The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
“Being a mother isn’t a real job – and the men who run the world know it.”
That is the subtitle of a recent article in The Atlantic called 1% Wives Are Helping Kill Feminism and Make the War on Women Possible. The article was written by Elizabeth Wurtzel of Prozac Nation fame and the oft-panned, anti-feminist Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. The above subtitle (or is it a caption for the photo underneath?) is a not-so-subtle preview of the appalling, self-contradictory screed that follows.
It has taken me much longer to write this response than I expected. I’ve written and re-written, edited and revised, scrapped and started over. The bottom line is there just isn’t enough bandwidth on the Internet to cover every inflammatory word. I could spend days correcting the historical inaccuracies of the author’s one-dimensional view of feminism and the genesis of the movement. Like Wurtzel, I am not a mother, but I could write for weeks on the tremendous guilt placed on mothers who stay at home and on those who don’t. How many articles could I link to on women who made a choice to stay or leave and feel tremendously fulfilled, or have regretted it since?
I could easily defend moms in the “One Percent.” Not all of them are reflections of The Real Housewives of (fill in blank) or The Nanny Diaries. I immediately thought of Melinda Gates and Susan Axelrod, both well-educated stay-at-home moms who are having a tremendous positive impact on the lives of millions. Contrary to recent public opinion, Ann Romney actually has worked all these years – as a volunteer for numerous charitable children’s organizations. She just didn’t receive an actual paycheck.
I considered pointing out all of the contradictions, like how the first line says being a mom isn’t a real job, yet in her attempt to take apart Ann Romney she says being a rich mom doesn’t involve “much of any of the stuff that makes being a mom a job (emphasis mine).” Or how she says educated women should know better, then accuses them of being so stupid their husbands think all women are too stupid to be working for them. Yes, it’s important to demand men make room at the boardroom table for women, but it is also critical they actually learn to see the value of having women there in the first place.
Plenty of bloggers and mainstream online media writers have been taking apart the article for days, so really there’s no need to repeat what most everyone has already written. I’d love to know, though, if anyone has addressed the “statistics” she threw in for which there are no citations. To say that stay-at-home moms only do 14% more work than moms who work outside the home is ridiculous. If that were true, I’d probably be able to get my sister on the phone far more often than I do and for longer than five or ten minute chunks of time. Mothers with outside jobs contend with phone calls from school or daycare, doctor’s appointments, school conferences. Being a mother is a 24/7 job, regardless of how many hours are spent in the home. It is universal that there is no telling a vomiting four-year-old in the middle of the night, “Sorry kid, I’m on my OSHA-mandated break. Catch me again at eight in the morning.”
When I read the line about feeling betrayed by educated women who decide to stay home, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Elizabeth Wurtzel’s resentment stems from something deeper, that maybe she regrets a few of her own decisions and she’s taking it out on women who have what she suddenly realizes she wanted. It’s possible she hasn’t learned to own her choices.
I’m not much of a moralist — I have absolutely no right to be — but in the interest of doing what’s right both for me personally and for women generally, I have been strict with myself about earning my keep.
What makes it okay for Wurtzel to do what’s right for her personally while begrudging other women who do the same? Here’s the thing: if her idea of doing what’s right for women means spewing narcissistic vitriol against other women, I’d appreciate it if she’d knock it off. I can get by just fine without that kind of “help.”
I don’t want everyone to live like me, but I do expect educated and able-bodied women to be holding their own in the world of work.
Merriam-Webster Online defines liberated as “freed from or opposed to traditional social and sexual attitudes or roles.” For me, it means not being shoved into a box and told what I can or can ot do because of my gender. As a feminist, I refuse to submit to that kind of treatment from a male-dominated society. However, I will not obey a command just because someone thinks I should in order to prove my fidelity to the feminist cause. That’s not liberating. It’s simply trading one form of oppression for another.
In her myopic view of marriage, Wurtzel makes the bold, false assumption that women who stay home must have been forced to do so, soothing their bruised feminist egos by telling themselves it was their choice. She makes the blanket statement that feminism can’t possibly be taken seriously “when it allows for everything, as long as women choose it” (emphasis mine). It is because of feminism that I can choose to become a doctor or a writer or a teacher. If I can choose to do a thing, I can also choose not to do it. So yes, staying home with children is a choice on that continuum.
Right now there are a lot of women at home teaching their sons how not to be sexist and their daughters how to stand up and not allow themselves to be marginalized because of their gender. That doesn’t make them “failing at feminism,” that makes them awe-inspiring.
As readers, we forget almost instantly the demographic of the women to whom she is referring. By opening with the statement that “being a mother isn’t a real job,” the article becomes about all mothers, regardless of socio-economic status. It is not only insulting, it is incredibly divisive (i.e., “Mommy Wars”). How are we ever going to accomplish anything – much less win the “war on women” Wurtzel mentions in her title – with so much finger pointing and infighting?
I am not going to make time to read Wurtzel’s article but it sounds like the kind of crap women write to win favor from the men in charge, this time liberal men. “Being a Mother isn’t a real job” to many people because motherhood is a job that hasn’t been sanctified by male participation. If men don’t do a job it can’t possibly be worthwhile to these folks. They are a bunch of ignorant bigots.
In fact Stay at home moms contribute a great deal to society, they just don’t get paid for doing it. Even professional women who quit work to be home with the kids contribute to society since they usually do volunteer work they don’t charge for. I guess to the people who degrade stay at home moms taking money for your contribution to society is necessary to sanctify it as valuable. When will they ever learn?!
This whole mommy war issue would be mostly resolved if people could understand the difference between valuable and valued. Mothering is valuable. Mothering is not valued, and inherently cannot be valued(*). Women have always being doing what is valuable, even under extreme oppression. Being valuable, doing valuable stuff is not going to get women equality. To gain equality women need to do more of that which is valued, i.e. paid work. Alternatively, we can demand that mothering be valued. It is an unenforceable demand (*).
* Because mothering exists outside the transactional domain where value is determined.
She’s just out to capture our dime – better just to ignore her – ignorant, divisive, and insulting to all women everywhere.
Bes – It was definitely tough to get through. I couldn’t even finish it the first time I clicked through on it.
Kali – What an interesting way to put it, thanks!
It is pretty funny though to leave a man (the father of your children perhaps) who thinks stay at home moms do nothing, home alone with the kids for a few days. You have to wait until the kids are old enough to talk fluently and make sure his Mother and sisters are not available for him to dump your kids on because believe me he will try. Also don’t leave him pre cooked meals to warm up, your children will survive. It is pretty hysterical, the kids are far more resilient than their Father generally. And the comments about your supposed leisurely life style will dry up immediately once you return. When you return home be sure and ask “so what have you done all weekend, No I mean what did you GET DONE” the second you walk in the door. After doing this educational exercise once all you have to do if your husband slips up and starts talking about how easy you have it is casually mention that you are planning to visit his sister and Mother again for a girls only weekend. HA HA haaa undemure cackle!
Great article, Edee. Thank you for wading through that, um, piece, and breaking it down.
And you raise a great question – how, indeed, are we to move forward when we continue to be our own worst enemies?
Thanks for this!
I think we, women, would be a lot better off in discussions of this sort if we write about what we know – either through personal experience (like being a mom, or not — both equally valuable) – and skip the “I know because I know a lot of them” rationale. When there are not clear, real, hard data to fall back on, one person’s opinion is as good as the next, so opining about “knowing” without walking in those shoes is pretty useless and meaningless, and not much better than men opining about women, in general, because they know them. However, it makes good, provocative copy. So does Ann Coulter. Instead, we need to set a new standard — write about what we know (not believe, or infer, or assume, or assert) and how we know it, and leave it at that. And we shouldn’t, in my view, reach for broad generalizations that just don’t fit.
That said, I think both Ms, Wurzel and Ms. Lemonier fall into the category of having controversial opinions. They think deeply and passionately, and write convincingly. I might even agree with some of their points. But in my view, that’s simply not enough, and is divisive in the absence of ideas about how to move forward with a “new agenda.” Just sayin….
Getting women to get behind women regardless of politics; even if they are a flaming Obama liberal, or hard right Phyllis Schlafly conservative. That’s the holy grail of political achievement for women and one hell of a tough nut to crack.
I was a stay at home mom for 17 years and also have worked full time at my career in two different blocks of time. I haven’t run into this woman against woman problem in my life. I think it is a media phenomenon. Wurtzel is a woman chosen by a bunch of men to be a token in their business. She says and does what she has to to get along in her job. That is pretty much what women in media do is act like the men in charge think women should act and that is why they seem so inauthentic on a primal level. This sounds like it was a liberal hit piece on Mrs Romney writen to impress male bosses. I would guess most of the people it is supposed to influence can see right through it. What it really does is expose how cynical the liberal attitude is towards women…as if we hadn’t already noticed back in 2008.
You know all the scandalous amounts of money that is raised by both political parties? Well they spend it on advertising and that means it is ALL Corporate Media profit. So the 5 media companies who own and run all TV and cable channels, all movie studios and all magazines in our country profit to an obscene level from our elections. They are profoundly sexist group of men. You saw what they did to Hillary and Palin and quite a few other women who were brave enough to stand up and run for election in 2008. Another thing that Corporate Media do is come up with a bunch of bogus “women’s issues” Several of those are the “war on women” and the war of professional women against stay at home moms. Its a bunch of BS. Here are some real women’s issues, equal pay for equal work, equal job and educational opportunities, equal and relevant health care, media images of women. Corporate Media and the political parties need to stop making up BS “women’s issues” that appeal to a sense of male drama and distract from real women’s isses.
Being a teacher isn’t a real job.
Being a welder isn’t a real job.
Being a vegetable picker isn’t a real job.
Being a nanny isn’t a real job.
Those are all true if (and this is a big if), of course, we measure the worth of how someone spends their time based on how much money someone else pays them to do it.
Can someone please explain to me why it is ok for us to say one way to spend time is better than another, when both are important to the healthy functioning of our society? Sure, I get that simple supply and demand explain why a vascular surgeon makes more money than a nurse (i.e., there are fewer vascular surgeons, and it’s extremely difficult to become one thus putting a big restraint on supply, whereas it’s easier (and I don’t mean to say by any means that it’s easy – just easiER) to become a nurse).
But, the question is why do we (specifically Ms. Wurtzel in this case, but our cultural values reflect that she is not in the minority here) layer on an almost moral judgment of how someone’s choices are treated by an economic system, a system that in theory is supposed to be so academically pure that the very idea of a moral judgment is anathema to the notion of economics? And, even further, why is this judgment extended beyond what the person does to become a judgment about the person? Why does Ms. Wurtzel want to perpetuate such control over people?
Ms. Lemonier is quite right to note that feminism means not trading one oppressor for another. Doing so leads not only to imprisonment for women but for their children as well and perpetuates an oppressive system.
Boo, Ms. Wurtzel.
Bravo, Ms. Lemonier.
Wurtzel made one point that is worth consideration. Every human being, male and female, owes it to themselves to prepare by education and/or training and experience to be able to earn enough money to support themselves and their children should it become necessary. That’s not to say that they need to be able to maintain their standard of living, but everyone needs to be able to provide the basics for themselves and their children in case of abuse, desertion, death, Bernie Madoff-style losses, ect. This is probably not as much of an issue for the 1% who seem to be amazingly well protected by current tax laws but I shudder when women go from high school graduation to marriage and babies without even learning to show up on time for a job.
That’s not to lay blame on any parents who are unable to find a decent job in an economic climate such as the one that we’re in but women and men who have some history of productive work outside the home are in a much better position to be competitive in a difficult economy at any time.
Volunteer work IS productive work. You show up on time and you do professional level work, you stay until you are done, you coordinate with others and others depend on you to show up.
Raising children IS productive work. You are on duty 24/7, you teach and instill values, you coordinate with many people and make thousands of decisions. You budget and you purchase and you plan. Also since I was a stay at home mom for 17 years I was often the only adult who was at home in the neighborhood. Often the children of working parents came to me with their problems that couldn’t wait until 7pm. In fact I have had several children who aren’t mine come “home” to my house for the weekend from college but not go to their own house (at the time I assumed no one was home at their house but found out later that wasn’t the case).
What ever point Democrats are trying to make regarding Mrs Romney and her worth as a person is very offensive. Since the Democrats ran Kerry, a wealthy serial gigolo for President any comments about wealthy people are also hypocritical. At least Romney earned his money rather than marrying it.
Those are all true if (and this is a big if), of course, we measure the worth of how someone spends their time based on how much money someone else pays them to do it.
This is not how it *should* be done. However, this *is* the way it is done in a capitalist economy. We should either create a society where we follow the “to each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities” idea rigorously, or we deal with the current reality and admit that greater economic power equals greater social power (even leaving aside quality of life issues). The patriarchy has always encouraged women to choose the low-power position, couching the argument in terms of high ideals – ideals that are not encouraged in their own (i.e. men’s) lives. Let’s face it – women are not going to get equal representation in politics, in business, or anywhere else by doing the lion’s share of the unpaid/low-paid work.