From New York Magazine:
But what if all the fighting is just too much? That is, what if a woman isn’t earning Facebook money but the salary of a social worker? Or what if her husband works 80 hours a week, and her kid is acting out at school, and she’s sick of the perpetual disarray in the closets and the endless battles over who’s going to buy the milk and oversee the homework? Maybe most important, what if a woman doesn’t have Sandberg-Slaughter-Mayer-level ambition but a more modest amount that neither drives nor defines her?
Can you be a stay at home mom AND a feminist?
UPDATE: From Megan McArdle,
Gay couples I know who've adopted children generally report that one parent ends up as "Dad" and one parent as "Mom". One person ends up in charge of the doctors appointments, the playdates and the ballet recitals; the other may help, but only one is the executive. And I gather that it's not just because we have some sort of social expectation that someone will be "Mom"; it's because the costs of sharing the duties outweigh the benefits. If two people are in charge of scheduling playdates and planning birthday parties, then you have to spend an enormous amount of time sharing information about these things. Moreover, you need to spend more time developing a joint policy on playdates and birthday parties: what sort of kids? How many? Who gets struck off the permitted list, and for what offenses? This is not only time consuming, but also, creates opportunities for spousal arguments.
Apt. 11d 
I am not sure I can get past the first page, although I will for my own blog later today. That one page produces this response though: I think it is _entirely_ possible for a family to decide one parent would be better staying home and for that parent to be the mother and for that woman to be a feminist.
I am not sure “She believes that every household needs one primary caretaker, that women are, broadly speaking, better at that job than men, and that no amount of professional success could possibly console her if she felt her two young children—Connor, 5, and Lillie, 4—were not being looked after the right way” is a set of beliefs I can align with feminism.
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I think the problem is when ANYONE tries to speak for ALL women. For instance, this quote from the article drives me batty:
“Women, she believes, are conditioned to be more patient with children, to be better multitaskers, to be more tolerant of the quotidian grind of playdates and temper tantrums.”
SO not true of me. May be true for her and for some women, but not all women. Neither she nor Sandberg speak for all of us. I know all sorts of families who have made different decisions that work for them. As I always tell my kids, different strokes for different folks.
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Yes, you can be a housewife and a feminist.
But holy hell are these people obnoxious. “Have a career you can walk away from at the drop of a hat.” So, make sure you find a man who will work a high-paying job so that you can work or not work as you please?
I’ll go as far as to say that Kelly was bringing more good to the world running a program for at-risk kids and being a “part-time” parent than she is being a domestic goddess. Now, I don’t think she should be forced to keep working if it makes her unhappy and she has other options but I also question the value of transferring all of that effort solely on to her children and her home life.
The best reason to be a housewife is because it makes you personally happy. It’s not acceptable to say that though so we have to make it about the children.
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Of course you can be a stay at home mom and a feminist, but this article is so thick with generalizations that make me queasy I can’t even finish it. I’m expecting the next page to dictate the shoe styles that women feel best in.
For example, in my life, I am the better partner at multitasking, and that makes me a worse parent in some regards — when home I’m always trying to clean/organize instead of do what my husband does, which is entertain and care for the kids.
I’m getting so tired of all the judging. The need of every family is different. Feminism should give every family the need to make their own choices.
These articles further frustrate me because they perpetuate the idea that a parent needs to be home. This of course is true in a land of super-expensive childcare, poor special ed, and part-time schooling. But what if we had a system that truly cared for the kids to enable parents to have ‘normal’ jobs if they wanted? I say we fix our educational system to support families first, then figure out where parents ‘belong’ AFTER they are truly given a choice.
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“… in a land of super-expensive childcare, poor special ed, and part-time schooling. ”
Like that.
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I agree that the directive to “Have a career you can walk away from at the drop of a hat” is so blind a statement that it boggles the mind. As I recall discussing here last year, that whole philosophy of a woman stepping away from a career to stay at home doesn’t work really well for many older women, whether sidelined by divorce or widowhood, having lost those years of income and pension savings.
These days we don’t see many people being able to nimbly jump in and out of the workforce. Heck, it’s tough to land a part-time retail sales job! And how many of the well-educated SAHMs they profile here ideally see themselves as walking in and out of minimum wage, part-time work?
I was also bemused that the article attempted to spin this as not being only about the well-to-do. “While staying home with children remains largely a privilege of the affluent (the greatest number of America’s SAHMs live in families with incomes of $100,000 a year or more), some of the biggest increases have been among younger mothers, ages 25 to 35, and those whose family incomes range from $75,000 to $100,000 a year.” That last demographic is still pretty darned privileged compared to the norms or those living in poverty for whom these lifestyle pieces aren’t even academic.
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I’m not going to be able to read the article, if it says “Women, she believes, are conditioned to be more patient with children, to be better multitaskers, to be more tolerant of the quotidian grind of playdates and temper tantrums.”
As with all such generalizations 1) individual mileage will vary significantly and 2) social norms have significant influence on whatever variability exists (in the most obvious case, the world in which men are rewarded and lauded for being tolerant with children and not for making a million dollars doesn’t really exist).
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Haven’t read anything yet because it is Monday, I’m detoxing from diet Coke, and I still have to grade before 1:40. But I feel I have to interject by saying:
It is possible to be a feminist and a SAHM.
Being a SAHM may or may not be a feminist position.
(I feel the same way about abortion rights. It may be possible to be a feminist and anti-choice, but I don’t think there is a feminist anti-choice position.)
Carry on. Catch you on the flip side of my 1:40 class.
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I think this point that Megan McCardle makes is a good one, so I’ll just quote it:
Gay couples I know who’ve adopted children generally report that one parent ends up as “Dad” and one parent as “Mom”. One person ends up in charge of the doctors appointments, the playdates and the ballet recitals; the other may help, but only one is the executive. And I gather that it’s not just because we have some sort of social expectation that someone will be “Mom”; it’s because the costs of sharing the duties outweigh the benefits. If two people are in charge of scheduling playdates and planning birthday parties, then you have to spend an enormous amount of time sharing information about these things. Moreover, you need to spend more time developing a joint policy on playdates and birthday parties: what sort of kids? How many? Who gets struck off the permitted list, and for what offenses? This is not only time consuming, but also, creates opportunities for spousal arguments.
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Yes, I saw that, too, Ragtime. Going to add it to the original post….
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I find MM’s review of the parenting practices of her friends to be a not very reliable source of a general standard of practice or how things have to be done.
The arguments against sharing duties of “mothering” are just as valid as arguments against the sharing of duties in the workplace (it’s long been the contention, now being modified, of why residents need to work 90 hour weeks — so that they can maintain continuity of care). When the decision is made that the work isn’t going to be done by one person, or can’t be, methods of distributing and coordinating the work have to be developed. That’s no less true for mothering than for other activities.
The questions asked here are case in point — “who gets struck off the ‘permitted list’?” That’s not a question I’ve had to answer, further than taking into account the desires of my own children (which I expect both parents to know about, if they want to know their children).
In our family these duties are largely shared, with different parents being responsible for different actives, children, and duties. And, we certainly do plan birthday parties together. And, synced calendars are our friends
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As with any work, there are both benefits and costs to the sharing of work, as opposed to having it done by one person. In the family, its two parents who know their children well, know their children’s friends, and their interests.
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We share executive type tasks in my household. It usually works that one person will take complete responsibility for a task while the tasks themselves are divided up. It works fine and we’re usually aware of what’s going on with the other person tasks. What we give up in efficiency we make up in flexibility; were are probably better able to meet the other person’s responsibilities if necessary than a couple with a greater deal of specialization. Every family structure and division of labor decision represents a trade-off and the trick is finding the one that works for you.
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This is so much about a particular kind of parenting that I don’t relate to at all, that I am having difficulty even responding other than to say “that’s a very particular kind of parenting.” Are the only interesting parenting choices the ones made by upper-middle-class professionals? And so much of it reflects the age of the children, and assumptions about intact marriages–what happens to all these people when the kids grow up and move away? That does happen eventually, right? What about the divorces, don’t any of these people ever get divorced?
It seems like a lot of weight to put on a relatively short period in your life: the time your children are young and need a lot of attention.
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I hated this piece on so many levels– the ridiculous, posed photos, the interviewing of women who are so extreme in their pronouncements they’re not even relatable to most SAHMs…But also, the writer make a big blunder. They reference Rebecca Woolf’s blog, Girls Gone Child…Woolf is a working mom– she works for HGTV in addition to her writing. I have to wonder if they even interviewed Woolf for this piece, or someone just came across her blog and decided, given the numerous photos of her children, that she’s a full time SAHM? I’ve been reading Woolf’s blog for a couple of years now, and my understanding is that Woolf has a full time nanny to help with her four children.
Someone really did a bad job of research.
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Still working on the article, but somewhere in page 4, I was reminded of this piece from a few days ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/more-fathers-than-mothers-say-they-arent-spending-enough-time-with-their-kids/2013/03/13/1f969de8-8bf9-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story_1.html
There seems to be a mismatch between gendered desires/fulfillment of ideal conceptions of work-life balance…
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Now that I’m done…
What I want to know: why do ALL of these profiles of SAHMs have to include the author’s “guilt” over working? How does this personal intrusion enrich the essay?
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“As I recall discussing here last year, that whole philosophy of a woman stepping away from a career to stay at home doesn’t work really well for many older women, whether sidelined by divorce or widowhood, having lost those years of income and pension savings.”
I’m kind of a broken record on this subject, but life insurance really isn’t that expensive, considering what it can do for you. We carry around a million dollars on my husband.
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I don’t get the “one person is in charge of playdates” thing. If I go out of town and my husband is home with the kids, is he supposed to call me wherever I am to check whether the kids can have a playdate?
The other thing is that my husband is mainly in charge of E-related stuff, while I am in charge of S-related stuff. As you can imagine, this has a lot to do with the fact that I have to buy bras and sanitary items and help S dress for recitals/competitions in rooms filled with women, but my husband is in charge of clothes and dentist appointments and the athletic activities my son does. I generally do school-related deadline-remembering, and my husband is in charge of seasonal clothes/items (winter gear and summer pool stuff except S’s bathing suits).
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My husband works about 60 hours per week, so realistically, it is impossible to divide the housework and childcare 50/50. He also has the time of job where he can never take a day off or do any home-related phone calls during the day. When he gets home, he’s a 100% working with the kids or doing the laundry or scrubbing the pots from dinner, but he’s not home most of the time. I am.
I also don’t like the gender determinitative stuff, but I don’t have a problem with these women being very, very proud of their work with their children. It’s rude to say that their job with the kids is worthless and could be done equivilently well by an uneducated stranger. Women make different choices in life. Hell, men make different choices, too. Shrug. Why throw stones?
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I don’t have a problem with their pride either, Laura. And I’m in the same boat as you– my husband works very long hours, weekends, overnights– we can’t even come close to an equal division of anything. I do take pride in the fact that I manage a lot of things on my own that others can share with their spouse. But the tone of this article was very snarky to me, very mommy-warish. One can be proud of household contributions without making overly broad generalizations.
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I’d probably work 60 hours a week if I could figure out a way to get paid for the extra hours at my regular wage or higher. Since I can’t, I’ve taken up drinking more.
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It’s rude to say that their job with the kids is worthless and could be done equivilently well by an uneducated stranger.
Are there people saying this? My discomfort with these conversations about SAHMotherhood are that they seem to treat children like widgets: the more time spent with them, the better they turn out. But parenting isn’t like that, there is not direct relation between time spent and the quality of the product, yet that’s often the tenor of these articles.
To push back on your uneducated strangers comment, is this meant to imply child care workers? I guess I don’t believe (says the working mother) that the uneducated strangers that are “raising” my children are doing any worse of a job providing care than I would. But then again, they are not my children’s parent and I personally believe that that relationship is what is important long-term, not that someone else spent 35 hours a week with them from the ages of 1 to 5.
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“It’s rude to say that their job with the kids is worthless and could be done equivilently well by an uneducated stranger.”
I’m going to echo scantee’s comments here. I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone saying that.
But I agree that the Pinterest-inspired competitive SAHM model does seem to assume that Time With Parent = Better, which makes sense only if that is true.
For me I don’t think it is. I learned that with my eldest. I was home with him until he was about 22 months old. We did lots of great things, but we also spent time doing stuff because *I* was bored or whatever. I love my kids but 22 month old train-and-fingerpainting play is not my forte.
He went to Montessori when I went back to work full time. The teachers all have BAs as well as Montessori training. The assistants have certificates in early childhood education as well as Montessori training. They were only strangers at the start. I learned a lot, a lot, a lot about kids from them.
I also did the math for myself and found it came up okay on time. I did it like this. My son was sleeping about 12 hrs at night, so I worked with a 12 hour day, so 84 daytime hours a week.
Day care was 45 of them (my husband and I were able to shift our schedules so it wasn’t 10 hrs/day.) But did I really care who was watching my child for his about 10 hours of nap each week or 1 hr/day, so 5 more of lunch/snack/diaper changes? No.
So it was about 30 hours of play time that I was losing. Not insignificant, but stepping out of my career was starting to look like a bad trade at that point.
Then when I considered that I was booking 3-6 hours a week of playdates and mommy-and-me classes, plus driving to parks and stuff (time in the car can be quality time, but isn’t necessary)…I pretty much relaxed.
I will say that the _house_ stuff or the marriage stuff or the community stuff does suffer. That is a different balance argument.
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But I agree that the Pinterest-inspired competitive SAHM model does seem to assume that Time With Parent = Better, which makes sense only if that is true.
And if we’re talking about rudeness, it’s kind of rude to parents who work outside the home. That is, if it is true that children generally are injured by not having a full-time parent at home, parents like me are bad people. If it’s not true, than someone who says it is true is calling parents like me bad people.
Now, just because it’s rude doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to say it if you think it’s true. If I’ve done my children an injury by not being around during the day for the last thirteen years, I deserve the abuse. But it’s probably a reason to accept that this conversation is one that involves a certain amount of inevitable hurt feelings, and not to go out of one’s way to take offense at something that seems to denigrate whatever decisions you’ve made.
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I didn’t mean that you guys were being rude. No. I was just explaining why these women are so proud of their work with their kids. I think that they should be proud of their work. Why not, right? Maybe not everyone is cut out for it, but I”m not cut out for being a lawyer either. A lawyer should be proud of his/her work. Why not a SAHM? Can she be proud of her work without offending people who don’t do that?
I have done everything, since I’ve had kids. Worked full time, part time, and been a full time parent, so I don’t identify as any one identity.
I did put a lot of time into parenting the kids, especially Ian. I got Ian to talk by talking to him for non-stop for two years. His speech therapists didn’t rewire his brain. I did. I’m really proud of that. Honestly, I could never pay someone enough money to talk all day to a mute kid. I know that other special needs parents don’t have the patience or the luxury of time to do something like that. A nanny couldn’t have gone to all those IEP meetings. Only I could. I’m proud of my work.
There is so much guilt about work and parenting. It’s very hard to walk away from any discussion like this without someone getting their feelings hurt.
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I do think that it’s fine to feel confident in one’s choices and proud of aligning effort with values and all that stuff. I totally think you rock, Laura, for having identified that need with Ian and addressing it.
I will say that I am realizing in this conversation that I am uncomfortable with seeing the child’s success as the product. My mum was a SAHM and she really should have been a doctor as she originally planned. This isn’t the forum for it but being the child of a mother who is _overly_ proud of her work with you has a whole bunch of wrinkles like what happens when you don’t perform up to standard. Failure was not an option in my teens, something I made up for quite a bit in my 20s.
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Can she be proud of her work without offending people who don’t do that?
You can be proud of specifics, no problem. I’m proud of all sorts of things I do both at work and with my kids without any implicit judgment of lawyers or mothers who do things differently.
Where it gets into a necessary conflict is if someone claims that if you don’t recognize that a stay-at-home-parent is generally better for children than two working-outside-the-home parents, then you’re denigrating the value of the stay-at-home-parent. At that point, someone’s insulted; either the SAHM is denigrated, or the WAHM is injuring her kids. And I do think people make that claim without realizing that it has implications in both directions.
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if someone claims that if you don’t recognize that a stay-at-home-parent is generally better for children than two working-outside-the-home parents, then you’re denigrating the value of the stay-at-home-parent.
It’s only denigrating to the SAHP if the value of other activities besides childrearing is ignored. If staying home makes the at-home parent happy and personally fulfilled, then I think it is possible to say that staying at home is a worthwhile choice even if it’s not necessarily better for the children. We don’t generally value personal satisfaction as a legitimate reason to do something (not for mothers, at least) so instead we make all about the children.
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Even if we ultimately land on the side that staying at home is always better for children I would still be totally ok with my decision to have my children in child care because I don’t just value their well-being alone and I think the long-term impact of any potential injury caused by child care to be small. The other things I value (the ability to provide financial stability to my family, the importance of paid work to my identity, the opportunity to not have to spend every waking every moment with my children) are important enough that I am willing to risk a small injury to my children’s well-being for what I perceive to be a greater long-term pay-off in other areas.
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“If staying home makes the at-home parent happy and personally fulfilled, then I think it is possible to say that staying at home is a worthwhile choice even if it’s not necessarily better for the children. ”
There’s the rub. Most SAHP do think that being at home is good for their particular kids. They do it, because it is fulfilling and it reduces on the chaos, sure. But most of them really do believe that their kids are benefitting from their presence. I don’t think that most SAHP believe that at-home-parenting is better for ALL kids, but most feel pretty strongly that being at home is better for THEIR kids. It’s a job for them, just lawyers do laywering work and chefs make nice meals.
I think it’s possible to have different opinions about parenting philosophies, while still validating the views of the other.
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“I am uncomfortable with seeing the child’s success as the product.”
Just so. Perhaps even a hundred times so.
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Most SAHP do think that being at home is good for their particular kids.
I agree that they should feel that way. I feel similarly about my decision to work.
The body of research on this topic says that children in child care are slightly less well-behaved and slightly better socialized than their at-home counterparts but that the effects are small. Since we don’t have much evidence showing that child care makes children much worse off, I think personal preferences and satisfaction should be the deciding factors.
There’s not much we can generalize from our personal preferences to others’ in terms of overall child well-being.
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“I don’t think that most SAHP believe that at-home-parenting is better for ALL kids.”
Andrea Yates’ kids would have been better off in daycare.
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I don’t think that most SAHP believe that at-home-parenting is better for ALL kids, but most feel pretty strongly that being at home is better for THEIR kids. It’s a job for them, just lawyers do laywering work and chefs make nice meals.
I’m not, here, reporting personal offense at all, just talking about the issues in talking about this that can lead to offense. But this is still a little tricky. As between me and a SAHM who didn’t go to law school, I’m a lawyer and she isn’t, no ambiguity there. Lawyering’s my job, I do it, she doesn’t do it. Flipping that around on the other hand, to describe what she does that I don’t, gets touchy fast: obviously, if you say that mothering is her job, she does it, and I don’t do it, I’m going to want to stick a fork in your eye for saying that I’m not a mother to my children. And even on a more concrete level, I do a whole lot of the same things with my kids (picking up from sports teams, taking them to doctors’ appointments, helping with homework, baking cookies) that a SAHM might.
Again, I’m not offended, you haven’t said anything offensive. But I think it’s easy to miss how characterizing SAHMing as a valuable “job” in general (as opposed to in some particular circumstance), and including everything that’s part of parenting in that “job”, implies that men and women who work outside the home aren’t parenting at all.
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Yes, it is tricky, because, on the other hand, if the parent who works says they are doing all the “important” work of parenting as someone who spends all of their time taking care of their kids (and folks are doing that here, in their thread) you are making a judgment about the effort that’s being spent on the children by the other mother.
I’ve been on both sides of this equation. I know my kids missed out on something when I was busy with other activities and that my presence itself matters to them. I would also have argued that it was unimportant before I stayed home with them and was generally available in a way that I was not before. In practical terms, it has meant that I can coach them on their teams (rather than just pick them up); it means I’m there for the ride home from school (when, yes, they talk). I used to say my daughter had no interest in talking to me. Now, I know that she does want to talk and that our conversations are going to play an important role in her life.
Now, for the flip side, I can point out that my son doesn’t care nearly as much, so, I do think the decision is very personal and people specific. Whether the “important” work of parenting can be done in addition to other work depends on the parent and the child, so I’m not saying that the balance doesn’t work out for others, merely that I can see how our family’s life is different without my work.
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It’s very hard to run a two-career household, when both careers demand long hours and unpredictable travel. It can become a father/mother/nanny/tutor/housekeeper/backup-nanny household. That’s stressful. It also means the “affluent” families may not have much disposable income left after paying the babysitters.
We knew a family in which the father chose to work part-time. Both parents had been executives/consultants, but it was very stressful for their kids to not know if either of their parents would be in the country at any particular time. With technology, employers can expect highly paid employees to be available all the time. Smart people, lovely kids–and one parent chose to make it all work.
Why is there such reluctance to accept that people should have the right to make their own decisions? Why should Sandberg have any more standing than someone’s maiden aunt?
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My problem is with an argument that says: being a SAHM is better for the kids so therefore you should do it — EVEN IF IT’S WORSE FOR YOU and makes you miserable and suicidal and like your life has been a complete and total waste. As though the only value that should be considered when thinking about how women should spend their time is the children’s outcome (and the house — that was my MIL, who told me “I’m so glad you quit your job so you can spend more time looking after the house.” My mental health and sanity or the rug? Apparently the rug won out because it was more important in her world) or the family’s or the husband’s. As though somehow once a woman has children what she needs is no longer relevant or part of the equation.
Imagine if they did a study and said that having a full time stay at home dad was the best thing a boy could possibly have, and that boys who had SAHD’s were more likely to graduate from high school and do well in college and would go on to have better marriage. And then the media launched a campaign to convince men that what they wanted was irrelevant. The only actual value was what was good for their boys. How do you think that might go over?
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” It can become a father/mother/nanny/tutor/housekeeper/backup-nanny household.”
This household can work, too, and I know examples where the family is healthy and happy and the kids thriving. An upside for the kids is that the life their parents build for the family is going to give them access to amazing things throughout their lives. Money yes, and the things that money can buy, but also access to opportunities. The Obamas and the Sandburg-Goldberg families are extreme examples, but plenty of other less extreme examples exist, too.
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Imagine if they did a study and said that having a full time stay at home dad was the best thing a boy could possibly have, and that boys who had SAHD’s were more likely to graduate from high school and do well in college and would go on to have better marriage. And then the media launched a campaign to convince men that what they wanted was irrelevant.
In order to set a good example, I stopped smoking and vandalizing poorly parked/too clean cars. That’s about as much as I’m willing to change for fatherhood.
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“Whether the “important” work of parenting can be done in addition to other work depends on the parent and the child, so I’m not saying that the balance doesn’t work out for others, merely that I can see how our family’s life is different without my work.”
bj,
I feel like I’ve missed some important episodes. What have you done?
“I used to say my daughter had no interest in talking to me. Now, I know that she does want to talk and that our conversations are going to play an important role in her life.”
Yeah, they want to talk to you when they want to talk to you.
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I honestly think that parenting is a job. It’s a lot of work. I love it, just as loved academia, but it is a job. I’m home right now. Writing and doing chores when the kids are in school. When the school bus comes home, I supervise homework. Get a rundown of the school day. Drive to soccer practice. Make dinner. Pick up from school when there’s a fever. Take to the pool in the summer time. Putting a limit on the video games. Reading stories. Managing the calendar. Whatever. I’m not watching TV or playing video games. I’m not the babysitter. I’m in charge and involved. It’s parenting. I’m not sure what else to call it.
Now, some of you might think that I’m wasting my time and that this job can be done remotely or outsourced. Maybe it can. But this is what I do.
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I honestly think that parenting is a job.
This might be where the disagreement comes from. I don’t think of parenting as a job, I think of it as a relationship. A relationship that requires a lot of work and tending to remain healthy, as all relationships do, but still, a relationship.
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Laura, I think it’s hard for people to call it a “job” because I do everything you mention on that list, but also have a work-for-pay job. I don’t think you’re wasting your time, but I do think balancing all of that is different than not having to balance it.
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I honestly think that parenting is a job.
Parenting is a lot of work. But working parents do lots of the same work SAH parents do. I make dinner, or my husband does. I pick up my daughter from rugby practice. I manage the calendar, in cooperation with my husband. I used to read stories, now I talk about books with them. I just don’t do any (other than planning ahead) of them during the workday.
If you list tasks like that as the “job” of being a SAHM, rather than as part of parenting generally, the implication is that they’re not getting done in the absence of a SAHM. I’m not saying you’re wasting your time; you’re managing your family life in the way that works for you and your husband and your kids, and I’m sure you’re putting in a lot of effort. But a lot of what you’re doing as a SAHM is stuff that you’d still have to do (or would still choose to do) if you decided to work outside the home.
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“This might be where the disagreement comes from. I don’t think of parenting as a job, I think of it as a relationship. A relationship that requires a lot of work and tending to remain healthy, as all relationships do, but still, a relationship.”
I also see it as a job, but also a relationship. At some point (college graduation?) it will stop being a job. But for the moment, there’s paperwork, there’s a schedule, there are deadlines, there are meetings, etc. Being an SAHM, I have to be business-like about how I spend my day, or the kids will be neglected and important stuff won’t get done.
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And now I’m going to offend the teachers…. Jackie, you’re a teacher. Honestly, your work hours aren’t that different from my writing gigs. If you’re home by 3:30 and working 180 days per year, so you’re in sync with the school calendar, you are doing the same work as a SAHM of school aged kids.
Maybe, LizardBreath. But I didn’t do this stuff at the same level and for the same number of hours, when I worked full time. I couldn’t. I wasn’t physically there. For years when the kids were young, Steve was only in the presence of an awake child for one hour per day. There is no way that he could do any of the things that I do. His work hours are a tad better now, so he sees the kids for a half an hour in the morning and for two hours in the evening.
I don’t want to make anyone feel bad about their own family decisions. Really. To each to their own. But I’m doing what I’m doing, and I’m kind of happy about it.
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But I’m doing what I’m doing, and I’m kind of happy about it.
This is what’s important, I think. I don’t feel bad about my family decisions-as I said earlier, I would still choose to have my children in child care even if I knew for sure that they would have done “better” with me at home-and I’m fine with saying you spend more of your time on parenting activities than I do.
I think I would be offended if someone was saying, “my relationship with my child is better because I don’t work and the same would be true for you if you didn’t work.” Given my personal circumstances, I feel like I can say assuredly that that is not true.
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I’m not really sure why I put on the SAHM hat in this comment section. The truth is that when you’re a writer or a freelance anything or an artist or an academic or even a K-12 teacher, work life and the parenting often flows together in a way that’s really hard to make the dicotomous categories of working parent or SAHP. It all just kind of flows together.
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Work life is the part where you can comment on the internet with fewer interruptions.
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The whole part that tends to irritate me when this discussion comes up is about how woman-centered it gets. I wish we could get to a place where it’s about people’s choices, not about women’s choices. I don’t have a problem with one parent being home and/or working part-time while another works full-time. I have a problem with it being women all the time.
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Yes, Wendy — that’s what I was trying to get at earlier. If you’re feminist, how can that come at the expense of your husband? We should be arguing about opportunities for all.
And in an earlier comment that disappeared, I mentioned actual income levels: looking at 2010 tax returns, half of all filers earned less than $33,000. 66% earned less than $50,000. There aren’t a lot of options in those budgets.
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“If you’re home by 3:30 and working 180 days per year, so you’re in sync with the school calendar, you are doing the same work as a SAHM of school aged kids.”
Sorry, but this doesn’t fly. I am in sync with the school calendar, but I do not get home by 3:30–my work day is from 7:30-5:00, and that doesn’t count the amount of work I do on the weekends or in the weekday evenings or in the summer. I know you don’t care so much about offending teachers (based on many previous posts), but I wish you would at least stop perpetuating misconceptions like this. And being freelance is very different from having a workplace that requires your presence, and very different from making up half of your family’s income and being part of how your family has health insurance, which I am.
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Jackie — don’t forget 28-minute lunches (if your school is anything like the ones my husband and I have taught at)!
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It is hard to define some of this stuff. I make sure my kid is limiting his video games, because after school he is at a daycare (the Montessori) where there are no video games. They also supervise his homework and because there are a few older siblings there in the afternoon, and they are trained Montessori teachers, seem to do better explaining the math. For me, it isn’t the same as me doing it – it’s better.
That said there are things I don’t do as a WOHM parent that I think my kids are missing out on. Playground time. Community service time. Visiting friends time. I am not as organized. My house is clean and reasonably neat but it is not Pinterest-worthy. And I do think we miss out on some conversations I would really like to have. For me though staying in the field was worth it, or has been so far.
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There’s a quantitative issue here, too, as well as a qualitative. That is, with one or possibly two (provided, probably, there are no special needs) kids, two involved parents really can accomplish all the tasks of parenting in a couple of hours during the evening. But if there are three or more kids, or kids with special needs, I honestly don’t know how it could be done. I have four kids, and it simply would not be physically possible for me to provide them with an adequate level (according to my instinctive standards, no doubt informed by all my relevant SES markers) of enrichment and attention if I worked full time. I’ve always known that having a big family was my highest emotional priority, so it was not particularly painful for me to step away from the job market after I finished my PhD. It was abundantly obvious to me that I could not have four kids and a big job, at least not with the kind of home life I wanted.
For that reason, because it’s never been a topic of great anguish for me, I feel curiously unmoved by the mommy debates. I see value in all the points of view, and I actually often find myself agreeing with the views of fundamentalists like Sandberg and Linda Hirsch. They simply don’t seem relevant to me calculus.
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I just commented about the family friendliness of teaching on my blog. It is, for the most part, easier to balance work and family with a teaching job. However, I have to say, it can also be a challenge. During the day, I’m not at a desk in front of a phone and a computer. I’m in a classroom with kids. There are days I barely I have time to eat and pee. I also run an after school club 3 days a week for most of the year, and that means my day starts at 7:45 and ends at 5:00. I get 25 minutes most days for lunch, often in the dining hall with the kids.
And there are often evening events, overnight trips and other obligations. I’m lucky in that I really do feel that we try to balance things out so that it’s not the same people doing these things, but I know it doesn’t always work that way everywhere. And we also tend to get time for prep and grading during the day, but many teachers don’t. They’re doing that at night, maybe after the kids are asleep.
I also can’t run errands during the day, and neither can my husband. I think that’s the one thing that I really miss about not working. I’m too tired to go after school, so I go on the weekend, or Mr. Geeky does. And that cuts into time I can hang with my family
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I’ll also say that a couple of weeks ago, I worked a 15 hour day–at school, mostlynot prepping or grading. I was with students in meetings, and finally, with parents from 7:30 a.m. To 11:00 p.m. Despite the long hours, I try to protect my time. I don’t work at home or check email unless there’s a specific deadline I need to meet. Turn off work mode when I’m at home. That’s something I didn’t do in previous jobs. And that didn’t work well for me.
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From the NYMag article: “Kelly calls herself “a flaming liberal” and a feminist, too. “I want my daughter to be able to do anything she wants,” she says.
Reminds me of my 28-year-old cousin, raised by a SAHM and a corporate dad who worked all the time. Her mom is rabidly, irrationally anti-daycare and anti-nanny; refusing to even consider the strong evidence-based assertions that the kids will be fine no matter what. Way too threatening for her, I guess. Anyway, being raised by a mom with those views – that SAHM is the One True Way – has been very damaging to my cousin in terms of what she believes her array of choices are. As she contemplates having a baby in the near future, she is struggling to overcome that very damaging false dichotomy, thanks to the way she was parented – she, in fact, was decidedly not raised to be able to do anything she wants. She already knows her own mom will trash her for using paid childcare.
I credit my own feminist SAHM mom (who took 10 years out of the paid workforce to care for me full-time, and who chose to have only one kid) for raising me to do anything I want. She was always clear that she did not necessarily expect me to always make the same choices she did. I now get that means she was very comfortable with her choices – which makes me happy that she didn’t have to “give up” anything major for me.
My mom parented me well when she would share anecdotes about female MDs she worked with who had 4+ kids and were rock stars who still practiced medicine, and how they paid their nannies well and gave them lots of paid time off. That was hugely influential to me, that she could also praise women who made different choices than the ones she did. Ultimately, I also chose to be a SAHM for a time, and my DH was a SAHD, and now we both work and have our preschoolers in Montessori. Thanks, mom!
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Just a couple of thoughts and then I’m exerting blogger privileges and closing comments, because this thread is bumming me out:
1. Of course being SAHM is a job. That’s why we pay our nannies, daycare workers, and pre-school teachers. That’s why we pay people to tutor our kids and drive them places. I think as feminists, we should value ALL work that women do, not just the work that the patriachy has defined as worthy of the title of “job” or “career.”
2. Parenting younger kids is such a different ball of wax from parenting older kids. I’m still figuring out how to parent a teenager. It’s less about physical maintenance, I think, and more about mental well being. I recently went to a town function where most of the women were parents of younger kids, and we had absolutely nothing to talk about. I’m going to write a blog post about it.
3. I think we make various decisions in our lives about family life and career. Some of these choices are made freely; other choices are made out of lack of freedom. But we have to find a way to find peace with our life paths, while accepting other people’s paths without the guilt or judgment. There are so many models of family life these days, and I really think we should embrace this diversity. It really is a function of an advanced society.
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