Is it even possible to make SAHMotherhood a feminist option?

[Emphaticmaybe]

As a SAHM how can I be a feminist if I am not contributing in the work place and striving for greater equality through employment. What do I need to do to make my situation as feminist as possible or are the two fundamentally impossible to reconcile?

That's encouraging to hear having

Bonsoir I think it again comes down to the micro or macro level.
In my previous job I was able, and would, had I stuck with it, been increasingly able to make a difference to women and children's lives on a macro level.

Increasingly I've been thinking that though I don't want to go back to my old job, I should put myself out there again as being available publicly. I just hope I haven't left too long a gap and I'm past my sell by date.

I do try to do things when I can. In all my books I include (what I hope) are credible female characters. And I regulary give interview and take part in debates about women in fiction.

But I'd be deluding myself if I were to pretend that this has the day to day impact on women that ws part and parcel of my old job.

Why do value structured/formal/institutional impact so highly, wordfactory? I don't think you are deluding yourself. I think you are buying into a patriarchal institutional set of values

Isn't the key element here choice? We/you have chosen to stay at home for a myriad of reasons (probably). You aren't being made to stay at home by your spouse or by virtue of being sacked on marriage/pregnancy. It's an entirely reasonable decision and there is a great deal that can be achieved from your current position (and may not be the only position you have in life because you can choose to return to work).

"Why not insist that childcare vouchers can accepted by SAHMs?"

They're talking about an idea like that in Germany - basically paying familiies which don't let their children go to nursery a "parenting premium" - unsurprisingly it has been nicknamed the "Herdpraemie" (kitchen premium") as it's further enticement for women to give up employment and stay in the kitchen where they belong.

I think that's a horrible horrible backwards idea. Also doesn't take into account that children benefit from childcare settings outside the home.

It'
Has a horrible name but isn't a horrible idea.

I think the alternative incentive of getting women into work ASAP and to remove their choice or the value of a nurturing role is far worse.

starshitterrorise - why is it only women who are pressed to choose between workplace and "nurturing role" [boak] - and only women who are damned whatever they choose? Incentivising women to withdraw from the workplace is a huge step backwards - when it's not been even that long since they achieved the right to stay in paid employment no matter what their marital status or how many children they have.

Perpetuating the idea that the "nurturing role" is a woman's role is very damaging.

Why is it perpetuating the idea that a woman's role is a nurturing role?

Although I do think that we have as women been conditioned to reject that for ourselves BECAUSE it has become so devalued.

I am a feminist. I am currently a SaHm. As a feminist I don't have to do any set of subscribed things. I refuse to engage in debates about what "type" of feminist I am, that is an issue for others not me.

I am a feminist and am currently raising a son and a daughter to be feminists.

My ideal vision is that both parents ought to be able to be active parents and still maintain their career. That might mean both working PT or in a family friendly way, or it might mean one being a SAHP or PT for a few years and then the other.

The thing is it is relatively hard to do that when the current system pushes towards the worker having invisible children and the main carer having an invisible job. Men get pushed one way and women the other, and how ever equal your personal relationship it is hard to switch roles as you go.

Every woman who becomes a SAHP is not just personally scuttling her own career, she is also allowing her partner to continue to work in a way that assumes that senior/ambitious people don't work PT, don't leave at 5, never drop everything for a sick kid, can travel without limit etc... and so it continues to perpetuate the system of work which pushes mothers out.

I do sympathise with individual choices and dilemmas, but I think if couples that have a respectful, equal personal relationship can't work out a solution that allows both partners to be active parents and work then how is anything going to change?

answering the OP: it depends how many women do it. if all women were SAHM, i think that would be terrible for our equality.

i dont think it matters if we think work is important or not. it is the main acticvity people engage in outside the home, it is what runs the world. and it is what pays the bills.

if you want equality for women, we need more power. if you look accross the world, power is not held by people who care for children/look after the home. i dont think it ever has or will be.

a homemaker doesnt want to run the country, so never will.

it is a simple as: do you think women who are raped will get fair treatment without women being an equal part of the entire policing/justice system? do you think the average man would treat women differently if half of his bosses were women? if every man's mother had full equality in the home? do you want half the worlds leaders being women?

of course, its not SAHParenting that is the problem, its that there are very few men doing it. so a feminist way of being a SAHP is to encourage more men to do it, possibly even ones partner.

Absolutely ok to be SAHM and be a feminist. Although the utopian ideal is I suppose that whichever parent stayed at home with the children society would support them to be there and give economic value to nurturing and housework.

Lots of feminists in the early 80s wrote about the importance of mothering for women, many of them arguing that being a mother and having a child were the source of powerful feminine values that society should adopt as a whole. And many of these writers came out of the radical as opposed to the liberal feminist tradition, as it was radical feminists who were more likely to promote female values.

Anyhow, history and utopian ideals aside - if you have a partnership where one partner, in your case a man, supports you to stay at home to do child rearing. That is fine by me.

I am not a SAHM

I think that caring for children, whether you are a SAHM or work in a nursery, is an extremely important role.

I also think it is important that there are women doctors, politicians etc. I would not want the entire medical profession to be male, for example.

But I don't see how the two things are incompatible. Many men in socially influential jobs retire in their fifties - so lose a decade of their career. Women who take 10 years out to be SAHMs also lose a decade of their careers. There is no reason why not working for ten years should be mean you can't progress in your career later, except the prejudice in society against SAHMs returning to work and the prejudice against promoting older people in the workforce.

There was a thread on AIBU recently about a SAHM who was having all manner of difficulties put in her way by various rules in her attempts to return to work as a teacher. Given that many women do becomes SAHM for a while, I would consider that regulational discrimination, as it has more of an impact on women as a group than men as a group. As a society we need to get rid of that kind of discrimination.

And a lot of it is just prejudice. If somebody took a couple of years out in their early twenties to stay at home with a child, that would be seen negatively by many, yet the same person taking a couple of years out to travel to South America or Thailand or wherever (the modern equivalent of the grand tour) is seen as doing something worthwhile.

SeaHouses - I agree that red tape and prejudice prevent people from returning to jobs they are amply qualified for, and the same red tape and prejudice prevents people who need to from taking a career break and returning refreshed and matured.

The point about people returning to work for other reasons is a good one Bonsoir. It must cause a lot of damage to the economy and society, as well as having a personal cost, that people are expected to keep climbing in one career without a break. A lot of otherwise highly competent and talented people end up with stress related illnesses and are a loss to their profession.

I wonder how many good teachers we lose because they are not given the option of doing something else for a few years and then returning to their former profession renewed.

I don't understand why one has to STAY home with the children. Why can't the employers of the parents have onside childcare/crèche and schools, offer flexible patterns of working, allow parents to nurture AT work, keep babies WITH them.

We are not just living in a patriarchal society, we are living in an anti-child one.

wasabi I think that is what I thought the feminist standpoint would be in terms of benefitting the most women possible, and that kind of makes the most sense to me. That if you are solely concerned with giving women more equality on a world wide scale, women need more power and they need to be in decision making roles to get more power. So in this case the collective good is more important than individual choice. Does that make sense?

I can see from the responses that there are obviously many different views on this, as there should be. I was just really interested in the ways of making being a SAHM more feminist in itself and also about whether the whole thing is just too contradictory.

Thanks for all replies.

Most people on the planet will never get into a position of huge power and influence though. Because most of the work that needs to be done is actually child care, care of older people, essential medical work, creating energy supplies, building and farming.

It doesn't actually benefit anyone for everyone to be attempting to get into a position of power. It is just that the gender, ethnic, class background and national mix of the people who are in positions of power should match that of the global population.

when i am talking about power, i am not just talking about 'great power' - i am talking about all levels of power.

e.g. in school, 50% of all the different roles being occupied by women, not just women mainly doing the lowest paid jobs (cleaner/TA), and men the highest (senior management).

Yes, but most jobs that need to be done don't really involve any power at all. Where there are large numbers of jobs involving people holding various amounts of power over others, it is generally because that area of society has organised itself in a way that is wasteful of human time and energy.

But Seahouses you don't have to be in positions of high power to have influence in the work place do you? Or is that naive coming from a SAHM?

If you are a coal miner, or a crop picker, or a fish gutter, or smallholder or any other essential job that most people worldwide are involved in, do you have any more influence than a SAHM?

Now, I'm sure that if every smallholder in the world got up and said that it was more important for women's equality (and most of them are women) that they went and took on a job that had more influence, then there would certainly be a lot more women in influential jobs.

But a lot of people would, as a consequence, starve to death.

you are correct that the coal miner, or a crop picker, or a fish gutter, or smallholder dont have much power may be none more than a SAHM but consider if half of these jobs were done by women:

and some of them become the foreman of the miners, the team leader of the crop pickers, the production manager of the fish line, and the successful smallholder who becomes a successful business person.

now the world is changing: lots of men start to work for women and maybe Mr Average starts to value women more.

Seahouses yes I agree with you in terms of global occupations. I admit I was thinking about teachers, doctors, lawyers etc but also about any role to be honest, large or small where you can make the treatment of women just a little bit better on an individual level.

Wasabi, I don't think it is preferable to be a businessman than a smallholder. I think one of the major problems of the world is that too much of it is organised around holding power and influence over others than actually getting work done. 5 smallholders may have little power or influence over anybody other than themselves. If 1 person starts up a business and then holds power over the other 4 smallholders who work for them, 1 person has a lot more power but 4 other people have a lot less.

A lot of positions of influence are primarily about maintaining social structures based on hierarchies and controlling other people so that people can maintain power for their own benefit. The power doesn't primarily exist for the good of people in general.

For half of the jobs which wield power for ethical reasons to do be done by women, it only takes a few women to take up those jobs. It isn't necessary for most women to have any involvement in them at all.

OP, I think you should look at what influence you could have in your own community as a SAHM, rather than think you have no influence at all.