A rant, on behalf of working parents.
The above question sets me off. Seriously. It set me off when I was a younger mom, I hit it again when I was a caregiver. The above sentence makes no goddamn sense, it's one of those silly-ass ways we tippy-toe around the feelings of women who don't work. WE ALL WORK "INSIDE THE HOME." There are no house elves. I've been waiting for one to come clean my toilets for 25 years, and I'm pretty sure they're not going to show up.
Women who opt to stay at home make a choice to opt out of the workforce, and that's great, and this is in no way a criticism of that choice, whatever floats your boat, but damn, why did we have to create new cutesy ways to describe not having a job? If you are at home, you are not in the workforce. Being in the workforce, "having a job," involves doing something for pay. Just writing that, I'm conscious of how we've rewritten our vocabularies in recent years, under the pressure of SAHMs who feel "undervalued."
We don't play this condecending ego-stroking game with men. Men work or they don't work. They can go to an office, work at home, work with their hands, be out of work, be stay at home dads, retire, they are whatever they are. If they are retired or out of work or stay home with the kids, they Don't Work. They do not have jobs. They may be remodeling a bathroom or landscaping the yard in their spare time, but they are not Working. They don't make excuses for it, (unless they're unemployed and not looking, then sometimes...) and they don't have to spend five minutes telling us about how challenging this not working thing is whenever they're asked what they do.
Men don't get asked if they work "outside the home" because when you say it to a man, the inanity of the question becomes obvious.
While I'm beating up cliches directed at women, let me take a swing at "Every mother is a working mother." Well no shit. Raising kids is work. Taking care of a house is work. Working mothers and fathers know this because THEY ARE DOING IT. In addition to the paying job, or as it used to be called, simply their Job, they are coaching soccer and shuttling kids to scout meetings and cleaning the bathrooms and buying groceries and folding laundry.
Just yesterday a man I work with (a director in our company who puts in long hours and carries a ton of responsibility) was sighing over his lost weekend - between cheerleading and soccer and other kid activities, he'd had no time to himself all weekend. Working moms and working dads sound a lot alike these days. When do we start saying "Every parent is a working parent?" When do we start saying "working dad?" We never will, because it doesn't fit with the "being a SAHM is a SACRIFICE!!" meme we've been coached to pass along for years.
So that's my rant du jour. If you opt out of the workforce, more power to you - if I win the lottery I'm going to retire so fast I'll leave skidmarks in the corporate office carpet. But please, enjoy your choice, embrace not working, quit trying to sell the choice of not working as more challenging, noble, brave, thrifty and reverent than working and raising kids like the rest of us "working parents" did it and are doing it.
Rant off.
Thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm tired of being berated because I chose to have a full time job; apparently I don't love my children enough. I'm also tired of hearing how hard it is to be a mom; I'm a mom too, and I would be familiar with it.
I think it's the unspoken assumption that a "working mom" (you know, who works "outside the home") is doing so for fun money, or to pay for the third beemer, or the french au pair and live in maid. Not for foolish things like paying for rent, or even more foolishly, self-satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteIt still creeps me out how quickly I went from being asked "what do you do?" (pre-marriage) to "Do you work [outside the home]?" (post-marriage) And the people who ask "why is your husband's last name X and your last name is Y?" usually get told "Because it's 2005". I don't begrudge anyone who took their husband's name, I nearly did myself, but come on.
Women are not property. They are not immediately their husband's play things, they can work [outside the home] at fulfilling jobs and they can even work because the family needs the money.
"I've been waiting for one to come clean my toilets for 25 years, and I'm pretty sure they're not going to show up.
ReplyDelete"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh God what I would not give for a house gnome who does dishes and toilets. And maybe pedicures.
And those who find fulfillment in devoting themselves to hearth and home have been viewed with suspicion for decades.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't want to work and don't have to work, don't. Enjoy. But it's comments like this - smug flowery language crediting great "devotion to hearth and home" to the woman who opts out of the workforce that is the fire that fuels the divisiveness.
Is the husband who goes to work to pay the mortgage and put food on the table of that hearth and home "less devoted" to it? Neither is the woman who opts to contribute financially to her family's security and future.
I can say with certain confidence that my choice to return to the workforce was the best decision for my entire family; particularly my children. I would also bet that my "devotion to hearth and home" is no less than most women, SAH or not. Why must devotion to family continually be measured by ones employment status?
ReplyDeleteI'm not following the logic here. Unless the logic is simply paycheck=work. In which case, it would be mighty depressing to stay home and take care of one's own children.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
That's the part I honestly don't understand. Isn't taking care of your kids the reason you opted out of the workforce? Why is it "depressing" unless it's equated to a paycheck? Why not just be okay with not working? Trust me, if I won the lottery tonight I'd be so okay with not working.
The point I'm trying to make is that working mothers - scratch that, working PARENTS, are also fulltime parents, they do the same house stuff, kid stuff, field trips and scouts and baking the cupcakes for 35 kids, as their SAH counterparts. They do it around a day job.
Our society reinforces the concept that SAHMs are on the moral high ground, "devoted to home and hearth" and to be admired for it. See comment above, which arrived right on schedule. See every breathless news story of the "horrible effects of day care," which, when you read the studies behind them, don't actually say anything horrible. See the meme in circulation that professional women are dropping out of the workforce in droves, which simply isn't so.
It's bordering on heresy in our culture not to put SAHMs on a pedestal, and to point out, as I did, that they are just women who made a choice to opt out of the workforce. That's not good enough, we must pretend they are somehow actually working harder than working parents. To say hey, we all do the family stuff too, leads to accusations of "suspicion" (Of what?) and "divisiveness" (Plenty of that shit coming off those pedestals, believe me.)
I'm at the other end of the child-raising thing, I've seen the kids and there friends grow up, and I'll be damned if there's any quality difference among the now 20somthing offspring. There is a significant quality difference in the lives of the women.
BTW, this is Catherine -I'm blogging from my laptop, which for some reason isn't recognizing me, so that's why I'm suddenly Anonymous. I can't type on this damn keyboard either, so my editing is probably even worse than my normal sloppy.
There = their. Told you I can't proofread on this thing.
ReplyDeleteI can say with certain confidence that my choice to return to the workforce was the best decision for my entire family; particularly my children.
ReplyDeleteMe too. And my husband benefitted enormously, and told me so quite often. He was very proud of me when my job took off and I started making better money and took the "major breadwinner" pressure - which he had never admitted he was feeling - off his back.
It still creeps me out how quickly I went from being asked "what do you do?" (pre-marriage) to "Do you work [outside the home]?" (post-marriage) And the people who ask "why is your husband's last name X and your last name is Y?" usually get told "Because it's 2005". I don't begrudge anyone who took their husband's name, I nearly did myself, but come on.
ReplyDeleteIt's the weirdest thing, how being married makes a woman's working life "optional." I ran into that bigtime when my husband got sick, and I had to explain, over and fuckingover, that Yes, I worked. Yes, I "had to" work (particularly if we wanted the patient to have health insurance, because he was on mine). I got pretty damn belligerent about it after the 10th or 12th time I was confronted with, yes, usually women, who acted shocked that I couldn't drop everything to sit by my husband's side 24/7. Imagine that, a woman with the same responsibility for providing for her family as a man, dealing with the same issues as a man - because we don't call THEM "working fathers." I never expected to encounter such Leave It to Beaver attitudes, but there they were. We haven't come a very long way at all, baby, and we have no other provision for the alternative. If you're married and your insurance is through your husband's employer, you're in for a rude goddamn awakening if he gets seriously ill, or she does and he decides it's too "hard" and leaves her. Seen that one too.
Thank you for this... I've often wondered the same sort of thing, but as a non-mom, I never felt qualified to express much of an opinion on the subject. Still don't... but you have and I'm grateful!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a bit of defensiveness for working outside the home. And as you said, you are on the other side of child raising---things have changed.
ReplyDeleteAs far as this comment, "
The point I'm trying to make is that working mothers - scratch that, working PARENTS, are also fulltime parents, they do the same house stuff, kid stuff, field trips and scouts and baking the cupcakes for 35 kids, as their SAH counterparts. They do it around a day job."
I would strongly disagree with that statement. As a parent with three children in school, I see who is there helping with the field trips, scouts and baking cupcakes....and for the most part it's not the "working moms".
Also, believe it or not, there are "droves" of women (possibly taken from a different entry) that are leaving the workplace to stay at home. I see them all the time. Maybe not in the area you live, but most definitely in my area. And yes, even (gasp!) MBAs, attorneys, etc.
Finally, in regards to your comment about if one's husband dies, the SAHM could lose the house, move in with parents, blah, blah, blah. What about life insurance? My husband carries a huge amount of life insurance to prevent such a scenario. I would think that most intelligent women who make their children their priority, would make the same decision.
It's too bad that there is so much bitterness on your part for SAHMs.