Are/should male norms be the benchmark for female 'equality'? Should 'femininity' be prized too?

Femininity should be defined by women, not the patriarchy. Do we even know what this looks like? I see many of women's roles as powerful and strong. Lifting and caring for an incontinent dementia sufferer is tough work. It nearly broke my Dad yet my Mum did this as her day job for many years. Giving birth is innately powerful. I have 2 children and see many women involved in their education, affective lives and so on. These women are classic feminine, classic masculine and everything thing in between (I live in a rural backwater). In this rural place, I have come to appreciate the role of womankind: care-givers, food providers, ordering the lives of the people around them (the elderly, the young, the men). Old fashioned kitchen gardening goes on and it is the healthy elderly that do this. When I look around the world outside industrialised nations, I see women doing all the low-value, low-paid work because someone has to: sustenance agriculture, heavy lifting, women will turn their hand to anything. In the west, women have more choice and, we are told, choose to stay at home or nurse etc. I think the wealth of the west has meant cultural norms, gender norms and stereotypes now dominate women's choices. Too often, talk about innate preferences or population-level trends between the sexes is used as instruments to justify the present situation. Be intelligent: we don't know what a truly free society even looks like for women. Those that wish to pour caution on women's roles are too often those who wish to thwart it. I'm thinking of that google exe memo. Why do people wish to put women in boxes? I see culture vs gene debate highly unsatisfactory: environmental differences that start before a child is even born become embedded in the brain and behaviour and is as powerful and difficult to escape as if they were genetic. What we can alter is the environment. Let's change that and see where we go.

Much of the debate over women's role in the modern workplace has come out of the postwar period and is defined (I believe) by hyperconsumerism. The capitalist:consumerist grip on the world is killing us all. I feel the debate about getting more women to participate in this ailing system is mightily missing the point. I'm sure this is where the schism between Marxist feminists/ women's lib and equality feminists originates.

I would appreciate any debate on the points I've raised: economics and feminism are not my specialisms.

The answer to this problem would be state-run free nurseries. Or a carers allowance for SAHPs.

That's what I had growing up (and my mum got 3 years maternity leave).

The fact that more women than men are found to be SAH is not problematic, in itself. Unless you think that the role of SAHP is worth intrinsically less than a paid wage - which is clearly exactly what several posters on this thread believe.

Absolutely it is problematic. The imbalance is a huge problem - men won't be in the domestic sphere and be around to raise their children, women won't be as represented in the professional world because they're stuck at home.

On an economic scale, SAH isn't worth very much - cleaners need no qualifications and nursery nurses just an NVQ, and it pays minimum wage. Staying at home literally IS worth less that my job, because I could pay someone else to do it for less than my salary.

Yolo, if you're maintaining that it is at least as beneficial for a baby to spend most of its waking hours in some kind of professional childcare setting, as it would be for said child to spend most of its waking hours with one of its parents, then we will just have to agree to differ.

I wasn't talking about babies, but children (school age +). I'm not denying it's better for a parents to be with a newborn, and for that we have maternity leave/SPL for up to a year.

While I was at school, there would have been 0 benefit of my mum being there to pick me up and take me home, over me going to an after school club with arts, sports and my friends.

‘But why is it always the woman that has to take the risk and the hit to her career? Children have 2 parents. This is basic feminism, I cannot believe we still have to defend women's rights to be parents and work in 2017!‘

Nobody is saying mothers can’t work. It’s not feminism to claim that children have two parents in anything other than a biological sense.

I think that on the whole in the UK the workplace has made some pretty good accommodations for female biology where that is needed. I just don't think it is needed for a very long period. My female biology has meant I have carried and birthed two children. I received time off for my antenatal appointments and prior to and after birth for that period of time when I was not able to work because I was too pregnant, birthing or recovering from birth. I then had the option to take longer leave if I had needed it in order to facilitate breastfeeding, or there were facilities to support expressing at work. In my particular circumstances I needed neither, but it was great to have the options. Provision for sick leave and healthcare support is pretty good too, except where that heads towards disability where the current government is making things incredible difficult. I don't think I've had any particularly female illnesses yet however.

While I think that society should support children I'd be incredibly wary of that defaulting to supporting women only to be carers. Already the longer maternity leave seems to encourage many men to opt out of active fathering, which is as far as I can see a loss for everyone.

If there are certain industries that are discriminatory against women who take career breaks, women should be warned what those industries are, so they can make informed career breaks.

Someone above argued it was the concept of masculinity that needs to change. Seems the guardian agrees: www.theguardian.com/money/2017/nov/21/the-masculine-mystique-why-men-cant-ditch-the-baggage-of-being-a-bloke

If SAHPs were paid a wage to recognise their (significant and vital) contribution to society, they could then employ cleaners for the cleaning, which might allow them to enjoy the 'caring' bit more, and free up more time to pursue other interests.

And how is this related to femininity and women again? If there was a living wage for staying at home, do you think more men would get involved? Now that there is an obvious cost to it, do you think it would get more equal? I think it would. I think that while it's free labour, men are very happy with the status quo of them having the money, and benefitting from that labour. I think that once the labour costs them money, it might force them to think more - it would certainly free women - suddenly it's not 'if you go out to work, we'll barely break even once you've paid for childcare' and now it's 'if you don't go out to work, then we'll be barely better off, so you may as well go to work if that's what you want, and have the opportunity for pay increases'

You are assuming that women need to bend their biology to fit in with the workplaces and employment systems created by the patriarchy. Imagine if they were designed by women for women.

correlation does not = causation. Entitled lazy men are not caused by their wives/partners choosing to stay at home for a period of time with their babies/children.

As discussed in the other thread, men do not even realise they are lazy and entitled because they have never had to give the tiniest iota of thought to raising a child & the associated admin tasks. So yes, there is a massive link between men having a wife and home doing it all and their complete ignorance of how much is actually being done.

Women would be on a far more level playing field in the work place if men also had to deal with all the associated parenting and domestic tasks as well as work. I think we need to hold men's feet to the fire and make them step up.

Fizzy, I've already said that where both parents/partners work, then the domestic burden should be halved. If one parent/partner (male OR female) is SAH, then I think it's reasonable that they also assume more of the domestic burden.

Right, so if you're the stay at home parent, it is reasonable you also do the domestic drudgery.

The fact that more women than men are found to be SAH is not problematic, in itself. Unless you think that the role of SAHP is worth intrinsically less than a paid wage - which is clearly exactly what several posters on this thread believe.

So it's not problematic that more women are expected to do the domestic drudgery (given your first statement)

We also don't think it's worth less than a paid wage (I for example, know exactly what it costs to get various household tasks done, as I pay people to do them).

Where we have the disconnect, is that I don't think that the work aside from parenting that a SAHP is expected to do, and even some aspects of parenting, are rewarding. I don't think that telling me that it's rewarding to be the SAHP, and therefore be the one doing the housework (as you say is reasonable), is enough payment to make me be the one to want to do all that housework, and tellingly, neither do men, or they would be clamouring to stay at home, in the same way that women fought to be allowed to work.

I think that 'caring work' - which isn't all parenting, and in actual fact is largely cleaning again, is devalued because no-one wants to do it, because a large proportion of it is unpleasant, repetitive, and boring and that's why it's not prized, and women, who are at the bottom of the power hierarchy, are expected to do it for free, and I'm just not going to participate in that oppression by encouraging or glorifying it.

The fact that more women than men are found to be SAH is not problematic, in itself I think it is highly problematic. Men at work expect to have their lives facilitated by women (see another thread on this very subject) and never have to engage their precious masculine brains with the minutiae of domestic life. This does not make for an equal or fair society and means any woman of ambition is not playing on a remotely level field.

because if*

The fact that more women than men are found to be SAH is not problematic, in itself.

TBH I think it is problematic because child rearing and domestic duties are overwhelming female then how do men know there is a place for them there? Where are their role models? Young childhood is over feminised in the UK. Most nursery care and preschools are female dominated. Primary carers are mothers. Where are the men in tiny children's lives? What about the fathers who would love to be SAHPs but social and cultural norms make it difficult.

And also OP, you do seem to be saying that if one partner were to do the dreary domestic stuff and work less, it should be the woman because they are more "naturally inclined" to spot the dust on the windowsill or something...

*I have simply pointed out that having two parents working full-time is a less than optimum scenario for the child.

For someone who's not doing that, you do seem to be arguing it strangely - blaming women wanting to work for rising house prices, telling me that I'm denigrating women's work when I'm actually denigrating the shit work of running a house (literally in some cases), being disparaging of the idea that some women perhaps want to work rather than stay home with their kids, and completely disbelieving the idea that a reasonable alternative is for men to stay at home.*

@Fizzy, exactly.

Also, since when is working full-time not optimum?

If my parents hadn't worked full-time, they wouldn't be extremely successful now. I wouldn't have had a lot of the opportunities I did, like travelling. I would be paying off a shit-ton of student debt right now, instead of having none. I wouldn't have had them both to look up to as having extremely successful careers and being amazing hardworking driven people. If either of my parents had been forced to stay at home doing housework and school pick-ups, they probably would have been miserable, and that certainly would have had a negative effect.

Who on earth are you to judge what is or isn't optimum for different families?

Again...nowhere have I disputed women's right to be working parents. I have simply pointed out that having two parents working full-time is a less than optimum scenario for the child.

For someone who's not doing that, you do seem to be arguing it strangely - blaming women wanting to work for rising house prices, telling me that I'm denigrating women's work when I'm actually denigrating the shit work of running a house (literally in some cases), being disparaging of the idea that some women perhaps want to work rather than stay home with their kids, and completely disbelieving the idea that a reasonable alternative is for men to stay at home.

So what is your point, OP? What has 'femininity' - whatever the hell that is - got to do with anything? Surely 2 people need to pull their weight & at the moment it appears to be men who are coasting. I rather think perceived notions of 'masculity' are a bigger problem.

And Fizzy, you know full well I was referring to parenting, not house-keeping.

You tell me how many full time parents aren't also the full time housekeeper then?

Have you been over to relationships? How many posts have you seen that first make it clear that they are only a SAHM, they have a 50/50 split of all other tasks, and how many do you see where they are a SAHM responsible for keeping the house as well? Now who's misrepresenting things?