Yet another mommy wars post
I know, even I’m getting sick of hearing about mommy wars. But, via 11d, Jane Galt has a different perspective on them:
"But I would like to point out that if you think you’ve found the One Right Way to raise YOUR child, then it does indeed make sense to fight hard to persuade as many other women as possible to make the same choice. If you are at home, working mothers are your enemy, at least until they chuck the rat race, and vice versa.
"Why do I say this? Simple: having the majority of people live the way you do has significant positive externalities.
I think she’s at least partially right about the externalities, wrong that they’re the explanation behind the "mommy wars."
If you’re a working parent in a neighborhood full of at-home parents, all of the social and school-related events are likely to happen while you’re at work. The afterschool program at the school is likely to be not very good, because few parents are fighting for it. And if your coworkers who are parents all have partners at home, they’re probably not going to be as sympathetic of your need to take off for a sick kid as someone else in your situation would be.
If you’re an at-home parent in a neighborhood full of two-income families, you’re likely to be socially isolated during the day. Your kids probably won’t have as fancy birthday parties or go on as many trips as their peers. The PTA will be more likely to meet at night, when you’d rather spend time with your spouse, less likely to meet during the day.
(I think Galt is seriously overstating the case when she suggests that there’s a real shortage of at-home parents for socializing with:
"Let me point out that staying at home with children is not nearly as rewarding as it was in the 1960’s. All right, there are more daytime television options than there used to be, and gyms now have day-care centres. But there is something huge missing, and that is all the other women in your neighbourhood. The ones that your mother had coffee with, asked to watch the children for an hour, played afternoon bridge with, formed the pillar of the PTA with, and so on . . . they’re all off trading bonds or editing books or waiting tables…"
Although there are fewer at-home parents, there’s still an awful lot. I think the increase in social isolation has more to do with a) suburban sprawl — a lot of the suburbs of the 50s and 60s look pretty urban by modern standards; and b) expectations of intensive parenting — it’s no longer socially acceptable to send your children out to amuse themselves in the street or to watch TV for hours while you drink coffee with the neighbors.)
But, I don’t think any of that is why the mommy wars exist. I just don’t believe that thousands of people are thinking — gee, my life would be easier if my neighbor also stayed home, so I’ll make cutting remarks every time I see her in office clothes so she’ll decide to quit her job. Or — it’s not fair that I need to compete at work with Roger, whose wife stays home, so I’ll try to convince her that she’s wasting her brain and would really be happier if she worked.
I think two types of parents make mommy wars type comments. One is those who are so happy with their choices that they truly can’t imagine that everyone else wouldn’t also be happier if they made the same choices. And the other is those who are deeply insecure about their choice, and so need to constantly try to prove that it’s objectively better.
April 4th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Aren’t all of us one of the two types? 🙂 And what are we if we don’t make those kinds of comments? I don’t even ask my sah friends when/if they’re going back to work for fear of it being interpreted the wrong way.
April 4th, 2006 at 8:01 am
I think some people are unintentional foot soldiers in the Mommy Wars. I have one or two friends who always mean to be supportive and end up saying the wrong thing–like when I complain about the cost of daycare, say, “Wow! If it costs so much, why would anyone ever want to work?” And so on. So I think you need a third type: oblivious. I mean, I let the comments pass because I know that they’re not intended the way they sound, but I also know people who don’t know these women as well *are* offended and fairly constantly by what they say.
April 4th, 2006 at 8:05 am
I think I was assuming the people in the first group were both happy and oblivious. I certainly know people who are totally happy with their choices — and may privately think that everyone who makes different choices is nuts — but have learned how not to stick their foot in their mouth.
April 4th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Those are some good observations. I agree that personal preferences and values are the critical deciding factor. But there is also the objective reality of which choice is better adapted to the world we live in today. Which is why at home parents seem to be more the happy oblivious types, and working parents seem to be more unhappy and insecure about their choices (on average). Doesn’t that say something?
The little comment that always sets me off is the “staying home is such a luxury” one. Grrr. Them’s fighting words 😉
April 4th, 2006 at 10:30 am
Stephen, I have to disagree with your approach of saying “this type of parent seems happier”. None of us here is in a position to say that stay-home parents are happier than working parents. (Unless you’ve done a study I’m unaware of, which is possible.)
I would also note that you can’t judge the situation based on the ease of the logistics of one setup or another, because that view is so short-term. Having a parent at home does alleviate short-term stress (getting the kids up early to go to day care, dealing with sick days) but builds up long-term stress (one spouse completely without retirement savings or social security, that same spouse’s lifetime earnings reduction). My own husband has stayed home 5 years with our kids, which has been a great experience for the whole family. But the stress we’re under right now, where he faces down the incredibly expensive options for reentering the workforce, is non-trivial. Crittenden has explored this in detail. The #1 indicator for women’s poverty in the U.S. is motherhood. (I would argue that it’s probably actually the #1 indicator for primary caregivers, not really women per se.) But in any case there are very long-term reverberations when you choose to stay home, and they should not be ignored.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Stephen, I would disagree as well. Anecdotally, I know many more working mothers whom I would classify in the “happy/oblivious” category and many more SAH mothers in the “insecure about their choices” category.
One thing that Galt’s post doesn’t discuss – and I realize it’s a minor slice of the pie – is the part-time working mom. A lot of women I know who pursue part-time work seem to challenge the notion of a dichotomy between work and SAH. They see benefits on both sides of the proverbial fence, and they don’t want to have to choose or miss out. So they straddle. Where are they in the mommy wars? Could they be the peacemakers and deal brokers?
Personally, I know very few women who end up reaping the benefits of a part-time work arrangement. Sadly, it often seems that they get the negative experiences associated with both work and SAH – instead of all the positives they had hoped for.
April 4th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Very insightful post. I think some personality types also just tend to see most things in black & white (thinking particularly of some religious people here). And you also have the zeal of the recent convert – which applies more to SAH moms than working moms, I guess.
April 4th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
And here again is the wonderful quote you put into your post about Marjorie Williams’ book:
“American women — can-do daughters of their country’s optimism — still secretly nourish a poignant hope that there is An Answer to the dilemma of work and family. On a personal level, and as a matter of social policy, we often seem to be waiting for the No-Fault Fairy to come and explain at last how our deepest conflict can be managed away.”
yah, the No-Fault Fairy. We are all waiting for the No-Fault Fairy. All of our choices have disadvantages. My wife and I both work: our kids would be happier if both of us were at home feeding them hot dogs and corn chips whenever they wanted (and mangoes, suddenly in our house there is a big style for mangoes). And then the house would go away and there would be no money for college.
April 4th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
I’ve had plenty of encounters with the insecure type, who have said some pretty cutting things about my SAH status. And I’ve seen some SAHMs say some pretty awful things to WOHMs. WOHM comments to SAHMs tend to be along the lines of “oh, don’t you get bored wasting your mind like that?”, while SAHM comments to WOHM tend to be along the lines of “oh, well, staying home is just the sacrifice that I have to make for the benefit of MY children,” or otherwise imply that WOHMs are bad parents and/or selfish people. Both sets of comments seem primarily designed to justify one’s own decisions, at the expense of the recipient’s decisions, and thus both reflect deep-seated insecurities. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered the happy/oblivious sort.
April 4th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Re Merseydotes’ post on part-time jobs: There are so few decent part-time gigs out there, I believe many people who would rather work part-time are forced to either work full-time or SAH depending on their circumstances. And it’s not just moms (and dads) who might benefit from having decent, well-paying, part-time jobs, but older people who may want to continue working, just not full-time. Or people too disabled for full-time work but still capable of putting in 20 or so hours a week. But most part-time jobs are ultra-crappy, so it’s either work or SAH for people who might want a third choice.
I keep thinking that this is not, at bottom, a “mommy” issue. I’m not married and have no kids, and therefore it’s often assumed that I have absolutely no life, no aging parents, no pets, no desire to take a vacation, and all in all I’m thrilled to be a goddamn bonded serf to the company. I don’t blame parents, though – I blame workplaces and the work culture. Perhaps as the Baby Boomers start to retire, there will be enough of a shortage of talent that companies start having to allow people to have lives.
I hate hate hate seeing this as a “parent vs. non-parent” issue – that’s nothing more than divide and conquer. It would be better if all of us could unite somehow to force better treatment for all.
April 4th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Hear! Hear! Ailurophile. I blame the work culture too and I wish I knew how to change it.
April 4th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Actually there was a controversial study that said just that recently. And while many didn’t buy it, it seems to make sense that working moms are generally more stressed than stay at home moms.
Personally I would never get into criticizing other people’s parenting choices. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy analyzing it on an abstract, non personal, level.
As a stay at home father I find the mommy wars simply perplexing. My wife works, but she is immune to criticism, because her kid isn’t left with a stranger every morning. And if I ever secretly look down on any working parents I know, I apply my secret scorn equally to both the mother and the father. (This is reserved for serious workaholics who are never there for their kids–you know the practically invisible ones.)
I think it all boils down to how the parent’s dynamic is set up. Two very ambitious parents is a pretty good recipe for neglected children and household stress. Two stay at home parents is pretty much undoable for the non independently wealthy. So as long as each couple has one Type A and one Type B, there is no problem. (Except perhaps divorce–but hey, you chose your partner.)
And as soon as people acknowledge that dad could just as easily choose to stay home, the workplace can no longer be accused of being inhospitable to moms.
April 4th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
I also think she’s overstating the case re: people not being around the neighborhood during the day. Maybe my neighborhood is special, but there’s always someone around. Right now in fact I see someone playing outside.
And most of the moms in my neighborhood work part-time. (Part-time ranges from 10 hrs/week to 30.)Perhaps this is because I live in a small town, where people have to cobble together a living. I mean, it’s harder to go out and find a corporate job…
April 4th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
I actually do think that the effect of other people’s choices do play a role in our desire to sit in judgement on other people’s choices. Maybe not consciously and specifically, in the sense of saying, I wish Julie would stay home with her kids ’cause then I could have coffee with her on Tuesdays. But, in the more general sense, I think that other people’s choices do affect our choices, and that’s one of the reasons we care what they do. A society in which all moms stay home is different from one in which a mom or a dad stays home which is different from one in which neither parent stays home with the kids. A workplace in which everyone has significant responsibilities outside of work is different from one in which no one does.
I’ve found myself getting a bit resentful of my fellow women scientists who opt out (taking the majority of repsonsibility for their families), leaving me to compete with their husbands (who are now relieved of family responsibilities). It affects my life, no question about it. That doesn’t give me a right to make other people’s choices for them, but we can’t get away from the fact that other people’s choices influence our own.
Oh, I actually think that some of the people who make comments that hurt those who make other choices are actually obvious people. They just don’t see the world from the other person’s point of view. It’s easy to _not_ be able to see the world other people inhabit when they make choices different from yours. I think the solution is to assume goodness of heart (and ignorance) and ignore it, or to educate (if it’s worth it to you).
bj
April 4th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
I think a major factor to the so-called “mommy wars” is rooted in the reality of a lack of extended family support. I work part-time and feel I am at home enough with my daughter; I have family willing to watch her. Leaving my field entirely would be a major setback to my career due to technology issues. I just wonder if most women had family to count on rather than daycare, would there still be a debate over working or staying at home. I suppose SAHMs can not fathom leaving their child with a stranger and attitudes become judgements. Working mothers reversely judge in how can a woman leave a career – are we reversing the feminist movement, etc. My aquaintances and colleagues are all highly educated, professional individuals where both parents worked and there were 2-3 children per household. All of their children went on to college, many Ivy League, and have phenomenal careers. I have read reports that children of working mothers tend to be higher educated and have better paying jobs. One thing I can not understand is how women can stay home once children are in full-day school. Staying at home is more work than my job.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
My favorite take on the mommy wars is one I accepted for the LitMama op-ed section and it’s up right now: http://www.literarymama.com/oped/
(and we are anxiously looking for more submissions for that section — hint hint!)
April 5th, 2006 at 11:18 am
In the interests of education, and not fueling the war (I refuse to call it the other words), those of us who leave our children in childcare don’t leave them with “strangers.” The teachers at my kids daycare/preschool are people we know, and respect, and we wouldn’t leave our kids there if we didn’t.
And, to just flip to the other side, women whose children are in full-time school, only have kids in school from 9-3, that’s 6 hours a day. If your kids go to a non-neighborhood school, you can subtract about an hour for a commute, and then you have five hours a day, which you can then spend on unpaid activities for your family & community. Our daughter starts kindergarten next year, and it might be a big difference if she was home all the time, but as it is, we can see that less of her day is more clearly occupied with school than she is now in daycare.
bj
PS: I’m completely with folks who say that staying home is harder than their job (that’s certainly true for me). There’s more judgement at work, but more moment by moment demands at home.
April 5th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Excellent post. I think there is a third type of person that makes “mommy wars” comments — those who are attacked, either in person, by the media, their pediatrician, their children’s schools, etc. Even the parent happiest and most secure in their choice, can’t help but feel the sting of an obvious comment or subtle insinuation, that their decision to work or stay home negatively impacts their family.
April 6th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Have I got mommy wars for YOU! From our friends (or, at least, Linda Hirshman’s friends) the Dutch:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=28628&name=Penalise%20educated%20stay-at-home%20women%20-%20PvdA
The Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) has proposed recovering part of the cost of study from highly-educated women who decide not to seek paid work.
MP Sharon Dijksma, deputy chairperson of the PvdA’s parliamentary party, believes the punitive measure is needed to stimulate more women to join the workforce. She outlined her ideas in ‘Forum’, a magazine published by employers’ group VNO-NCW.
“A highly-educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work – that is destruction of capital,” Dijksma said. “If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.”
April 6th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Keep in mind that almost all education is free in the Netherlands, paid for by the state. I personally feel that changes the dynamics of the situation.
April 12th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Well, it looks like pretty much every thing was covered in these comments. I just had this conversation with two friends. One had just been severely criticized by a friend for working part-time. The sad part of the mommy wars is the judgment that is place on others and the strain on relationships. This was supposed to be this woman’s very close friend. I think we would do well, first, to stop worrying so much about who is working or not, and two, to keep some opinions to ourselves. (Except for blogs of course!) Parents who are intentional with their child/ren are probably going to make the right choice for their family.