can i be a feminist and a sahm?

Ohhhhh lets think...no,no I don't think I can... it would have to happen then I would come rushing back and tell you all.... but I do hold my husband to ransom for shoes and holidays.

oooo - that is a provoactive statment. Wikileeks, can you clarify?

I am only a feminist when it suits me......

agree with sakura. it is a loong loong discussion... perhaps we will have it one day as is always helpful and thought provoking

As a family, money needs to be earned, and the children need to be looked after. There are many ways of arranging things so that both are covered. If you and your partner, as equals, sat down and worked out a solution which suits you both, and in which you are both still equal, then fair enough, whether that means you are at home, or he is, or childcare is paid for.

The problems arise when staying at home is seen as the lesser of the roles. When people say a SAHM is dependant on her partner, it does not occur to them to think that her partner is dependant on her for childcare.

So, in a partnership of equals, staying at home is fine from a feminist viewpoint. However, assuming that you should, because you are female, is not. There are also issues with the way society is structured, as mentioned by others, which make it difficult for a couple to operate freely as equals, such as rights to time off and unequal pay. If a man can earn more, and a woman can legally take more time off at the beginning, this places outside pressures on the choices which are practical, pushing people into traditional roles they may not otherwise choose.

I think as long as you are looking at it practically it's ok, as in:

You have a pension that is being paid into.
The housework etc is split fairly.
Skills are kept up so you can return to work.

Personally as a single parent I'd never want to be financially reliant on anyone, if I'd given up my career I'd have been stuffed now. As my children are at school I'd hate to be at home all day.

I feel that being a sahm is a feminist choice that I made for myself, my dp supports me and the family's choice and see's it as being an equal job.

You don't have to stay at home if you don't want to !

I worked from when ds was 6mths to 18mths, didn't earn much if thats what you mean by a constrained choice, also then yes it is a constrained choice by history's influence.

I still feel I have freedom by comparison to others living in much more morally/economically constrained societies. This I am quite grateful for.

In addition to staying at home I can paint, do occasional sessional work and part time work I missed out on when I was commited to a full time position.

I think the concept of free choice is an ideology that's been touted a lot in the past twenty years, but I think this individualist POV is an illusion. There are constrained choices.

sorry, crossposted there.

I think I am still confused though Sakura - you're still not allowing for free choice in your picture, or not apparently anyway. I did work while I was also at home in the UK - that was my choice and I was lucky that my job allowed me to do it (being self-employed helps!) so I wasn't part of your dichotomy.

I do see what you're saying but I don't see that you're allowing for any middle ground in your scenario.

when I say patriarchy has forced women out of medicine, politics and business I mean they have actively done this. I've been reading about the millions of women who were killed in the witch-burnings and how it was women who had knowledge of herbs and healing who were targeted, especially midwives. This was medicine as society knew it, before patriarchy took it over.
I'm saying that the public/private sphere dichotomy is fake , that having to "choose" between one or the other has been made up by the system to the benefit of men.

I think that some mothers believe that their way of doing things is more valid than other mothers' but that's not the main point here I don't think because that could just as easily be said for private/public schools, hot-housing/free-range etc

Patriarchy has persistently separated children from their mothers by force [boarding schools, factory work, forced adoptions etc] and at the same time has forced women out of politics, medicine and business into the private sphere, creating a dichotomy, to the point where today women are grateful to either not be with their babies or be with their babies but have nothing else.

Sakura - if it's not a choice, what is it then?
So long as you have free choice to do what makes you happier, where is the manipulation? Are you suggesting that some fall prey to the idea that mums who work are more valid, and some fall prey to the opposing idea that to stay at home with your child through its formative years is more valid?

But what about people who just want to work outside the home, or people who just want to stay at home and look after the children? Where is the manipulation there? Society pushes alternately in one direction or the other, so in one lifetime you can have a swing for and against staying at home OR working outside the home OR trying to do both.

I probably wouldn't define it as a choice, just as a woman who is forced under patriarchy to leave her children in order to work for a pittance isn't really making a choice, or even the woman who sees feeding the capitalist machine as a somehow a more valid way to spend a life. I wouldn't say any of us are really making a choice; I would say we're all doing the best we can under the circumstances, and that we've all been manipulated, one way or another. The crux of the manipulation is believing there is actually a difference between a SAHM and a WOHM,　as if these are two valid, opposing, separate entities that you can actually choose between.
As I say, the system needs an overhaul. LOng discussion.

I don't see why not since you have made that choice and not had it thrust upon you.

I was very late to having children and decided I wanted to be a SAHM (although while I was in the UK I was also a WAHM because I could) - DH was happy with my choice so that's what I do. When we came over to Australia I told him that I wouldn't be working until I settled in, and possibly not until DS went to school - he was happy with that.

If, OTOH, he had said to me "I don't want you working, your proper place is in the home bringing up my heirs" and I happened to want to work, then it would have become a feminist ishoo - because his wishes would have "outranked" mine.

Can i just add here that SAHM is a patriarchal label and doesn't really have much to do with women at all, but is in fact simply another way of chategorizing women and therefore alienating them from each other.

Although housewife is an absolute blatant insult, so obviously SAHM is preferable.

Definatley. Yes.

Yes.

(As long as you don't believe that all mothers should be SAHMs, or that women are better at looking after children than men, or anything like that, obv).

yes

Yes

yes

sahm mum is a label and a construct

mainly even