Can you be a feminist housewife?

[wigglybeezer]

Can you be a feminist if you don't have a career but your DH does, especially if this situation has been going on for a long time (13 years in my case)?

I don't feel downtrodden by the way, merely a bit bored and lacking in choice ATM. I earn a small amount of money, so don't have to ask DH for everything but I'm wondering if my Granny (who was a hospital consultant) was a better feminist than me. I just found a photo of her and her pals at medical school where she has noted on the back that there were 18 female medical students out of 180!

no its not natural,its a social construct,this giving things up lark
do peruse the bit of thread about industrialisation and mums and kids worked, housewife is a post war affectation or something rich folks did

SM - I know mums have worked throughout history and work around the world, but they also tend to take more day to day responsibility for young children as well. That's not just a culturally specific idea that has emerged in the past 50 years in industrialised countries as far as I can see.

Riven -

But the point I am making is not about affordable childcare, vouchers, schools etc.. (important though all that stuff is).

It is that in a happy, mutually respectful relationship etc...still 9 times out of 10 if someone is going to be a SAHP or secondary earner/main carer it is going to be the mother.

Its like people don't even see that there is another option - why immediately start to talk about extended family, paid childcare, the responsibility of employers etc...but ignore the question of why so many happy/respectful/mutually agreeable couples choose to protect the husband's career and long term earning power at the expense of the wife's - rather than both going part time and/or less pressured and sharing the family responsibility more evenly.

-(I'm not asking you to justify your personal choices in your situation, its more of a general point.)

The social construct is the outsourcing of infant feeding, which has happened in many societies throughout the millenia but which is not natural and does not give optimal health outcomes for either mother or child, but does allow the mother to disengage from her child in order to fulfil other roles, be that working for money (historically, this would mainly have involved working for her husband) or running her household and bringing up her older children.

In response to your point Himalaya, when dh and I decided to have a child, we did discuss the practicalities, as most do. He earned more than me by a fair bit, so it made sense for him to continue being the main earner and me the SAHP. However, even if we earned the same or I earned more, I knew I wanted to SAH, there was a deep conviction on my part that I was going to be far more responsive to the child's needs maybe because I carried it, gave birth? I remember my first time out for two hours leaving ds with dh. I came home to find him asleep in three layers of clothes with a temperature, next to a hot radiator. Dh is a clever guy, and one anecdote is not to imply that men can't look after babies or that women can't give up control. But the fact remains, for me, concerns about 'protecting' dh's career or my future earning potenial were way down on my list of priorities.

Of course, I am a product of my own upbringing. I had a SAHM as did dh. It is familiar, it worked for our mothers and fathers and is working for us. The thorny question is, why bother studying for a degree/training/building a career, just to let it all slide when a child is born? Is that letting the side down?
I don't think so, not if it's what you feel is best for your family and self. I certainly don't think careers or the world of work are any more important or valuable than being a SAHP.

THanks for bringing us back to the point Himalaya. Apologies for taking the thread off on a tangent but I couldn't stand by and see such women-blaming posts go unchallenged.

Anyway back to the point...

I'd like to see a national survey of mothers would want.

For me being a SAHM would be soul-destroying. Love my children as I do, I know I would feel like I'd lost a part of my identity if I'd have to give up work and being a SAHM can be so relentless and exhausting. I admire women who do it enormously. They have huge amounts of stamina and if they've chosen the role willingly they are obviously very secure about their identity and goals.

I'd like to see a world where it's a non-debate and each woman can do what she likes. I think that due to biology we will probably find that although many more men would be drawn to the role we would still find more women than men want to stay at home even if paternity leave and maternity leave were identical, flexible working practices were the norm, and staying at home had a high status. Breast-feeding is a major factor and as anyone who has tried to BF and return to work knows (me included) feeding/expressing and working can completely take over your life and leave room for nothing else.

As a feminist I wouldn't have a problem with SAHPs being predominantly women. I also think a lot of women - feminists or otherwise - would choose to SAH if it didn't have such a crushing effect on their careers. Why should a 5-year gap have such serious consequences that it is affecting someone's career 15 years later? Given that HALF our population is female and that MOST women have to work throughout much of their adult lives, shouldn't we be trying to change working practices so it is NORMAL for people to take time out without it being a death blow to their career?

Why is our economy set up around male reproductive roles rather than women's despite the fact that women have always been an important part of the economy and actually outnumber men in this country? Why have we allowed our economy to entrench this rather than dismantle it and why are we allowing things to get even worse right now with the reduction in the childcare element of WTC and the essential privatisation of childcare which means there simply isn't enough of it to go round? This is 2011. Are women equal or not? If we're working within the current system then equality for women has to start with equality of economic independence, which means heavy subsidies of childcare. Here in the UK we have one of the highest costs of childcare in the world.

I'd like to see things changed much more dramatically so that staying at home becomes a valuable occupation in its own right. It may not be possible to be 'paid' for it under our current system but it can certainly be better protected. The earning partner can sacrifice half his pension contributions to the SAHP for example, and they could be further boosted by the state in lieu of the tax-free allowance that SAHP would have if they worked. That way the role is respected in fiscal law and a SAHP doesn't find themselves massively disadvantaged for those years out when they later come to retire.

Mothers who resume their careers after a child-raising break don't always want to scale dizzy career heights, so I don't think that the career trajectory of mother returnees is "damaged" solely by the fact that they have taken time out, but rather is changed by virtue of priorities that are different to those that the same women had pre-children.

Bonsoir* - that's why I'd like to see much more research into this area. I do think it is a mistake to assume that the only desirable role is to scale the career ladder. Not everyone wants to and not everyone can be a high-flyer anyway.

However, I think a lot of women's priorities change after having children because of society, not because of their own desires. Once a woman goes back to work when her DC sart school for example, it's true her priorities may have changed. She may place a lot of importance on being able to easily take time off for the DC's parent/teacher events, dental appointments, sick days, or simply because of wanting to be there every day after school, etc.

But while these may be priorities how many women want it to be their priorities? How many would willingly hand over those sorts of priorities to their partner if it were possible? Not always in its entirety but say 50% of it so that both parents could make the best of family and job.

That's why flexible working practices need to become the norm. At the moment these sorts of roles tend to fall to the woman because it's somehow seen as easier for her to take time off work at short notice or to go part-time. If that's what she wants to do, good for her, but i think many women find themselves forced into that role without being entirely aware of it because of the way our society is structured.

It's rarely realistic to share those child-related priorities if you are in the business of scaling dizzy career heights, though. If you are both doing 50% international work-related travel, you have to outsource them to a reliable third party. Which is not to everyone's taste, hence one parent scaling back.

Dizzy career heights apply only to a small percentage of the population though. Most people just have a job, though it may be defined as a career because it is not unskilled NMW type work, requires some qualifications and skills, and may involved supervisory functions and an increasing pay grade over time. Those sorts of jobs/careers are very amenable to being more flexible; it's just that there isn't the political will to make it happen.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

"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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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?

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...

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.