Sociologist Neil Gilbert argues that (in Sandra Tsing Loh’s Atlantic paraphrase) “financial need is not the force behind women’s shift in the past 50 years from work in the home to work in the market-place.” Rather, the driving force is “the desires of those who have made out like bandits in this new order, the tiny minority (3.5 percent in 2003) of women who earn $75,000 or more.” Loh continues:
Members of this occupational elite have created a host of cultural norms by which their far less privileged sisters—who, again, make up the vast majority of working women—feel they must abide. For . . . doctors, lawyers, judges, and professors, work has been terrific, so it’s no wonder they’ve advocated social change, imposing on society between the 1960s and the mid-1990s ‘new expectations about modern life, self-fulfillment, and the joys of work outside the home.’
It reminded me of an earlier but quite similar perspective on the same issue in Sigrid Undset’s 1932 novel Ida Elisabeth. The speaker is the lawyer Herr Toksvold:
There will never be more than a small percentage of either men or women who can create for themselves a field of work which they could not exchange for another without feeling it as a sacrifice. But because a few women have succeeded in making themselves a position which it would be a sacrifice for them to give up if they married, perhaps nine times as many are forced to go out and do a full day’s work as breadwinners, and to do the work of a mother and housekeeper the rest of the twenty-four hours, or as many of them as they can stand on their feet without dying for want of sleep. Because a few females of the middle class have discovered that it is a disgrace to be kept by a man.
I am glad I can work, but employment outside the house does not necessarily provide more dignity and fulfillment than “merely” staying at home and raising one’s kids.
Female pundits may find their work fulfilling, and that’s great. But when we’re cheering women’s rise in the workforce, we should stop acting as though every working woman—waitresses, grocery clerks, retail workers, those making minimum wage at unpleasant jobs—feels quite so optimistic. Most workers do not attain from their job the self-esteem boost and psychological satisfaction that (say) a lawyer or a company executive might. Like most human endeavors, work has its downsides, for women as well as for men.
February 26th, 2013 | 11:43 am
Quite right. So why the gendered nature of this discussion?
Yes, certain cultural norms are created for the benefit of those earning $75,000+, and those norms may not fit well for the rest of us – male or female. And yes, dignity and fulfillment can be achieved by staying home and raising kids – for woman and for men.
At least part of the achievement over the past 50 years is to free both men and women to pursue work or be at home, without being constrained by gender. Yes, this means that both women and men must confront a broader array of choices, a larger menu from which they must choose, knowing that they will never be about to taste all the options. Choice can lead to anxiety and dissatisfaction. But when you investigate discussions about limiting people’s choices in the interest of promoting their happiness, you find a strong negative reaction.
Perhaps this discussion is gendered because, in the past, women faced fewer options and thus could more easily live in the illusion that they could fully “fulfill” all the options available to them. For better or worse, women are now subject to a similarly crushing burden of choices that men have had to endure. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that some people would look upon these choices and seek, in Erich Fromm’s words, an “escape from freedom.”
Arguably the next thing we need to free ourselves from is the pursuit of status, of fame, of wealth for wealth’s sake. I’ve previously advocated for the return of the hippies. I know they made an appearance in the late 1800s as well as the 1960s. Maybe they’re due for a return.
February 26th, 2013 | 12:01 pm
Even the woman working as a wait person, however, seems to have more options in life even if her job isn’t great. She is more likely to divorce if her marriage is troubled, for instance, because she knows she can support herself. I would guess, therefore, that her spouse is more likely to work at the relationship because he knows she can survive without him, too.
February 26th, 2013 | 12:58 pm
Simone de Beauvoir openly admitted that in her eyes, the purpose of feminism was to make life comfortable for career women, and non-career women were to be sacrificed for making them uncomfortable.
“No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”
February 26th, 2013 | 1:06 pm
I agree with Nobody, Really. Most jobs stink, including jobs that men do, like driving trucks. The question we should be asking is not whether women should have paychecks but why are working conditions so miserable for so many? The reason conservatives always ask the Woman Question but never the Work Question is because the answer to the latter reflects badly on the wealthy and powerful people who pay their salaries.
February 26th, 2013 | 1:28 pm
Karen — so liberals’ salaries are paid by poor people and powerless governments, or what?
February 26th, 2013 | 2:10 pm
Women who manage a home, raise children, participate in civic and church activities; who strive to introduce notes of grace and dignity in family (and extended family) life; who understand the dignity of upholding high standards for order and cleanliness and do not disdain simple, essential tasks of daily living done for the common good; who love beauty; who pursue intellectual interests through private study, and who treasure their deeply satisfying lives are indeed “working”. They are working very hard. The rewards are not easily measured. This is not surprising because they are beyond price – for men, women, and children.
Professional careers are often noble. They require extensive preparation. They are rewarding in ways that can be measured and some that cannot. But professional status is not possible for most men and women. The life of a “householder,” or that of a “homemaker” was once an alternative considered worthy of respect and worthy of the enormous amount of work and workmanship that was expended on making a this way of life good – good for those who lived it and for the common good as well.
February 26th, 2013 | 3:46 pm
Considered worthy by whom? Considered worth for whom?
In May 2012 CNN’s Hilary Rosen stated that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life. This provoked outrage from Fox Broadcasting, Republican operatives, and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. Raising kids is such worthy work!
Yet none of these people expressed outrage four months earlier when Mitt Romney talked about the nature of work:
And back in 1994 Mitt told the Burlington Business Council that “work is ennobling” and that “we will do everything in our power to make sure that people who are on welfare have an opportunity and an obligation to go to work, not after two years but from day one if we could.”
In short, child-rearing is worthy work when people I like do it – but it’s self-indulgent indolence when other people do it.
February 26th, 2013 | 7:44 pm
nobody.really, There’s a nuance you’re missing here. Ann Romney was part of an intact family raising children in the context of support by her husband. You and I were not paying for her to raise her children, and they were likely being raised in a stable environment conducive to success in life. Most of the mothers on welfare are single mothers, sometimes from divorce but probably more often from having children out of wedlock. That puts the taxpayer in the position of subsidizing out of wedlock birth. That’s a bad thing. Illegitimate children of single mothers generally do worse on all types of social measures than those born and raised in intact families. As I said on another thread, as harsh as it may sound, the loss of stigma attached to out of wedlock birth and divorce is extremely unfortunate. Like I also said, those stigmas are dead and not coming back to life. Perhaps work requirements are the next best thing in terms of a) deterrence and b) failing that, at least taking the taxpayer off the hook.
February 27th, 2013 | 8:05 am
Will the author of this post say the same about men? Or is that most men make more than $75,000 a year or more? Aren´t there many men who work as “waiters, grocery clerks, retail workers, those making minimum wage at unpleasant jobs”? The whole argument, of course, is not unpleasant badly paid jobs…is that men are supposedly never to be expected to stay home and “raise the kids”, only women, isn´t it?
February 27th, 2013 | 8:35 am
Reply to nobody.really:
My position was not based upon statements by political figures. It rather stems from life experience, observation of human flourishing, and study of history.
As to “Considered worthy by whom”. Why the people who throughout human history lived in communities in which the modest or grand family home was the basic cell of civilization and in which sons and daughters beyond counting acquired some knowledge of goodness. [The parallel existence of harmful situations notwithstanding. That problem required correction not destruction.]
February 27th, 2013 | 9:20 am
This discussion is gendered because people are gendered. It’s far more of a burden for women to work — even in elite jobs, but especially in every other kind of job. Women bear children in their bodies, nourish them from their bodies, and are especially, wonderfully, able to nurture young children in the home.
A man is able to do a less than fulfilling job with grace when he knows he has a home to come home to. History bears this out. Check out the Odyssey — ancient poem on this theme, google it.
Men are providers by nature. Why that should be considered more glorious than being a nurturer is a testimony to the power of power. We should try a little love — devotion to others — to temper all that power.
Any woman, regardless of status, can be an elite homemaker. Very few women can be “alpha females” in the world, and those pay a terrible price to do so, unless they don’t have a family.
That these assertions will outrage people is the sadness of our time.
February 27th, 2013 | 11:42 am
“Even the woman working as a wait person, however, seems to have more options in life even if her job isn’t great.”
She has one less option, though — to stay home, raise her kids herself, and run the kind of home she wants to run.
The option to support herself after divorce is of no value to the happily married woman. I have a hard time finding an increase in the number of options to be a net benefit, to the woman who’s had the one option she actually wanted, removed.
February 27th, 2013 | 12:17 pm
nobody.really — when Mitt comes here, you’ll have to ask him.
February 27th, 2013 | 12:35 pm
Leila:
You seem to be confusing biological facts (for example that women bear children in their bodies) with a sociological fact or sociological fact disguised as mythology (gender roles disguised as “nature”, i.e. “Men are naturally providers”). True, women bear children in their bodies. But that only happens to be for 9 months; you may also say that women nuture children (breast feed them) but then that is a small lapse in their infancy. How does that translate int “Women should stay home and men should go to work”? How does that mean that women cannot be competitive in the labor market? You are just simply repeating mantras without evidence or support for them (and contrary to evidence, since women have become more and more important in the labor sector).
February 27th, 2013 | 12:36 pm
Pentanom:
“She has one less option, though — to stay home, raise her kids herself, and run the kind of home she wants to run.”
Funny how that option does not count for the separated husband with a job. In other words, funny how that is only an option for women…
February 27th, 2013 | 2:22 pm
It’s not an option for any separated person, I suppose. It would be a potential option for one member of each stable couple, if the couple so desired, had not women been liberated from the drudgery of raising their own children to the freedom of assembling circuit boards, cleaning hotel rooms, and raising other people’s kids. However, because women are now so “liberated,” relatively few couples have that option left anymore.
February 27th, 2013 | 2:26 pm
“How does that translate int “Women should stay home and men should go to work”? How does that mean that women cannot be competitive in the labor market?”
Realistically, repeated lapses of 15-18 months (to provide for an optimally safe birth and a year’s worth of several times a day breastfeeding) makes women who bear children less competitive in the labor market. That disadvantage can be overcome, but it’s not clear what we’ve gained by remaking society in order to make that option less available to the majority.
February 27th, 2013 | 2:39 pm
And Sergio, if this was really all along about making women have to work outside the home just like men have to (because somehow divided labor is inherently unfair, which I don’t really understand), why was it sold to women as being in their interest, rather than men’s interest?
It may be arguable that the world is a fairer place now that mothers of young children now have to carry two the weight of fulltime jobs instead of just one (working at one and paying for the other), but it doesn’t make the feminist trope that this was really all about making life better for women, any less disingenuous (or at best extremely myopic.)
February 27th, 2013 | 2:40 pm
That should be “carrying the weight of two fulltime jobs.”
February 27th, 2013 | 3:57 pm
Pentanom:
“However, because women are now so ´liberated,´ relatively few couples have that option left anymore”
Ah, is not of course because on your worldview women seem to be the only ones with that obligation ( and thus, when they are given other options, is their fault – or the fault of their liberation- that the COUPLE don´t “have that option anymore”). That is still very…courious.
“Realistically, repeated lapses of 15-18 months (to provide for an optimally safe birth and a year’s worth of several times a day breastfeeding) makes women who bear children less competitive in the labor market.”
That makes women less competitive only when they want to have kids and for a specific period of time. But then rasing a kid goes beyond the first year and the breast feeding period. What about the father taking a leave from work to stay with the kid at home while the mother goes to work in the subsequent years?
“And Sergio, if this was really all along about making women have to work outside the home just like men have to (because somehow divided labor is inherently unfair, which I don’t really understand) [...]”
What is unfair is not divided labor…what is unfair is that the division of labor is considered to be static by conservatives. Women and men should always bear the same division of labor (women at home, men working) just cause they happend to have a different sort of chromosomes. That is not only unfair, is abhorent to be more precise.
“why was it sold to women as being in their interest, rather than men’s interest?”
What is sold in their best interest is that women have the option to chose, in a first instance. And yes, usually being able to work is also in your best interest too, because usually people who work and can pay their own bills well…do not depend on anybody to survive in this world. That is not very hard to…
February 27th, 2013 | 5:01 pm
Honestly, is something stopping these “liberated” people from being stay-at-home parents if they choose?
Perhaps so.
Contemporary US workers are the most productive in the world. And the fact that the US welcomes women into the workforce enhances our national productivity hugely. Among the factors that ended the stagflation of the 1970s was women’s entry into the paid labor force.
That said, women’s entry into the paid labor force greatly expanded the labor supply – arguably, expanding it faster than demand. And when supply increases faster than demand, price falls. Is it a coincidence women’s entry into the paid labor force coincides with wage stagnation, the decline of unions, and the rise of income inequality? Every young wife that entered the paid workforce had the effect of bidding down the wages of all other people in the paid workforce – including her husband’s. In short, much of the net benefit of women’s paid labor flowed not to the employed, but to the employer.
Households that were able to maintain two people in the labor force might not feel the pinch, and might even increase household wealth to some extent. But they would not be able to maintain the same lifestyle and social status that a single wage-earner had been able to maintain in the previous generation.
So, in sum: It may in fact be the case that women lack the freedom to pursue paid work outside the home while maintaining a middle-class lifestyle. Arguably the labor market has changed such that households now require two bread-earners to maintain that lifestyle.
February 27th, 2013 | 5:14 pm
The comments by Sergio Mendez are quite abstract. Husband and wife, father and mother, are distinguished by “a different sort of chromosomes”.
The “inner goods” of traditional homemaking (work which benefits the husband working outside the home and the children) cannot be known by observation. This is something (like love, like faith) which must be lived.
Anyone who has lived in a well-cared for, well-managed, loved home will understand its intrinsic worth for those who choose it.
Love, marriage, motherhood and fatherhood are not subject to the laws of economic transactions.
February 27th, 2013 | 9:16 pm
Sergio, nothing I said implies that the woman HAS to be the one who stays home. The “liberation” of women to do unpleasant grunt work (the reality in most cases) instead of raising their own kids now means that in most couples there is no option to divide the labor AT ALL anymore, in any way, whether it is the man or the woman who would choose to take on the childcare and housekeeping. That has been the economic effect of the feminists seeking liberation for high-status women at the expense of low status women. Both parties must work full time and farm out the work of child-rearing and housekeeping that still has to be done, to the same extent, and now they have to pay for it, as well. In effect, the labor of providing has been split while a third party (or various surrogates for third parties) takes over for the homemaking/daily child care.
This just does not seem to be a benefit to women at the expense of men, but rather a detriment to both men and women, and particularly, but not exclusively, to those women who would have been happy to divide the labor in the traditional way, and the men who would have been happy to support them in doing so.
And in answer to the question of why it would be preferable for the woman to stay home even after the period of frequent breastfeeding, the point is that it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to compromise two careers rather than one, and the reality is, and will always be, that someone who works less consistently and gains less experience over time is going to progress less in earning power. (I’m also taking into account that some people choose to do more than the “two kids in four years and done” method of building a family — popping in and out of work for 12 month stretches repeatedly over several years isn’t going to be good for anyone’s career. I certainly have no objection to anyone’s making that choice,…
February 27th, 2013 | 9:22 pm
“What is sold in their best interest is that women have the option to chose, in a first instance.”
No, they really don’t. There are many women who feel they can no longer choose, but must work outside because of the economic realities of the post-feminist era. Talk to women who are not paid to write articles and books, fly airplanes, or practice law or medicine for a living about whether they would have preferred to spend their children’s childhood working or taking direct responsibility for their upbringing and quality of their home life. No doubt you’ll get a mixture of answers, but you will get a significant minority who felt they did NOT have the “option” to do what they would have preferred. Taking away desired options is not “giving more options” in any meaningful sense.
February 28th, 2013 | 10:22 am
A. Reader:
When you accuse my comments of being abstract, I find it ironic. The point is that the ability to choose is always determined in a specific context, personal and social. Women may chose to remain at home and raise the kids or keep their carreers. The reasons for doing that are multiple. On the other sides there are people, like many on this tread, defending some really abstract idea about women and men nature, the former as domestic workers and child raisers, the last as “providers”, without bothering to see specific cases.
Pentanom:
You say nothing you have said implies it is the woman that HAS to stay at home. But alll your comments are directed at how women are the ones who supposedly lost the capacity to stay home. How is that not equally true for men? Why in your considerations the issue of men staying home is absent? Why you ignore the legal and social constrictions that women faced during centuries -including the last one- that forced them to be the ones staying homes and why do you denounce the freedom they have gained to be able to perform many of the activities reserved only to men as some kind of impediment?
See for example this statements in your last post:
“And in answer to the question of why it would be preferable for the woman to stay home even after the period of frequent breastfeeding, the point is that it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to compromise two careers rather than one, and the reality is, and will always be, that someone who works less consistently and gains less experience over time is going to progress less in earning power.”
Why you stikll assume that when a women has kids she must be the one who will have to work less constantly (if in the end you support that both parents take on the endeavors of raising a child)?
Regardin your last comment. You seem to imagine that many women could not chose…
March 1st, 2013 | 6:25 am
Reply to Sergio Mendez:
Your reference to men and women as distinguished by their chomosomes, abstracting from certain recognizable tendencies and biological rhythms, also actual structural capacity, and which are not limited to their biology or structure but expressed in personal inner qualities of personhood was the reason for my use of the term “abstract”.
I am of the opinion that men and women, left to their own choices, will in the majority place different emphasis on domesticity and civic work and work in professional or commercial venues. Ideas have power. Mockery of domestic and civic life as work suitable for any person of intelligence has been effective beyond what an observer might have imagined possible.
I am also of the opinion that any characterization of management of a household – that micro-world which is at once a hotel, a clinic, a counseling center, a hospice, a school, and, often, a museum of culture, with all the tasks and work that go into the maintenance of such a center of human activity – is a grave error.
Sentences such as “she will be the one who will have to work less constantly” betray a lack of knowledge of your subject.
A day or two spent in a real (not abstract) home where husband and wife work together in every sense of the word “work” would help you understand the reality you seem to consider the “easy” part of raising a family or living in a neighborhood.
Does “work” qualify as “work” if and only if it receives a wage?
March 1st, 2013 | 7:42 am
Correction of post from “A Reader”:
“… any characterization of management … of that micro world -” as anything other than honorable work, which properly done provides dignity and grace to human life – “is a grave error”.
March 1st, 2013 | 9:02 am
A. Reader:
My reference to men and women distinguished by their chromosomes was a way to point out how people like you give some really abstract qualities to real flesh and blood personns only based on their sex. And that is exactly what you continue to do in your post. You obviously are not talking about “real” home, because homes are different and personns living in them are different for many reasons (social class, life story, etc).
You also claim ideas have consequences, and you say the “mockery of domestic and civic life as work suitable for any person of intelligence has been effective beyond what an observer might have imagined possible.” Aside from the douboius claim (who actually mocks “domestic and civil life”?) I wonder why you do not seem to see the contrary (exaltation of domestic and civil life as a suitable and only possible life style for people acording to their sex, will usually push them to “place their emphasis” precisly in those).
“Does “work” qualify as “work” if and only if it receives a wage? ”
No, who said that? But then I was talking about the entrance of women in the labor market. Why are you so decided to deny them that possibility?
March 1st, 2013 | 9:32 am
You and I are separated by time and our two frames of reference therefore have different referents.
I lived through the period of disparagement and mockery of domestic life. It took place on a sophisticated level as feminism first took shape. Radical language was used to describe homemaking as unsuitable for intelligent women. Books were written; magazine articles were published, songs proclaimed a new way of living, freedom from the boredom of homemaking.
This freedom for professional women did indeed in many ways live up to its promise. (The dark side was the fact that fertility does not last as long as we would like). For many women who found more mundane jobs, life was in fact not improved. For many children and for their fathers as well as for their wives and mothers, life was negatively impacted.
My goal is not to proclaim domestic and civil life as the only possible life style for women but to describe its value and its possibilities for those who choose it – to reclaim it as one honorable “work”.
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