The Cannon Fodder of the Mommy Wars
Posted
September 9, 2006 at
3:41 pm by
Andrea
At least once every two weeks, I revisit the family budget and try to figure out a way to scale my hours back to part time. I’ve done this since returning to work after maternity leave twenty months ago. That makes forty budget sessions, minimum, and every one is the same: if I reduce my hours, we go in the red. The difference in cost between part-time and full-time child care is so slight that a reduction in hourly earnings would not be met with a reduction in costs, and the result would be a monthly budget deficit that could only be eliminated if we cancelled the cable, the phone, the cell phones, the internet, all disposable income and reduced our monthly grocery bill by about $100. And that would be, mind you, with me working part-time. If I were to stay home, we would have to sell the house and rent an apartment instead.
So I’ll admit to feeling a tad fed up with the constant media flood of stories about women who actually have the choice of whether or not to work. The women I know who work, work because they have to–they are the sole or main breadwinner in their families, or without their income their families wouldn’t eat. Most of the women I know who don’t work for pay, don’t because the money they could earn wouldn’t cover the cost of childcare. Yet newspapers and magazines seem entirely preoccupied with stories about the five percent of women whose husbands earn enough money that they can realistically decide for themselves whether or not they want to work.
Or, as this wonderful article from today’s Toronto Star put it, “The average woman gets up and goes to work. She doesn’t have time to wring her hands about it.”
The result? Policy proposals that come out of these discussions tend to be in the interests of those who can afford to trade less income for more family time.
While flex-time, shorter work weeks and more part-time options are often cited as family-friendly solutions for working parents, the just-released 2006 Ask A Working Woman Survey by the giant U.S. labour federation, AFL-CIO, shows different priorities. Top concerns among the 25,000 respondents included inadequate pay rates that don’t keep up with cost of living, lack of retirement security and inadequate benefits.
The biannual survey has consistently shown women would rather have the opportunity to work overtime than reduce work hours. In 2006, 38 per cent said their earnings comprise all or almost all their family income; 75 per cent said their earnings comprise half or more than half.
You might think that after thirty years of the same criticisms–that the problems of upper-middle class women are not actually representative of the problems of women as a whole, and that real feminism explores solutions that work for women who are among the working poor or just-plain-poor and not only the rich–that we might see some change. Instead, the media remains consistently fixated on the so-called “plight” of women with options and ignores the struggles of women without. Or, as Sandra Tsing Loh put it, afflufemza: “wherein the problems of affluence are recast as the struggles of feminism.”
And you know that if this is true for me–a university-educated woman with a comfortable middle-class income and an employer who technically offers options such as part-time work and flex-time, but who can’t afford to use them not because my income pays for fancy vacations or nice cars but because it pays for the groceries–then how true must this be for the majority of women, who are not university-educated and who don’t have comfortable middle-class incomes?
Today, the wealthiest 20% of North Americans own approximately 80% of the resources. They also seem to get about 80% of the air-time. It’s a crying shame.
Tags: feminism, mommy-wars, Social Issues, work |
10 Responses to “The Cannon Fodder of the Mommy Wars”
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1. Jessica said:
September 9, 2006 @ 4:44 pm
It’s not just the elitist judging working moms though. Statistically speaking, I get, oh 100% more essays slamming working mothers than I get essays slamming stay-at-home-moms. I refuse to accept those essays because it’s bad enough that moms have to be put in a position where they have to work full-time to compensate for the necessities of life (the basics are so expensive), but to be judged for it does not envelop the spirit of The Imperfect Parent.
Most moms work because they have to.
2. Amy said:
September 9, 2006 @ 8:24 pm
Honestly sometimes its hard to admit that I don’t work full-time outside the home. I feel guilty, even though I don’t live high-on-the-hog. I know many women who work because they have to, and you’re right, they have little time to complain about it - and frankly - they make the best of it so that they are positive people and amazing role models. I admire them — but I don’t want to be looked down on because I stay home. I find its a catch-22 for me. I don’t fit in anywhere — not with the rich stay-home tennis moms, and not with the working moms. I’m my own category, as usual. Articles and posts like this one help bring the reality to light for everyone — I hope it gets read by many.
3. Kristen said:
September 10, 2006 @ 12:07 am
I’m reading the mommy wars book now - and I’m not that far into it. I worked part time for the first year of my daughter’s life because they could not find me a replacement and I wanted my students to graduate (college). It was an amazing situation and if I could find that again I would.
Since then, I’ve had the fortune of staying home, but I have a few business projects and write to make money to help cover some bills and expenses. And I do it because I want to - not necessarily because I have to. If I found a great paying, enjoyable part time job that took me out of the house a couple days a week, I’d snatch it up in a heartbeat. But I just couldn’t be away from my kids for 40 hours a week unless my husband was home with them.
In my mind, I imagine that many women would love to be able to work part time and be able to be with their kids the rest (these are moms that have working spouses as well). I just don’t imagine most women want to be away from their kids for 40-50 hours a week - no matter how satisfying their job is. Do I judge them because they do OR have to? Absolutely not. And I don’t think it wrong for them to desire something different.
I think it speaks to a greater cause for women to focus on - making the workplace more compatible for mothers as opposed to just rolling our eyes and judging peoples’ choices.
4. Melanie said:
September 10, 2006 @ 12:39 am
I swear, I just contemplated asking you to marry me. (Ignore the fact that I am married, hetero and probably live on the other side of the country. Mere trivialities.)
As one of the not-middle-class working mothers you referenced who have to work, with only a year of college education to my credit, I felt this article down to my bones. And it brought into focus a feeling I have had for years, but could never quite define: there is a definite emphasis on (and slant toward) those mothers who can afford to make the decision to work or not to work in the feminist discussion these days. While these women deserve their fair share of airtime, it is just so sad that it almost always trumps the discussion of the needs of women like me, whose real day-to-day “pay the bills or feed my kids” dialogue that not only I, but many women across the nation must have with ourselves.
And that’s a crying shame.
5. Andrea said:
September 10, 2006 @ 11:01 am
Yes, exactly. I don’t begrudge any woman who has the ability to make the choice, to make whatever choice best suits her. What bothers me is that the eighty percent of women who can’t make a choice are routinely ignored. (I include in that group the women who might like to work part-time or full-time but can’t because it would cost too much in childcare to do so.)
But then it’s the same in every area, isn’t it? The fashion magazines focus on the clothing choices of the rich (when was the last time you saw a spread of wal-mart clothes?). Articles on cars focus on expensive new models, most of the time. Travel articles are usually about exotic overseas trips, not an overnighter to a local camping ground. And so on.
Kristen, I think you’re probably right, and that in an ideal world most women would like to work part-time. The problem is, in our less-than-ideal world, most women don’t have an hourly wage high enough to permit them to scale back their hours and still pay the bills. So in order for policy proposals that make part-time work accessible to more women to have an impact on the working-class, it would have to be met with an increase in wages and benefits, so that these women could afford to take advantage of those proposals.
6. Jody M. said:
September 10, 2006 @ 1:56 pm
I wanted to respond to Kristin who said this:
“I think it speaks to a greater cause for women to focus on - making the workplace more compatible for mothers as opposed to just rolling our eyes and judging peoples’ choices.”
I’m not sure I agree with that. I just had a baby and have a toddler as well and will going back to work soon. Having worked at my job and position for years before I got pregnant, I can say that there is a lot of slack granted for working moms and the rest of the employees have to compensate for when their not there and doing their jobs. I’m lucky as I can afford childcare in my home, but I’m sure I will be taking more time and using our benefits much more now that I have a baby. Of course, I will try to bring my work home if I can on days that I can’t be there, but I think it’s unfair to expect everyone else to work harder because they don’t have kids or are fathers instead of mothers etc.
7. Kristen said:
September 10, 2006 @ 7:58 pm
I certainly don’t suggest that folks work harder, and clearly, as Andrea helped elaborate for me, I think part-time is an ideal situation - perhaps it’s a bit utopian.
I think for the most part, moms do what they have to do - and certainly some have to work 40-50-60 hours of work not because they love being away from their kids but because they have to.
However, that also speaks to the level of excess we live in - and how the average family can no longer afford to live on one “typical” income. I’m one of those people - actively house searching on one income and realizing if I want to live in a single family home, I’m going to have to go back to work.
So much for support of the family unit as we might like to see it.
8. Cristina said:
September 11, 2006 @ 1:02 am
I am lucky enough to have an employer who is willing to let me work part-time. I’m also lucky that my parents are willing to watch my son for me the three days a week that I work. We have had to make some sacrifices–we didn’t get the BIG house we could have gotten, but it’s been worth it to be able to work less hours.
However, I know that most women don’t even have the option. They HAVE to work. And that IS truly sad.
9. win said:
February 1, 2007 @ 5:10 pm
We really liked the website .. Thank you.
10. Sam said:
February 15, 2007 @ 12:23 am
Hi all-
First guy to post here it looks like so go easy. Lucky enough my wife is able to be at home with our two kids. It was by here choice 100%. It has been hard and we have had to give up a lot of our lifestyle though. Old cars, don’t eat out, dont go to movies, dont rent movies and the list goes on and on.
I think often families get caught wanting to keep up with the Jones next door and they feel they both have to work. It has been really amazing to us with careful budgeting and giving up a lot of things how little a family can live on. However it is tight!
Utlimitley it is up to the family and especially the mother, mom, wife to decide.