal staff whose paid work happens inside her home.
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What is the Democratic Pary supposed to do to be less judgemental towards housewives? All politicians heap praise on home, hearth, family, etc. Some people have hurt Flanagan’s feelings at cocktail parties, but I seriously doubt they’re Democratic party operatives.
Furthermore, marriage might as well be compulsory for anyone seeking higher office. For example, Russ Feingold absolutely needs to have a wife in order to have a shot at the Democratic nomination.
Flanagan evidently feels insecure in high-flying cultural circles because she spends a lot of time at home with her children and writing about motherhood. So what? People get snubbed at cocktail parties all the time, usually for bad reasons by people with bad manners.
Flanagan is so self-centered that she thinks her social anxiety is a microcosm for the entire American political process.
If I had to guess, based on her writing and her appearance on Colbert, she gets snubbed by smart people because she’s a lightweight. She giggles and writes about fluff. No, home and family AREN’T fluff. Flanagan’s elegantly styled musings about her privileged existence are fluff. She has zero intellectual heft. I’m not surprised that smart snobs at cocktail parties vibe her.
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What do I think? Well, I don’t think that the Democratic party honchos have a problem with housewives, as Lindsay said. But I think that Ehrenreich and the lovely ladies of Salon do. Women who aren’t in the workforce make them very uncomfortable. Where were they a few months ago when Hirshman was stomping around?
The Democratic party may not have a problem with housewives, but high profile spokespeople for the Democratic party do. And I think it’s hurting their cause.
Look Flanagan shouldn’t be surprised that her writing ticked people off. If you make controversial statements, you have to be prepared for that. I just think that mixed into the criticism of Flanagan’s idea was some disgust with her lifestyle.
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I don’t know Laura, I think the disgust with her lifestyle is with her hypocrisy, not her “staying home” (as many other commenters have said).
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Which high profile spokespeaple for the Dems have a problem with housewives? Hirshman? Ehrenreich? The lovely ladies at Salon? Last I checked noen of those folks were by any means voices for the Dems. Can you imagine any of them running for office on a Dem ticket? Instead we have
People think Flanagan is a Republican because she seems like a selfish hypocrite. And, yup, we liberals think that many Republicans are hypocrites (and that many hypocrites are Republican), because it’s a consequence of thinking that you can order other people’s lives for them while not imposing the costs of those orders on yourself. As far as I can tell, Flannagan doesn’t and didn’t actually take care of her kids any more so than I do (and I work outside the home fulltime).
Surely there has to be a better advocate for housewives than Flanagan?
Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I do criticize the choice accept gender-based divisions of duties, what I see Flanagan advocating (but not living).
bj
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yikes, forgive the typos.
Which high profile spokespeaple for the Dems have a problem with housewives? Hirshman? Ehrenreich? The lovely ladies at Salon? Last I checked none of those folks were by any means voices for the Dems. Can you imagine any of them running for office on a Dem ticket? Instead we have the soccer moms, like Pat Murray.
People think Flanagan is a Republican because she seems like a selfish hypocrite. And, yup, we liberals think that many Republicans are hypocrites (and that many hypocrites are Republican), because it’s a consequence of thinking that you can order other people’s lives for them while not imposing the costs of those orders on yourself. As far as I can tell, Flannagan doesn’t and didn’t actually take care of her kids any more than I do (and I work outside the home fulltime).
Surely there has to be a better advocate for housewives than Flanagan?
Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I do criticize the choice to accept (or demand) gender-based divisions of duties, what I see Flanagan advocating (but not living).
bj
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“Surely there has to be a better advocate for housewives than Flanagan?”
Unfortunately, that’s a built-in difficulty. Insofar as a woman is professionally advocating for housewives, she’s not a housewife, so she’s a “hypocrite.”
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I don’t think the democrats do a good job with the housewife set. Most of the initiatives they promote have to do with helping women in the workforce. They have not aggressively pursued anything to help parents who want to stay at home. They’ve not pursued, for example, a more liberal FMLA that would pay people to stay at home. When they discuss women, they discuss either the pro-choice issue or gender/pay equity in the work force. If you look at their official agenda (http://www.democrats.org/agenda.html), there’s no specific mention of women at all.
I’m currently quite pissed at the Democratic party for lots of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with childrearing or gender, but I don’t see anything to recommend them in those areas either.
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“Unfortunately, that’s a built-in difficulty. Insofar as a woman is professionally advocating for housewives, she’s not a housewife, so she’s a “hypocrite.””
Not at all. A woman can write/talk about her former life as a housewife, and there’d be no hypocrisy there. The issue is that Flanagan has never really been a housewife, even under her own definition.
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Flanagan isn’t outside the workforce! She’s a working parent who works from home. Her book deal was probably worth more than most American families make in a year. It’s absurd to pretend that her husband works and she doesn’t.
Far from being transgressive, her lifestyle is normative amongst the urban intelligentsia. I seem to recall that Barbara Ehrenreich had a similar arrangement when her kids were young.
So, if Flanagan is getting vibed at cocktail parties, it’s not because she’s a full-time SAHM. Anyone who is publishing in the Atlantic and going on Colbert will be perceived as being not only “in the workforce”, but as having a high-powered career.
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I’d also have to say I find Flanagan’s arguments here ill-reasoned:
* she got her gig at The Atlantic after impressing Benjamin Schwartz at dinner parties, who was also married to her dear friend Christina, so I find it hard to believe she’s being cast out from her social circles– and I’m not guessing that, it’s been cited in profiles of her before.
* I also find it interesting that she cites Ehrenreich and Salon, who happen to be the writers who took her to task on all the fallacies and inaccuracies in her “serfdom” essay. Sounds to me like she can dish it, but not take it.
* I still find it puzzling that anyone would consider her a housewife, at all– just because she wants to claim it doesn’t mean she is.
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Just some history. Ehrenreich’s original problem with Flanagan was that she thought that she was bashing her daughter who worked full time. She didn’t care if Flanagan used a nanny, because her daughter used one. I remember finding Ehrenreich’s reaction so puzzling, because Ehrenreich had written a great book on the nanny problem. It’s funny how this debate about childcare gets so personal so quickly.
I don’t want to get into the loser position of defending Flanagan. I’ve criticized her a lot in the past for the contradictions and the sloppiness in her writing. The feminism slams at the end of her pieces, I have always just blipped over because they seemed to be after thoughts and were too weak to even care about.
Is Flanagan a hypocrite? I guess it depends on how you define housewife. Is a housewife someone who spends most of their time at home, has the primary responsibility for the childcare, and whose husband just mows the lawn? If so, then that does describe her (and myself). She never writes that a housewife shouldn’t make money. But that is also one her problems — she never defines her terms. That bothers me more than the fact she had a nanny.
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I don’t see a problem with employing a home childcare worker–provided you pay them well and provide good working conditions.
Obviously, it would be better if we had more generous parental leave in this country, more tolerance for part-time work, and a national daycare system.
Even so, if you’re in a position to hire a nanny at a good wage, more power to you.
Flanagan claims that she has a very traditional lifestyle. She doesn’t. She has a thoroughly modern upper-class two-career marriage, like Barbara Ehrenreich’s daughter and (I’d guess) the majority of the lovely ladies at Salon over 30.
She’s not advocating for housewives, either, except insofar as she presents her own fantasy lifestyle as superior to other people’s ways of life. If she were advocating for housewives, she might talk a bit about policy (especially in, say, Time Magazine)–instead she goes with her usual schtick–bashing other people instead of talking about ideas.
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Isn’t this just Flanagan’s contribution to the ongoing debate about how the Democratic Party can win in 2006 and 2008? Written in typical Flanagan style (i.e., all about her, and her supposedly-under-attack life choices)?
I’d really like to talk about whether the way to “win back” “traditional” families is via altering the Democratic party positions (or perceived positions) on abortion, gay rights, and the sanctity of the family (usually code both for traditional family and teenage sexuality ideals), or whether we need to talk about why people persistently vote against their own economic interests. Why does the Democratic Party accede to the Republican swindle of the real middle class, not to mention the poor? People hear “tax cut” and believe it will change their lives, even when the median household won’t see a dime. And the Democrats stand around talking about how to change our abortion position?
Even the New York Times, in outlining the differences between AMT increases and capital-gains decreases in a recent article, headlined the article “AMT attacks the middle class” — no where in the copy did anyone address how the actual chart revealed that, for folks earning between $100K and $200K, the AMT change would average $971, while for folks in in the $75K to $100K range, the AMT change would cost about $300. It was something like an average of $32 for folks earning the median household income. And not until you reached the $200-500K range did AMT increases start to take a big bite: about $2700 per year in additional taxes. Meanwhile, the capital gains tax phase-out was going to benefit folks making over $1M. But this really cannot be considered “Middle class” against “Rich.” It’s rich vs. richer.
So the real question, it seems to me, is: does the Democratic Party want to advocate for progressive taxation anymore, or does it not? Do Democrats agree with Republicans that it’s not about people’s economic lives, but their cultural and personal lives?
In our traditional family, where I haven’t made even pin money in two years, there’s a GIGANTIC tax advantage at work on our behalf. I don’t feel economically neglected by either party, not one little bit. And not only do I attend church every week, I’m a Sunday scool teacher. So I think my “traditional” credibility numbers are sufficiently high to count for SOMETHING.
It wasn’t just Bill Clinton talking economics in 1992; Ross Perot shocked everyone with the egg-head charts that supposedly wouldn’t sell in the heartland. Why are the Democrats hung up on values, when people have been royally screwed economically for six long years? I’m baffled.
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I don’t think any at-home mom who advocates for at-home moms is a hypocrite. There are tons of great mom bloggers out there, for example, who are writing in their spare moments, usually from home.
The issue I have is with all the staff support Flanagan has. Like Laura, having the nanny look after the kids so you can do your mommy-advocating is a bit of a conundrum. Also, when you have your own income, and you’re maintaining your professional standing, in my book you get fewer points for your “sacrifices”.
Flanagan’s got more room to wiggle these days, now that her twins are in school. And she does claim to do her writing while the kids are in class. If only she hadn’t confessed to never changing a sheet I might be less critical!
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Speaking of taxation, why is it that the child tax credit is $1,000 per child? I have a very shaky grasp of how our tax system works and what the full array of family tax breaks are, but I looked the number up just now, and was appalled by how small it is. I realize this is a very complex issue and that there are a variety of family-directed breaks, but it still seems pitifully small. I think taxes should be much more based on the number of people that a household income has to support.
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I’m going to quote pollster Kellyanne Conway: “The natural stations of life, including the three magic M’s — marriage, motherhood, and munchkins — move women toward a more conservative philosophy.”
Flanagan is right. By looking weak on terrorism and emphasizing that they are the party for gays, radical feminists, and ACLU members, the Democrats have been losing average moms in droves (their husbands have been voting mostly Republican anway).
And once you’ve persuaded a majority of middle-class parents to go Republican, the kids are likely to end up there too.
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