Can you be a feminist housewife?

Oh, I think f/t parenthood is the hugest and most challenging thing I've ever done. After all, we're (almost) solely responsible for the entire behavioural/emotional/physical development of another person/other people, besides having physically formed them in the first place. We're raising the next generation of taxpayers/doctors/roadsweepers/teachers etc. Not to mention the people who will look after you in your nursing home, scottishmummy!

Much harder than f/t teaching in Inner London (which I did for quite a few years) or running your own business (which I also did for a few years). And also more rewarding. I can always find another job, return to an old one or start a new one. But I will never, ever get this time back with my children while they're really young. So.. I'm quite satisfied with my lot. I suppose it helps that my partner is completely supportive about me returning to paid work whenever it works, and realises that we'd all have to share responsibility for the home-running tasks if/when I do. But I wouldn't have decided to share my life with him if he wasn't like that, I suppose...

not gushing 'ardest job in world praise.no
yes it is a significant thing to be a parent,but its not a job no
we all parent and raise our children.its what parents do

Isn't it? Not deserving of praise? Derision then?

and dont make me laugh mums isnt most important job i world,its an individual choice.you watch your own kids...and?hardly deserving of gushing praise.

well no,if someone waged goes out 37+hr week no i wouldnt expect them come home and do equally half of chores etc.not if unwaged person at home not working. the person not working would do the house stuff whilst worker at work.

Bonsoir said 'I just think it is unrealistic to think that men and women are somehow going to share work and share domestic responsibilities equally in the way you claim.'

but that's the bloody point - they should, money needs to be earned, house needs to maintained! It should be shared out irrelevant of gender, surely.

I think your question shows that there's still a lot to achieve in the battle for equality!
I feel confident that I'm a feminist ...I do work but from home and look after the kids and home almost exclusively because my husband works long hours. The problem comes in the response from other people...just mention the SAHM element and they can glaze over but talk about my work and the conversation gets more animated. Ok kids and housework can be dead dull..but maybe the answer is ( as has been mentioned) that you keep up the education, maintain outside interests, build your confidence levels so that you don't feel you're letting yourself down somehow...
Nb a good mother is the most important job in the world....you also get to pass on your feminist views to your kids x

I don't expect DP to do housework at all during the week, really - because he isn't physically here to do it. Which is the main reason why sharing domestic responsibilities is so often a non-starter. If DP has any spare time in the week, I would much rather he devoted it to his family than anything else at all. That wouldn't change if I worked the same hours outside the home as he does - we would need to outsource more.

I don't know why we have to discount nannies and housekeepers, Himalaya. What's your reasoning? I just think it is unrealistic to think that men and women are somehow going to share work and share domestic responsibilities equally in the way you claim.

And, no, employees who are there when it comes to the crunch do not necessarily have a housewife. They can have a nanny or housekeeper. The only thing they definitely do is forego time with their children and partner.

I am not talking about out-sourcing childcare to nannys and housekeepers I am talking about sharing it more equally over time with the child's father.

Why do people automatically think that if a mother is not on hand to look after her children it must automatically mean it is outsourced to a lower paid woman?

Bonsoir - you say work-life balance is impossible when the crunch comes, there is always another employee out there who will put work first...but what you miss out to say is ...because they have a housewife at home that makes that possible.

missmehalia - I am the same as you and don't want to hand my family and home over to others to take care of. I know many, many mothers who are hugely qualifed and experienced and only a very few are prepared to carry on all guns blazing on the career path (with nanny/housekeeper) when their children are young.

I think employees can try to combine work and family in a balanced way all they like, but ultimately employers want employees who put work first when the crunch comes. And if an employee insists on work-life balance when the crunch comes, there is always another employee out there who will put work first...

I agree it is a vicious circle - part-time work is disadvantaged, so the only people who will take it are those who have to or those who are not making work goals a high priority 'not dedicated' etc...

When you are employing someone for a serious job these are not the people you want. So why bother going out of your way to make work part-time, or get to grips with flexibility?

Unless men, and women who are skilled, serious and sought after for work demonstrate by their choices that it is important to them to combine work and family life in a balanced way, why would employers change?

Not everyone wants to spend lots of time away from their children. I didn't choose to have my children just to hand them to someone else during most of their waking hours. I know some do, and believe it or not I don't judge them. I just don't think it right for me to do that. And I don't expect the entire paid working world just to pause until I'm ready to join it again. I am quite OK with taking responsibility for a career gap, I think it will take a while though before it's the cultural norm for both adults (in 2 parent families) to make equal career sacrifice, or for most careers to allow for this.

I think one of the greatest current injustices is that people working part time are so disadvantaged and discriminated against. Until that changes, I don't think much else will. Why would both parents in a 2 parent family go part-time if they're both financially so disadvantaged?

If you want to close the pay gap between men and women, you basically need women to move up to pay levels similar to those of men and to subcontract domestic labour and childcare. Flexible working (whether over a week, a year or a lifetime) is only going to be marginally helpful as most responsible jobs (and that is where Western economies are going to create jobs) require dedicated workers.

Yes they can-paid employment isn't the be all and end all of life.

Bonsoir -

But one of the main calls of feminism is to close the pay gap between men and women.

As far as I can see it is mathematically impossible for men and women to have comparable earning power at work, while the majority of families continue to organise their affairs so that dads earn more than mums.

Similarly how can we say that employers shouldn't assume that women with children won't take their career as seriously and will need more concessions than men with children, if we say it is perfectly ok for peoplr to make those assumptions in their families.

This is a cause and a consequence of the widespread uptake of the housewife role. If as feminists we are saying that situation is ok to continue we are also giving up on closing the pay gap.

Families are perfectly capable of taking decisions for long term benefit - they take out mortgages and work the housing ladder, migrate for work, put their children through university, pay into pensions, limit their family size -- all of which can entail some sacrifice to secure stuff recognised as important. Saying that making short term financial sacrifice to get mum's career back onto a equal footing with Dads' after childbirth and breastfeeding is 'pie in the sky' is saying that women's careers don't matter as much as men's.

Getting 'what happens to a mothers career' out of the mental box of 'stuff we manage and stumble through on a daily basis' into the mental box of 'great big important family decisions worth investing in' seems just as important as low cost childcare etc....perhaps more so.

"So that for example if a couple has a child and one partner earns more than the other, why can't it be the obvious thing for the higher earning partner to see that as a good time to take more time off so the lower earning partner gets to build up their experience and earning power rather than disadvantage them further?"

I think that is a bit pie-in-the-sky, personally. Families are usually concerned first and foremost with overall household income in the short term.

Sunshineandbooks - one sort of informal 'survey' of what women want I think comes from the number of women doing degrees and higher degrees. Putting so much time, money and effort into getting qualifications and skills in a particular area suggests someone whose ambition in life is not to be a housewife ....and yet an informal survey of playgrounds and toddler groups shows that they are often full of well educated women who have given all this up to take on a traditional housewife role.

You ask why we haven't had a stronger push for flexible work (at least beyond female dominated industries and low status jobs). The lack of political will in part must be because dads who have the support of a housewife don't have to worry about school pick ups and sick days etc... It's a non-issue for them.

By choosing to duck out of the workplace for the long term while husbands carry on their career unimpeded, the role of housewife is part of what entrenches the lack of family friendliness at work.

I don't think this can be solved through legislation and subsidies, it needs a change of attitude.

So that for example if a couple has a child and one partner earns more than the other, why can't it be the obvious thing for the higher earning partner to see that as a good time to take more time off so the lower earning partner gets to build up their experience and earning power rather than disadvantage them further?

... if you had 2 children and one was really bright and the other was struggling in school you would be more likely to spend money for extra classes for the one who is struggling because they need it more, rather than the one who is already ahead. But with two earners in the family it is normal to say the one earning less should also take on more gaps in their CV, less flexibility at work etc...

I see your point sunshineandbooks, will have a look at the link thanks. I agree it's hugely important to still make changes in the flexibility of the workplace. My situation is brilliant, but it came at a cost in a way. I, we, waited until we were in the ideal position to allow me to SAH and lost out on fertile years doing so. I know it's not a choice many mothers have either and that's wrong.
missmehalia we work along the same lines as you and your dh, i think hell would have to freeze over before I was happy to have to 'ask' for money in a partnership.

I agree with those who don't care for the term 'housewife'. We have gone round the roundabout with that one, surely.

The way I see it, when you commit to being part of a family group there are lots of different things that need doing in order to keep it organised and afloat: bringing in money, organising that money, childcare, shopping for food/clothes/holidays and budgeting, domestic admin, property maintenance, banking, etc. The list goes on and on. And how families choose to divide these tasks up (if there are at least 2 adults) is up to them. If it works best for one of you to stay at home to attend to lots of these things during the day then so be it. It does not mean that that person should have less financial or general decision-making power.

My partner and I make financial decisions together, taking into account total household income and expenditure before divvying up the play money between us. Nothing else would work for us.. As and when the day comes that the childcare is not so demanding on our time and we are both more free to go out and earn, the same practises will apply. We'll just have more play money - hurray! I happen to be the one at home most of the time. I refuse to accept that it means I should be disempowered financially because of it, and have to 'ask my partner' for a certain amount of money to buy new knickers. We have equal play money, we contribute equally to keeping the family organised, cared for and paid for.

perfumed, no of course you're not less of a feminist for wanting to be a SAHM. I'm sorry if that's come across as my stance because nothing could be further from the truth. If you've got several days to spare you might like to take a look at this thread.

I personally believe that capitalism exploits women and that many fortunes have been built on the backs of an army of unpaid women providing essential functions, such as childcare, for 'free'. IMO it's the greatest con against women of all time - the notion that they're "living off" either their partners or the state if they SAH. Whereas in reality their partners/ex-partners would not be able to perform their roles if it weren't for the SAHP (at least not without paying vast sums of money). And that's only the financial side. There is something wrong with a society that sneers at the desire of a parent to look after their own child. A willing, loving, engaged parent is surely the ideal person to care for their child.

In my ideal world we would substantially change society to allow this. However, my ideal world does not yet exist, though I keep engaging in discussions about how it could be achieved and I hope to see it in the future.

The reason I keep on harping back to flexible working is because under our present system the ability to SAH out of choice is always going to be one reliant on capitalist economic principles. Both in the past and at present, women have always had to work. Even back as far as hunter-gatherer societies women combined childcare with other responsibilities. Before industrialisation this was actually easier than it is now because those roles were adapted to fit with those responsibilities (was still a bit shit though as people kept dying from starvation and disease and the like, but that's going off on a tangent). I don't want to see women being confined to certain roles because they're the only ones that can adapt around childcare. Instead I want to see paid work adapting (where at all possible) to family life. And I think in a fair society where family is considered important, it should be possible to really incentivise this through leglislation.

So yes, IMO it is definitely possible to be a SAHM and a feminist. I suspect that SAHMs who are self-defining feminists have already realised that they are performing a hugely valuable role that benefits society and men and they demand that respect from their partners. I hope so, anyway.

You make very valid points sunshineandbooks, especially about flexible working practice. However, that is only relevant to women who want/need to go back to work. What about SAHP/M who are full time SAH? This is what the op is asking.

Am I considered no longer a feminist because I left the workforce outside the home? I actually do still freelance when health permits, but for the purposes of the op, lots of women are full time stay at home mums. They don't earn and the reliance on the males earning seems to infer lack of feminism. But that is only so by denigrating SAH as a non job. It is a job, albeit unpaid. If I didn't do it, someone else would be paid to do it. I choose to do it, I am a huge believer it is my right to be with my child as I see fit. I have rights within my marriage, thanks to feminsim, and I will avail myself of those rights if I need to. I am a still a feminist, it's who I am, not what I do. Its in every answer I give my son, in how I raise him. The sole earner still relies on the SAHP to make this family set up work. It's mutually beneficial.
Often these discussions seem to veer back to childcare and affordability, as though the SAH option was less desirable.

In Western economies, people increasingly have jobs that require multiple skills and are integrated into the globalised economy and do not lend themselves easily to "family-friendly" policies. Anecdotally, a friend recently moved companies to do an identical job in an equally prestigious company to the one she had been doing, but with fixed hours (9 am to 6 pm, with one early start/no lunch break day of 7 am to 3 pm so she can fetch her 4 year old DD from school one day a week) and no out of hours calls (no BlackBerry). She took a 50% pay cut to do so...