Half Changed World

Yale dorm rooms are kind of small.  It’s not unusual to have four students sharing a two-bedroom suite that was built in a previous age for two students, or possibly even for a student and his servant.  One of the stories that floated around when I attended is that Yale used to have a goal of admitting "1000 Leaders of the Future" each year.  Then they decided to admit women (in 1969!), but they didn’t want to stop admitting "1000 Leaders of the Future," and they didn’t think women could be "Leaders of the Future," so the class size was increased by 250.  The story isn’t entirely supported by the data, but it’s certainly believable.

Yesterday’s Times had a story about Yale women who plan on being stay-at-home mothers.  It’s been a subject of heated discussion on several of my email lists, as well as of posts at Stone Court, Rebel Dad, And the moon is slowly rising and elsewhere.  My usual litany of complaints applies (unrepresentative sample? check. framing of work-family issues as a purely women’s issue?  check.  little discussion of societal factors at play? check.)  And yet, I found myself interested in the article nonetheless.

This blog is named after the subtitle of Peggy Orenstein’s book "Flux."  I recognized a lot of myself and my peers in her description of women who in their 20s thought that their possibilities were limitless, but by their 30s had started making accomodations and compromises.  Louise Story describes young women who have already concluded that they can’t "have it all," who won’t be so unpleasantly surprised down the road.  (Of course, the story doesn’t touch at all on the role of the NYTimes in creating that impression.)

So why was I depressed by this article?  Laura at 11d suggests that some of the complaints about the article are signs of prejudice against SAHMs and the work of childrearing.  I don’t think that’s my case.  My husband is also a Yale grad, and I certainly don’t think he’s "wasting his education" chasing after the boys. 

If I really believed that these young women were thinking seriously about what they value, and making career and life decisions based on those values, I’d be cheering about this "trend."  But as Ann Bartow points out, law school probably is the last thing you should be signing up for if your goal is to work part-time or to move in and out of the labor force.   Why go tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt if you know that you’re only going to work for a short while?   Or are Mom and Dad supposed to foot the bill?  And can’t you please figure out how to explain your choice in a way that doesn’t involve slamming people who make other choices?

Perhaps the most telling quote in the story is at the end:

"Ms. Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most of the work raising kids.

‘I accept things how they are,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind the status quo. I don’t see why I have to go against it.’

After all, she added, those roles got her where she is.

‘It worked so well for me,’ she said, ‘and I don’t see in my life why it wouldn’t work.’

The scary thing is that Ms. Ku is right.  Conformity has worked very well for her so far.  Fundamentally, you don’t get into Yale by bucking the system.  You get into Yale by sitting in the front row in class, and doing your homework, and doing very well on tests that involve filling in circles with number 2 pencils.  You get into Yale by playing a musical instrument or being on the debate team or organzing a major charitable event, or preferably all of the above. 

If Yale is still interested in developing the "Leaders of the Future," it needs to figure out a way to admit some more kids who do mind the status quo.  And it needs to shake some of the complacency out of the ones who don’t.

Today’s book is Unraveled, by Maria Housden.  The subtitle of the book is "The True Story of a Woman Who Dared to Become a Different Kind of Mother" and the "different kind of mother" that Housden became is a non-custodial parent.  When she and her husband divorced, she let him have primary physical custody, accepting a standard visitation schedule of alternate weekends and several weeks over the summer.  For a while she moved to California to be with her boyfriend (now husband), but now she lives on the east coast, not far from her children.  The book challenges its readers’ assumptions, raising the question of why is it shocking that a "good mother" — not one on the brink of collapse like Laura Brown, the runaway housewife of The Hours — would give up custody of her children, when millions of fathers do so all the time. 

Unfortunately Housden spends far too long trying to justify her choice, rather than challenging the need to do so.  And her justifications left me hollow: "I knew in my heart that my gift in the world was more as an artist than an everyday kind of mother.  And my real responsibility to my life, the lives of my children, and the world, was for me to have the courage to create a sense of home and work that would allow me time to explore and express the things I wondered about and knew."  I find this language incredibly insulting to the thousands of men and women who manage to be creative artists without walking out on their kids. 

I’m not criticizing Housden’s choices.  Unlike many of Laura’s commenters, I don’t believe that parents have an obligation to stay in unhappy marriages for the kids’ sake.  She had married young, and (at least in her telling) her husband’s expections for their marriage were stuck in the 1950s of the Feminine Mystique.  They had watched their 3-year-old daughter die, the sort of crisis that either makes or breaks relationships.  Her husband was willing and able to be the custodial parent (with the help of an au pair).  But I lost patience with the new-agey language, the constant claims that this was necessary in order to find her authentic self. 

Sandra Tsing Loh reviewed Unraveled in the September Atlantic.  I requested the book from the library based on the start of the review, only to discover later that Loh hated it, for mostly the same reasons that I did.  But Loh then uses the review as a launching point for a semi-coherent rave about Oprah, Anna Karenina, and "female-rage anthologies by overstressed working mothers bitterly wrestling with husbands and playdates and deadlines."  If anyone who has read Loh’s review can explain the last two pages, I’d love to hear it

***

Updated:  Go read Jody’s post on this subject.  Thanks.

In her comment on my post on part-time work, Jennifer wrote:

"So that makes me think that an employer who can figure out how to employ people (of course mainly mothers) part time in an effective way that makes use of their real skill sets will, be able to get some real leverage out of the talent differential they are able to exploit."

I think that’s right — but precisely because so many employers are unwilling to consider part-timers, those that do can often get away with paying them less.  One of my first posts on this blog pointed out a newspaper article in which a publisher referred to stay-at-home moms as "a cheap and highly skilled workforce."

I’m still surprised that employers aren’t more willing to hire parents returning to full-time work after a few years out of the workforce.  Setting aside those few careers where the technology does fundamentally change every 2 or 3 years, it’s hard to make an economic argument for why they shouldn’t be more open. 

The only explanation that makes any sense to me is what economists call "signalling." In this context, a signal is a something that isn’t bad in itself, but is believed to correlate with unobservable characteristics that are undesirable.  For example, young adults with GEDs do much worse in the labor market than their peers with regular high school diplomas, even though they’ve proved themselves by taking the test to have similar levels of knowledge.  Economists suggest that a GED is a signal to employers that the person might have a low tolerance for routine and discipline.  Similarly, I’m afraid that employers see taking any extended period out of the workforce as signaling that the person might lack full commitment to a job.   

I recently read a blog posting where Mandy at Fosterfest pointed out that Justice O’Connor spent a significant period of her life as a stay-at-home mom.  She argued that at the time there really weren’t very many experienced female judges, so given that Reagan wanted to nominated a woman, he had to accept one with fewer credentials than the average nominee.  Today, there are so many women with highly successful linear legal careers, it’s unlikely that another woman with an extended period out of the legal profession could ever be nominated.

I’m not arguing that people who take 5 years out of the workforce should expect to return at the same level as their peers who worked continuously during that period.  But, far too often, they aren’t able to return at even the same level that they were at when they left.  And that just seems crazy.

bj and jackie asked me to amplify on my comment that "In general, I’m less optimistic about part-time work, and more focused on improving the on-ramps for people who have taken time off from the workforce, but I think it’s worth working for both."

Having thought it about it more, it’s probably an overstatment to say that I’m "not optimistic" about part-time work.  It works very well for some people, and I definitely think it’s worth pushing employers to consider part-time options for more jobs.  But I don’t think it’s going to be the magic bullet that solves work-family conflict.

Let’s look at some types of part-time jobs:

• Jobs that are part-time because there’s really only 20 hours (or 24 hours or whatever) of work each week that needs to be done.   The classic example of this is the small business that only needs a part-time bookkeeper.  Adjunct professors who only teach a class or two probably fall into this category, too.  If the number of hours of work available — and the salary paid — match what a worker is looking for, these can really be win-win setups.
• Jobs that really should be full-time, but the organization only has the money to pay for a part-time position.  This is particularly common in the nonprofit sector, where workers often wind up working more hours than they’re paid for, since there’s always more work that need to be done, and they believe in the mission.  This category also includes jobs that are actually full-time hours, but are officially classified as part-time so the employer can get away without providing health insurance or job security.
• Jobs that don’t require continuity of staffing from day to day.  My guess is that the majority of part-time jobs in the US are in this category, mostly in the retail, food, and service sectors.  These jobs are often highly flexible — for the employer.  Many employers alter workers’ shifts from week to week, depending on projected traffic.  In a few cases these are highly skilled, well-paid jobs — think speciality nurses — but most are low-skill, low-paid jobs.  In either case, they rarely offer a career path.
• The oft-discussed rarely-found career-track professional part-time jobs.  The jobs that Suzanne’s friends desperately want, but can’t find.  I actually know a fair number of people in such jobs, but the trick is that they’re almost never advertised.  The only way to get them is to work full-time, prove yourself to your employer, and then negotiate a part-time deal.  And such deals often include an implicit or explicity promise to check email or come in on your "off" day in the event of a crisis.

The truth is that not all jobs can be done equally well by two part-time workers as by one full-time worker.  Women want OBs who will stay with them until the baby comes, not ones that will walk out in the middle of labor because it’s the end of their shift.   Even when a job can be divided, there’s often a significant cost in time spent passing information from one person to another.  When there’s a labor shortage, sure, employers will accept these costs, but when there are equally qualified people lined up who are willing to work full-time (or more), they’re less likely to be flexible.  And they’re more likely to be flexible with current workers, in whom they’ve already made a significant investment in training than they are with new hires.

My other concern with part-time work as a solution to work-family tensions is that it only addresses the work side of the issue, not the inequitable division of household responsibilities.  And, as Rhona Mahoney points out, women in part-time jobs often wind up with the worst of both worlds: jobs that are unsatisfying, the vast majority of the household responsibilities, little free time, and little power to negotiate a better deal.  Even if a woman has a highly satisfying part-time job, because she brings in the secondary income, she often has to give up her job if her husband’s job demands relocation, or if the work interferes with childcare.

There’s an old joke that goes something like this:

The Lone Ranger and Tonto were surrounded by hostile Indians, and had no way to escape.  The Lone Ranger turns to Tonto and says "Well, we’ve had a lot of adventures together, but it looks like we’ve come to the end of our road.  I’ve been proud to have you as my friend.  And Tonto looks at him and says: "What do you mean "we," White Man?"

Last week, Suzanne at Mother-in-Chief wrote a passionate explanation of how her skills and talents — and those of many women like her — are being wasted because corporate America can’t figure out a way to use them in a meaningful way on a part-time basis.  She wrote:

"We did not quit our careers. Essentially, they quit us. Companies could not merge parent and paycheck.  Instead of heading back into those high-paying, highly respected jobs, we lower our expectations….  Moms do not fit into the corporate culture. As a result companies are missing out on the talents of driven and dedicated women."

I recognize the phenomenon that Suzanne is describing, but I don’t see myself in her "we."  And I know a lot of employed mothers who get nervous when they hear this kind of sweeping rhetoric, because they worry that if their bosses believe that "all women will leave when they have kids," things will get even harder for them.  And some stay-at-home mothers do leave their jobs without regrets or ambivalence.

Working mothers and their advocate are equally likely to use overly sweeping "we" statement.  Dawn at This Women’s Work has written persuasively about how mainstream feminist discussions of work and family issues still tend to marginalize stay-at-home moms.  My favorite example of this is from the Work & Family Program at the New American Foundation.  I think they do great work, but I grind my teeth every time I read one of their documents that includes a statement to the effect that families with stay-at-home partners have gone the way of Ozzie and Harriet.  (I can’t link to an example because their website seems to be down tonight.) 

I’m not saying this to pick on either Suzanne or New America.  It’s an incredible challenge to talk about mothers’ issues without either minimizing the diversity of experiences (and thereby making some group of mothers invisible) or treating everything as a matter of individual choice, with no recognition of the systemic factors that shape our choices.  This is tricky stuff.

I’m really enjoying the thoughtful comments on yesterday’s post about housework — thanks to everyone who’s written.

In general, I agree with Wayne’s point that neither working for pay nor caring for children exempts you from doing "the scut work that comes with being an adult."  But I don’t think that each task needs to be divided precisely 50/50 in order for the overall division of labor to be fair.  As Cecily wrote:

"In my house, my husband can’t vacuum successfully to save his life. So I vaccum. But, thankfully, he’s wonderful at cat litter. I can’t imagine that changing if we ever actually get to have a child, even though my husband plans to be a SAHD. It’s not like having a baby is going to make him good at vacuuming."

It reminded me of the big bruhaha at Salon in June over Ayelet Waldman’s essay about how her husband does all the home repairs.  Yes, not everyone has the privilege of having a partner who can take over the tasks that you’re bad at, or just don’t want to do.  Yes, there’s a risk that your partner could divorce you or die, and you’d have to figure things out from scratch.  Or a flu pandemic could strike, bringing civilization to a temporary halt, and you’d wish you knew how to build a solar still from parts lying around your house.  But, notwithstanding Robert Heinlein, most of the time specialization does make life easier.  (Waldman goes further and suggests that she likes being dependent in some ways, because it’s a sign of her commentment to the relationship.  I do find that a little oogie.)

That said, if people duck out of all the unpleasant and time-consuming tasks, the ones that need to be done day in and day out, because they’re "not good at it," my recommendation is that they obviously need more practice.  No one is born good at scrubbing toilets.  No one has an innate sense of vacuuming. 

I think this is particularly important when it comes to the nitty-gritty tasks of childcare.  As I believe I’ve written here before, I think one of the biggest obstacles to active fathering is that it’s so rare in our society for men to get long periods when they’re solely responsible for their babies.  That makes it hard for them to gain expertise and confidence in their parenting, so that they don’t just hand the babies back to mom when things get rough.

I was struck by this post, from LAmom, in which she suggests that financial concerns are causing women to postpone (or forgo) parenting:

"If women who might be both physically and emotionally ready to have children routinely feel like they can’t because of finances, then our society is failing to meet the needs of women and families."

I think LAmom is fairly characterizing the discussion on Feministing that inspired her post, but I wondered how representative those experiences were.  I can’t think of anyone in my personal acquaintance who really wanted to have kids, but waited because of money.  (By contrast, I know a lot of women who wanted to have kids, but didn’t want to be single moms, and weren’t in a relationship that they wanted to bring kids into.)

More broadly, Dave Pollard claims that people worldwide are having fewer children than they want, due to economic constraints.  I’m skeptical about both halves of that statement.

The first part may be true in the sense that the Gallup organization does regular surveys of how big people think the ideal family is, and people in most countries do give higher numbers than the actual birthrate.  But I’m not sure how much thought people put into those answers, and whether they actually mean that many people have significant regrets about not having more kids.

The second part of the claim seems especially weak to me.  Pollard argues that the widespread correlation between women’s education and lower fertility is spurious and that the increased participation of women in the labor force is demand-driven.  In other words, women are working because they have to, and therefore can’t have as many kids as they want.  This seems totally offbase, for several reasons.

• People overwhelmingly have fewer kids in more affluent countries than in poorer countries.
• At least in the US, women’s labor force participation is unaffected by husband’s earnings, which makes it very hard for me to accept Pollard’s claim that it’s driven by "economic necessity."
• Pollard cites a statistic that "over 40% of Americans say they would have more children if they were wealthier."  In reality, however, in the US rich people have — on average — fewer kids than poor people. 

Today’s book is The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes A Good Mother, by Miriam Peskowitz.  Peskowitz’s core argument should be familiar to any reader of this blog:  that there ought to be better ways to combine work and family without running yourself into the ground, to move back and forth between full-time and part-time work and non-paid work without derailing your career, that the media-fanned "mommy wars" only distract us from making common cause.  She portrays herself not as an expert, but as an ordinary mother trying to understand what’s going on, and bringing her readers along on her voyage of discovery.

While there are details that I would quibble with Peskowitz about, I really liked the book as a whole. (My quibbles: I think she overstates the case to which the media portrays SAHDs as having an easier time returning to the workforce than SAHMs; I wish she had talked more about the ways in which domestic responsibilities tend to fall more heavily on the partner who works fewer hours, or even just has more flexibility in scheduling.) 

The emotional core of the book is the final chapter, entitled Playground Revolution, in which Peskowitz introduces us to a variety of groups that are working for change.  Some are fighting for legislation that would provide paid parental leave.  Some are organizing for better neighborhood playgrounds.  Some are organizing nurse-ins at Starbucks.  Some are fighting for welfare recipients’ rights to stay home with their children.

The point is that you don’t have to sign on to try to change everything at once, just the piece of it that moves you the most, that seems within your grasp.  But Peskowitz makes a convincing case that even as we each grapple with a different piece of the puzzle, it’s important for us to recognize that our pieces are part of a whole.  Or, as another generation might have said, think globally, act locally.

Last year, all I wanted for Mothers’ Day was for T. to take the boys out for the morning so I could sleep in and read the newspaper in peace for once.  This year, I’m not so desperate.  Not sure what that means.  D. keeps telling me that he made something for me at preschool, but he can’t tell me what it is because it’s a secret.  He also thinks he should make me a cake, having watched the Dora mother’s day episode.

The Washington Post’s obligatory Mothers’ Day story actually does a nice job of pointing out that "working" and "stay-at-home" mothers are points on a continuum, not polar opposites. 

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with my new toy.  I’m totally addicted to Village Sim, but it annoys me that the women do absolutely nothing else during the two years that they nurse.  All of our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have starved to death if that were really the case.

This morning, I went to a briefing on the "Maternal Wall" organized by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.  Much of it covered ground that I was already familiar with, but I really enjoyed the introductory speech by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Wasserman Schultz is a freshman Representative from Florida, and I have to admit, I hadn’t heard of her before.  Her bio is quite unusual.  She’s 38 years old, and was first elected to the Florida state legislature at 26.  She’s also the mother of 6-year-old twins and a 20-month old.  And during the campaign, her opponent, a woman with adult children, consistently charged her with being a bad mother for running for office. 

Wasserman Schultz won me over with a story of how, at one event, she couldn’t find a pen and so took notes with a crayon.  Her opponent seized upon this as evidence of her "frazzledness" and lack of fitness for office.  When asked about it by a reporter, Wasserman Schultz responded "I may not always have a pen in my purse, but I always have crayons."   Me too.

Wasserman Schultz pointed out that there are only 4 women in Congress with children under 15, and only 2 with children under 10.  The classic women’s path in politics has been to get involved later, when children are in high school, or out of the house. Politics is a time-intensive career, but not one that requires a linear path of achievement.