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Well that’s the argument made recently by the New York Times. The article focuses specifically on the stigma attached to being a housewife in European countries, highlighting the policies of Norway and Sweden:
Nordic politicians have long focused on working mothers, giving them subsidies for elderly care and child care and, more recently, financial incentives to share parental leave. Over all, these policies have increased economic growth, raised tax revenue and given women who wanted to work more financial independence, more social benefits, more personal fulfillment — in short, what many would call more freedom. But social engineering is a blunt tool, and some worry that the freedom of working mothers has come at the expense of making outcasts of a minority who want to do things differently.
…In countries where mothers still struggle to combine career with family and quit work less out of conviction than out of necessity, they are often doubly punished. In Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, most schools still finish at lunchtime, and full-time nurseries for children under 3 are scarce. Yet in this generation of young mothers you are more likely to find women saying they are on extended maternity leave or between jobs than admitting they are housewives.
The kicker for me was this bold statement:
When it is no longer socially acceptable to be a housewife — or homemaker, in modern American parlance — has feminism overshot its objective?
Honestly, I’m not really buying into this argument. The most tragic example they could come up with was of a Norwegien woman who just wanted to stay at home, but was “sneered at” (their words, not mine) so she had to enroll at a university even though she didn’t want to. Really, right now? This is their most tragic example of oppressed housewives? Who is this woman and how has she gotten this far in life letting other people tell her what to do and who to be?
Surely there are probably social pressures in these countries attached to being a housewife. But there are pressures attached to social status in a myriad of different ways for everyone. Always. Walk into any suburb in America and there are social pressures in the community based on wealth or occupational status or education. This isn’t exactly news to anyone. To me, all that has happened is that the social pressure has swung from one side to the other. Where before women were looked down on for working out of the home, now they are looked down on for not. It would be ideal if there was never any judgment about a woman’s personal choices, but that seems pretty unrealistic.
What do you think? Do you think feminism has gone too far? Do you think the stay at home mom is oppressed? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, right?
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Why, yes, yes – it’s true. Being a housewife is pretty much a stigma in many European countries. In fact, one of the most despective words you can tell a woman in Spanish (from Spain) is “maruja” – a housewife who spends her day gossiping. To be honest, I don’t understand how a woman can contemplate never working and living off her husband’s wage, to raise the kids. Can’t contemplate it, just don’t understand it.
However, if others want to do it, it’s their choice!
You said the answer right there – to raise the kids.
For some people, raising children is the most important thing they will do, and also the most interesting. They find it a lot more practical to raise the kids themselves, rather than making money to pay others to raise the kids.
As long as everyone’s into it, it’s an extremely logical system – division of labour, in the vein of Adam Smith. One person works at making money to support the family, the other works at raising the children and keeping things running for the family. Really more practical that having two people do half of each.
But everyone has different interests, and people find fulfillment in different things. As someone who doesn’t even want kids, I would find the idea of staying home and raising children to be horrible. but I recognise that others are different.
I think housewives are the subjects of condescension and yes, “sneers,” in certain parts of US society, and probably more so in Europe. I think it’s ridiculous, because the point of feminism is freedom for women to choose their path in life, instead of being forced into being whatever society deems acceptable. It’s kind of ridiculous that housewives are seen as lazy bottom-feeders. Certainly, some housewives are lazy, but I have met plenty of women in the work force who are lazy as well.
Like Mireee, it’s hard for me to understand the *desire* to be a housewife. I think it has much to do with the era of feminism in which I was raised. I’ve always had modern feminism. My mom worked outside of our home, and although we were poor and it was out of necessity, she says even if we had been wealthier she would have worked.
This concept is very interesting to me, regardless of my inability to completely understand that desire. Many of my friends have started having children with their respective partners, and most of them have chosen to quit their jobs and stay at home. I’m happy for them because they’re able to do what they feel is best for their children, but part of me wonders if they really are happy as SAHMs.
I became a mom early (17) and although I’ve worked in different careers fields I’ve never felt that I had any type of career calling. The one thing I’ve been very good at is parenting. I was very involved in my daughter’s school, and a part of that was definitely a reaction to my own working mother’s total lack of involvement in our school growing up.
She was never at functions or birthdays and she was always the woman rushing in at the end of a choir performance. I wanted to be the opposite of that. And then I realized I enjoyed grading papers and making copies for the teacher. I enjoyed being there for every single event. I enjoyed the time I had with my daughter to turn everything into a learning opportunity.
Of course, I was able to do that and earn a living because my mom was able to hire me. The work I used to do for her in the office I was able to do at home in my own time, which freed me up to be the kind of SAHM I wanted to be with my own daughter. Without her work and sacrifice while we were growing up she never would’ve had the connections and experience to run her own company.
Now that I’m married and my husband earns enough money to support all of us, it would be silly for me to work outside of the house rather than care for our son. My mom no longer runs her own business and I wouldn’t earn enough working outside the home to pay for childcare costs.
I would be tired from work, feeling guilty about not being with my son all day, and I’d still be the one cooking dinner and doing other domestic chores like I do now. That doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.
For my family and our situation it makes zero sense to pay somebody else to do what I’m better at. I’m better at giving my son the type of one on one attention I want him to have and I’m a kick ass cook. We could never afford a nanny and a cook with what I’d make working outside the home.
Am I constantly fulfilled by being a SAHM? Of course not. But I wasn’t when I was working a full time office job with my daughter in preschool, either.
At least now I really care about the job I’m doing instead of it being about a paycheck. That is far more fulfilling than rushing through work so I can get home to my kid.
Ugh! Why does it matter how a woman and her husband (S.O. whatever) decide how to raise their children? It is no one elses damn business. If a woman chooses to work, awesome, if she chooses to stay home, also awesome. I am SO over everyone telling people how best to raise their families. What works for one family, doesn’t work for another. That doesn’t make one family better then another. And this is even worse on new Mothers. Somehow when a woman gives birth she must endure everyone else’s opinions on her life. “How can you not breastfeed/bottle feed? What do you mean you’re going to stay home/go to work? Why would/wouldn’t you co-sleep?” It’s insane. We are supposed to be helping and supporting women and are so on our damned high horse that instead, we are cutting everyone down. I think not only have we not accomplished the ideals of feminism, we’ve regressed. How dare we say that we support women when we can’t even support her simple family choices? Okay, I’m off my soap box now, but this shit has to stop!
Being a sahm I often look around and think to myself “What the hell am I doing?!!” It’s not always fun and the pay blows, but it definitely has its benefits as well. (Teaching my kids learn to read has been so freaking awesome)
I think anyone who understands feminism nowadays knows that at its core is the idea that a woman should have the power to choose for herself the course her life will take.
I don’t think feminism has ‘overstepped its bounds’. I do think there are a number of feminists who have gone from seeking opportunities to prescribing bests.
I think freedom must include the freedom to choose differently.
My mother worked full-time when I was a kid. I don’t remember feeling lacking for parental attention on either side, but then, I was a fairly independent kid. I think I would have disliked having a parent around all the time.
My mother says that it wasn’t her great love of career though. Two incomes definitely helped, but they could have worked with just the one. She says that she felt under great pressure to work to use her education and to be a contributing member. Looking back now, she thinks she might have chosen differently without that pressure. Personally, I think she wouldn’t have been satisfied at home with us, and would probably have just been on a bazillion different volunteer committees and just as busy, but I think it unfortunate that those choices are influenced by others.
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