No more mommy wars (a mother's day present -- a few days early)
Is there a mommy war?
Below is my answer, published last Sunday in the Washington Post under the headline and subhead "The Mommy War Machine: Put a binky in it!":
You see the magazine illustration: two women glaring at each other, about to take a swing with their satchels -- one a briefcase, the other a diaper bag. And you know right away what's coming: another "Mommy Wars" story, a juicy tale of mothers who work and moms who stay home, dissing each other on playgrounds and in school parking lots with junior-high-level bile.
This trend story has been running for a generation. Just this month, the latest salvo -- Leslie Bennetts's book "The Feminine Mistake," a call-to-work warning women about the long-term costs of staying at home -- hit the shelves with a bang, setting off another round of news stories, talk shows and cyberspace debates about the progress on the battlefront.
But I've got news for you: This is a war that isn't.
The ballyhooed Mommy Wars exist mainly in the minds -- and the marketing machines -- of the media and publishing industry, which have been churning out mom vs. mom news flashes since, believe it or not, the 1950s. All while the number of working mothers has been rising. Here are the facts: Since 2000, the percentage of working mothers with infants has held steady at 53.5 percent, according to a February report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When they can afford it, married women with infants take maternity leaves of a year or so, but then head steadily back to work: 75 percent of mothers with school-age children are on the job. Most work because they have to. And most of their stay-at-home peers don't hold it against them.
But that doesn't stop the media machine. Whether or not William Randolph Hearst ever really said "You supply the pictures, I'll supply the war," everyone knows that a war, any war, is good for the news business. The Mommy Wars sell newspapers, magazines, TV shows and radio broadcasts, as mothers everywhere seize on the subject and agonize, in spite of themselves. "Every other week there's an article saying that if you don't work, you're in trouble financially, and if you do work, your child is at risk," a single mother of three who works part time told me. An especially inflammatory article or episode can increase Web site hits, achieve "most e-mailed" status, drag more outraged viewers or listeners to the phone lines and burn a media brand more deeply into consumers' minds.
That's because middle- and upper-middle-class women are a demographic that responds well to anxiety, says Caryl Rivers, author of "Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women." She sees the Mommy Wars as "the intellectual version of 'Thin Thighs in 30 Days.' " Tell women that working will damage their marriages, harm their health and ruin their children, and they will buy your magazine, click on your Web site, blog about your episode and write endless letters to the editor. They may do so out of fury, anxiety, scorn or an earnest desire to correct your statistical errors -- but if your goal is to increase your hit rate or impress your editor, producer or publisher with something that's widely discussed, where's the downside?
All the above was accomplished by some of the most notorious Mommy Wars articles, which, in recent years, have appeared in the elite triumvirate of the New York Times, the Atlantic and the New Yorker. That list includes "The Opt-Out Revolution" by Lisa Belkin, a 2003 Times Magazine cover story that looked at a handful of Princeton grads who (unlike most of their peers) left demanding jobs to stay at home with their children; Caitlin Flanagan's gloating potshots at working moms, especially "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement" in the Atlantic in March 2004 and "To Hell with All That" in the New Yorker in July 2004; and an article on the New York Times's front page on Sept. 20, 2005, that repeated that many women at elite colleges were opting for motherhood over careers.
Each of these garnered enormous buzz, as we say in the media biz. Belkin's piece was the most e-mailed Times article of the year. It drew so many outraged and laudatory letters that the Times ran them for four weeks. The article was critiqued on almost every prominent media Web site and online opinion magazine and was debated on countless e-mail discussion groups. Google "The Opt-Out Revolution," and you'll get more than 42,000 hits. The article was clearly a resounding marketing success.
The New York Times is tugging at the guilt of the privileged -- and has been for more than half a century, with "career women go home" articles dating to 1953. But the less affluent are just as heavily targeted by the Mommy Wars marketing machine. In a "Dr. Phil" show that aired in November 2003, working moms and stay-at-home moms were seated on opposite sides of the aisle and encouraged to hurl insults across the divide. The show's Web site drew 152 pages of comments, a joint statement of disapproval from its two featured experts (who insisted that their thoughtful discussion was misleadingly edited to look like a fight), and an "Apple Pie in the Face" award from the organization Mothers and More -- and the show is still being talked about today.
Or consider a recent "Oprah" show, aired on Jan. 23, called "My Baby or My Job: Why Elizabeth Vargas Stepped Down." The show attracted nearly 1,500 messages on its Web site despite its flatly false premise, as Vargas still has an impressive job, even if it's anchoring "20/20" instead of the ABC evening news.
Book publishers can impose this false division as well. Take Leslie Morgan Steiner's 2006 book of essays by mothers, a volume she edited explicitly to bridge misunderstandings between mothers at home and those at work. Her own essays were titled "Our Inner Catfight" and "Ending the Mommy Wars." And yet, over her objections, Random House titled the book "Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families." Can you say "inflammatory"?
Steiner, a Washington Post blogger and magazine executive, now says she accepts that the title (if not the subtitle) worked to get the book into the hands of those who most needed to read it. "In a market where 200,000 books are published a year, and 70,000 alone are pitched to the top three TV morning shows," she says, that hot-button title got her on television and snagged nationwide reviews.
Of course, even William Randolph Hearst couldn't have ginned up a war without some nasty facts on the ground. The Mommy Wars construct sells because, however distorted it is, it does touch a nerve. No matter what choice a working woman makes after she has a child, the grass always looks greener on the other side. Daniele Levy is a Massachusetts lawyer who stayed home for a couple of years when her two children were infants. Now she works a four-day week at a nearby law firm. "When I was home full-time, I thought, 'Wow, look at those women who can make it work,' " she said. " 'They have their children and their careers, it must be really great.' Now I'm working, and I just talked to a friend who's at home, I'm thinking, 'Wow, that's really fun, that must be really great.' "
"We don't live in a society that has a mindset that workers get pregnant and have babies," says Judith Stadtman Tucker, editor of the Web magazine Mothers Movement Online. She points out that mothers' march into the workforce started to plateau in the 1980s -- just as childcare costs started rising sharply.
At the same time, the workplace has become steadily more demanding, with mandatory overtime for many who have jobs. Meanwhile, the United States notoriously lags behind all other developed nations on such policies as paid maternity leave, family sick leave or health care that's not tied to that one all-consuming job. Nor has the culture relinquished the idea that caring for children -- or for anyone in need -- is women's responsibility, with men "helping" occasionally, if asked. So who can blame women for battling internally over how to give their all to both work and baby -- a battle the media blow up into a sandbox showdown?
But the conflict may be nearing its expiration date. In 2006, several prominent books on the subject were published -- and sold abysmally, according to figures from Nielsen BookScan. Only 9,000 copies sold of Caitlin Flanagan's widely reviewed "To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife," in which a woman wealthy enough to stay home and have a nanny insisted that mothering from home was the only right way. Only 4,000 copies sold of Linda Hirshman's "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World," which argued the opposite position: that elite women were wasting an entire generation's human capital unless they stayed in ambitious jobs. Could it be that women don't want to shell out $25 to be told they're living in a war zone?
Or could it be that women and men today refuse these false choices? Carol Fassino, a mother of three who works part-time, reads all the Mommy Wars articles but shrugs them off. "Everybody lives a different life," she says. "I'm not gonna put down the newspaper and go slit my wrists. I know women who work or don't work or are like me, in the middle. But if people have felt judgmental, they kept it to themselves."
Most women today have to work: it's the only way their families are going to be fed, housed and educated. A new college-educated generation takes it for granted that women will both work and care for their families -- and that men must be an integral part of their children's lives. It's a generation that understands that stay-at-home moms and working mothers aren't firmly opposing philosophical stances but the same women in different life phases, moving in and out of the part-time and full-time workforce for the few years while their children are young. "The mommy wars thing is a little simplistic," confirms Julie Huck, a 38-year-old working mom with two preschool children. "It's all hyped up and a little silly." Like Fassino and others, she longs for a cultural shift and family-friendly policies that allow everyone -- women and men -- to work more flexible hours, without career penalties.
Would that end the Mommy Wars? Let's hope.
NOTE: Check here to see a partial list of blog mentions of the article. And if you're interested, scroll up from there to see some of the letters we got in response. By the way--one letter-writer from a major metropolitan daily told me that she had always known the mommy wars were bunk, but her editor assigned her to write the articles anyway!
Article: "[Since] 1997, the participation rate for married mothers of infants [has been] 53.3 percent . . . ."
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/02/art2full.pdf
Your version:
"Since 2000, the percentage of working mothers with infants has held steady at 53.5 percent . . . ."
Analysis:
The article says about half of mothers with infants work.
You say about half of working mothers have infants.
P.S. The article also says: "In 2005, there were 2.4 million married mothers whose youngest child was less than 1 year old."
May 7, 2007 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
For what it's worth, I read it the other way around - that is, I understood her to mean what the article says.
May 7, 2007 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see the mommy wars as the successful media/establishment transformation of, literally the broadest social problem we face - how to replace our species and raise children the best way - into an 'individual' or 'lifestyle' problem about 'choices' and 'options.'
We don't need sane government policies, just snarky episodes of Dr. Phil.
May 7, 2007 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
EJ, Thank you!
This seems so obvious that I wonder how the heck the mommy-wars meme got started in the first place. Society as a whole is not as petty as the target demographic of Dr. Phil or even the NYTimes.May 7, 2007 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hate to say it but there really are mommy wars. Not as presented, though. There really are conflicts between people with kids and people without kids, though.
Those of us without kids, though we might want them as I do, are often rather annoyed when our government goes nuts about Hollywood and video games because of "the children" without even a word for those of us who are amused and entertained by "out there" ideas in art.
I rather often feel like our government is trying to serve people with kids rather than those of us without them.
So, while I agree with you that the woman on woman violence you're describing is a convenient fiction for the media, there are mommy wars. It has to do with the notion that procreation is to be supported and that singles don't have a voice in social and tax policy.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 7, 2007 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
An excellent point about the "official values" and government emphasis. There is, for example, a sophisticated technology for controlling inappropriate content, of which the White House apparently is unaware: the OFF switch. Must be one of those cases where the political appointees are suppressing science. I have no problem with assistive tools such as V-chips, but the ultimate authority is parental. As Nick von Hoffman once said while an FCC commissioner, the VCR put pornography back where it belongs: in the home.
While I get along surprisingly well with teenagers, I do not find small children more pleasant, in general, than a root canal. Babies get a very slight exception, since they remind me of Winston Churchill, a man I much admire.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 7, 2007 9:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Taking care of the children are what grandmothers are for. LOL... (Bet that was a hit with the feminists.)
Seriously though, I remember reading that this was one theory as to why women live longer than men - that it serves a purpose of child care.
And to clear the chauvenist air, if the grandmothers were raising the children, that meant the women were out gathering while the men were out hunting - so they were career women way back when, so why should they not be now?
(Easier said then done. Our children's grandmothers live 2 and 3 hours away, one stays quite busy with bridge, and the other is taking care of a grandchild who's father is in another country and who's mother works. But in the old village setting, it would be easy to visualize the grandmothers rearing the children.
May 7, 2007 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Got to agree that the real divide is between parents and nonparents. As a nonparent, I am in awe of the daily sacrifices made by the parents, and appalled by how little support they get from society. Lip service, yes. Hysteria about nonexistent or rare threats, yes. Hymns to the importance of The Family, yes. Genuinely needed and substantial policies that would reduce some of the handicaps parents face in raising the people who will carry on after me (and support me in my old age), nope, don't see it. They deserve much more.
May 8, 2007 5:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry just about everyone needs to take a time-out and re-read 'Feminine Mystique'. Betty Friedan pointed out some uncomfortable truths about the culture that valorized the stay-at-home mom. Given modern day labor saving devices it really is not that hard a job and for her target audience, that of college educated women. was driving them out of their minds with boredom with the result that they end up obsessing about something.
Housekeeping and childraising is not an 80 hour a week job unless you make it so. Women's magazines and the bizaare world that has launched Martha Stewart Living are all symptoms of the Peter Principle in action: work expands to fill the time available.
Because make no mistake about the root of the Mommy Wars. If proper childraising actually is a 40-60 hour a week job then mommies who work are bad mommies. If you can hold down a job and still be a good parent without live-in help then stay-at-homes are to that degree slackers. There is an irreducible tension there. But don't take it from me, I'm just going to get in trouble talking like this. Get down to a library or bookstore, pick up a copy of the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, read it, think about what she was saying and understand why the modern Women's Movement took the shape it did and why women's presense in the work force changed in the way it did.
People say that it takes two people working to support a family where it only took one in the fifties. People also point out that the typical family enjoys a higher lifestyle now than in the fifties. What people don't do is draw a line between the two. Women's Liberation did more than liberate women, it liberated a whole bunch of productivity which translated into a whole bunch of material goods. Whether that is really a net good depends on you. But we are in a world where on the one end is the mommy home-schooling her kids and on the other the ambitious lawyer juggling her 50 hour a week job with her child care arrangements with most women in-between and each faced with the dilemma of not wanting to denigrate the choices of the other yet not willing to concede the 'bad mommy' question.
There is a reason why Betty Friedan was a hero in the opening days of the womens movement. She had really, really important things to say. And it is not all about marketing, much of this was self-inflicted by women against women. Sure much of the bickering was being manipulated by men cynically calculating on Madison Avenue how to make women out guilt-trip each other over housekeeping and child-raising standards. Friedan showed that women didn't have to be defined by the role of 'wife' and 'mother' and if men were threatened by the new reality well too bad, so sad.
May 8, 2007 7:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jan
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Sorry. This former stay-at-home mom who (even as a nurse) found it very hard to get a job.
I spilled some wine on my laptop last night and it wouldn't type "c's"
I ficks it with a Q-tip, but now it won't type that letter that comes after "w."
May 8, 2007 7:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you that it's all platitudes. I could get behind initiatives that would actually help, but only if they're fair. For example, if parents get paid time off work then single or childless workers either need to be better compensated for taking on the work left over from the parents or they need to be able to take their own personal leaves when they want.
I just don't like the notion that people with kids are somehow better than those without.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 8, 2007 8:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
They are not better. It's just that they are not getting paid for their second job.
And society needs people to continue to pay taxes to fund your social security and to keep the Country that you live in going when you retire. So children are everyone's responsibility in a society.
In my opinion, people without children or grandchildren should be the ones out volunteering after work with tutoring poor children, big brothers / big sisters, boys and girls clubs, ymca, what you have.
May 8, 2007 9:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lots of people have second jobs that are unpaid. Artists, writers, musicians, bloggers, actors...
Is it really better to go tutor kids than it is to go rehearse a new play?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 8, 2007 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, it is different in this sense: if you quit your unpaid job as an artist or blogger, the world loses a little bit of the kinds of stuff that make happiness in life, but it still has a pretty big store. If you quit your parenting job, a person loses much of the possibility of happiness at all.
That is to say, there is an analogy to be made here in regards to CtrlAltDel's argument, and it's a good one (a world without artists, writers, musicians, bloggers, actors, etc. is at least arguably very bad, just as a world without people paying our social security will be bad). But the public good argument doesn't get to everything that is morally imperative about supporting parents. In some instances (children, but also sick family and others), individuals in a society with no social safety net are put in the position of being unable to care for those who cannot care for themselves, which is really a terrible moral dilemma to face. An enlightened society, it seems to me, will find ways to shift resources to make it possible for poor single mothers to ensure that their children are cared for, or a working spouse to help a dying partner, etc.
May 8, 2007 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the pernicious problems of our medical system is cost shifting, including the case of unfunded mandates for such things as emergency care (e.g., EMTALA requirements) have their real costs shifted to those patients with better ability to pay. In like manner, insurers with more market leverage get deeper discounts, and the costs are still shifted, worst of all to the self-paying patients.
I agree with your point that dealing with care issues would be a legitimate function for a society. Unfortunately, it is not being treated as a societal responsibility, but a selective and private one. Much as healthcare costs are shifted to sick people with better financial resources, family leave costs or workload are shifted to co-workers rather than the society. In small and medium businesses, this can be a very heavy shift, perhaps resulting in people quitting and leaving even a smaller pool to take on the work.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 8, 2007 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, that's what gets me so worked up about it, Howard. The burden is just moved to other employees. In that sense, it's as if some one is saying, "What your coworker is doing with their time is more important than what you might want to do with yours."
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 8, 2007 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's pie in the sky about proposals like mine are that the burden really needs to be shifted differently, to society as a whole. Then you end up (not that it's a bad thing) proposing a European-style welfare state. That is, if the government was taking on the risk/responsibility for subsidizing family leave, etc., then it wouldn't fall to the employer to pay for it, and in theory, it shouldn't fall to the coworker to deal with the mess (since the employer would be in a position to hire a temporary replacement). But that's a tall order, starting from where we are now.
Then again, a Pew study indicates that even conservatives want to build a social safety net (sort of).
May 8, 2007 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Keeping one's own house and raising one's own kids are not jobs, period.
Proof? If such a narcissistic fantasy were ever implemented, who would pay the single parent or person living alone?
May 8, 2007 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that work-time-off-for-children issues ought to be addressed in the public sphere, as other child-related issues are (tax deductions, for instance).
But government action of any imaginable kind will never be enough for the hard-core "pay me to raise my own kids" believers, who tend to inhabit the upper-middle class, because governments can't confer occupational currency in a rapidly-changing field, maintain circles of professional acquaintances, or ensure possibly irrational expectations of uninterrupted promotions during an interrupted career.
Another issue-- If we pay people, beyond the existing incentives, to raise their own kids, why won't they tend to have more kids? And if they do, is this what we want?
May 8, 2007 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, who cares in the end if some people want everything? I would like all that, but I don't expect it, and I wouldn't be more likely to expect it, I don't believe, if I were Danish and didn't have to take my parenting leave unpaid.
I don't know if I'd have seven kids, say, just to get seven years of leave. That's not much of a life of luxury....
May 8, 2007 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am puzzled by the tendency to frame this debate as support the family v. don't support the family. Isn't it more accurate to say that we already have a level of support for family-work in the form of tax credits and FMLA, and the question is whether there should be MORE support, and if so, how much? Not saying that there shouldn't be more support, but I think the debate is more honest if we say it is about how much more support we want. It is true that currently the government subsidizes family-work to a limited degree, but does not subsidize blogging, jazz piano, novel writing or what have you (unless indirectly through funding agencies that distribute grants, which aren't universally available to all who might want them in the way that a tax credit is).
May 8, 2007 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, but if you were instructed that having as many children as possible would guarantee a special place at the foot of God forever, and if you were fool enough to believe it, you might find it easier with more money.
May 8, 2007 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or to take destor's point in another direction --protection against child molesters has (IMHO) outweighed almost all rational considerations in how the criminal law & penal system have been changed over the past decade. We're willing to throw the Constitution out the window to "protect" against the statistically insignificant danger of stranger abduction. Hard cases make bad law and worse legislation. But how can you argue against "Chrissy's" law, complete with mourning parents on TV claiming that the only thing that will ameliorate their undoubtedly horrendous personal tragedy is an ill-conceived law?? It's amazing how much energy legislatures are willing to spend in "supporting families" when it is a matter of restricting the rights of criminals. Would that they could devote a tenth as much effort to actually helping ordinary families!
May 8, 2007 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
E.J.--
I really liked your Op-ed, and basically, I agree with you: the media loves the "mommy wars" for the same reason so many people like to watch women's wrestling.
Most mothers have to work for economic reasons, and I think that middle-class and most upper-middle class mothers recognize this.
But there is a narrow sphere of much more affluent mothers who don't have to work, and within that sphere some of those who stay at home really do look down upon those who work. (Those who work, of course, also can look down upon those who stay at home. But, these days, in some very affluent suburbs, those who stay at home are in the majority--and so, their prejudice wins.)
When my children were very, very young, I lived, for a few years in Fairfield County, Ct., home of Greenwich, Ct., etc.
In the morning I would drop my 3-year-old and 4-year-old off at nursery school, and then head for the train station. I really didn't feel any guilt--they both liked nursery school. (It was a great JCC nursery school.) And I liked my job. But I did feel the communal disapproval of the mothers.
Very, very few of the other mothers worked. As I raced out of the nursery school parking lot to try to make my train, they stood in groups, deciding where to go shopping, then where to have lunch. (I know this sounds like a caricature, but it's actually the truth.)
Since I couldn't be home to pick up my children in the mid-afternoon, I tried to find rides with other mothers. They would not have had to go far out of there way to drop them off. But most politely refused, on the grounds that since I couldn't "take my turn" I really couldn't be part of the car pool.
The nursery school teachers, on the other hand, were sympathetic, and willing to drive my kids home where a high school baby-sitter was waiting. (I paid the nursery school teachers, of course.)
The other mothers also were unhappy that I, as a working mother, would send my kids to nursery school even if they had a runny nose. (Not a fever or a painful sore throat--but a cold.) My feeling was that, at that age, kids inevitably pick up colds from each other. That's how they build up immunities.
More recently, a friend living in a similarly
affluent community in Westchester County has had similar experiences . . ..
So I think there is a very narrow reality to the "Mommy Wars"--in extremely affluent communities--and that publications like The New York Times are writing for that narrow audience. After all, many NYT editors live in those communities, and they like to read stories about themselves.
May 8, 2007 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Could you provide some examples that explain what you mean by this:
But government action of any imaginable kind will never be enough for the hard-core "pay me to raise my own kids" believers, who tend to inhabit the upper-middle class...
I really can't imagine what you're talking about. I personally would love for our country to provide universal health care, and a comprehensive public transportation system. Is that what you're talking about? If so, I would like to mention that everyone could ride and get health care; not just families with children.
But really; that can't be what you mean when you say middle-class people are asking for hand-outs to raise their children. Please elaborate.
****And for those who are worried about my laptop (see below) I just about have the "x" working. I just have to smack it really hard!**********
Jan
May 8, 2007 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow! You must have had quite a nursery school for your 3 and 4 year-old's; they got out of nursery school late enough that a high school kid was at your house for them mid-afternoon.
Since I couldn't be home to pick up my children in the mid-afternoon, I tried to find rides with other mothers. They would not have had to go far out of there (sic) way to drop them off. But most politely refused, on the grounds that since I couldn't "take my turn" I really couldn't be part of the car pool.
You state that the other mothers wanted reciprocity (what is wrong with that?), but your implication is that they should help you out of your situation because, well, because you asked... is your point that when you're entitled, you're entitled? You don't describe them as your friends. Did you make friends with any of the mothers of your children's school-mates? Lucky for you the teachers stepped up. But I wonder; those teachers might have had some pressure from their administration to accommodate clients.
More recently, a friend living in a similarly
affluent community in Westchester County has had similar experiences . . ..
So, affluent stay-at-home moms are just bitches, huh?
I just want to say that the attitude you express is not a mommy war thing. To me it is about people who feel as though others should help them out simply because they feel entitled. People who lead (one type of) busy lives often judge those who consciously have chosen to do things differently, as available to do errands for them --> see:
They would not have had to go far out of there (sic) way to drop them off. But most politely refused, on the grounds that since I couldn't "take my turn" I really couldn't be part of the car pool.
Were you ever planning to "take a turn" at anything? I didn't think so.
Jan
May 8, 2007 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
A few points:
1) What's wrong with women's wrestling? Trish Stratus rules!
2) Why did you care what the uppity moms thought? Or, did you really care?
3) Your kids are going to be tougher than their kids. That's important.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 8, 2007 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Destor 23--
You are absolutely right-- my kids are tougher. Thank you so much for recognizing that possibility. (My daughter has been teaching first-graders in the toughest school in the Bronx for four years-- and they are learning to read. My son is equally tough and extremely self-reliant. I'm very proud of each of them.)
And regarding caring about what these other moms thought. Well . . . yes, and no. At some level, I did care. "Girls" (and even women) tend to care way too much about what other people think. But I did ignore them insofar as I continued to live my life and raise my children the way I thought I should. I had very little choice.
On women’s’ wrestling-- I don't enjoy men's wrestling (or boxing) either. But I don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with women wrestling. I just think that many misogynists (women as well as men) enjoy the spectacle of women hissing and spitting at each other.
May 8, 2007 7:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad your kids turned out well and that you stuck to your guns in the face of social pressure. I didn't mean to minimize that, by the way. Those pressures are very real. At the same time, going to school with the sniffles does toughen a kid up -- you grow up and you're not sure why but you remember that there's still work to be done even when you're not feeling 100%.
As for the wrestling: Women's pro wrestling is fake! And pro wrestling one of the best performance art forms out there. Seriously, they do more than hiss and spit, I promise. They defy gravity. When it's good, it's so much more than a simulated cat fight. I know what you mean about the mysoginists watching. But there's really more to it then that. I'd venture that the best female pro wrestlers completely transcend the old cat fight element and achieve some real artistry. To some extent, that's a matter of taste, but you'd be surprised...
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 8, 2007 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cville Dem--
I can't help but wonder about your hostile tone, and language.("just bitches, huh?")
I wonder if you are a stay-at-home mom, a working Mom, or just somebody in a bad mood.
To answer your questions, yes I did a have a couple of very close friends among tne nursey school Moms, but they lived far from my home.
And no there was no 'pressure" from the school administration--there was no administration. This was, as I said, a relatively inexpensive Jewish Community Center nursery school run by one woman with a couple of assistants.
Finally, I was always happy to have other kids over for play-dates, etc., when I was home. But reciprocating wasn't the big issue. There were mainly philosphical differences about child-rearing. The stay-at-home Moms tended to be more protective-- more likely to be upset if a child fell and scraped his knee, had a cold, etc. (which is one reason why they stayed at home) and critical of more laissez faire working Moms.
May 9, 2007 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that the there should be single-payer health care at low cost to the citizen, day care in schools, good public transportation, and all that. These resources benefit everyone equally.
But as a matter of public policy we can't have a government-mandated child-leave scheme giving the well-off three, ten, or thirty times the dollar-value of benefits that a teacher, a bus driver, or a janitor gets. Any government-mandated child leave program that avoids this rank injustice is OK with me.
There are other aspects of (typically upper-middle-class) employment that governmental regulation cannot practically reach, and which seem to have become part of the 'dignitary interests' of some upper-middle class employees. I gave as examples: the need to remain occupationally current while absent from work in a rapidly-changing field; continuing interactions with professional acquaintances while absent from work; and meeting expectations of uninterrupted promotions during an interrupted career. If employees for whom these things are significant can extort some sort of make-whole payments or other personnel action from their employer, more power to them.
But they won't be able to, except in rare cases. People in an organization won't generally stand for someone who is gone three years out of ten being treated the same regarding promotions, salary levels, etc., as someone who has been there ten years out of ten, all else held equal. And why should they?
The real problem is that for some people, the idea that the choices they make should have consequences is unfair.
May 9, 2007 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maggie, I responded to what you wrote; not what you didn't write. You seemed to be making the case that the stay-at-home parents were being selfish:
But most politely refused, on the grounds that since I couldn't "take my turn" I really couldn't be part of the car pool.
Now you say:
But reciprocating wasn't the big issue.
What was the issue? Your post was about not getting help you asked for, to transport your 3 and 4 year-old home by people who "didn't have to go far out of their way (paraphrasing)"
Now you say this:
There were mainly philosphical differences about child-rearing. The stay-at-home Moms tended to be more protective-- more likely to be upset if a child fell and scraped his knee, had a cold, etc. (which is one reason why they stayed at home) and critical of more laissez faire working Moms.
What I object to in your post is that you are very judgmental about stay-at-home moms because they didn't step up to your plate. Your statement above confirms that.
As it happens, I have been both a working and a stay-at home mom and what I know is that both can work; both are valid decisions. Both can produce independent, happy children; the common thread has to be that the parents are at peace with their decision and they have to have a "village" of their own making ready.
When I quit my job and stayed home it was the hardest decision I'd ever made. It was the right one for me. I had plenty of working friends, and I always felt good about helping them out. We were a team, and all these years later we still are.
As to your assumption that knee scrapes and sore throats (which I gather from your inference are trivial things) are blown out of proportion to those who are at home, I wonder where in the world you get that. We all want to justify what we did by saying it was best for our own children. I have no doubt that your children are fine, upstanding citizens.
What bothered me about your post was that you were blaming women who you seemed to think had nothing better to do for not helping in a way that you seemed to feel entitled to.
Then you went on to say that a friend of yours in a wealthy suburb had a similar experience, as though that confirmed everything you said before. Then you accuse me of being hostile or in a bad mood.
That is typical of narcissistic people who are bitter if they don't get everything they want.
Jan
May 9, 2007 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just have to point out... this has been the longest and most passionate sub-thread... I think this is evidence that the issue of how do we take care of people with children while being fair to those without is actually more vital than the "Mommy Wars" issue that EJ effectively debunked. Maybe we should shift topics and get onto what kind of society would be most fair to those with kids and those without?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 9, 2007 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm in for that discussion - it's certainly a hard one.
May 10, 2007 4:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maggie,
Glad to have you in here in the comments! Sounds as if you had that experience of philosophical differences a decade or two ago. My sense is that the generations have shifted, and the lines aren't so strictly drawn.
But even if there exists such a divide amongst the highly privileged, the amount of ink the subjuect gets is a distraction from the public policy discussion we *should* be having--and a failure on the media's part. It privatizes what ought to be a public policy discussion.
Raising children is an important social good, and an unbelievable burden that should be socially shared. I don't agree with some of the commenters here that raising children is a private pleasure akin to playing the piano. Nobody's piano playing is going to pay my social security benefits or bring me meals on wheels when I'm old and toothless. Caring for other human beings is a different category, and vastly undervalued in this country.
May 10, 2007 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly, my experience was a while ago.
And as I said at the beginning of my post, today, the vast majority of middle-class and upper-middle class Moms work.
That's why I was suprised about my friend's very recent experence in Westchester-- until I realized that she is living in a town that is so affluent that women actually can afford to stay at home.
Putting this together, all I really meant to say was that at one point in time, the Mommy Wars was a real phenomena,at least in some places, but today, only a smal group of very wealthy women have the choice. So, as you point out, it's not worth wasting the ink. It's just a story that has taken on a life of its own.
In the meantime, I was surprised to see the thread turn into a debate as to whether parents are getting unfair privleges in the workplace. Like you, I believe that we need to look at children collectively. (This, I think, is true of many political problems in this country.)
Society's children are, in some sense, all of our children. Some of us choose to have kids; some don't. That's fine. But if somebody didn't have children, we wouldn't have a future.
That said, the burden shouldn't fall unfairly on an individual in a very small workplace where, if one person goes on maternity or paternity leave, someone else has to do 40% more work. Here, I suspect we need government support (perhaps in the form of tax breaks) for employers who provide good leave benefits, to help them afford a temporary or part-time worker to fill in.
May 10, 2007 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only similariuty between babies and pianos is that my baby wakes my neighbor, and his piano does the same to me.
May 10, 2007 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink