The Feminist Housewife

Airheaded editor of new magazine for stay-at-home mothers, in Salon interview: I hope you got this sentiment, that we are all very grateful at the end of the day. Going from the workforce to staying home is a transition and a challenge but it is totally worth it. The moments with your kids are priceless and when you put your head on your pillow every night you know you are there for your kids and you know you're doing the right thing. It just feels right.

Bitchy Salon interviewer: Are you conscious that statements like that -- about how you know you're doing the right thing -- will make many working mothers feel angry and guilty? (Because naturally, if a stay-at-home mother believes that her choice was a good one and her work is worthwhile, this invalidates the choices of mothers who work outside the home.)

A lot of people have been pissing me off lately.

Linda Hirshman in The American Prospect, a magazine to which I subscribe: Great as liberal feminism was, once it retreated to choice the movement had no language to use on the gendered ideology of the family. Feminists could not say, "Housekeeping and child-rearing in the nuclear family is not interesting and not socially validated. Justice requires that it not be assigned to women on the basis of their gender and at the sacrifice of their access to money, power, and honor."

And since I'm a poor, oppressed housewife who has apparently bought into the gendered ideology of the family, I haven't had time to post about it -- just to stew.

Happy Feminist commenting on Pandragon thread about the Salon article: There is also no way, no how, taking on a powerless position in which you produce nothing economically is ever going to get you the same status in society that men traditionally enjoy. I am not knocking women who become homemakers, but to fantasize that somehow it can become a position that is as powerful and respected as being an executive is simply unrealistic-- and it perpetuates the notion that women should continue to take on these less powerful roles in order to "transform" them.

And you know, part of why I'm so infuriated by all this is that both sides are pissing me off. The editor of "Total 180" or whatever the new magazine for stay-at-home mothers is called embraces all the cliched happy-talk of the people who feel the need to pat me on the head -- "being an at-home mom is the absolute hardest and most important job there is." And, well -- no. I am not so desperate for validation that I think that my job is harder than that of, oh, a chicken processor on a slaughterhouse line. I am not so pathetic that I need to be assured that my job is more important than that of a doctor with the International Medical Corps who's training midwives in Afghanistan. Also, if someone's going to try to speak on my behalf, I want them to sound halfway intelligent -- not, God help us all, cite The Mists of Avalon as a historical reference or talk nostalgically about how much more attentive parents were in the 1950s. Oh, and I'm okay with the term stay-at-home mother or homemaker or even housewife; "Chief Home Officer" made me cringe with all the oh, teh cutesy horror I normally reserve for limited-edition Precious Moments commemorative plates.

But for the love of freshly-ironed pillowcases (no, I don't iron the pillowcases), the fact that my work as a stay-at-home parent is not particularly valued by society (except in the sense that I get all the platitudes I can eat, lucky me) does not mean that it is not valuable. Our society fails to value domestic work because we live in a sexist society. Why are feminists suddenly all buying into the sexist idea that traditional women's work must be pointless and stupid? I agree with Happy Feminist that I am never going to have the same status in society as a CEO. (It is possible that there are people who believe that this is going to change, but I think they're mostly taking better drugs than anything in my medicine cabinet.) Nonetheless, our sexist society's sexist judgement on my work does not make my work less valid, or my choices less legitimate.

I didn't "take on my role" to "transform" it, or because my gendered society told me that I had to, or for any other feminist or non-feminist reason. I wanted to stay home with my children because even if most children are tedious and boring, my children are brilliant and interesting, and funny, and also very cute. Ed also wanted to stay home with the kids, but I won. I think I used the "I have breasts, and you don't" argument.

Housework may be boring, but raising children is not. What a stupid thing to say.

Saying that I am proud of what I do, and consider what I do to be worthwhile, does not mean that I think mothers who work outside the home are bad, neglectful mothers who should feel guilty about their choices. I resent the idea that by speaking positively of my own work, I must be putting them down.

The vast majority of working stiffs -- male or female -- do not find their jobs particularly fulfilling. Admittedly, even at boring jobs, they give you 15 minute breaks a couple of times a day, and you can go to the bathroom all by yourself and nobody stands there while you're peeing and asks you questions about why you keep a hair-catcher in the bathtub and when you're next going to replace the bar of soap. Still, most people have a job, not a fabulously fulfilling career. And most women who choose to stay home were choosing between domestic work and a JOB, not domestic work and a CAREER.

Finally, I just want to say -- I think that the "mommy wars" are fostered by THE MAN to keep us down.

(I'm going to cross-post this to bad_feminists, if I can figure out how.)