Working Women
 

Beside Every Successful Man

Ladie's, does this seem wrong?

I take it this is a question posed solely to women?

I don't find this surprising. Raising children is pretty much a full time job until they're old enough to go to school, and the prospect of working a 9-5 and then having to cook, clean, & look after the house & your children isn't too appetizing. There is a limit to how much energy your body can output, after all. It's not impossible, though; as the article points out, most women who have kids are stuck in this position. Never mind -single- moms.

One of the unfortunate byproducts of the feminist movement was the standard of living being raised. (That sounds grammatically awkward- please forgive me, I'm tired :P) That's not to say the feminist movement was a bad thing, just that there were some unforeseen consequences that we have to find a way to deal with.

Call me shallow but I'm not going to have kids unless I stumble upon a big pile of cash. I'm not too fond of the idea of kids in the first place (yay I get to house a parasite in my uterus for nine months and then push it out in blinding pain), but if I were to have kids I'd want the luxury of being able to dedicate as much time as possible to them, especially in their earlier years. Of course you can raise kids while you're poor and they'll turn out fine; money just makes things a hell of a lot easier. >_>

I had something I was going to say here, but Pocheros wrote it all for me.

There was a period of time where women had the flexibility to choose between staying at home or getting a job, but that time has passed, and we've moved on to a world that expects both parents to work. I don't know if I agree with the idea that staying at home increases family income by supporting the husband's career. There's potentially a lot of income to make up there.

Well, if your husband just works in tech support (like me) then, yeah, not a whole lot you can do except tell him he's doing good?


Me and Tiff work full time and just looking at the cost of living, I really dont see how we could survive on even 1 and 1/2 incomes at what we're making.


Then again, we're pretty young and there's still things I want to explore as far as additional income, so, who knows?

EDIT: Is this just a result of working men expecting women who work to ALSO care for household duties?

This isn't the first time I've heard claims like this. I neither agree nor disagree, mostly because it's difficult to pin down her precise angle from just an excerpt, but also because the fundamental goal of the feminist movement was to get that opportunity and the choice to take it or not.

Now, as for all these women that want to leave the workplace in favour of their kids... Well, who wouldn't if they could? Let's not forget that women are still the primary caregivers, even among working women. So, if you had the choice between taking care of your children or working full time and then going home to take care of your children it sounds like a no-brainer that you would cut work out of the equation if it were economically feasible. However, I have some issues with those kinds of statistics because we never get to see what the questions actually are. For all we know they could be loaded, one sided, or worded in such a way as to make a person feel like a horrible human being if they don't spend every waking second with their kids. We just don't know, and oftentimes unless you get a physical copy of the study you never will. Furthermore, we don't know what other kinds of questions were asked in what kinds of contexts. Cherry picking statistics can say anything you want them to say.

Statistics aside, her idea of the wife supporting the husband's career sounds to me like part of the conservatist throwback we've been experiencing for the past decade or so. That's just my opinion though, from what little I garnered from the excerpt.

On the other hand, you might argue that it's simply more convienient for the mother who is, naturally, the primary caregiver (what with pregancy and taking leave, etc) to fill that role more permanently, than for both parents to interupt their work schedule or routine in order to split duties? She may not really be writing from a 'conservatist' viewpoint, at least, not simply for the sake of BEING a conservative.

I think that a lot of feminists think that empowering women meant that all/most women should be filling the same role as men traditionally do (Not just that they are able to, which is totally reasonable) - I mean, maybe when you pin them down on the specifics they'll concede that SOMEONE has to stay home and feed the childrens, but the attitude is kind of unreasonable? I mean, what exactly does that mean for women (or men!) who want to be the stay at home parent?

I should have pointed out that I used the word 'conservatist' to detach it from the political associations that the word conservative would have attached to the idea. I was talking more about the forced socialization of women into the inferior feminine role that has been running counter to the feminist movement.

Here you're touching on the differences between post-feminism and third wave feminism, and I don't feel fully qualified to explain them adequately. I'm sure there are also several other angles to feminism that other groups support who call themselves something else too.

wiki is a decent starting place, but I'd try to read more in-depth than what wiki gives.
third wave feminism
post-feminism wiki has even less to say here.

I'm thinking I subscribe to third-wave feminism then. My central viewpoint is that most of feminism has had the opposite of the desired effect, effectively masculinizing the role of women rather then empowering the feminine role. A lot of the social change so far has been mostly to make girls and boys equal, which is a good goal, but their process has been to acknowledge the dominance of masculinity but argue for women's rights to act in the masculine frame, which diminishes and actually berates femininity.

Edit: To put it more simply, feminism has allowed girls to act more like guys, while making "girly things" seem unimportant, rather than making boyish and girly things equal in their own right.

That's double edged. To say that you want things to be equal in men and women negates the fact that there truly are inequalities in people's genders. Seriously, if a guy was perhaps more feminine what would be your first reaction?