Outstanding post and persepective from your first hand esperience.
A whole lot of work for a questionable return, yet necessary, tireless effort, none the less.
Like I always way, "Keep on keepin' on!"
My uncle Ken, 7 years older, recalled ringing all the bells in the neighborhood the day I was born, boasting to everyone that he was an uncle. They have always treated me as their beloved younger sister. So I actually had three older brothers and five younger brothers. I was 11 and 13 when my younger brothers were born. In pictures I look like their young mother. How could I ever see men as the enemy?
I can feel my blood pressure rising right now! Great post...rated for raising children full time
Men are feminists now too, as well they should be. You'll meet some of them here, full time child-raisers. Lonnie, bbd (Barry), Skeptic Turtle (Derek) and more.
It's sad that growing up in the 50's and 60's we were proud of our mother's full time career but resented her absence from home and our time spent with nannies. I stopped working full time for 5 years when our son was born for that very reason. Best move ever. Found creative ways to use my intellect and energy. Still, I had the luxury. Too many do not.
How can raising children ever achieve prestige when teaching still does not? Hard questions, Mary. Glad you're asking them.
I was born in '71 so I was born to many of the fruits of your labor. Most of my jobs have been in traditionally male-dominated fields, quite simply as that was where the money was. We've seen jobs which were once the sole domain of men now have a majority of women, the result of which is lower pay in that field (the field of psychology is an excellent example). Perhaps the next generation of feminists should focus further on re-defining the differences between "money" and "worth", thus giving the status of "value" to all? Thank you for your post.
You raise excellent issues. I don't want to overgeneralize. Yes, there were many lesbians in the NYC women's liberation movement. More upsetting is that there were few mothers with children. It became a vicious cycle. Women who insisted they were in happy marriages were too often accused of "false consciousness."Women who stayed home with their children were sometimes derided. Because it was not a movement of mothers, abortion, not child care, became the key issue. Women with happy marriages and children were turned off , left, or didn't join in the first place.
I entirely agree with you: "the large majority of us are not psychopaths. Like them we are products of how we were raised, the images we got from television." You argue: "Work is being sold to women as personal fullfilment. Basically it was all just to get all women working and paying taxes." I would have rejected this statement in 1971. Looking back, one could indeed argue that that the women's liberation movement was co-opted by corporate capitalism. Women went to work in huge numbers, and at the same time one wage earner could no longer support a family. Women's working disguised wage stagnation.
I grew up in a lower middle class community. Most residents were not college graduates; many had solid union jobs. How is it that fathers in the 50s could support much larger families on one income? Yes we lived very frugally, but our mothers were home; our grandmas or aunts helped out. There were no day care centers or nursery schools. we started school in half-day kindergarten that was all fun and games.We were given much more freedom to roam the neighborhood without direct parental supervision. No cell phones monitored our every move. We would have pitied children with overscheduled lives, ferried from one" stimulating" lesson to another. But we didn't know any such children .
By 12 or 13, we were supposed to figure out how to earn some money--babysitting, paper routes, snow shoveling, leaf raking, etc. By 16, we had jobs all summer, from the time school ended to the time it started.
My mother had not been able to attend college because her dad died when she was 17. She attended night school and worked full-time, then got pneumonia and didn't have the energy to continue with college. She went back to college; we both graduated in 1967.
My parents and my teachers always encouraged me academically. No one one discouraged my dreams. My dreams were distorted because I brought myself up to be one of the guys. I didn't investigate female fields like psychology or early childhood education. My mother was appalled when I dropped out of Stanford's Political Science Ph. D. program, throwing away a chance she never had.
The conflicts between love and achievement were in my psyche. Before my first daughter was born, I assumed I would go back to work full-time. But I fell madly in love and found that spending all my days with young children was the most fascinating, rewarding job I had ever had.
You raise questions I am incapable of answering. For most of human history there was not a split between home and work. Women's work was fully as important as men's work. Both parents were around; they were too busy to spend time stimulating their children. But children watched and participated in the work going on around them.
I don't think men evolved to be fighters and women evolved to do everything else. Women did the work that was compatible with pregnancy, breastfeeding, and caring for children. Men were not so tied down to the homestead.
Since I had children, I have worked mostly as a public librarian, a field dominated by women. Crippled by civil service in too many localities, library careers tend to be hierarchical. You advance by years spent on the job, not by innovative talent.
My mom only went back to work after I had left for college. And I was home for my daughters. I am sad that daughters will not have that time with their children. Agreed, that most parents don't have the luxury of one staying at home with their babies or toddlers. But some have higher expectations of economic security that we did. We always lived from paycheck to paycheck. We lived in an apartment. The kids knew their choice was the State University of NY or a full tuition scholarship. I believe the first few years of life are more important than any college.
In New York, teachers actually do pretty well with great pensions, because they unionized and were willing to strike. Parents can't go out on strike.
Your excellent comment raises so many more issues. Elder care is a looming crisis. Women my age spend most of their time discussing their parents. As families get smaller, more of the burden falls on fewer children. The need for child care ends; the need for elder are is entirely unpredictable. Increasingly women lose more work time to elder care than they did to child care.
I took care of my mom in my home for the last 3 1/2 years of her life. Because she had long-term health care insurance, we were entitled to 6 hours of a home health aide daily. We might have had an aide a third of the time. So many of the aides' stories were tragic. None of them had their own cars. Agencies would assign them to places without public transportation; many had to take two buses and a subway to work. Many had left young children in the Caribbean with their families. We paid the agency $18; the aide was lucky to get $8. There was a constant turnover. They sent an 4'11 "aide to care for my 5 ' 8" mother. The first time she tried to help my mother up, she fell into her lab.
We are facing a catastrophic crisis in home care as the baby boomers age.. Medicare and private insurance don't pay for the home car unless you are suffering from an acute medical problem. They don't cover help with the activities of daily living that frail and demented adults require, Medicaid only kicks in if you are absolutely impoverished and skimps on home care. Eventually Medicaid is the primary payer for nursing homes. In the NYC area, a year in a nursing home is well over $100,000 a year. Medicaid could bankrupt most states. All the discussion on health care rarely mentions this problem.
Every single aide we employed and every single nanny in my son's neighborhood is a woman of color. A white woman caring for a toddler is recognized immediately as his grandma. At least in areas with a large immigration population, women's liberation has come at the expense of much poorer women with no job security and few, if any, benefits, separated from her own children. If you stay home and take care of your kids, you are not part of the GNP. If you hire someone to care for your kids while you care for someone's kids, both salaries are counted.
Can the question of money versus worth even be understand in today's capitalistic society?
Second: women still have a much broader base they can use in forming their identity. A males identity is still based on his ability to compete and to win. When he stops competing and winning he loses almost everything--often even that woman he is competing and trying to win for.
Thirdly: (I lied, I have three points) The problem with "feminism" in my view is that it is an "ism" in the first place--an ideology--and like all ideology it is a projection either of the individual who is putting forth their "perfect world," or acting as a spokesperson for the collective conscience at any particular juncture in history.
I have a hard time with ideology. Hugs,
When this "ism" is presented in vast, heroic terms within a relationship (and is paid heed with the best of intentions), but the reality devolves into tangled negotiations about the division of labor in the kitchen, some men, even deeply well-meaning men (such as I have been), find they want to go outside. For a while.
Or longer.
It's better to eat bitter herbs in the wood shop all alone,
then quibble with a grouchy pard`nerd. I too can wash
a dish, and pat dry, as if the plate was a soft babies butt.
she has a soft behind when she grows older? Shush ups.
Mary King has become a treasure of wealth. I learnings.
I've worked part time on and off over the years and feel completely competent in almost any endeavor I embark upon, including grad school, volunteer work, new jobs, social situations, etc. It's always been difficult for me to get on an anti-male bandwagon--how could I? It's antithetical to my life: I've been frankly supported by a loving, attentive, hardworking, and family-oriented husband, and I have lived with and raised three fine boys who are sensitive, funny, and brilliant. What's not to like? I loathe when friends or neighbors generalize in either direction--and it's often male bashing.
All that having been said, I do look for patterns in the genders and see some things that seem more "male" or more "female." I know it's often said that sexuality is on a continuum, and I'm wondering if gender is, too. Do you know? There do seem to be more masculine men and more feminine men and more masculine women and more feminine women and all the types in between. I'd have to think for a minute to figure out if I'm talking about appearance here or including aggression as well. It's hard to say. I know that I'm much more outgoing and aggressive than my husband, who is fairly mild mannered. When I call him passive-aggressive (which he can be), he shoots back that I'm aggressive-aggressive (which I guess I can be).
You make excellent points, and I accept the third completely--your analysis of feminism as an ism, an ideology.
You write: "as we become more and more of a "service" society, rather than producing goods, the evolving marketplace favors women's natural skills, such as relationships and communicating"
You sell men short and underrate the impact of sexist stereotyping.
Let me talk about the fields I know most about. The fastest growing job field in NY is home health aide. If the sexism could be overcome, men's superior strength would make them better caregivers for the immobile elderly. At least half the aides the home health agencies sent us were physically inadequate for the job of taking care of my mom. My husband was absolutely necessary. We always employed a male physical therapist for my mom.
Men are often superb caregivers of young children. The male children's librarians, teachers of young children, and nurses I have known have all been excellent.
You write: "males identity is still based on his ability to compete and to win. When he stops competing and winning he loses almost everything--" You overlook what I consider the most important male role of all--fatherhood. That is the subject for any number of posts.
Your perceptive comments here and your own blog posts have opened my eyes and clarified my focus. I am grateful.
I greatly appreciate the appreciation:) I have seen what you describe in so many marriages, including my first one. I hope I am wiser now and understand what is truly important. "When the reality devolves into tangled negotiations about the division of labor in the kitchen, some men, even deeply well-meaning men (such as I have been), find they want to go outside. For a while. Or longer."
And everyone suffered. And the children, grown, are desperate to avoid their parents' failures.
I wish your intelligent perspectives had shaped the movement. Our struggle was with the patriarchy, which helps some men but hurts many more. But how many of us succeeded in making that distinction when arguing with the man in our life about housework or child care?
In the last 40 years, caring for children has been drastically devalued, increasingly seen as a job for the poorly paid nanny or child care worker. Even the demand for "affordable quality childcare for all" outsources the job, overlooks the possibility of tax breaks, job protection, or other incentives for parents caring for their own kids. Among my daughters' and my nieces' and nephews' highly educated friends, I know exactly one parent who stayed home full-time with her child for 2 years. That strikes me as a tragedy. These people have choices, but seem afraid to make them.
Even if companies have paternity leave, most men are afraid to take it because they worry no one will ever again see them as serious workers. Our brave new world for women has too often become a nightmare world for children.
If we truly valued children, child care workers would be educated and paid like teachers. Often I am shocked to learn what salary very affluent couples deem adequate for their nannies.