I read this blip in Newsweek. It made me soooooo angry. This woman just wrote a book called “Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.” This noble work argues that “women should stop wasting their expensive degrees in the nursery.”
As I read about how I am wasting my education, not being fulfilled and hurting all of society in general by staying at home to raise children, my first thought was, “Who is this lady?” So I Googled her.
She wrote a fascinating article in American Prospect entitled: “Homeward Bound.” She begins with the startling statistic that half of the most-privileged and best-educated women in America are staying at home to (gasp) raise children. She basically argues that ‘true’ feminists need to tell ‘traditional’ women that this choice to stay home is bad for society and bad for them because the lives they’re leading allow too few opportunities for ‘full human flourishing’ and that “the real glass ceiling is at home.” What is this glass ceiling? Why the degrading roles that are forced upon women in the home.
One of my favorite quotes: “The family — with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks — is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, ‘A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.’”
This was my very, very favorite quote: “these daughters of the upper classes will be bearing most of the burden of the work always associated with the lowest caste: sweeping and cleaning bodily waste….they have voluntarily become untouchables.”
As much as I would like to intellectually refute all of this, my reaction is simply, “Ex-cuse me??” I am wasting my life and hurting society my raising my children? Lady, you are the one who is damaging society with your mixed-up values. Money is not the only measure of power and status in a society. Yes, it is a shame that the important, difficult job of “Mother” is unpaid. It is an even bigger shame that the people who care for children professionally (teachers, day care & preschool workers) are paid disgustingly low wages. But you can never convince me that my time at home with my kids is wasted simply because I am not paid for it.
According to the article, I am degrading myself by cleaning my house. Hum. I wonder who cleans the author’s house? Perhaps her husband? Or maybe her manservant? Because she certainly couldn’t have hired a woman to do such degrading work. Or maybe she just doesn’t clean. There’s an option. She argues that women should never get a liberal arts degree (because there is not a lot of money to be made there) and we should marry someone poorer, younger or much older to keep our ‘power’ in the relationship and that we should never have more than one child (because women with more than one kid often leave the workforce. So, I’ve done everything opposite than she advises. Good. I also think its hilarious that the author is a philosophy professor (very marketable – snort!) and has three kids. Do as I say, not as I do, huh?
I’m not sure what her goal was in this article, but she didn’t even make me look seriously at my life. She made me more proud of my choice to invest my time and energy directly into my children and made me ashamed to call myself a feminist.
I could only think about her children. How would I feel if my mother was writing something like this? Telling other women not to waste their time with families and such. Poor kids. This poor author! I feel very sorry for her — that her home life was so terrible that she is trying to get other women to question theirs. That her children are of less value than her career and income. That the home itself is of such little value to her. Very sad.