Huffington Post - Feminism and motherhood article

[Bardolino]

This Huffington Post Australia Article has just popped up on my Facebook feed, shared by one of my friends.

It's annoyed me and I can't quite figure out exactly why. I think it's because it appears to be blaming feminism for society devaluing mothers, especially SAHM. Am I misreading it? Have I simply dismissed it because it's HuffPo, or am I right in thinking that there's something 'off' with the article?

And the proportion of SAHDs remains tiny.

Surreyblah

I had this conversation with my son who is in his 20s.

He said something like 'the reason women stay at home, mum, is because it is just easier, it makes more sense'. Explaining that his working hours, business trips, expense account dinners, etc, made it sensible. He agreed that women should have the choice to do all that too, of course.

But when I said (radically!) why not just overhaul the entire system, so that working hours, business trips, and business dinners across the board everywhere, were completely re-designed on a more 'half share' basis to help prioritise childcare, he looked at me like I had taken leave of my senses.

So I just kept saying why? Why can't we? Why are working hours are 9 to 6, when school hours are 9 to 3.30? Why are business dinners so popular with men, when business lunches would do the trick just as well? Why not Skype instead of fly?

You could see him thinking noooo, but then not being able to say why.

It does really annoy me that men would simply be totally unable to adhere to this system, if women weren't at home raising the next generation.

( disclaimer. I have late onset feminism, otherwise that conversation would've been completely unnecessary with my son)

It is possible in many jobs. A male colleague has a flexible working agreement that means he is free to do the school run at the end of the day.

Your son is right in some aspects - when most of my friends had babies, they would get good maternity pay (most got more than statutory,) while the men wouldn't have - economically, for most of them, there was no choice, and that situation probably won't change unless maternity and paternity pay is equal. And meanwhile, men's careers progress (men often benefit from having children, whereas women suffer the "mummy penalty, ") so for any subsequent children, it makes even more sense not to lose the larger salary, as it often will be by that point. Then childcare costs mean it may not be financially viable for the mother to return to work.

But most men are mostly thinking about how it's inconvenient to them if they don't have a SAHM for their children, and even if they acknowledge the issues, I see little evidence of them then thinking, "well I'm a manager - what can I do to improve this for others?" There are exceptions, but it's not commonplace. I don't think we'll get any system overhaul from them.

I have late onset feminism

Ha! I laughed out loud at this - some people do seem to view my opinions as an affliction too, so it's very appropriate!

The elephant in the room around it all is that it was in general women who campaigned for parental rather than just maternity leave, not men, who are still, largely speaking, not taking it up. They just don't want to. Of course men could make the time to raise their kids, of course they could go flexi or make the lunches (and some do) - but most of them know that they're onto a good thing. They get to go out of the house and work and have cups of tea with colleagues, they get to come home and be too tired to do any housework, and then they need some time off, away from the kids at the weekend to decompress. Meanwhile muggins is packing PE kit and shuffling to clubs, and picking up dirty socks, always thinking of the next task all her working hours - and the bloke, and society in general - still gets to have a go at her if she doesn't then leap into employment the moment she has 4 hours free while the kids are at school. Because as a SAHP, you apparently have all the time in the world, after you've been the nanny, PA, cleaner, night nurse, taxi and delivery driver.

It makes me SO ANGRY when I hear people have a go at SAHM - because it's bloody hard work, it's unpaid, and the only promotion is for the kids to get bigger and move out - at which point I imagine you look around and realise you've become completely institutionalised and don't actually know what to do with yourself other than look after other people.

If you strip it right back, the human race has to do certain things to ensure survival, and survival in circumstances as comfortable as possible.

So everyone has to do certain jobs to make that happen.

Loosely the more 'difficult' the job the more status it has and the higher it is remunerated.

So in order for those jobs to exist, you have to have an equal and opposite job. Which is so low status, it's not paid at all.

I'm not sure if you could successfully work out a way for stay at home parents to be remunerated, but if not, it should certainly have higher status.

I'm not sure if you could successfully work out a way for stay at home parents to be remunerated

Usually it's done by looking at what it would cost to hire a cook, cleaner, nanny, chauffeur, gardener, to cover the tasks involved. That includes unsociable hours/on-call payments.

Loosely the more 'difficult' the job the more status it has and the higher it is remunerated.

That is quite loose, though. There's evidence that if a particular job becomes less male-dominated, its status goes down. If women are pushed out (as has been the case to some extent in IT,) status will be retained or may rise. Salary does tend to go with higher status jobs, but it's not as simple as saying it's because of the difficulty.

EBearhug

Yes, I completely agree. 'Difficult' probably wasn't the right word.

Perhaps if more men were stay at home dads, the status would rise as a result. In fact it definitely would, if history is anything to go by.

Read this finally.

Why is it feminism's job to educate everyone?

"Loosely the more 'difficult' the job the more status it has and the higher it is remunerated." That made me laugh. Cordelia Fine quotes quite a few historical examples of how job status goes up or down depending on whether the number of women who do it goes down or up.

never

Well quite. The definition of difficult changes with the gender doing it.

I'm not sure if you could successfully work out a way for stay at home parents to be remunerated

Usually it's done by looking at what it would cost to hire a cook, cleaner, nanny, chauffeur, gardener, to cover the tasks involved. That includes unsociable hours/on-call payments

You are viewing this as if a stay at home parent gets no monetary or other tangible benefits from the arrangement. I often see comments on MN that sahms are loking after "his children" rather than the couple's children.

It's not really that they don't share in the income of the person working (although often it is controlled), it's more to do with the fact that the stay at home work isn't considered important because 'important jobs' are remunerated.