s/o: Paying For "Women's Work"

[Saille]

I was struck particularly by the idea that we are now paying individuals to do the jobs that women used to do at home for free. Women are naturally more inclined to do these, so women take these jobs. The desire for this work to become paid work is a theme in Peggy Seeger's songs. Her most famous song, "Gonna Be An Engineer," goes like this --

 

I'd do the lovely things that a lady's s'posed to do

I wouldn't even mind if only they would pay me

Then I could be a person too.

 

What price for a woman?

You can buy her for a ring of gold,

To love and obey, without any pay,

You get a cook and a nurse for better or worse

You don't need a purse when a lady is sold.

 

My gut reaction to this had nothing at all to do with valuing women's work or the right to be paid for that work. It had more to do with the economic effects of the two-income family phenomenon.

 

I have a problem with the industrialization of the jobs women used to do at home for free. I'm glad that paid childcare is available, but it's become the status quo, and I don't consider that healthy. Now, probably on a homeschooling board, that's not a terribly controversial opinion. But I suspect it is controversial in my community.

 

The main problem, at least for me, is that women can get paid to do this important work, as long as they don't mind doing it for someone else, while paying someone else to do it for them. It looks really silly when I type it out. This concept has become so normalized that us homeschooling mamas get all those "I could never stay home with my kids" comments, even from teachers and child care workers.

 

Additionally, the freedom to earn income has made doing important work at home a privilege instead of a right. Many people are just priced right out of doing it. Homesteading becomes almost a necessity, and who bears the brunt of that? Not the man, who in the current economic environment is doing the paid work of two or three people. So, if your gold band is not in fact a form of white slavery, but a compact between equals, you are both worn to a nub and exhausted from trying to do something that few of your acquaintances do, using skills few of them have. Either they treat you like a carnival sideshow, or they completely romanticize what you are doing. Either way, it's hard to chat.

 

Add to this that modern American pop culture is so far removed from your reality that LOST looks more normal than American Idol. I don't know. I'm tired just thinking about it. But I sort of want to slap Peggy Seeger right now, even though I understand what she was saying. It's not her fault the big corporations have commoditized my life. But I wish our elders had at least considered and prepared for that possibility.

[Peela]

I may be speaking through my hat here, especially since I am not in the U.S. and instead live comfortably in a wealthy middle class suburb in a boom state in Australia.....but aren't a lot of the problems due to everyone wanting so much more than is really healthy and sustainable in the long run, for the majority? If everyone feels it is their right and privelege to have a decent family home in the burbs, to have 2.2 kids and all the mod cons of modern life....somewhere surely something has to give?

There are so many factors involved in all these issues.

 

I personally feel that its about time people stopped caring so much about being able to get along with mainstream culture, and just did what they feel is the right thing to do. The days of fitting in and being normal are over. It's time to follow your own star and do what needs to be done and not worry that it isnt what everyone else is doing. We homeschool- find other homeschoolers. I am part of spiritual circles that are not mainstream but I live in an area where they are very accepted- by choice- I would not move away unless I had to because they are my community. We rent because thats just what works for us and buying would not be good for our kids. It's true, my non homeschooling friends frequently try to convince me to work, as if homeschooling , whiel obviously worthy, could not possibly be enough. As if being supported by a husband is so ...not normal any more.

But who cares? Dh and I have always marched to a different beat, and not always the same one as each other, mind you.

 

While these times are constantly changing and bringing many challenges, to both men and women, I think they are also lending themselves to opportunities for innovation and creative thinking, working in new areas, finding what matters more- money or a career one loves , values....while many may be going in a different direction, there is plenty of evidence that there are other movements afoot that are very positive and life affirming. Perhaps one needs to be willing to stand apart before one can access them, but they are around.

 

Whatever is happening in mainstream culture...and there is plenty there that doesnt look so wonderful, including the culture that puts 6 week old babies into full time daycare until they go to school- there is an equal and opposing non mainstream culture, and we are part of that, being homeschoolers. And so are many other people doing different things, trying to make a difference in their own way.

I prefer to focus on that which is wonderfully positive, rather than the vast amount of negative. We are homeschooling. We are creating a culture and setting an example to others in the community, and our children themselves. Some of us live in virtual poverty to do this- others not so. In previous eras we might have been working in factories with our children at home with their grandparents, until they were old enough to also work in factories.

 

Times will change whether we like it or not, both for good and bad, and while womens roles are changing, probably our innate natures are not and things will balance. Men are having to learn to adapt and change and I think thats a good thing. I am personally glad women have the choices they do.

I like watching the evolution of culture.

[Saille]

.....but aren't a lot of the problems due to everyone wanting so much more than is really healthy and sustainable in the long run, for the majority? If everyone feels it is their right and privelege to have a decent family home in the burbs, to have 2.2 kids and all the mod cons of modern life....somewhere surely something has to give?

There are so many factors involved in all these issues.

 

Well yes, but where did that mentality come from? Bush isn't the first American President who told us to spend as a patriotic duty, and the reason people could (and in some ways, had to) do that is because we moved to a model of two people working outside the home, which meant that no one had the time to bother making things. They just bought them, instead. Over the years, folks in the U.S. have lost the skills to make, grow or raise what they need, to the point that there are people who are genuinely freaked out by the fact that I would eat eggs that come out of a chicken who lives in my yard. The practical effect of existing solely as a consumer and not producing anything is that, in the absence of reflection, it leads to magical thinking about where all that stuff comes from, and where it's going. Increasingly, the products we buy are made to be disposable. They are not intended to last, b/c if they were, we wouldn't buy more, would we? And all of this is the tip of the iceberg that led to shopping being the most common recreational activity in America. So yes, many, many Americans feel entitled to things they don't need, but they've been carefully groomed for generations to do so, and everything about American culture makes it easier to do that than to not.

 

Maude knows I march to the beat of my own drummer and will continue to do so. That's not the issue. The issue is that I had an adverse reaction to a song about social justice because I found it ironic in light of my modern reality.

Edited July 4, 2010 by Saille

[Murphy101]

I'm fine with women having choices.

I think men have always adapted and often found it very hard. (I'm thinking pioneers for example).

 

I think saille is saying the problem now is that it has become very hard for a woman to have the choice to be a SAHM. For many women they sincerely and often factually feel they do not have that choice. They are in a situation where if they do it for minimum wage for someone else while paying lass than that for yet another someone to do it for their kids - that's readily accepted. But if the same woman decides to do the same work for free for her own home - she is a drain on society. It shouldn't be like that. It simply isn't logical, practical or healthy or even economically sound.

[FairProspects]

My gut reaction to this had nothing at all to do with valuing women's work or the right to be paid for that work. It had more to do with the economic effects of the two-income family phenomenon.

 

I have a problem with the industrialization of the jobs women used to do at home for free. I'm glad that paid childcare is available, but it's become the status quo, and I don't consider that healthy. Now, probably on a homeschooling board, that's not a terribly controversial opinion. But I suspect it is controversial in my community.

 

The main problem, at least for me, is that women can get paid to do this important work, as long as they don't mind doing it for someone else, while paying someone else to do it for them. It looks really silly when I type it out. This concept has become so normalized that us homeschooling mamas get all those "I could never stay home with my kids" comments, even from teachers and child care workers.

 

Additionally, the freedom to earn income has made doing important work at home a privilege instead of a right. Many people are just priced right out of doing it. Homesteading becomes almost a necessity, and who bears the brunt of that? Not the man, who in the current economic environment is doing the paid work of two or three people. So, if your gold band is not in fact a form of white slavery, but a compact between equals, you are both worn to a nub and exhausted from trying to do something that few of your acquaintances do, using skills few of them have. Either they treat you like a carnival sideshow, or they completely romanticize what you are doing. Either way, it's hard to chat.

 

Add to this that modern American pop culture is so far removed from your reality that LOST looks more normal than American Idol. I don't know. I'm tired just thinking about it. But I sort of want to slap Peggy Seeger right now, even though I understand what she was saying. It's not her fault the big corporations have commoditized my life. But I wish our elders had at least considered and prepared for that possibility.

 

Hear, Hear! :hurray:

[stripe]

What I find objectionable is the idea that it's professional to be paid to clean up after someone who's not a relative, but demeaning to clean your parent/child/spouse for free OR the idea that paid employment is somehow glamorous whereas being "at home" (i.e. a housewife) is repetitive and demeaning, without stopping to wonder what sorts of jobs most working women have (maid, factory worker, etc -- rather than CEO or tenured professor).

 

Back to the Sandra Tsing Loh article and the Neil Gilbert book I referenced earlier.

[IsabelC]

Too tired to respond right now (yeah, I know, must get off the puter and get to bed!) but Saille I love some of your posts and this thread is definitely something that will be percolating in my brain ...

[Mama Lynx]

What I find objectionable is the idea that it's professional to be paid to clean up after someone who's not a relative, but demeaning to clean your parent/child/spouse for free OR the idea that paid employment is somehow glamorous whereas being "at home" (i.e. a housewife) is repetitive and demeaning, without stopping to wonder what sorts of jobs most working women have (maid, factory worker, etc -- rather than CEO or tenured professor).

 

.

 

 

Nodding along violently.

 

One of the many reasons I did not finish getting my teaching certification is that it occurred to me that I was training to pay to put my kids in daycare and in school, while I left them to go teach other people's children, to take that pay to pay for their childcare ...

 

Made no sense. And yet the one option was honored and praised, the other was not. It is a rightful achievement to care for and teach other people's children for pay, but not to care for and teach my own.

[Saille]

I think saille is saying the problem now is that it has become very hard for a woman to have the choice to be a SAHM. For many women they sincerely and often factually feel they do not have that choice. They are in a situation where if they do it for minimum wage for someone else while paying lass than that for yet another someone to do it for their kids - that's readily accepted. But if the same woman decides to do the same work for free for her own home - she is a drain on society. It shouldn't be like that. It simply isn't logical, practical or healthy or even economically sound.

 

Yes this. And the essential problem would not be solved by my dh staying home instead of me. (We've done that, too.)

 

Yes to what stripe said, too. And I think we've developed this very superficial sense of what's demeaning. Truly, I do not generally hear the word sacrifice outside of this board. And I hear it here mostly from Christian folks. Why on earth does that word have so little traction outside the context of religion or patriotism? The sense of the new, the clean, the manufactured or systematic as "good" is so pervasive...but there is great good to be found in making and doing things one's own self, for the benefit of one's own family. Homesteaders talk about this. But they're a fringe culture. The push in this country is to value shiny, glossy, new over homespun, patched, repaired, and just good old fashioned serviceable. To be honest, I even resent the dichotomy. Enslaved by our wedding bands and employing post-Depression thrift, or free and driving SUVs while sipping lattes and picking up replacement swiffer cloths at Target, where our fellow mama is busy getting hassled for feeding a baby...*gasp*...with her breasts! That affected sort of squeamishness just drives me crazy.

[Saille]

nodding along violently.

 

One of the many reasons i did not finish getting my teaching certification is that it occurred to me that i was training to pay to put my kids in daycare and in school, while i left them to go teach other people's children, to take that pay to pay for their childcare ...

 

Made no sense. And yet the one option was honored and praised, the other was not. It is a rightful achievement to care for and teach other people's children for pay, but not to care for and teach my own.

 

Ack! Yes! Exactly!

 

(I have to add here that no one ever asks me about work anymore. Ever. And I'm working really hard.)

[Charles Wallace]

If I can add some of my two cents, here's what I believe happened -- and I lived through some of it, so it's at least consistent with my experience.

 

Women were traditionally discouraged from having jobs after marriage except in rural communities, where they often worked their fingers to the bone with livestock, cooking, cheesemaking, wool-work, and so on. In urban communities, poor women worked. However, for middle-class and rich women, work was supposed to occur only before marriage (I'm thinking Laura Ingalls Wilder here).

 

You can see this reflected even in movies like Mildred Pierce, where it's a Very Big Deal for Mildred to get a job, even though she's a single mother. Interestingly, even though she's scraching out an income, she hires a "girl" (a maid) to care for the domestic chores.

 

However, after WWII, when women were basically compelled to work in the factories because of a shortage of (literal) manpower, many didn't take easily to being fired when the soldiers returned and being Betty Crocker after having been Rosie the Riveter. Growing feminism, especially with the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, made women question the validity of their second-class status in society.

 

Despite this, society was still largely against women working for any other reason than husbandlessness or dire economic need, or both. It wasn't until advertising agencies and economists realized three important things that the situation changed:

 

1. If women worked, they would represent an entirely new niche market.

2. If women worked, the gross domestic product would be increased.

3. Women can be paid less then men, so we get an increased GDP for much less money than we would if men were doing the same jobs.

 

Society's ideals started to shift. Now, we saw corporate portrayals of working women as sexy -- anyone remember the campaign, "I can bring home the bacon...fry it up in a pan...and never let you forget you're a man?" for Enjoli perfume? For Charlie perfume? Sexy, assertive working women became idealized in advertising -- and became attractive to women, many of whom were unhappy being given the limited (respectable) career choices of wife and mother. (Note: Please understand that I am not denigrating being a wife and/or a mother. I am denigrating the limited options. People are happier when they can choose.)

 

Pretty soon, the "norm" for what houses looked like, what possessions "normal" middle-class people were supposed to have started to shift. For example, there's a neighborhood in my city which was built following WWII. Most of the houses are considered normal middle-class dwellings. Know how big they are? About 950-1000 square feet...for a family. Most of my friends' houses in this same city built in the 1980's and following are twice that...and more. The size of families didn't change, but economic perceptions did.

 

With two incomes, it now became the norm to have MORE: a big house, a television, a DVD, a cell phone, a computer, an iPod, a Wii, an Xbox, a bedroom to yourself, and so on. Look at most commercials for cleaning products and ask yourself, "Based on what I see in the commercial, what do I think the average size of this commercial-person's house is?" The commercial is presenting you with a carefully calculated "norm." It wants to present itself as a representative American middle-class house.

 

We very powerfully want to be like everyone else in our socioeconomic group. We really do have a strong urge to keep up with the Joneses. To homeschool, to have only one income, resists the trend of the last fifty to sixty years' worth of American economic growth. It cuts your income in half or more. Speaking as a homeschooler, I understand very well what that means: we just do not have the house, the house space, or the stuff that many of my friends of equal "class" have or expect to have. Oh, well. That's the cost of homeschooling and it was worth it to pay.

 

I hope this helps explain or answer some of your initial questions. Sorry about the dissertation.

 

CW

[HRAAB]

Yes this. And the essential problem would not be solved by my dh staying home instead of me. (We've done that, too.)

 

Yes to what stripe said, too. And I think we've developed this very superficial sense of what's demeaning. Truly, I do not generally hear the word sacrifice outside of this board. And I hear it here mostly from Christian folks. Why on earth does that word have so little traction outside the context of religion or patriotism? The sense of the new, the clean, the manufactured or systematic as "good" is so pervasive...but there is great good to be found in making and doing things one's own self, for the benefit of one's own family. Homesteaders talk about this. But they're a fringe culture. The push in this country is to value shiny, glossy, new over homespun, patched, repaired, and just good old fashioned serviceable. To be honest, I even resent the dichotomy. Enslaved by our wedding bands and employing post-Depression thrift, or free and driving SUVs while sipping lattes and picking up replacement swiffer cloths at Target, where our fellow mama is busy getting hassled for feeding a baby...*gasp*...with her breasts! That affected sort of squeamishness just drives me crazy.

 

YES, YES, YES!!! And nodding to what you wrote in the OP.

 

I'm raising five daughters, and looking towards the future I sometimes feel so sad and depressed for them. Being a feminist, I always wanted my daughters to have real choices, and now I see them not having many choices. Sometimes I apologize to them because I feel somehow guilty - maybe because I got caught up in the 'me generation' in the 80's. I do think the best gift I've given them is staying home and doing all those jobs myself and saying 'this is my choice and I'm taking it'.

[stripe]

What's interesting too is that I've read that in countries like India, upper class women participate more in the workforce because it's so easy (and affordable) to get help around the help. Often those women (their maids) also have maids/childcare of their own. But what I find irritating is when women are supposed to go work in another country (either as maids or nurses, or whatever), and this is so fantastic. I think that is really a difficult situation, because they are often separated from their children for years.

[Renee in NC]

What's interesting too is that I've read that in countries like India, upper class women participate more in the workforce because it's so easy (and affordable) to get help around the help. Often those women (their maids) also have maids/childcare of their own. But what I find irritating is when women are supposed to go work in another country (either as maids or nurses, or whatever), and this is so fantastic. I think that is really a difficult situation, because they are often separated from their children for years.

 

I'm thinking, though, that there is a much greater social hierarchy in India. So, the upper class woman works and pays a middle class woman to clean/care for her children. Then the middle class woman pays a lower class woman (much less) to clean/care for her. So, who cares for the children of the lower class woman?

 

As for going to other countries to work, this reminded me of Kuwait. In "Material World" they show the wealthy (to us - middle class there) family with the couple who works for them as domestic workers. They were from another country, where they had left a child. This was normal for Kuwait because there wasn't a lower class to do the low-level service work.

[stripe]

I'm thinking, though, that there is a much greater social hierarchy in India. So, the upper class woman works and pays a middle class woman to clean/care for her children. Then the middle class woman pays a lower class woman (much less) to clean/care for her. So, who cares for the children of the lower class woman?

Sometimes the one who is caring for her children is herself a fairly young woman, sometimes a relative who's been sent to live with the other woman. Getting a place to live and not having to pay for her food / expenses often relieves a burden from the girls' parents, making it (ostensibly) a "win-win" situation for all concerned.

 

The number of women from the Phillipines who work abroad is truly startling. It may not always be a bad thing in some respects -- and certainly many of the kids are left with loving relatives -- but the fact that money alone is dictating so much of this, unsettles me.

[Renee in NC]

Sometimes the one who is caring for her children is herself a fairly young woman, sometimes a relative who's been sent to live with the other woman. Getting a place to live and not having to pay for her food / expenses often relieves a burden from the girls' parents, making it (ostensibly) a "win-win" situation for all concerned.

 

The number of women from the Phillipines who work abroad is truly startling. It may not always be a bad thing in some respects -- and certainly many of the kids are left with loving relatives -- but the fact that money alone is dictating so much of this, unsettles me.

 

You know, there were at least 2 families in the Material World book (or Hungry Planet) where there was a young girl (10 or so) living with the family doing work in exchange for room and board. I hadn't thought about that. I am glad that it isn't a worry for my daughters - I can't imagine how their mothers feel.

[Murphy101]

You know, there were at least 2 families in the Material World book (or Hungry Planet) where there was a young girl (10 or so) living with the family doing work in exchange for room and board. I hadn't thought about that. I am glad that it isn't a worry for my daughters - I can't imagine how their mothers feel.

 

Which brings up the fact that a 10 year old girl or boy is usually not considered a child per se in many of those countries and thus the mother might not feel like she is leaving behind a child in the same sense as would. At 10, many are sold, apprenticed, indentured or whatever else you may or may not be able to imagine. :(

[Renee in NC]

Which brings up the fact that a 10 year old girl or boy is usually not considered a child per se in many of those countries and thus the mother might not feel like she is leaving behind a child in the same sense as would. At 10, many are sold, apprenticed, indentured or whatever else you may or may not be able to imagine. :(

 

That's so sad. While I can see a 10yo being capable enough to take care of children and housework, isn't this a form of indentured servanthood? Does anyone know what happens to them later? I can't imagine sending an adult child of mine off to wherever and never seeing them again!

[Murphy101]

That's so sad. While I can see a 10yo being capable enough to take care of children and housework, isn't this a form of indentured servanthood? Does anyone know what happens to them later? I can't imagine sending an adult child of mine off to wherever and never seeing them again!

 

It can be and likely is, but that isn't an across the board negative if they are truly repaid in having a valid profitable profession afterwards. Even here we have programs that offer education in exchange for service. Doctors, teachers, veterinarians. ... I'm betting that's not how it comes in those other countries though. :(

 

I can't imagine it either, but really before the information age and especially before the industrial age this was the norm even if they didn't move out of the country. Travel was hard, expensive in so many ways that it simply didn't happen much unless the family was very wealthy. The majority that crossed the pond to settle in America never saw the family they left behind again. And more than a few of this who came were late teens and early 20s, single or young families looking for a better life. So I am grateful not to have to make that choice, but I certainly can't fault the guts and desperation it might take for another to make that hard decision. :(

[Leanna Tomlinson]

The main problem, at least for me, is that women can get paid to do this important work, as long as they don't mind doing it for someone else, while paying someone else to do it for them. It looks really silly when I type it out. This concept has become so normalized that us homeschooling mamas get all those "I could never stay home with my kids" comments, even from teachers and child care workers.

 

 

 

I found this frustrating when filling out transcripts, college applications, and scholarship paperwork with my dds. Somehow, an eldest child who has been a great help to the household, logging countless hours of childcare, service to grandparents, housework, gardening, baking, etc. is not nearly as valued as the teen down the street who puts in 20 hours of community service, but in all other ways has basically no responsibilities.

 

My older daughters could run a house in a way that would have put me to shame in my early marriage, but their work and skills held no value in the eyes of many colleges and scholarship committees. They may have been better off in the realm of scholarships had I sent them to work at a daycare center instead of caring for their siblings, sent them to volunteer at a nursing home instead of helping their grandparents, had them sell their baked goods instead of feeding our family, sent them to work at a landscaper rather than planting and managing their own garden.

 

It's not that the skills my daughters have aren't valued. They are valued as long as they are carried out in the public arena. An individual's contribution to the home and family is what we undervalue as a society. Maybe it's because we, above all things, value the individual?

Edited July 4, 2010 by Leanna
punctuation

[stripe]

Maybe it's because we, above all things, value the individual?

Or money?

[Saille]

Or money?

 

:iagree:

 

That, and we value titles. Compartments. If it's on a certificate, it counts. Actually, I think this arises from a type of bureaucracy that walks hand-in-hand with the industrialization I was talking about upthread. (Charles Wallace, your explanation was helpful. Thanks.) Automating things means that everything has to be broken down into steps and logged in easily definable ways. I actually think the dumbing down of public education is owed in large part to this mentality. (And it's how some of my worst bosses got to be bosses, by embracing that mentality. Lemme tell you how frustrated I am that some of those womens' work is valued more than mine.)

Edited July 4, 2010 by Saille

[dragons in the flower bed]

Ack! Yes! Exactly!

 

(I have to add here that no one ever asks me about work anymore. Ever. And I'm working really hard.)

 

(I ask sometimes, don't I?)

 

Someone I haven't seen since my four-year-old was crawling asked me yesterday, "So what are you doing now? Are you working?" I believe I was visibly offended. "Harder than ever, yes, at home."

 

Yes, I agree, too, that Peggy Seeger stings a little these days. (Housewife's Alphabet had to leave my iPod.) I sometimes want to say to the older feminists, what the !@#$ were you thinking? But I can understand the thought process they were going through. "Okay, only paid work is valuable? Pay me then, 'cause this poop is VALUABLE." What would a real solution look like?

 

When I was a new mother, I lived in a community that valued unpaid work at least as highly as paid. They were ranchers and descendants of pioneers and conservatives and fundies (and I mean fundies affectionately in this sense). Their kids got up early and took care of the ranch jobs, and got no pay, and were highly valued. I miss that attitude. But the attitude itself didn't create enough extra time in the day for most families to support themselves financially and do home work for itself, too. If we're not recommending gov't stipends for the homeworkers, and we're not recommending family wages so one adult can stay at home or both can work just part-time, then what? What is the solution?

Edited July 5, 2010 by dragons in the flower bed
forgot to link something no one could possibly get without a link

[scubamama]

You know, these thoughts of being the unequal partner/servant/making the less valuable or socially aceptable choice were only nibbling at the edges of my conscious thought until recently.

I grew up rurally. My mom was a SAHM - but she was also profoundly disabled. I fed her and helped care for her bodily needs. I went to college and became an RN. I also married right after graduation. That "early marrraige" was only starting to become unusual in my hometown area. More and more girls went to college and married later after working for a while.

I did work for a while. But out of necessity - my dh was disabled by a felon in a stolen car and was in rehab for a while. We waited to have kids until he was literally on his feet again.

If that would haven't happened, I would have had kids much earlier (I'm 34 now).

Fast forward to now - we live in the greater LA area. After a lifetime of rural living and not too much worrying about whether or not I was "measuring up" to society's ideals - I found myself wondering about my choice in life. To be a SAHM and homeschool. Dh and I wanted me to be at home. But here, what you wear, drive, look like and live are all scrutinised. It's very disheartening to me. I don't want to work and dh wants me to be at home. But I am constantly bombarded with comments - you know the kind I mean. Wow - you hs? I could never do that...my kids would drive me crazy...I love my job etc.

Even my bf has completely changed her views and daily life. I think this has effected me more than any other one thing. She was divorced after her dh had an affair, then she remarried and now is divorced again. But now she has a kid. During marraige #2 she was the breadwinner and loved her job, loved daycare (called it school...?). Even now, our conversations are fraught with land mines. I am at home with the kids, her son is at "school" (he's 4) and having issues.Work is complicated for her - satisfying and yet time consuming - traveling, etc My heart is so torn for her. She made some singualry bad choices (which we all do), but I don't like a former extreemly conservative xian telling me my life would be better, more enjoyable...more everything it's not! I'd have a new car, better clothes, the kids would be having more fun and my fav - more "opportunities" in school...

My heart is troubled by all this. I do succumb to feeling downtrodden at times - you know, the toddler is crying, the others are fighting, how will we fix the ailing van this month? etc. If only mom had a job we'd be ok! We moved here to my dh's dream job and he's one happy guy, but I'm not feeling it here yet. I left my heart in the country - or was it in the past? I have this theory about time zones being not just in hours only from rural PA to LA...more like decades.

Well, I guess this was a vent. :tongue_smilie:

I have to admit that there are times I enjoy being a cultural relic by being with my kids and then there are times that I just want to go to the bathroom all alone without any interuptions. But I'm not ready to have a daycare help me to that end.

Not yet, anyhow!

 

Michele

ds 8 dd5.5 dd3

[dragons in the flower bed]

I found this frustrating when filling out transcripts, college applications, and scholarship paperwork with my dds. Somehow, an eldest child who has been a great help to the household, logging countless hours of childcare, service to grandparents, housework, gardening, baking, etc. is not nearly as valued as the teen down the street who puts in 20 hours of community service, but in all other ways has basically no responsibilities.

 

I find I spend a lot of mental time, especially while washing dishes (by hand), scheming up ways to make it look real to the Man. In this case it seems easy. Pay your daughters. Take it back in room and board. (Think "owing your life to the company store.") Put that all down on paper.

[dragons in the flower bed]

Quote: "Maybe it's because we, above all things, value the individual?"

Or money?

 

 

I think it's money. We live in a corporately driven culture that whispers to us 24/7 from birth to death that the only way to ascribe value is by use of dollar signs. Homeschoolers, vegetable gardeners, backyard musicians are all literally worthless.

[Rosie_0801]

It's not that the skills my daughters have aren't valued. They are valued as long as they are carried out in the public arena. An individual's contribution to the home and family is what we undervalue as a society. Maybe it's because we, above all things, value the individual?

 

I think it has something to do with time. If you work, you are still supposed to keep the house clean, as if houses can get clean without anyone spending time on it. So if working people keep their house clean in the time it takes for their dinner to defrost in the microwave, a stay at home mum should be able to do the same. This means that she's only spending ten minutes a day cleaning her house because that's all that is required, so she obviously spends the rest of her day, bored, watching Oprah, and who on earth would value that other than the tv channel and Oprah herself?

 

It makes no sense, but somehow this is how the thought process seems to go.

 

And because everything can be bought, not buying but doing yourself becomes a self indulgent hobby, on par with watching Oprah.

 

Someone I haven't seen since my four-year-old was crawling asked me yesterday, "So what are you doing now? Are you working?" I believe I was visibly offended. "Harder than ever, yes, at home."

 

 

I get that occasionally and you know what the responses are like? Most of the time, a woman will sniff that you should be working and a man (even a childless man) will say it's crazy for a woman to work outside the home when they have pre-schoolers.

 

Rosie

Edited July 4, 2010 by Rosie_0801

[dragons in the flower bed]

Most of the time, a woman will sniff that you should be working and a man (even a childless man) will say it's crazy for a woman to work outside the home when they have pre-schoolers.

 

I get the opposite. Women will usually tell me they wish they could afford to stay home. It doesn't usually come up with men, but on three different occasions (all in the same little profession/geographic region) men told me in slightly more diplomatic terms that any partner of theirs is expected to share equally in the income producing. I've always wondered what that was about. I wouldn't mind working full time if I had a partner who could garden, breastfeed and homeschool. I think I'd rather like it, actually. Maybe the article in the other post shed a little light on the attitude. Or maybe the men were afraid they'd be expected to earn 100% of the income *and* do 50% of the non-paid work?

[Mrs Mungo]

I think it's money. We live in a corporately driven culture that whispers to us 24/7 from birth to death that the only way to ascribe value is by use of dollar signs. Homeschoolers, vegetable gardeners, backyard musicians are all literally worthless.

 

:iagree:

 

I get the opposite. Women will usually tell me they wish they could afford to stay home. It doesn't usually come up with men, but on three different occasions (all in the same little profession/geographic region) men told me in slightly more diplomatic terms that any partner of theirs is expected to share equally in the income producing. I've always wondered what that was about. I wouldn't mind working full time if I had a partner who could garden, breastfeed and homeschool. I think I'd rather like it, actually. Maybe the article in the other post shed a little light on the attitude. Or maybe the men were afraid they'd be expected to earn 100% of the income *and* do 50% of the non-paid work?

 

I agree. However, I wonder what they think 50% of the unpaid work *is*?! I don't think most unmarried people without kids realize that it is a LOT of work to run a household. Not to mention, *most* "stay-at-home-moms" have at least one volunteer job (I usually have at least two, at one point I had 9). In the military world, those volunteer jobs often help your dh advance in his career. I'm just saying...it is *really* complicated and I don't think most people understand that.

[Rosie_0801]

It doesn't usually come up with men, but on three different occasions (all in the same little profession/geographic region) men told me in slightly more diplomatic terms that any partner of theirs is expected to share equally in the income producing. Or maybe the men were afraid they'd be expected to earn 100% of the income *and* do 50% of the non-paid work?

 

I think the men I've met imagine stay at home mothering to be one great, big, sleep deprived, pooey catastrophe and can't imagine how a woman could work outside the home and still keep all that under control. It is best that women take care of all that poo because men just aren't tough enough to handle it. :lol:

 

I think the men you've met must be falling into that trap I described earlier in this thread or perhaps another, where housekeeping only takes ten minutes a day, so the five minutes he does each day is a very fair and equal share of the job.

 

Rosie

Edited July 5, 2010 by Rosie_0801

[Peela]

I think the men I've met imagine stay at home mothering to be one great, big, sleep deprived, pooey catastrophe and can't imagine how a woman could work outside the home and still keep all that under control. It is best that women take care of all that poo because men just aren't tough enough to handle it. :lol:

 

I think the men you've met must be falling into that trap I described earlier in this thread or perhaps another, where housekeeping only takes ten minutes a day, so the five minutes he does each day is a very fair and equal share of the job.

 

Rosie

:lol::lol:

I get that too. Particularly from dh!

I get a mixed bag from other people. My non homescholing girlfriends are envious, especially the single mother friend who works and goes to uni as well. And yet they do find it a bit uncomfortable as if somehow I am not doing my bit. As if looking after ones own kids is not quite enough- we should be contributing more. Underneath, though, I do think there is a lot of envy.

 

The best I can do though, rather than lament, is dowhat I do to teh best of my ability, because I can. My step mother recently encouraged her daughter to homeschool her own daughter who was being bullied at school. The daughter emailed me and we chatted. She chatted to my SIL who has homeschooled a couple of years. She foudn a local homeschooler- a few weeks later, she is joyously homeschooling all 3 of her kids! Whatever teh trends are, we can do this and we aren't the only ones. If we can, there are others. Not all of us are wealthy. If we are not valued...was there ever a time in history when women had it all, and were valued for both their work at home AND their ability to lead nations, companies or in other ways work in the world? At least we have that choice. And our daughters, and daughters in law, might realize they have that choice. And the others who see us and our kids as we go about our lives, might realize they have that choice too. Homeschooling is a growing phenomenon. And considering how many cookbooks and self help books and websites such as Flylady there are, we aren't the only ones reclaiming the value of a rich home life.

I think we just have to plug away at valuing ourselves and teaching others how to treat us by the way we are, and not wait for the world to change around us. There are enough of us to make a difference.

[Heather in Neverland]

1. Most of the "younger" guys that I know (my brother is one of them...age 35) EXPECT their wives to contribute to the household income.

 

2. I don't think the devaluing of women's work is anything new.

 

3. I will probably get flack for this but, I personally don't feel cleaning a house is THAT difficult (assuming you don't live on a farm and raise animals and what-not...I am talking your basic suburban house). Yes it is work. Yes it has to be done. No it does NOT take 8 hours a day.

 

4. Homeschooling adds additional tasks to a woman's day that SHOULD take up time and plenty of it. Add that to house cleaning and cooking and you have a full day. One that is VALUABLE.

 

5. But I am still grateful that women have choices. I made the choice to have a career. I realize that makes me an evil working mom but I love what I do. My mom had NO education past high school and when my father cheated on her she had NO options...3 young children, no way to support herself. SHE WAS STUCK. That will NEVER happen to me.

[stripe]

3. I will probably get flack for this but, I personally don't feel cleaning a house is THAT difficult (assuming you don't live on a farm and raise animals and what-not...I am talking your basic suburban house). Yes it is work. Yes it has to be done. No it does NOT take 8 hours a day.

 

You've got a point. If you don't believe me, try handwashing the entire family's laundry. Gack!

[Audrey]

If everyone feels it is their right and privelege to have a decent family home in the burbs, to have 2.2 kids and all the mod cons of modern life....somewhere surely something has to give?

There are so many factors involved in all these issues.

 

I personally feel that its about time people stopped caring so much about being able to get along with mainstream culture, and just did what they feel is the right thing to do. The days of fitting in and being normal are over. It's time to follow your own star and do what needs to be done and not worry that it isnt what everyone else is doing.

 

:iagree: Awesome post! But I especially like the above piece.

 

We're definitely "outside the mainstream" and I can't imagine any other life. I so detest the whole suburban culture grind. IF there is a hell, when I go there, I am certain it will be one big suburb of same-as houses crammed within inches of each other on cul-de-sacs all named after the trees that used to be there. And I. Will. Go. Insane.

[Rosie_0801]

3. I will probably get flack for this but, I personally don't feel cleaning a house is THAT difficult (assuming you don't live on a farm and raise animals and what-not...I am talking your basic suburban house). Yes it is work. Yes it has to be done. No it does NOT take 8 hours a day.

 

 

No it doesn't, but when you are breastfeeding and completely sleep deprived, it takes longer than the few energetic hours you have, if you have any energetic hours. Or maybe I'm just wussy. Sometimes the mind is willing but the body isn't, and that phase doesn't pass for four years.

Rosie

Edited July 5, 2010 by Rosie_0801

[Audrey]

 

3. I will probably get flack for this but, I personally don't feel cleaning a house is THAT difficult (assuming you don't live on a farm and raise animals and what-not...I am talking your basic suburban house). Yes it is work. Yes it has to be done. No it does NOT take 8 hours a day.

 

 

Even with a farm and animals, it doesn't take 8 hours a day. We have electric vacuums, and washers and dryers, all manner of handy time-savers. Even on the days when I wash the all the walls, cabinets and all the drapes, it still doesn't come anywhere near 8 hours. You'll never be able to convince me that keeping an average family house is a full time job. (not that you were trying to, Heather -- I meant the general "you")

[Barb_]

Even with a farm and animals, it doesn't take 8 hours a day. We have electric vacuums, and washers and dryers, all manner of handy time-savers. Even on the days when I wash the all the walls, cabinets and all the drapes, it still doesn't come anywhere near 8 hours. You'll never be able to convince me that keeping an average family house is a full time job. (not that you were trying to, Heather -- I meant the general "you")

 

Here it depends on whether the big people are currently outnumbering the little people. When the messers and the novice cleaners outnumber the teens and adults, well it's like Erma Bombeck said, "Cleaning house while children are growing is like shoveling while it's still snowing." Worthwhile, but never finished.

 

Barb

Edited July 5, 2010 by Barb F. PA in AZ

[Colleen in NS]

:lurk5:

 

Very interesting thread.

[rwjx2khsmj]

I had this revelation last week when I had someone come clean my house. It was a gift from a dear, dear neighbor. She sent her cleaning person over to clean my house. What a blessing!

 

The cleaning person left me a note telling me that for $120 she'd be happy to clean my house every week. Man! Did I feel valuable. That's almost $500 a month that I'm worth for simply doing what I do around the house. If I took time to factor in the child care, taxi service, tutoring, etc. The list goes on and on.

 

It really is crazy that I could be employed outside the home and pay someone else to do all the things I do. Then I'd be able to say, "I work for xyz" instead of "I'm a SAHM." The only difference would be that one is a conversation starter while uttering SAHM immediately causes a second head to grow out of my right shoulder. I don't want to mention the hideous transformation that occurs when I throw home schooler into the mix.

[Mama Lynx]

You got me, Rose. I wish I had an answer - especially now.

[dragons in the flower bed]

You got me, Rose. I wish I had an answer - especially now.

 

:grouphug:

[dragons in the flower bed]

3. I will probably get flack for this but, I personally don't feel cleaning a house is THAT difficult (assuming you don't live on a farm and raise animals and what-not...I am talking your basic suburban house). Yes it is work. Yes it has to be done. No it does NOT take 8 hours a day.

 

Well, I think that's what we're saying. "Your basic suburban house" is a cinch to take care of because your basic suburban house is composed of and cared for with toxic materials and chemicals and throw-away objects. When you stop Swiffering and start mopping, give up paper towels and plastic tupperware, make bread and jam and cheese instead of buying it, use a clothesline instead of a dryer, and cram a family into the smaller space of an older non-suburban house, it's not as quick. This work is becoming devalued in part because it's being sold in the form of impersonal, economically unbalanced, unhealthy, ecologically monstrous aids of all sorts. What we're saying here is we're NOT suburban and no one seems to realize that non-suburbanity has value.

[Mama Lynx]

Well, I think that's what we're saying. "Your basic suburban house" is a cinch to take care of because your basic suburban house is composed of and cared for with toxic materials and chemicals and throw-away objects. When you stop Swiffering and start mopping, give up paper towels and plastic tupperware, make bread and jam and cheese instead of buying it, use a clothesline instead of a dryer, and cram a family into the smaller space of an older non-suburban house, it's not as quick. This work is becoming devalued in part because it's being sold in the form of impersonal, economically unbalanced, unhealthy, ecologically monstrous aids of all sorts. What we're saying here is we're NOT suburban and no one seems to realize that non-suburbanity has value.

 

Oh, take some virtual rep for this!

[Saille]

(I ask sometimes, don't I?)

 

If we're not recommending gov't stipends for the homeworkers, and we're not recommending family wages so one adult can stay at home or both can work just part-time, then what? What is the solution?

 

I'm sorry, Rose. Yes, you do ask, but I should have been more specific. I think that I tend to group both of us in an extremely small fringe culture (see the GUS thread on top of everything else), and this causes me to think of you as an interested party in the sense that a colleague would be an interested party. But my family and my in-laws will literally sit and talk for hours about their jobs, dh's and SIL's jobs, etc., and those conversations do not include me, even though I know that they all value me as a person and consider me intelligent and capable.

 

Right this second, it occurs to me that a paradigm shift would help a lot. Perhaps we could focus on resource allocation rather than earnings. There are incentives for carpooling, and insurance incentives for being accident free, having a safer car or a shorter commute...why shouldn't there be some sort of grant/tax break/whatever for reduced use of infrastructure due to rugged individualism. I realize that this will connect back to the whole "money back for not using the public schools" argument, though.

 

The thing that bothers me most is that, in exchange for new and additional freedoms, we co-opted some of the freedoms we already had...I dislike the trend towards pricing people out of living more simply. It doesn't seem like that should be possible.

Edited July 5, 2010 by Saille

[dragons in the flower bed]

why shouldn't there be some sort of grant/tax break/whatever for reduced use of infrastructure due to rugged individualism. I realize that this will connect back to the whole "money back for not using the public schools" argument, though.

 

Yeah, that brings in the big government concerns straightaway. But I love the phrasing: "Tax breaks for rugged individualists!"

[Saille]

Well, I think that's what we're saying. "Your basic suburban house" is a cinch to take care of because your basic suburban house is composed of and cared for with toxic materials and chemicals and throw-away objects. When you stop Swiffering and start mopping, give up paper towels and plastic tupperware, make bread and jam and cheese instead of buying it, use a clothesline instead of a dryer, and cram a family into the smaller space of an older non-suburban house, it's not as quick. This work is becoming devalued in part because it's being sold in the form of impersonal, economically unbalanced, unhealthy, ecologically monstrous aids of all sorts. What we're saying here is we're NOT suburban and no one seems to realize that non-suburbanity has value.

 

Oh, yes this. This is a very accurate description of my life, although you left out the quack grass, which is *extremely* time consuming. Not to mention that working folks aren't generally living in their houses all day. That's less toilet use, fewer dishes, less trash, less dirt in general. Now add in kids who are constantly exploring their interests...today we had playdough, shaving cream, and I don't know what all else. Yesterday it was paint and black raspberries. Last week it was everything in the recycling bin and all my masking tape.

 

One of the reasons I love winter is because the garden is asleep and I can have some time to knit. One of the reasons I hate winter is because all the activities start back up, and I tend to be the person running them, which means I can never just show up on time...I have to bring everything, have a plan, and wrangle children. Just once I would love to be one of the mamas in the lobby with a novel. And I think that people sort of expect that I will be that person with the plan, because after all, I don't *work*.

[Saille]

5. But I am still grateful that women have choices. I made the choice to have a career. I realize that makes me an evil working mom but I love what I do. My mom had NO education past high school and when my father cheated on her she had NO options...3 young children, no way to support herself. SHE WAS STUCK. That will NEVER happen to me.

 

I'm with you on this, I really am. I do like knowing I have my teacher cert. should I need it, and I've used it to bail us out before. Certainly it gets me a better hourly rate than I'd get at other p/t jobs...in specific instances, a LOT better. I simply wish the choices were more nuanced. Tomie DePaola's father was a barber, and they owned a house and supported three kids on one income. My dh is college educated, and we scrape by, even with my extra jobs and our general thrift.

[Joanne]

I'm torn. In many ways, I am an anomoly in both worlds: the SAH and the WOH.

 

I think that women in the workforce and women at home are complicated subjects. I grew up at a time when women being at home was *devalued* - BY WOMEN. It was hard to get that voice out of my head (1970's organized feminism, which was, possibly by necessity strident and over-done).

 

I became a mom and an "AP" one at that. I read the LLL's book about staying home, read Mary Pride, basically shunned feminism. I eventually took care of other people's children for pay. For this a percentage of SAH moms and WOH moms (even some clients) looked at me with disdain. Interesesting, huh?

 

When I took on homeschool clients in my early single mother days, I was looked on with disdain even on this board.

 

I've worked, with 2 under graduate degrees, cleaning an office building @ night. Poor pay, terrible work, terrible and sometimes amusing assumptions by the office employees (90% of whose jobs I could do with minimal training).

 

Housework doesn't take 24/7 - homemaking *can*, but I'm not convinced (anymore) that it should.

 

Even my bf has completely changed her views and daily life. I think this has effected me more than any other one thing. She was divorced after her dh had an affair, then she remarried and now is divorced again. But now she has a kid. During marraige #2 she was the breadwinner and loved her job, loved daycare (called it school...?). Even now, our conversations are fraught with land mines. I am at home with the kids, her son is at "school" (he's 4) and having issues.Work is complicated for her - satisfying and yet time consuming - traveling, etc My heart is so torn for her. She made some singualry bad choices (which we all do), but I don't like a former extreemly conservative xian telling me my life would be better, more enjoyable...more everything it's not! I'd have a new car, better clothes, the kids would be having more fun and my fav - more "opportunities" in school...

 

Do you see the hypocrisy in this? It's not either or. There is not a singularly fitting answer, even for and within each family for the long haul.

 

My life story is very much like that of the friend being described. I can tell you, unequivacobly, that I am a better mom, wife, friend, Christian and person now that I WOH. OTOH, since much of my role is also SAHM, I mitigate a lot of the issues that develop with WOHMothering.

 

To be honest, I live in TX - a suburb of Houston. I have found very little criticism of SAHMothering, homeschooling OR WOHMothering. In my wide scope of people, I've seen families fail and families thrive from all settings.

 

I no longer believe the rhetoric from either side. The truth is that it's a trade-off. There are pros and cons from either choice. It's just as unfair to assume most WOHMs "miss their children growing up" as it is to assume that a SAHM isn't "contributing" or "fulfilled".

 

I don't believe that it's all about money or provision. It's NOT all about consumerism. And when a Mom chooses to return to school or work, it can be the right choice even if the family doesn't "need" the money.

 

For some mom-at-home-families, they have elevated a vision of "family" and make it an idol. And, yes, for some WOH families, it is about consumerism. But we do a disservice to people when we assume either way or strip a complex choice to fit it into a neat shape that we've scripted in our heads.

[Lovedtodeath]

 

The truth is that it's a trade-off. There are pros and cons from either choice. But we do a disservice to people when we assume either way or strip a complex choice to fit it into a neat shape that we've scripted in our heads.

Imagine your rep is filled to the brim.

[Peela]

It really is crazy that I could be employed outside the home and pay someone else to do all the things I do. Then I'd be able to say, "I work for xyz" instead of "I'm a SAHM." The only difference would be that one is a conversation starter while uttering SAHM immediately causes a second head to grow out of my right shoulder. I don't want to mention the hideous transformation that occurs when I throw home schooler into the mix.

 

Really? Is it that bad for many of you? Thats what is getting me about this thread- is it really so "wierd" to do what you are doing- homeschooling, SAHM etc? Or, does it just make you uncomfortable to be seen as just a bit different, and perhaps you are over sensitive to people's moderate judgements? I mostly feel people dont really care what other people do....people are too self obsessed for that. So I dont take it all very personally.

I am so used to not being normal or mainstream I am finding it hard to relate to those of you who find it such a big deal that you are no longer considered such. I am finding it hard to relate to why it would matter very much to you. But perhaps I have just become immune to people's judgements from my years of being on the outside of that whole career world anyway. Or perhaps the community I live in encourages individuality and walking your own path to the extent that I feel what I do actually inspires many, even if at the same time they might also have judgements.