Is choosing to be a SAHM a feminist decision?

"Shift the expectation that the cost is the women's responsibility and that if it's more than her salary she needs to stay home"

But surely that's just semantics? It costs us the same amount of our money regardless of whether you class it as coming out of my salary, or half out of mine and half out of his. What matters is the total amount of income and expenditure for our family. If expenditure on childcare is more than one person's salary then it's cheaper if that person stays at home.

why can't we view a woman as receiving a fair wage for looking after her own children by sharing in the earnings of her partner? Or does that argument not hold water because we view her as being entitled to half those earnings anyway?

Surely the problematic aspect would be the inherent imbalance of power rather than the question of default entitlement. It's basically a set-up in which the independently earning partner controls the financially dependent one's access to what's due to them.

In general, of course you can be a SAHM and a feminist. I don't personally regard it as a feminist choice as such due to the aforementioned problem of it introducing a power imbalance into a relationship. I'm also doubtful about attempts to 'reclaim' a role that women have long been forcibly reduced to.

The main issue is really that it's a very one sided affair which isn't helped much by someone's individual husband being completely on board with shared housework, money, etc. It's still, at the end of the day, a decision that husband gets to make and could change his mind about. If he did, he wouldn't be anywhere near as badly affected by the consequences as the wife would be. She, on the other hand, can't freely make unilateral decisions of the same magnitude without self-sabotaging.

OTOH, I completely agree with the points made about the value of women's work and the need to generally divorce the value question from that of earning power etc.

Someone responded to me pages back that they don’t want to work outside the home because they want to raise their kids thenselves. I think I’m raising my kids but please define raising - if it means me spending 24x7 with them then I guess I am not raising them myself.

Isn’t it the case that until the 1950s most women/mothers DID work, apart from the very wealthy who outsourced to nannies and governesses anyway.

Every boss I’ve ever had has been a white man with a SAH wife. He has never had to juggle domestic and children related issues with work, and has been able to devote long hours ( face time) to the job. It is very hard to compete with that when you are a hands on working parent (though obviously not actually raising your own children). The model of SAHM in middle class families (where affordabikity of childcare is not the issue) is not helpful to women in the workplace. And women not being represented in leadership roles in public/private sector and politics affects us all in thbthe long term. Men are making the decisions on how we all live.
Children are wonderful and we all love them above everything else, but sometimes I think women sacrifice themselves and their life choices for their children and I’m not entirely convinced it’s all a good thing. Disclaimer - I would not like to be a SAHM, it is one of the hardest jobs there is and yet it is pretty thankless and totally relentless, and I have huge respect for people who can stick it out.

I was just adding to your point Vivienne. Noone will get paid for looking after their own children, primarily because as you say they are their own children. But in addition because doing something in a non-professional capacity with no qualifications or certification does not usually command much money, if any. That's all.

Not quite sure what your point is Ratrolypoly. My point was the SAHP is taking care of their own children. If they were taking care of somebody else's then they could be paid as a childminder. Nobody is paid for doing their own house repairs or own decorating. But other people can be. Why is taking care of your own children any different from any other performed task.

Liberal feminists would say you could call yourself a rad fem. Radical feminism would say you can't be rad fem.

You can believe want you want to believe imo, but I'm a wishy washy liberal.

Bluntness
I can stereotype like that because the research backs me up.

Doctors, lawyers, bankers, business owners, board members

While there is parity between the sexes in terms of entry to the law and medical profession, the numbers of women who become consultants or judges are still ‘mystifyingly’ low.

The disparity in income between male and female bankers, board members and business owners is worse than other sectors - you couldn’t have picked shittier examples of the world moving on if you tried.

As for doing high earning, working mothers a disservice, I am one of them. I know how hard it is and how many barriers I still have to hurdle. It’s exhausting and enraging.

I’m in my mid forties and it’s unequivocally getting harder now for younger women. especially those from a WC background like mine.

The world has changed but it doesn’t feel like it’s going in the right direction.

A women can no more receive money for taking care of her own children any more than a man or woman can receive a wage for cleaning their own home, installing their own kitchen or repairing their own car.

Honestly, you'd be unlikely to even get money for installing someone else's kitchen if you're not a professional kitchen fitter.

A women can no more receive money for taking care of her own children any more than a man or woman can receive a wage for cleaning their own home, installing their own kitchen or repairing their own car. It's pie in the sky.

@TheGrumpySquirrel

I think that's got to be right. So if a woman received a fair wage for taking care of her own children, then she could be a radical feminist?

If the answer is 'yes', I guess my next questions is this... why can't we view a woman as receiving a fair wage for looking after her own children by sharing in the earnings of her partner? Or does that argument not hold water because we view her as being entitled to half those earnings anyway?

Yes aGrumpy, government subs etc. @Bella, what she said.

Cat I don't know, but I don't think it would be complicated to come up with a way of discerning it. Were I not on maternity leave right now it's the sort of thing I could probably give a crack at; working out a reasonable wage based on the pay scales of other roles with similar responsibility and value profiles. I'm not doing it for fun though!

aGrumpy ah yes, the social conditioning of women to want what women want... I used to manage a sales team years ago and every female I took on aspired to be the bloody office manager who sat on the front desk! I kid you not, I had to almost beg them to believe they could want to be the boss, and that their minds were not their own!

"You can be rad from a position of being a victim of the current set up."

I agree, but you need to recognise that the set up exists.

Why do you feel obliged to define yourself as a ‘radical’ feminist, rather than simply as a feminist?

Radical means wanting to get rid of the whole current system of capital-formation, social structuring, division of roles by gender. It also implies being active in pursuing these goals — so having some number of free hours a week in which to campaign, lobby, write or teach (if attempting to persuade by rhetoric), or else to work outside the home modelling this kind of society. So, no, you can’t be a radical feminist and a SAHM, if both terms are taken in the normal sense. It would be possible in one sense if you had private income (eg you had inherited money in your own right), but radical feminism wouldn’t be consistent with living off interest on capital without attempting to redistribute it, so I don’t think that would work either.

Maybe you just want to say that you are a committed feminist and SAHM? I see no issue with that whatsoever.

@Bluntness100 yes women are in these professions- I'm one of them. We are still the minority in these professions.

Ergo, as a radical feminist you can only accept a job that:

Does not prop up the status quo and have a negative effect on other women.

Doesn’t disadvantage other women, by paying them a low wage with no prospects, to clean and manage your household and children.

Attracts a salary stratospheric enough to accomplish this while allowing you the headspace to ensure the future generation are woke and you can fight the good fight on Twitter.

Being a SAHM looks like the the most radfem option given the current state of the employment market!

You can be rad from a position of being a victim of the current set up.

Women structurally earn less for many reasons;

At school - less girls in STEM subjects, socialised to be less pushy, speak up less etc

At university - choosing subjects / careers that allow flexibility later on because they expect to be taking on the majority of the childcare responsibilities (eg GP instead of surgeon, teacher instead of accountant).

In love - choosing a man with a "good job" who can provide for you and a family / men not choosing women who are their career or intellectual equals / men choosing younger women / women choosing older men

At work - not pushing for that pay rise. Pushing for it anyway and being seen as aggressive. Being passed over for promotion because you might have babies soon. Choosing a less male dominated profession because let's face it the environment is pretty grim even if the pay is better.

After kids - taking a year off work, or more,. Being sidelined and given an "equivalent" job with no prospects for progression. Being stuck at the same pay or lower for years while your husband gets raise after raise.

Etc bloody etc

No wonder women give up on this shit. It's exhausting. We need proper policy intervention.

Disclaimer- yes I'm generalising. That's kind of the point.

Jobs that are valued by men currently attract the biggest financial awards. Jobs that are valued by women are either badly paid or expected for free

You cannot gender stereotype like that. It's so wrong. On so many levels. There are so many proffessional high paid women out there, you do each and every one a disservice. The world moved on. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, business owners, board members, the list is endless, women value these careers and are in them now.

I’ve been an FT WOH parent, a SAHP and most things in between over the years.

It doesn’t matter a jot in terms of feminism.
I have had jobs in my younger days where I was paid well to use my skills and talents to prop up the oppressive status quo and negatively impact women and children.

Those times at work trouble me as a feminist. Taking time to educate and guide my children does not feel at all problematic.

I will say though that DH and I have both spent time being FT SAHP and FT WOHP.

I’d probably feel differently, personally, if I’d always been at home with the DCs with DH as our sole financial support.
I have been lucky enough to have a career that paid enough to make my employment viable.

I have friends, who were earning less than their partners when DCs arrived, who never really got back into work. I don’t consider them retrogressive.

Much of society is set up to support the outdated notion of a FT employee, whose silent partner manages every other aspect of home, family and social life.
I only escaped that trap as I was earning much more than DH when DS1 came along. My equally able friends weren’t lucky enough to be in that position.

Also, the work of looking after children, elderly relatives and other societal input carried by women is woefully unappreciated.

To put it in perspective, If SAHMs (i’m Purposely leaving dads out here for clarity, sorry lads ) held a national strike day, the nation would grind to a halt and people would die.

Radical feminists should be equally exercised about the complete lack of pay for work by many women, as much as we rightly are by the gender gap.

Jobs that are valued by men currently attract the biggest financial awards.

Jobs that are valued by women are either badly paid or expected for free.

Definitions

Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical reordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts.

Liberal feminism is an individualistic form of feminist theory, which focuses on women's ability to maintain their equality through their own actions and choices

I maintain the op is not a radical feminist on this specific matter. She is a liberal one. Supported by her Immediate come back to me (which she later excused) as saying that her husband valued her. She is saying she has maintained her equality even though she is financially inactive and dependent on him. This is absolutely not radical feminism. It's liberal.

@Bellamuerte not if you make government subsidise child care & force men to pay half of it (I mean shift the expectation that the cost is the women's responsibility and that if it's more than her salary she needs to stay home which is short sighted and damaging)

@LorelaiVictoriaGilmore that's interesting and raises the question of fair pay for childcare work. I think you can be yes. The woman you are employing is paid and working. As long as it's not exploitative, what is wrong with it? If you are asking whether you can also be a socialist - that's a different question.

I think my earnings were less because I went into teaching. I was never going to earn what dh, in the private sector, had the potential to earn. The only way to get anywhere near would have been to go into senior management, but the down side to that is less teaching time.

"I think we could start by ensuring those people who do it professionally are paid better"

Surely that would just mean fewer women being able to work because they can't afford childcare?

@Bellamuerte you and the vast majority of women who give up work because "it just makes sense". Why do you earn less than your husband? Why do most women earn less than theirs? Is that an equal society? Men keep the earning power and financial independence- then it continues to "make sense"? Look beyond your own situation to the bigger picture. That's why it is absolutely relevant to feminism

Assuming that, as some posters are arguing, you can't be a SAHM by choice and a rad fem, I have this question... if you go to work but (as in my case) pay another woman to look after your children, can you be a rad fem?