I finally got around to reading Judith Warner’s piece in the New York Times. I saw some tweets about the article, when I was on vacation, but couldn’t be bothered to check out until yesterday. I was throwing a stack of old papers in the recycling basket and the magazine plopped out. I only read the article, because the alternative was continuing the mad cleaning of the house in preparation for an in-law visit.
In retrospect, I chose wrong. Dusting the stereo system would have been more enjoyable.
This article is CLASSIC mommy war crap. It’s a look at a handful of the women who Lisa Belkin interviewed several years ago for a trend piece on women who leave high-powered jobs to become a stay at home parent. Warner joyfully mocks them for their bad decisions. Check out the photographs of the women in the article:
Oh, man. I screwed up.
If only I hadn’t quit my job, my life would be PERFECT right now.
Keeping up a brave face, but inside, I’m in a sea of pain.
I could tear the article apart, but I don’t have the energy. OK. I can’t resist one bit of illogical nonsense. I love this sentence for its stupidity. Warner writes, “And after decades of well-publicized academic inquiry into the effects of maternal separation and the dangers of day care, a new generation of social scientists was publishing research on the negative effects of excessive mothering: more depression and worse general health among mothers, according to the American Psychological Association” But the researchers aren’t looking at normal mothering. They are talking about excessive mothering, whatever that is. There is also tons and tons of research about the benefits of attachment parenting.
It’s shameful that the New York Times published this sensational, dishonest crap. It’s too bad, because the topic of post-parenting employment is pretty interesting. What kinds of jobs can full-time parents get, after they have taken time off to raise children? How can full-time parents keep the skills sharp during that time at home? How should they modify their expectations? I would read that article.
Apt. 11d 
Among my many annoyances with the article …
– How did “a handful of the women who Lisa Belkin interviewed several years ago for a trend piece” (as you aptly put it) turn into “the Opt-Out Generation”? Was “opting out” ever really a trend?
– Why doesn’t Warner unpack such statements as ” ‘All this would be easier if you didn’t work,’ ” O’Donnel recalled her husband saying”? Why is it always solely about the woman’s choices?
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So much of what gets tagged in that article as “the problem with women giving up their jobs” is really more about marital problems – Like a woman going back to work and being expected by her husband to continue to do all the household tasks she managed as a stay home parent, even though, prior to kids, they both helped out equally. Or a woman being expected to perform all the household tasks without assistance from a spouse, even those that are not directly tied to her role as primary caregiver to the kids. The one that slays me is the guy who thinks that his wife is essentially lazy for not doing it all by herself, seemingly miffed that he should have had to hold down a job and still pick the kids up after piano lessons some of the time. He thinks if HE had been home with the kids for twelve years, he could have done it all AND become an astronaut. Right. If that was my spouse, I might well suggest he relocate to Mars. Seems to me that the commonality in all the stories is less about women in or out of the workplace and more about a lack of real partnership in marriage, a willingness to see the sacrifice on both sides, a shared belief in the worthiness of each person’s work and a sense of shared accomplishment in building something together. There are plenty of challenges for women and men trying to reenter the workplace after extended breaks, but this article is more of an advertisement for marriage counseling than anything else.
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My take home, too, that they hadn’t chosen their husbands wisely. Now that’s a fairly common occurrence, so it’s not meaningless that the non-working spouse faces bigger challenges when a marriage fails, and that one way to mitigate the risk is to maintain one’s individual economic viability. But that’s not going to happen with two 500K consultants heading a family, without making other significant decisions about the care of the children and household (like a nanny who is the primary caregiver).
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I enjoyed the detail that one of the women only makes a quarter of what she used to make. Which was $500k. So she makes $125k now.
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On the one hand, I do think some of the cases call out for marriage counseling – but on the other, I thought it made an important point about possible structural issues in marriages where one partner works and the other doesn’t. It wasn’t the case that 99 percent of men prior to 1975 were jerks who therefore didn’t truly value their wives’ contributions in the household as caregivers for children. What it was (arguably) was that setting up structure in which one partner stays home and the other earns all the money is going to generate a view of the stay at home partner as somehow “lesser.” – not all the time, of course, but more often than not. So when people in the 21st century start replicating structures of the 1950s, but expect to come up with a different result, they are naive. (I am not saying this has proven to be true empirically, just that it is important to think about whether it might be.)
Just the other day a friend who is a generally a strong feminist was critical of another woman’s decision to continue working for low wages when she and her husband could have afforded for her to stay at home with their baby. I mentioned the article’s point that it can be short-sighted to do that calculation just for the kids’ pre-school years, without considering the impact on future ability to find work at the same level (or at all), on future earnings, and on balance in the marriage. She had never thought of it that way. So the article was helpful in that sense. (Another point – my dad, one of the nicest guys there is, very supportive of his daughters, still thinks of the money he made while my mom was a SAHM and homemaker, as *his* money. It’s the 50s mentality.)
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There’s also the reverse phenomenon, where the wife regards her earnings as entirely hers to dispose of (this is even somewhat traditional–think “butter and egg money”).
I think my mom did that when I was a kid and she’d occasionally do substitute teaching. I remember overhearing “discussions” where my dad pointed out to my mom that she just couldn’t spend every dime of her substitute teaching earnings–some of that needed to be earmarked for the taxes on those earnings.
A few years back, I was making a little bit of babysitting money, and when the kids were under the impression that it was somehow “my money,” I was very pointed on it being family funds, and to be spent for general welfare, rather than just for my benefit.
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“Another point – my dad, one of the nicest guys there is, very supportive of his daughters, still thinks of the money he made while my mom was a SAHM and homemaker, as *his* money.”
My family of origin is very traditional, and I have literally never heard my grandfather or dad or uncle use that terminology.
I listen to the Dave Ramsey show a lot, and one of the tells that somebody (of either sex) is about to do something REALLY stupid is that they say something along the lines of, “It’s my money and I’m going to do what I want to” or “I work hard for my money and I deserve XYZ” to their spouse. Nobody ever said that to their husband or wife to justify doing something smart.
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we are 55. my husband also thinks of the money as his money.
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There’s a phrase that I learned in grad school family therapy training: “He who earns the gold makes the rules”. Any time I worked with a couple, I was taught to tease out the unspoken rules around who makes the rules/sets the priorities. And whether unpaid work was valued as much as paid work.
Paid work trumping unpaid work in importance is still a strongly held belief both within relationships and without.
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All of our money is our money and I have never heard my husband say anything that suggests that he thinks it’s his money (in spite of the fact that even when I earned a salary he was earning 10X what I earned).
There’s an interesting book (is it Joan Williams?) in which the author argues that the community property allocations in which women were guaranteed 1/2 the family assets have been largely detrimental to women in general (as opposed to those in the .1%) since for those fmailies, the biggest “asset” in the marriage is the earning capacity of the workers in the household. Thus, if the family with 100K in assets and 100K in salary dissolves, splitting the 100K doesn’t go very far in supporting the 2 families if the 100K in income goes to the spouse who earned it (i.e. no alimony and child support that is set as a per child payment, rather than a percent of earnings).
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I’ve been waiting all week for you to write about this. The point at which I got genuinely pissed off was the bit that scantee quotes. But in general, the men are treated as if they have no agency at all — they are just fixed obstacles. Whereas the women got to make choices! (and screwed up). But only about their jobs, not about their spouses.
“Another point – my dad, one of the nicest guys there is, very supportive of his daughters, still thinks of the money he made while my mom was a SAHM and homemaker, as *his* money.”
I have this vivid memory of my uncle (1930), “head” of the most traditional family unit in my extended family (pretty traditional throughout) saying “The money I earn is our money, and the money Barbara earns is her money”. Perhaps he was unusually enlightened, but I don’t think it was an unusual view. He wasn’t saying it resentfully.
I’m interested what people think about cases where the main breadwinner is also the main caregiver. Suppose you contribute 3/4 of the family income, but also do 2/3rds of the domestic/caring labor. Should you, then, regard all of the income as “ours”?
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I would consider myself the main breadwinner and the main caregiver (although my husband would certainly want to debate the percentage of domestic/caring labor we each do). Due to my job location, my husband does not have the right to work. Therefore, I make 100% of the family income.
Our age (very late 30s) and cultural background (middle America) mean that my husband wasn’t trained by his family in the domestic arts. He can “cook”, but it’s more heating up food/grilling than preparing dishes from scratch. He can clean (although we have a cleaner twice a month) but it doesn’t come naturally to him. Most of his day is volunteering for an organization we both believe strongly in, so I don’t fuss too much about what I see as an unequal distribution of domestic labor. We have no children, which makes it easier (so much easier….). I do way more around the house than I should, but it makes for a happier me.
Saying all that – we both consider our cash flow and our investments as “our” money. His support and flexibility have allowed me to grow my career in three countries (so far). I would not have had nearly the level of success at work without him willing to give up his career on my behalf.
I’m not sure we are the best case to answer your question, as we currently make more than we need. We don’t have spending constraints at this time (or rather, our needs and desires can be met without spending more than we should). But we do consider the income “ours” – we’re a unit and the resources are for the unit, not for a person.
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I had an entirely different take on the article. I write this as a 53 yo mom who is happy to be called a feminist, and who worked a variety of full time, part time, and not at all when my kids were young. I remember those articles from 10 years ago about the high earning women who thought they could step off the track and easily return to it whenever they felt like it. I’m happy to see the follow up and that justice, or karma, was served. They are the kind of women who, while working, would have looked down on moms, SAHMs in particular. They are the kind of women who would not have made accommodations for administrative females in their workplace who needed flex schedules, nor would they have pushed for changes to be made at the corporate level to make their workplaces more family-friendly. And now they are surprised to see that society/their husbands/their former peers don’t value the work they have done raising children. Too f*ing bad. It’s not the mommy wars; it’s you get what you pay for.
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“I’m interested what people think about cases where the main breadwinner is also the main caregiver. Suppose you contribute 3/4 of the family income, but also do 2/3rds of the domestic/caring labor. Should you, then, regard all of the income as “ours”?”
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. (And this is pretty much the only contexts where that quote has a prayer of working.)
I think having a functioning budget process helps a lot with this problem. In our family, there’s a monthly budget meeting on the last day of the month, and ideally, everything for the next month that is spent is on that list. “Our money” doesn’t mean either spouse being able to go out and spend money without consideration for general welfare–it means having input at the initial budget meeting. If I want something that my husband thinks is unnecessary (a particularly sumptuous stroller or new wallpaper for a bathroom that already has perfectly good pink palm-patterned wallpaper), all I have to do is ask that $20-$40 a month be allotted for that thing that I’ve got a bee in my bonnet for and then add it up, month after month. By and by, the $40 a month will turn into enough money for the stroller or the wallpaper. (It helps a lot to have an extra $40!) We’re going to be doing this with for our next car (which my husband thinks we don’t need) and I think we’ll eventually do it for a new kitchen (ditto). He may not think we need stuff, but he won’t say no if one fine day, it turns out that we have the cash in hand for the project.
Where my husband does have way more votes than I do as an SAHM is on pure work stuff. For instance, if the only job he got had been in Scotland, we would have gone to Scotland.
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I do know a few couples in my generation (early to mid forties) where the stay at home mother has told me her husband has ultimate veto authority on the budget because he earns it. I don’t know how widespread this is, and wonder if any studies have been done. In my same sex marriage where I earn 80% of our income I have sometimes caught myself feeling like I “own” the wealth and worry how much we unconsciously absorb from our parents. In my family my father controlled the money he earned and because he was such a tightwad my mother returned to work after 12 years of staying at home to make “her own money” she could spend on us children. My father was a machine operator and my mother could only get clerical work or retail after her time out of the workforce, so we were “blue collar lower middle class,” though my college friends called me working class. I sometimes feel my father’s attitude lurking and wonder how easy it is to change from generation to the next.
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I would kill for a job at the NYT– to interview a few women, characterize their responses as a widespread “trend,” and then get a paycheck for it? Sign me up!
And what really frustrated me, was the fact that Belkin’s initial article about the opt-out “phenomena” was widely discounted by later research. So Warner is “updating” something that was false to begin with? WTF?
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Great comments, guys. Sorry just getting to read them this morning. Love this thread talking about “his” money and all that. If I can, I will turn it into its own post.
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I come from a working-class background where at least the two preceding generations of “breadwinners” turned their paychecks over on payday, minus some beer money. To some extent, we’ve carried that forward. We both work full-time but my partner earns more than I do. I set up his direct deposit, his 401k allocations, and I do our taxes. He gets a spending allowance for his hobbies but has relatively little interest in what is to be done with the rest of our combined income. I create the budget for everything from the kids’ clothes to new furniture to insurance. So there’s no 50-50 partnership at all where money is concerned, but we are 50-50 on childcare and housework. This works for us, but only because my partner doesn’t have a lot of material needs and hates “administrative” tasks. If I didn’t work outside the home, I would take over more of the housework and childcare, but I would retain 100% control over the $.
I do think where it’s financially feasible, women who have the choice to “opt out” would do well to maintain an investment fund that accounts for the loss of social security contributions at the very least. I might have been scarred for life after reading Ann Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood, but I would put such a fund ahead of the children’s orthodontia (they can get braces later in life if they want them!) or college funds (assuming that student loans will still exist…).
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