Why is promoting the SAHM choice a feminist issue?

[HelenBaaBaaBlackSheep]

This kept coming up in the other thread and I didn't want to drag it off topic so thought I could start it here. I'm genuinely interested as I don't see any connection.

To explain, feminism to me is about equality of treatment (e.g. same wage for same job), equality of opportunities, the rejection of a system in which women are property to be exchanged, shared or abused. But I don't get what it has to do with lifestyle choices like being a SAHM.

Hmm maybe because the role of being a SAHM is generally devalued by our society?

SAHM's are incredibly devalued by our society - just witness all thise "feckless single parent" headlines which the media so loves. Ignores the fact that staying at home to care for a child is just as valid a choice as is working. Trouble is the option is actually removed for most of us who have to work in order to keep a roof over our heads.

promoting SAHP is a feminist ideal. men should be encouraged to stay at home and look after their children too. when sah is valued, women will actually have a choice, instead of it being the default setting.

oo er. what happened there?

Because being a SAHP affects you adversely financially. It is a feminist issue because it is mostly women who choose to do it. Part of that is because it is mostly women who are expected to do it. Also it is partly that the man is more likely to have a higher income, so it makes financial sense for a family if the mum is the SAHP. Also it is because the mum, if she breastfeeds, will have to take a certain amount of time off, and it is easier to stay out of work, than it is to get out of it IYSWIM.

I see more and more Dads being the SAHP if the Mum's earnings are better. Saw a Dad last week who said he worked 2 days a week and cared for the baby the rest of the time and his wife went to work full time as she was better paid.

ONe of the things that makes it a feminist issue is that it is so bound up with women's economic dependence on a male partner. SAHM with a wage-earning man in the house = Good Thing (not least because she knows her place.)
SAHM with no man to keep her under control or support her financially = Bad Thing. She can't expect to be kept by the taxpayers as she's not washing their socks/waiting on them/obeying them.

And being a SAHP isn't valued as a job, so if a man does it, it's considered a bizarre choice, and people wonder if he's 'under the thumb', when actually it's a very valid and valuable choice.

Traditionally the jobs that men do are valued more than the ones women do, even though they all contribute something vital to society. Health Care Assistants are as important as Doctors, but who gets paid more?

What about what people think of volunteers in charity shops?

When more men are SAHPs, it will probably mean it will be valued more, which is good, but irritating that it hasn't been up until now because it's mostly women who do it.

Interesting, and I get the points about valuing care work, and that the non-assumption that a woman will be responsible for all child-care will be a huge step forward in equal opportunities(for both men and women), but I suppose staying at home is an economic choice to me which is why I don't see it as an equality issue.

It's funny how the economic choice so often ends up being on in which the woman stays at home, isn't it? I wonder why that might be....

I can see this issue relates to gender, but not sure I understand the feminist angle.

From talking to other women, I have to say my perception is that more women than men have a strong desire to stay at home with their child when they are little. Isn't this about the difference between being a mother and being a father? I mean the emotional difference, not any kind of stereotype, and in general and on average. Obviously every individual father and mother's experiences will be unique.

Certainly for me, my husband didn't feel the same strong, almost physical compulsion to be with the children when tiny as I have. Is it really such a leap given that I was the one who carried, grew, birthed and breastfed them? He's very involved and chooses to spend an awful lot of time with the children, arranging his work so he's here at teatime, getting up in the night, doing breakfast most days etc.

I find it odd to try to boil down the complex emotions involved in these decisions to a purely economic argument. Economics do play a role if the family cannot afford to lose part or all of one income, but even if all pay was equal do we really honestly think it would split 50:50?

Oh, and I type as a largely SAHM who was earning more pro rata than my dh when I wade the decision to stay at home. I appreciate we are incredibly fortunate to be able to make this choice, something lots of women (or men) simply cannot do even if wanted to.

Surely the whole point of feminism is to give women the right and the freedom to choose

Like HearMeRoar I chose to be a SAHM and regard it as a giant triumph of feminism that I had that choice to make.

Choice is also a misnomer. THere are lots of threads an discussions on here about how the term "choice" with regard to feminism is another hijacking by the patriarchy. Happens all the time. FOr exmaple saying women now have the "choice" to have an abortion or not, completely failing to take into account that society is working against them when they fall pregnant because a) men and society are flippin obsessed with penetrative sex and b) an unplanned for child is a one-way ticket to the poverty trap. Instead of banging on about choice why not educate men to understand that putting their dick in a woman's vagina might make her pregnant.

lifestyle choices is something that men made up in order to completely devalue anything that women do i.e pregnancy, breastfeeding, baby-rearing. Call motherhood a lifestyle choice and voila! society no longer has to support children and mothers.
Call SAHM or WOHM a lifestyle choice and voila! there is no longer a massive amount of women forced into soul-destroying minimum wages jobs while being forced to give their babies to someone else. Extra clever this one, because voila! at the same time you can also declare that it's women's fault they have no pensions or career prospects because they made the "choice" to take care of their own babies when they should have given their babies to someone else, anyone else, anyone else woudl be better than the mother all in the name of the great GDP

Now economic independance is important, a very important feminist struggle, but there is no liberation to be had under the current set-up.

I really think some men don't realise that you can have sex without sticking your dick in.

Becoming a SAHP may be an economic choice based having enough money to make working a choice, but for many families it is an economic choice based on having insufficient funds to cover childcare costs - in which case it is not really a choice at all.

The trouble is, men and women are not different. They are socialised to be different. Girls get bought biggies and babies and are shown countlessnexamples of why their role in life is to be a mother. Boys get the opposite. Men who got a lot more in the way of traditionally femimine influence as a child tend to feel much more like they would like to be a sahp.

This has Been shown time and time again. Put a man in a situation where he has no choice but to be a main care giver to children and he becomes brilliant at it and loves it. When we live in a world where boys and girls are not exposed to gender conditioning from the minute they're born, I bet we'll see far more sahds and far fewer sahms ie. It will become equal.

In purely physiological terms, men and women are different. Women can be pregnant, bear children and breastfeed. Men can't. It doesn't mean that women should or that they have to; what it does mean is that those abilities should be more valued than they are. I mean, ffs, we women can make tiny people and we can make food! With our bodies! That is really an amazing ability if you think about it.

I do, however, completely agree that socialisation is a major influence on both sexes. And it really bothers me that people always ask me how old "he" is because I dress DD in light blue.

Dh was telling me at the weekend about a graph he remembers from his Economics A level which showed the amount of work done in the world by gender and paid/unpaid. He was struggling to remember exactly and said he'd look it out but basically remembered that unpaid women's work was a huge amount - the biggest sector by far. :(

From what I understand, feminism is about equal treatment, about having equal rights and options. As long as people still treat a sahp as an economic drop out, the equality wont be there, for men or women.

equal treatment by whom ? By the patriarchy, of course. that's why waiting or even fighting for equality to be granted by the powers that be is never going to work for women. The concept is at odds with liberation.

THe thing is, in evolutionary and sociological terms, this world of 'paid work' is very very new ie work where you go away from your home and are paid by an employer as opposed to making/growing/selling things out of your own home in a way that meant you just had your DC on the tit or crawling round your feet or indeed helping with the family business.
When my DS was a baby I opened a small shop/stall in an indoor market (as well as doing freelance writing in the evenings) so I could work and have him with me. This was economically a fucking disaster for me as I made a lot of business mistakes but as a general model it has things to recommend it.

Yes, I'm always going on about how they've stolen our skills and sold them back to us, and the only way we can buy them is by working for The Man. Food, clothes, medicine, birth, (pottery was invented by women I've just learned- they kept that a secret didn't they). We could have done all of that ourselves, with our friends and family, with our kids around, or on our own.

Sakura: complete hijack here but what time is it where you are? I am lamentably ignorant when it comes to geography and time zones but have notice that you are often on here when most UK MNers are in bed.

It's 10a.m here, but more to the point, what's your excuse???