The Mommy Economy: A Review of The Feminine Mistake
‘œMotherhood is a state of being, not a job description.’ ‘“ Sara Nelson
When I announced to one of my sisters that Jeanine and I plan to work full time after the baby is born (we’re adopting a newborn boy and he arrives in December!), she asked, ‘œWhat’s the point of having children if you’re both going to work?’
The question, coming from my competitive sister, was hardly a surprise. After all, she gave up her career as a CPA to stay at home with her three young children and in her mind; this was the just the ‘œright’ thing to do. With the youngest now in first grade, she went back to work part time. Of course, I wanted to ask: why on earth would you have children if you were going to work?
I didn’t because I already knew the answer: it was based on economics. They need the money. Most families do these days. That said, my sister seems happier (and I think is probably a better mom) when she’s working. These are the same arguments made by Leslie Bennetts in her book: The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?
I met Bennetts recently at a panel discussion in Los Angeles entitled: Baby I’m Bored: When Did Motherhood Become a Career and is it a Professional Disaster? The audio broadcast is available here. It was moderated by the brilliant Meghan Daum:
Forty years ago, the term ‘œstay at home mom’ would have been considered redundant. Twenty years ago, ‘œhousewife’ had become a dirty word and the ability to balance family and career was seen as an extension of female self-respect and empowerment. Today, some women are rejecting the 1980s-era notion of ‘œhaving it all’ by dropping out of the workforce–sometimes permanently–to raise their children. In her book The Feminine Mistake, journalist Leslie Bennetts suggests that women have been oversold on the idea they must choose between being good workers and being good mothers. Using extensive data, she suggests that women who stop working even temporarily sacrifice much more than financial stability.
A lot of people disliked this book when it came out last year. There were plenty of SAHM’s that thought Bennetts was the anti-Christ. Of course, it makes perfect sense they would be defensive about their choice to opt out of the workforce. I was surprised though when the writer at The New Yorker gave it a tepid review.
Unlike those above, I loved this book for its financial stance and have been sounding the trumpets ever since Bennetts signed my copy and warned that many gay and lesbian parents were falling into the same trap as their traditional counterparts. In the book, Bennetts cautions women:
What I want to do is sound a warning to women who forgo income-producing work in favor of a domestic role predicated on economic dependency. My first goal is to document the long-term dangers of that choice in hopes of persuading these women to reevaluate its costs. My second goal is to reaffirm the immense value of income-producing work that gives women financial autonomy along with innumerable other rewards. In the endless acrimony of the culture wars, those key factors seem to have been largely overlooked, at least in the media and the standard public debate.
I meet more and more gays and lesbians who are opting out of the workforce to stay home with their kids. They cite many of the same reasons that straight mothers use: the high costs of childcare out weighs the income and benefits of working, it’s better for the kids if one of us stays home, my partner’s career is more important (and he/she makes more money).
According to the trade group, the National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies, the average cost of infant care is 10.6 percent of household income. Bennetts writes:
Discouraged by such warnings, women often decide to give up their careers, rationalizing that choice with the thought that they would be working only to pay for child care, and that their work would therefore be pointless. But this argument completely fails to take into account the long-term development of any worker’s earnings potential. Your own career is an investment you make in yourself, one that ‘“ unless it is interrupted or derailed ‘“ will pay dividends throughout your life.
Some benefits are financial, some are intellectual or creative, and others involve different kinds of personal growth. If you devote your life to supporting your husband’s career, all those dividends belong to him ‘“ as does the career itself. Ultimately it’s his asset, not yours. This basic fact many not become apparent unless you lose your breadwinner, whether through divorce, illness or death ‘“ but the harsh truth is that a dependent wife spends her life enhancing an asset that, in the end, may not even belong to her.
This makes about as much sense as putting millions of dollars’ worth of renovations into a house you don’t even own. Few intelligent people would sink a lot of money into refurbishing a rental, but stay-at-home wives think nothing of subordinating their own financial interests to those of their husbands, blithely assuming that those interests will never diverge.
What spoke to me about this book is how quickly we’ll give up our financial independence in the name of motherhood. Of course, the intent of this review and post is not to start the lesbian mommy wars. Actually, I think the review at Salon.com says it best:
In the end, I’m not sure the book’s bravado will be entirely convincing to all of the women she wants to persuade. It’s deaf to the way a child and family-centered life calls out to a lot of women, and to some men. When I’ve written on these topics before and gotten shrill about the importance of having a career and keeping maternal urges in check, I’ve gotten thoughtful and sometimes persuasive letters from women and a few men who derive more joy from family than from work, who’ve sacrificed to make sure at least one parent is regularly home with their kids, who take the time to make their house a home, not in a competitive or compulsive way, but out of love and longing. I no longer dismiss them as victims of a new feminine mystique.
Still, I’m glad to have ‘œThe Feminine Mistake’ reminding women to protect their future and that of their kids. In the end, women have to search their hearts, and not merely books, to find the right balance of child rearing, work and home for their own lives.
After reviewing a book on Queercents, I typically raffle it off to those that entertain me in the comments section below. Sorry gang, I’m keeping this one. I want it for our library so if Jeanine ever comes home after a hard day wanting to opt out of the workforce, I can point to it and say, read! Or who knows, maybe it will be me that gets the crazy idea’¦
I certainly understand that making money isn’t the cure all and I’m just about to find out how hard the balancing act is. After all, I’ll be a WAHM paying for childcare, but still traveling internationally for my job. I write this on the brink of packing for another 7 day trip: London, Paris, Rome. It all sounds so glamorous as a childless career girl. But wow, the reality of motherhood is about to hit our household. And I’ll be turning to Leslie Bennetts’ book as a reminder that financial independence still trumps diaper duty in my Queercents opinion.
So lesbian mommies (and gay daddies too!), what’s your take on this topic? If you’re a stay at home parent, are there any safeguards you can put in place to protect your finances and ability to return to the workforce down the road?
My wife is the SAHM 1/2 of our parenting partnership and I’m the “going to work” 1/2. And I absolutely don’t want it any other way. I love the fact that our children are being raised by us and only us. We have a 4 year old and a 8 month old and I love that their activities are guided and designed with complete flexibility according to what works for them. Is it financially harder? Yes. Is it really hard because my wife is out of the workforce so she’s not saving for retirement (can’t contribute to a Roth if you don’t earn), not contributing to social security, and can’t get my benefits when I die. Yes and that scares me. But you know what? It’s still worth it. I still love that every morning the family calls me at the office to say good morning. I love that they’re at home when I get there. I love the choices we make for our family and our children even if they aren’t the common ones.
Here’s my perspective as a former corporate executive turned stay-at-home mom and freelance writer. (Much of this is taken from a post I wrote about Bennetts over at Mombian.)
There are indeed financial concerns involved in being the stay-at-home parent, and to this extent, Bennetts’ words are wise. I once spoke with a woman who thought that having her name as a second cardholder on her husband’s credit card was enough to build her own credit rating. To her credit (!), she soon applied for a card of her own. “Educating ourselves can help us to make smarter choices,” Bennetts says.
I disagree with Bennetts, though, in her not-so-subtle bias against stay-at-home moms. She has said:
It’s a twisted strand of ideas, and one that a feminist such as myself needs to untangle carefully. Yes, blind financial dependence is bad, as is the societal assumption that the mother in a straight family will be the one to stay home. Just as being pro-choice doesn’t mean you believe all women should have abortions, however, being in favor of mothers’ financial success and career opportunities doesn’t necessarily mean you think all mothers should have outside employment.
It’s also not always a matter of one or the other. Some women stay home when their children are young, then return to the workforce. Others use the time to build alternate, often self-employed, careers. Others may do what my partner and I have done, where each of us has taken some time to be the stay-at-home parent. (Same-sex couples have more flexibility in this regard than opposite-sex ones, I think, as we are not as bound to the expectation that it will be the mother, not the father, who stays home.)
It’s important to keep in mind, too, that there are distinct phases of childhood: early days before preschool; early school, often for only half a day; full-time school, but with a parent or caregiver needed at home afterwards; and the later teen years, when teens are more able to spend at least a few hours on their own. A parent’s career/home choice for each of these stages may differ. Being a stay-at-home mom when one’s child is young doesn’t mean giving up financial independence for life, especially if one has been a good saver and investor beforehand.
I also think these decisions are hard to make, pre-child. Depending on a child’s maturity at any given point, or any special needs, one’s priorities might change. One might also simply decide that too many hours of daycare makes it feel like someone else is raising your child, and that’s not what you signed up for. Alternately, you may have a social child who thrives in an environment with lots of other children, and you feel that daycare is more stimulating for them than the activities you could provide yourself.
I don’t think there’s one right answer for everyone. Yes, it can feel very odd to give up financial independence–and I’m all for continuing to maintain separate bank accounts in addition to a household one–but parenthood forces partners to rely on each other in many new ways. The only general advice I can offer, no matter what you choose, is to make sure to talk things over with your partner, and keep talking, so your expectations for yourselves, each other, and your family unit are in synch.
Growing up, I knew I never wanted to be a full-time “homemaker” like my mom. Career was always my goal. I find myself in the (mostly straight) stay-at-home world, then, a little like Jane Goodall among the chimps. Yes, I’ve skipped back across the generation of superwoman, do-it-all feminism to stay at home with my child. I’m doing so, however, as part of a relationship that is anything but traditional, and where we each had equal opportunity for either role. It wasn’t staying at home that I objected to when I was young, but, I now realize, the idea that someone else had made the choice for me.
I have to echo much of what Dana has said on this. It’s complicated. Once you’re in the trenches, you’ll see how the best-laid plans of working moms get covered in sticky fingerprints. My partner and I both essentially work part-time, in terms of hours spent out of the house. But we have an unusual level of flexibility in our chosen professions. And staying home (even part-time!) turns out to be both more challenging and more fulfilling than I ever imagined; working at home turns out to be…kinda crazy, with a toddler. As Dana says, there’s no generic experience–as your kid develops, the issues change.
Instead of interrogating/dissing individual women’s choices, I think it’s more helpful to look at the *context* in which those “choices” are made. Compared to the rest of the developed world, we have terrible options here in the USA. I’m thinking of my friend whose German *father* got three years’ leave time from his job as a business professor for each of his three kids. Or my Canadian friend who was given a year’s paid leave from her job, and then put her daughter in incredibly high-quality daycare–with a genuine French grandmere–for the equivalent of $7 per day. Quel bargain! And guess what? Her taxes are about the same as mine–as is her income; it just goes to stuff like daycare instead of invading other countries. Both stayed in the workforce in the long run AND nurtured their kids. Fancy that!
The myopia we show as a society on this issue leads to women ‘choosing’ to leave the workforce. And we’re talking about middle/upper-middle professional women; working class women have far fewer options. Frankly, my dear, I think all the available options suck. The US workplace simply hasn’t kept up with the reality of working parents. I don’t think it makes *economic* sense, actually, to lose talented parents permanently when they leave the work force because we can’t accommodate what are often temporary needs (it’s a whole different ball game once kids are in school).
So, I refuse to participate in any version of the mommy wars; I honor all parents’ ‘choices’, and question why we aren’t creating better options for all of us. I do know women stuck in bad partnerships/marriages b/c they gave up financial independence to care for young children, but I don’t blame them. Until the so-called ‘family values’ crowd actually values families by creating a reasonable paid leave/daycare policy, the options will continue to suck. And that effects EVERYONE–including folks without kids.
Two more addenda to my looooong post:
-the final line should read “affects”, not “effects” (I’m an English professor, for God’s sake!)
-Congrats to Nina and Jeanine!!!! Welcome to the parenting trenches…
First, congrats!
Second, I think it’s definitely important for a woman to consider her future, career, etc, when she’s making the decision on whether or not to stay at home (or perhaps work at home?).
The thing that gets me is that I knew a lot of kids with 2 parents who worked who seemed, crassly put, to be an accessory to their parents’ lifestyles. The parents only saw their kids a few hours every day (cut down further by kids’ after-school activities) and on weekends, though I’m sure they loved their kids. I think the point of having kids is to share life with them, and the best way to do that (particularly at first, when the kids are learning so much) is to spend time with them. So I support one parent either staying home entirely, working from home, working part time—actually raising their kid, at least until the kid is in school. I knew someone who at the library who had a part-time morning job and was then home by 2pm, well before her kids got out of school.
It’ll be interesting to see you revisit this once you have your baby in your family. For me, this idea of staying home as ‘sacrifice’ rings strangely. What a precious gift and strange and wonderful adventure it is to be at home with these two brand new beings!
Anne Manne (Motherhood – highly recommended – a feminist perspective on being a stay at home mum): ‘Yet motherlove, as Helen Garner once wrote of Eros, “mocks our fantasy that we can nail life down and control it” and is “as far beyond our attempts to regulate it as sunshine is, or a cyclone …Children teach a different kind of consciousness to the one most celebrated in our society- the free, untrammelled, achieving self. Children call out the best in us, requiring us to put our energies on behalf of others, and forcing us to think most deeply about what we value. And from “the ramshackle life of a mother”, as Joanna Murray Smith once expressed it, a strong sense of self may emerge.’
What do I value most deeply? How my children grow up, the sort of people they become. Not my financial situation or my status in the eyes of the world. I think what Bennetts misses is how shallow these things appear when compared to the small people who see me and my partner as the centre of the universe.
I found this post at Mombian where I posted this comment: “This, the competitive attitude from ‘working mothers’, has been a situation I have found myself in as a stay at home mom who also happens to work from home. Many friends and family members have tried to ’set me up with a job’ over the years, and I feel like screaming sometimes! Now I tell them I already work 3 shifts, I couldn’t possibly take on any more! HaHa I would love it if my wife could stay at home full time, that is something we are working towards by focusing on our ‘estate planning’. When I was in a straight marriage, ‘estate planning’ came automatically, but in the end after the divorce I didn’t have anything, not even state disability, he accrued it all. Now I am working towards a career in my spare time, on the side of my ‘career’ as a mom. In any case, the double standard lives on! Too bad.”
As for “safeguards you can put in place to protect your finances and ability to return to the workforce” I suggest (and this may sound corny!) taking classes and/or volunteering in your spare time as well as maintaining your social connections. The last thing you want is for your skills to get rusty, your resume to have a time gap with no activity, and your ability to interact in an adult conversation to fade away as the children grow. They start out as lil ones, but they will be adults one day and will learn from your ‘model’. I try to give my children a good example of love, family, and career in being a work at home mom. Plus the book Rich Dad Poor Dad is a good one for a new perspective on money, assets, and ‘The American Dream’. PS Great post!
(I’m standing here feeding the children, thinking about this post)
I wanted to add, I intended to go back to work part time when the children were three months old. Now they’re nine months old and I’m trying to work out how at least one of us can be at home with them for the first three years.
Another thing Bennetts misses is the shift of focus once you are a parent. As feminists, we are used to thinking of ourselves as the oppressed group. ‘These are my rights and I have to claim them.’ In comparison to children, though, we are the powerful group and they are the voiceless. As a parent I think most people naturally move to considering their needs, as the kids can’t fight for their rights and needs themselves. This can look like sacrifice, I suppose. But I have put myself out for other powerless groups – Australian rainforests and refugees in detention centres have been passions of mine – and I wouldn’t do less for my children. And the perspective I have reached is that children have a ‘right’ and a need for their parents, pretty much full time, during the first three years.
And also a right to be responded to when crying, so I must go!
For those parents who have made the decision to stay home and now want to return to work, see Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work. At home dads,don’t be discouraged by the “Moms” in the title – the strategies are relevant regardless of gender. Also, mid-career professionals on career break in the Washington,D.C. area should attend the Career Relaunch Forum, an all day return to work conference on November 12, 2008, at George Washington University. More info at http://www.careerrelaunch.com, and http://www.iRelaunch.com
First, thanks for the warm wishes on the arrival of our baby.
I really appreciate all the comments and certainly agree that I’m writing this before the fact. My views are bound to change when this sweet baby arrives. And as Dana and Jennifer framed so nicely, there isn’t any one generic experience when it comes to motherhood and work.
That said, the financial dependency part is a big concern for me. I wouldn’t ask it of Jeanine, nor would Jeanine want it of me. I’m sure I would feel the same way if I had married a man, so for me personally, it has nothing to do with gender or sexuality. Dependency is frightening (in my opinion and experience) and that’s the part I wrestle with: how do you balance this with the responsibility of parenthood? I’m not sure. But I will soon find out.
Thanks for the interesting thoughts and for sharing your experiences. I hope this thread continues to grow because it makes for a valuable conversation and one where I’m sure to return to and review often in the coming year.
The perspective I’ll throw out here, as someone with a child now in middle school, is that juggling work and childcare/parenting gets more complicated as kids get older, not less. My son attended the same daycare center for years, and while the cost was high, I didn’t have to worry about other logistics except for sickdays. But once school-age comes, then it’s a matter of piecing together care for before-school, after-school, half-days, summer vacation, school vacation weeks, minor holidays, and snow days. I negotiated a flexible-hours work arrangement with my employer when my son started grade school, and so I’ve been home with him after-school for the last 5 years. I also accrue enough vacation time to help cover some of the minor holidays and school vacation times. If I had been out of the workforce when my son was younger and then tried to re-enter it in my current field, I would not have been able to get the considerations around scheduling and vacation hours that I received as an established employee. Similarly, several of my son’s friends have moms who quit their jobs when the kids were babies and planned to re-enter the workforce when their kids started grade school. Those babies are now in middle school, and the moms still have not found jobs that offer them sufficient flexibility for them to go back. A few work very, very part time (<10 hours per week) but none at anything with significant financial benefit.
In my opinion, I also feel that having time available for hands-on parenting matters much more now that my son is older. Daycare can do a fine job of teaching universal lessons like not to bite and how to share. The lessons my son is learning now (dealing with dishonest friends, coping with homework and changes in school, relating to girls, talks about sex and drugs and alcohol and death and love and religion) are all much more complicated. So I’m glad that I now have more time at home to teach him my values on things that aren’t as universal as “don’t bite.” I also have time to help him get involved in extra-curricular activities that promote our values. For example, twice a month we do set-up at the local soup kitchen; we couldn’t do this if I worked until 5:00 every day.
When I hear mothers of young children talk about their plans to stay home until the kids start school, I wonder how they have weighed that option against the financial and emotional benefits of working full-time when the kids are young, and then cutting back when the kids are older. Staying home when kids are young and then working a substantial part-time job for the (many more) years they are school-age may sound like the perfect compromise, but in practice, I have met almost no moms who actually pulled it off.
Great post Nina. I’ve really enjoyed reading all of the comments. It’s a lot to think about, and certainly something that I will be digesting for a while.