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”.

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?

“… 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”.

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?

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…

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.

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,…

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.

[Being a stay-at-home parent] would be a potential option for one member of each stable couple…. [B]ecause women are now so “liberated,” relatively few couples have that option left anymore.

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.

“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…