Feminism and SAHM

[samoa]

Can a woman be a feminist and a SAHM by choice?

If being a SAHM is a relatively recent phenomenon, who looked after the children? Was there universal free childcare?

I see this trotted out and I think well, WTF does that have to do with anything?

Yes some women choose to be at home with their children no matter what bit there are many others sick of trying to care for multiple children while working full time, others made redundant, others refused flexible working or part time working or others in an income trap where childcare means they take home peanuts and the added stress is a deal breaker. Life for the WOHM is tough if you don't earn £££££££.

I find these feminist debates utterly depressing because it isn't about who's the 'better feminist' or read the right books, or has a Phd in Women's Studies, it's about the fact in many industries women get a shitty deal before and after they have children.

What do we need? Quality subsidised flexible childcare for every family, flexible shift working if possible, parental leave - and I know alot of you already have this but I can tell you in the private sector you'd better not ask for it, or ever have ill children or even mention them really.

And yes men can also care for children but DP doesn't have any of this either.

Sorry a bit of a rant nut I find this 'debate' so frustrating as it never addresses the real issues.

I am in agreement with Sakura on a number of things, that child rearing is under valued and that the current set up works very poorly, for instance. I don't think my view is on the edges or extremes or anything, (maybe just muddled :-) ), so there is likely to be a lot of overlap. I think I fundamentally disagree with her about economic systems though it's hard to tell reading posts about other things.

Still I don't think I'm talking simply about external/intrinsic value of child rearing - I'm also saying women added more economic value previously - they raised children and did other economic activity. And I don't think dropping the "other economic activity" is a particularly good step for women. I also do not find the focus on the role of child rearing for women in the sense of encouraging women to do more of it at the expense of other things to be empowering. I think, in general, we do enough of it already. Though I also see the personal choice element of that.

So while I don't think it is anti-feminist to be a sahm, I don't think it's particularly feminist. It's a choice lots of people make (including me) for all sorts of reasons, but I haven't made it because I think it furthers the cause of women and I don't really see how it can.

Unrulysun - I think the way through the "having it all" syndrome is to push through so that there is a fundamental shift away from just mothers being responsible for cildren. In many ways I think sahms add to the pressure for "perfect motherhood". So women can't win at the moment.

Norman - totally agree with the current set up sucks. I would like to universal subsidized or free childcare, flexible working that's actually used, a cultural shift to have fathers as well as mothers be expected to be fully involved with their children, some way for single parents to share some of the emotional and practical burden of child rearing, work and institutional hours that recognized the pulls on families with children, better ways to integrate working with children in your care. And probably a whole lot more.

Yes - in Germany a friend's sister who is a single parent received her teacher training for free, free childcare in a lovely nursery and was actually purposely given a job close to her home because she was a single parent. What a sensible policy.

A Swedish friend is over here while her husband lectires at university - she has been granted a 5 year career break and will return to Sweden then.

And I also agree with all of those things and clearly decision making is very difficult when the world is set up to be anti women and anti children.

And if you could job share senior positions then i think that things at the top in a number of fields would look very different but it's a fact that most employers would prefer children neither seen nor heard.

But in my context at the moment for my own selfish reasons I could really do without being made to feel I'm letting down the sisterhood.

TeiTua It's not that, they gave Rosalind Franklin's prize to someone else and didn't acknowledge her

suchprospects, what will lift the status of child-rearing in the 21st century is that more men will take on the role

Gah, the bitter irony

I foreseee a future where men become the SAHP (where the prestige and government cash will flow once enough of them start doing it) and the woman will be sent out to the office to work for peanuts

BUt as everyone has already said, and this is a point LEnin makes a lot: the real problem here is the nuclear family, which isolates the mother from economic productivity, and from other care-givers such as grandma. Planting rice with your babies around is one thing; desk work is quite another. It is near-on impossible to get serious desk work done with a baby or child around ( I have tried it). In the past the mother's productivity would have blended seamlessly in with her environment; nowadays that can't be the case. So it really is either/or.
But what is consistent today is that women's labour is still invisible. Watch the encouragement that dads getting for doing what women are not even noticed doing.

coupled with the fact that many women are not given the choice, as litchick points out. BUt industry and corporations have always used cheap female labour. In political science it's well-documented that women represent a particular economic group: the cheap, reserve labour (during war time, for example) or the unpaid workforce. that's still the case today.

My ultimate point is that rejecting child-rearing can only take women so far. It will always be low paid women, or unpaid women, who end up doing the work, even if it's not the mother doing it, because of the lack of value society places on it.

What really makes me angry is this completely patriarchal notion that we have to "get teenage mothers back to work" . That really says it all to me. MOthers of a certain economic group are doing nothing in the eyes of certain members of society, even though they already have a full-time job if they're caring for their child, and are definitely contributing more to society by raising it than they would be working at Maccy D's with their baby being raised by... another unpaid woman? Another barely educated woman?
The entire set up makes my mind boggle, once I start thinking about it.

Then (and I've even heard this on MN) you get people saying, well they shouldn't have kids if they can't provide for them. Which tells me that some people hark back for the days when abortions were forced upon women because they had no way of raising their baby themselves , or women had to remain virgins until they got married. When our system isolates economic power from mothers and has been set up (deliberately IMO) in such a way that if you care for your baby and children yourself, it is impossible to earn a wage as well.

Sakura- I'm not sure that the only thing that will raise the status of child rearing is when more men take on the role (though I think if the status is raised more men will take on the role). I'm not suggesting women reject child rearing, and I think the idea that mothers who work outside the home have rejected child rearing is pretty offensive. I'm suggesting we share and combine it.

I can see the status of child rearing being raised in a number of ways - including parents who go out to work insisting on higher quality childcare (and so better pay etc.). At the moment "Higher quality seems to be mainly about box ticking - i.e. the sort of thing you can train people to do with a few courses at a college) rather than a real investment in the practice as a craft. So I can also see how such an emphasis can fail to actual raise standards significantly. But I do think it's a route that could work.

Also more mothers in positions of power - at the tops of companies and political parties, deciding on media content, directing research - who make the question of balance important. We are slowly getting to the stage of more women in those positions, but I don't think were really yet at a point where most of those women can be the sort who would feel comfortable pushing a feminist agenda like that.

Not so sure about the teenage mothers thing - agree the vilification is horrible and getting them to work in McDonalds is pretty pointless. But I also see it in general as a route that women with few options tend to take - and that says to me, a) it is a low status route, and b) we need to give them more options to engage with the world. So getting them into skilled employment relatively early on would be good in general.

sakura - I don't think there was ever a golden age of working motherhood, where childrearing and economic productivity blended seamlessly! Mothers today have it better than they ever have done, in terms of combining child rearing and economic security (though I agree more can still be done).

And the point about getting teenaged mothers to work is about getting mothers who have few qualifications and no economic support from a partner to stand on their own two feet rather than rely on the state. Which is a perfectly good one!

I'm not coming from a liberal feminist perspective, I'm coming from a radical feminist one. WOmen can strive as much as they like to fit into society, like square pegs into round holes, but it won't bring them liberation, even if they will gain more equality on men's terms.

For the meantime, in the short-term, I agree entirely with your last post suchprospects We can try to change the system as much as possible, more power can only be good for women, but fundamentally under a system like this, women will only be seen as defective males, because the entire value system- what society regards as important, what should be valued- is patriarchal

Dittany proposed a book for one of the book clubs and I think it might cover this topic. It's called "Counting for Nothing" and shows, in economic terms, how women are devalued by society. It'd be interesting to have this discussion after we've all read it

sakura - be careful; we can all feel useless and devalued if we try hard enough! No-one can achieve everything.

I'm talking objectively; as in women are devalued, which is why they're overly represented among the poor and the disenfranchised and the sex industry.

I'm not talking about me, personally, feeling devalued.

I'm talking objectively. Men are devalued - they are over-represented among breadwinners and they suffer disproportionately from high blood pressure and heart disease as a result.

''they are over-represented among breadwinners and they suffer disproportionately from high blood pressure and heart disease as a result''
I don't think it can be said it is from being the main breadwinner, surely there are many cultural educational and general lifestyle factors to consider

Bonsoir, it's men who make the rules. Are you imagining a time when men cried to be allowed to take care of the children but the ruthless women barred them from it, forcing them, instead, to work in prestigious, well-paid cushy jobs
I think not
My heart bleeds for them

Sakura - I don't think men make all the rules and they don't necessarily make worse ones than women. For example, I think French feminism has a lot to answer for - I don't think that many of the adjustments that have been made to society because of the French feminist movement are improvements. But hey ho...

In these days being SAHM doesn't always mean that you are dependant on dh. Or that you live in his house.

The SAHM profile has changed alot.

Are you ruling out the possibility that the woman has made good money in her 20s and early 30s? That she is the one who paid the deposit for the house or she has rental income and stocks or she sold her successful business? With the rise in age of having the first child the above scenarios are not unheard. In my group we all fitted in one or more of the above categories. And we are all back and work again now. But i've worked 20 whole years before i had my first child. 20 years X 70 hrs pw.

Women can work and save and invest and owning their house before they get married and have dcs.

can you give examples of French feminism Bonsoir?

Do you read French, sakura? Can you read (or read about) Simone Veil, Françoise Giroud, Elisabeth Badinter?

yes I do, will have a look, thanks

Try Edwige Antier "Eloge des mères" for a counterpoint position - she considers herself to be a néoféministe,ie the next thought generation after Veil, Badinter etc. Her grandson is in my DD's year at school, so I observe the family closely