Fifteen Impossible Things To Believe Before Breakfast:
1. A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the raising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time.
No, no. I'm going back BEFORE feminism in what I'm discussing. I realize that's difficult for a lot of you to even picture, having been reared in (and by) the Feminist Theocracy, but there was a pre-feminist world.
The idea that we used to have as a universal given -- and which functioned admirably and I think could function admirably again -- is that a home with a stay-at-home mother is a very different thing from a house that a feminist returns to every night and from which she departs every morning. The FACT of a wife-mother being in residence 24/7 -- except when there's something she needs to do outside of the home -- is the thing that MAKES it a home. It's the thing that makes her a Homemaker as distinct from a housewife. A housewife or househusband is a bare subsistence version of what I'm talking about.
There's a centrality to the Homemaker construct that makes it sustainable and allows a family to flourish. The husband leaves the home every morning to earn a livelihood that finances the home that the homemaker is making. There are a nearly infinite number of ways to make and then improve a home. But it requires someone being IN the home to do it. Yes, if she's just a resentful housewife -- "I'm a wife and I'm in this house and all I do is the same housework over and over and over blah blah blah..." -- well, yeah. That's a problem, but that's an attitudinal problem, in my view. This is what "happily ever after" is: you are the central figure in your life story and your husband's life story and your children's life stories. Why? Because the central fact is the home and YOU'RE the one who's there all the time.
A mother bird, to cite an obvious example, can't make her nest and hatch the eggs and take care of her offspring AND go foraging. The father bird can't either. It's an either/or thing if it's to be done properly.
The Feminist Theocracy maintains that that's not true. And I can see that you've bought into that (as most people have): A house that is empty from nine in the morning til six at night is JUST AS MUCH a home as a house that has a homemaker in it during those hours.
To me, that's self-evidently ludicrous. It certainly wasn't my experience. Our house was just our house. It wasn't a HOME because my mother worked outside the house. My mother was a school secretary but it was pretty obvious that that was who she was. She slaved like a trojan to create the illusion of being a homemaker but there's a difference between an actual homemaker and a housewife. I had friends who had homemaker mothers and friends who had housewife mothers. The difference was obvious. The homemaker is making the home and making dinner and cleaning and doing laundry ALL DAY, timing it so that there's a "dinner hour" a "family meal". The housewife arrives like a bat out of hell along with everyone else and tries to do everything the homemaker spent ALL DAY doing into the same four hours everything else needs to be done.
You can call that a home if you want -- and I'm sure you do -- but I don't think it is one.
I visit with the Kitchen families twice a year and have for six years, both with homemaker mothers. It's very nice to visit a home and see it function as such. "I thought so".
Ericka always jokes about getting her kids t-shirts that say "Too Good For Daycare". If she doesn't, I probably will. It's entirely true. And her kids are very aware of it, because they have friends with "evening parents" and they know the difference.
I mean, it's INSULTING to actual homemakers to suggest that what they do ALL DAY can be done just as effectively between 6 pm and 10 pm. THINK about how that would make YOU feel.
But, that's nothing new for the Feminist Theocracy. A big part of what feminists do is insult, condescend to, patronize, disparage and dismiss Homemakers.
It's necessary for feminists to do that because without stigmatization of 24/7 Motherhood and Homemaking, I'm really pretty sure that would be what MOST women would opt for because I'm pretty sure they're hardwired for it.
I also think if women back in the 1960s could see what feminism has turned into -- the plummeting replacement birth rates, plummeting successful (i.e. lifelong) marriage rates, 86% of women out in the workforce -- I doubt that MOST of them would have "opted in". Their assumption, I think I'm safe in saying, was that birth rates would remain the same and successful marriage rates would remain the same. MOST women had lifelong marriages prior to 1970. A small percentage of "tomboy women" wanted to be like men and were.
But, I think if MOST women were being honest they would trade -- happily -- what they've "achieved" since 1970 for a much higher successful marriage rate.
And a successful marriage needs, I think, that "orbital" quality, with the Homemaker as the central reality.
Marriage as it WAS was more successful than marriage as it IS today.
9 comments:
Dave, I've said it before and I'll say it again: In retrospect (not as much at the time), I consider myself to have been very fortunate to have had a stay-at-home mother. Now, she wasn't your typical homemaker, because she also owned and ran a business, but it was on our property. And, once we got to a certain age, we worked for her (it was a dog boarding kennel). So she could come up the hill and check on us anytime during the day during the summers (surprise inspections), each of us had daily chores, and then we had play time out in the woods if we wanted (we lived in the country).
It wasn't idyllic, but it was a childhood I consider now that I was very fortunate to have.
And, during the school months, she was there to make sure we caught the bus (or Dad drove us to school), and she either was there to meet us with a snack when the bus dropped us off at the end of the school day (or, later, to pick us up after our after-school activities). And if she wasn't in the house when we got home, then we knew she was working just down the hill in the kennel.
And, by some quirk of 1970s telephonic technology, if we didn't want to run down the hill for something, we learned we could dial the last four digits of our home phone number (3338), and it would ring down at the kennel!
So, in a way, my mother actually *did* have the best of both worlds: A working woman who was a stay-at-home mom.
Oh, and, icing on the cake for us kids? My parents were (mostly) happily married for 43 years, until my mom passed away in 1991.
Maybe my story isn't the best example of what Dave is talking about, but it was a pretty good foundational childhood.
Bonus: By staying at home, my mom had time to teach my brother and I to read before we ever hit kindygarden (no preschool or daycare centers for us). And by the age of 6 or so, I astounded my father by reading aloud from the paper he was reading, while I was viewing it upside down. So, my point being, kids with stay-at-home moms who are invested in rearing them properly usually have much more well-rounded childhoods. Especially in two-parent households.
Sorry this comment was so long.
Hi Dave,
I appreciate the response especially considering how difficult it is to type one handed. I think one response per day is an excellent idea even if you had not been limited by the problem with your right hand.
Ok, on-wards.
My responses are colored by the country I grew-up and still live in - The U.S. and by my own family history. I was raised by a single mom. My Dad died in Viet-Nam when I was 2 years old. I have no recollection of him. Mom was forced by circumstances and temperament to enter the workforce. During the daytime I stayed with my Grandmother or an aunt. When grade school came around Mom worked early shifts when she could so that she would be home before school let out. By the time i reached middle school Mom had put herself through night school, it had taken many long years and sacrifice, but she made and did it with honors. I had never been so proud. Never once, not once did i ever feel she had not been there for me. She was magnificent. My experience was not singular. Most of the kids on my street came from two working parent or single Mother homes. Only one family that I knew - with 8 kids,had a stay at home mom. They turned out good for the most part, but so did I and the other kids on my street.
The picture you paint of a woman staying at home watching the kids and being fulfilled solely by making a home is not the reality for the majority of this country and has not been in a very long time. I do not denigrate those women who choose to do that, but a woman can no more suppress her needs for intellectual, and emotional fulfillment than a man can. Nor should she be forced to by patronizing and woefully outdated modes of thought. In the U.S. 80 years ago 36% of families were engaged in agriculture. Today that number is less than 3%. Your 'ideal' stay at home mom was based upon a mostly rural and hard-working - farms are back breaking work long gone existence. Now, I am going explode some minds. We start in 1950 which is a landmark decade for many reasons. WWII had ended five years earlier - which had seen the greatest ever participation by women in the workforce - and they liked it. Baby making was booming, but curiously enough so too was the working woman, and not just single working women, but married women. Now here is the explosive part - suicide rates among all ages of females started to drop in the 1950's. With one glaring unexplained exception in 1970. But ever since the 50's suicide rates went down. Why? When more women entered the workforce and more working moms existed, how could suicide rates go down? Because they were freer and happier and were able to use their minds instead of wasting away at home watching television and doing laundry and cooking dinner and reading a book. Watching kids will keep you occupied - until they do not want to be bothered, but it is not the most intellectually stimulating thing. Women have just as much right to wanting to explore their full potential as men do.
Read this and this link
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1986/09/women-in-the-work-force/304924/
Addendum
overall female suicides did drop but if i am being honest - and I am, women of child bearing age suicides did increase.
20–24 years 6.2 7.1 12.2 16.1 15.1 15.8 12.5 12.0 12.4 12.1 - - 13.6
25–44 years 11.6 12.2 15.4 15.6 15.2 15.1 13.4 13.8 14.0 13.8 - - 15.0
25–34 years 9.1 10.0 14.1 16.0 15.2 15.0 12.0 12.8 12.6 12.7 12.7 12.4 14.0
35–44 years 14.3 14.2 16.9 15.4 15.3 15.1 14.5 14.7 15.3 14.9 15.0 14.9 16.0
Jeff, an observation...
I think you have force-fit your childhood experience erroneously into what Dave is describing, for...some reason for which I could only ascribe in equally erroneously a way. A "stay - at - home mom/homemaker" is just that, quite literally. Your mother, as you have described, is not performing to that role regardless of how much you work to align what she did to Dave's views.
My brother and I had a stay at home mom and the traditional 2-parent household. Zero outside work or responsibility. It was not a wholly pleasurable experience for a number of reasons. Thus, my experience is absolutely contrary to your proclamation "my point being, kids with stay-at-home moms who are invested in rearing them properly usually have much more well-rounded childhoods. Especially in two-parent households." And honestly, "well-rounded" means...? To what bias or personal assumptions are you tagging as well-rounded?
I don't mean to come off as attacking you. I am happy you have a affection and fondness for your childhood circumstances and appreciation for Dave's position. But, swinging a wide-swath paintbrush on this subject is misguided and presumptuous, especially when your brush bristles aren't quite the brush Dave is using. (how's that for a discrete kind of metaphor, oy!)
I'll agree fully with Dave's assertion around the disrespect given to the homemaker. That is an unforgivable shame. Personally, regardless of whether my daughter (now 2) decides to be a full time homemaker, full time leader of the free and/or unfree world, or lean-in style attempting both I "only" expect her to do so with full commitment and to crush those in her way. I shall not teach her to abide people ascribing a role to her she does not desire to embrace.
Be that my being brainwashed by the feminist theocracy or my wanting mine own flesh-n-blood to build her own world is irrelevant to me. She's her own individual - not a stereotype others can dictate a role unto.
Erick...an observation (I like to watch...):
"Because they were freer and happier and were able to use their minds instead of wasting away at home watching television and doing laundry and cooking dinner and reading a book. Watching kids will keep you occupied - until they do not want to be bothered, but it is not the most intellectually stimulating thing."
What an interestingly bias-filled statement: wasting away at home...
If the role of homemaker and mother were value-perceived beyond the "my kids and my home are me", meaning...if the societal norm were to celebrate that role rather than denigrate (and I'm reaching way back to long-ago times where the mother was the celebrated role and cherished being), then thoughts of "wasting away" would never be conceived (heh, it means 2 things! intended).
I think to truly understand the notion of importance to the homemaker role Dave is describing, one needs to fully dismiss a present-day perspective of that role. To make an analogy: if being a homemaker held the equivalent societally celebrated value as a Peyton Manning or Lebron James or Steven Spielberg or George Clooney (my apparent sexism in selecting all men intended, for mine own reasons) then the reward would be much more than the present-day value places onto that role. There were times in which being the farmer's wife held equally regarded status as the farmer (and I'm going well well well back from the 1930s or 40s or 50s).
I may have been a bit obtuse in my prior statement "if being a homemaker held the equivalent societally celebrated value as a Peyton Manning or Lebron James or Steven Spielberg or George Clooney".
My intent was to call out names to what I believe are celebrated roles. Manning: star quarterback; James: star forward; Spielberg: star filmmaker; Clooney: star star.
It would be odd to include among those names a Jane Doe: star homemaker, as that role does not have the celebratory stature of the others.
Forgive my incomplete thought in my prior post's closing paragraph.
Bill,
when i wrote that i knew it was not the most elegant turn of phrase but i did not correct it because of what i typed earlier which you may have missed.
I said -
The picture you paint of a woman staying at home watching the kids and being fulfilled solely by making a home is not the reality for the majority of this country and has not been in a very long time. I do not denigrate those women who choose to do that, but a woman can no more suppress her needs for intellectual, and emotional fulfillment than a man can. Nor should she be forced to by.
patronizing and woefully outdated modes of thought.
I certainly should have put a bit more thought into my overall statement including links, but I stand by what I said.
Homemaking can be very hard work, and some women are greatly fulfilled by that. But that is not the only way or even the majority way that women are fulfilled now. To fail to recognize this is to live a life in rose tinted glasses and remembering when bread was only 10 cents a loaf. Of course what is forgotten is that wages were just a few dollars a day and that 10 cents added up quickly
As I was taking out the garbage a thought popped into my head...
If Dave is thinking the homemaker role is to include the man's arrival at home from the job and then he gets to enjoy being served his whiskey, slippers, and so on whilst sitting on the couch with a pipe (ok, I may load things a bit thick, but) after the homemaker has put in an equally long day...feminist theocracy not-withsdtanding: that's bullshit.
I don't think that's what he's describing. Least, I hope not. Even in instances where there is a full-time homemaker, there's shared responsibility rather than servitude. Work dude: get home, enjoy the family-time and get your own fucking slippers and drink. And help with the dinner cleanup.
I got a lot of big smirks out of this post!
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