Can women have it all by choosing to stay home?
But what if all the fighting is just too much? That is, what if a woman isn’t earning Facebook money but the salary of a social worker? Or what if her husband works 80 hours a week, and her kid is acting out at school, and she’s sick of the perpetual disarray in the closets and the endless battles over who’s going to buy the milk and oversee the homework? Maybe most important, what if a woman doesn’t have Sandberg-Slaughter-Mayer-level ambition but a more modest amount that neither drives nor defines her? …
Meanwhile, what was once feminist blasphemy is now conventional wisdom: Generally speaking, mothers instinctively want to devote themselves to home more than fathers do. (Even Sandberg admits it. “Are there characteristics inherent in sex differences that make women more nurturing and men more assertive?” she asks. “Quite possibly.”) If feminism is not only about creating an equitable society but also a means to fulfillment for individual women, and if the rewards of working are insufficient and uncertain, while the tug of motherhood is inexorable, then a new calculus can take hold: For some women, the solution to resolving the long-running tensions between work and life is not more parent-friendly offices or savvier career moves but the full embrace of domesticity. “The feminist revolution started in the workplace, and now it’s happening at home,” says Makino. “I feel like in today’s society, women who don’t work are bucking the convention we were raised with … Why can’t we just be girls? Why do we have to be boys and girls at the same time?” She and the legions like her offer a silent rejoinder to Sandberg’s manifesto, raising the possibility that the best way for some mothers (and their loved ones) to have a happy life is to make home their highest achievement.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
When I first graduated from college, I got a job as an administrator on a mainframe-based software library. There was a group in my department that was building a PC-base version of the same library system. They thought a lot of the features of the mainframe version were unnecessary so they dropped those features in the PC version only to find out later there was a good reason for those to be there. They spent a lot of time saying “Oh, so that’s why they did it that way.”
Odysseus on March 19, 2013 at 8:12 PM
I have an idea. Pitch a provocative query within the most limited paradigm and pretend to call it writing.
Capitalist Hog on March 19, 2013 at 8:15 PM
argh that is a long article, i’m not reading it all. but just from looking at the excerpt, i probably wouldn’t like it if i read it, anyway.
but i just want to say, i am so sick of all the articles on this topic. why can’t we just let each woman do what she feels is the best lifestyle choice for her situation? women who work outside the home need to stop criticizing women who stay at home and assuming that they are lazy and controlled by their husbands. and women who stay at home need to stop criticizing women who work outside the home, and assuming that that’s not how they naturally want to be, and that they are being too selfish and don’t love their families as much.
i am so sick and tired of BOTH SIDES of this debate.
Sachiko on March 19, 2013 at 8:18 PM
Who is stopping you? You didn’t even read the article but you’re complaining about being limited in some way by its ideas. FAIL!
Capitalist Hog on March 19, 2013 at 8:21 PM
Children need a mom.
Feminism was never about the workplace. Feminists hated the family, men, children, being a woman, etc. Any and all reminders that women and men are different because differences always put a roadblock in the Leftist agenda. The Personal Is Political, remember?
If staying at home advanced the agenda, then the feminists would have done that.
INC on March 19, 2013 at 8:25 PM
My wife got her degree, then her masters and promptly entered the professional working world. She found Christ and shortly afterwards, found me.
She always wanted to be a mother. To her, that after her faith and marriage were most important. Her degree was something she’s interested in and she loves, but it’s for income, not for life.
We started a family and she’s been the bread winner, but along the way she desired to stay home. She grew jealous of me and my time with the kids.
Our plan and effort now is for me to eventually become the bread winner and her to stay home. This is where she’s truly wanted to be all along.
Nothing saying women can’t work, but I don’t think it’s in their true nature to really want to work.
*ducks* and runs…
Logus on March 19, 2013 at 8:27 PM
Yes, they can have it all, if they stay in my home, and they are Swedish.
Seth Halpern on March 19, 2013 at 8:31 PM
THIS. So. Much This.
Women can choose to be an astronaut or a housewife or anything in between. What a woman ultimately decides to do with her life will be dependent on her individual circumstances. What works for one woman and her family is not necessarily the best thing for another, and that’s something that must be worked out within the family itself.
Welcome to the 21st century, ladies and gentlemen.
/Also, in before the HotAir Morality Police(tm)
DangerHighVoltage on March 19, 2013 at 8:31 PM
Get a job.
Capitalist Hog on March 19, 2013 at 8:32 PM
…outside the home once they’ve had a child/children. All women work. Now, you can *duck* and run…
Fallon on March 19, 2013 at 8:33 PM
I fully agree.
INC on March 19, 2013 at 8:35 PM
I had a couple of great-aunts who were career women in fields populated by men at a time when it was unheard of. I think one was born in the late 1800s, at least before 1904. I believe the other was born sometime in the 1910s. I learned some things from seeing what’s happened in previous generations. Children pay a price.
INC on March 19, 2013 at 8:36 PM
This
Connie on March 19, 2013 at 8:41 PM
My mother worked her a** off so that I could be given a better quality of life. I turned out ok. And a lot of kids I knew with a stay-at-home mom were dysfunctional as all getout.
/Anectdotes posted on the internet are a funny thing, and they don’t equal data.
DangerHighVoltage on March 19, 2013 at 8:45 PM
How fantastically self actualized some feminists are.
h a p f a t on March 19, 2013 at 8:49 PM
so if a dad works outside the home it is perfectly fine, but if a mom does the exact same thing she is hurting her kids in some way? ahaha wow okay
they need a dad too. and there are many dads who work outside the home but no one complains. people only complain when a mom does it.
i read the excerpt and the beginning, so i know what the article is about… i am not taking the time to read the entire thing, it’s so long and i already know what it’s going to say because there are 100 other articles about this! and i never said i felt limited. i’m just annoyed.
so you think you can make a generalization about a woman’s “true nature” just because of one woman. wow. this is why i hate this topic.
exactly…
Sachiko on March 19, 2013 at 9:26 PM
Logus on March 19, 2013 at 8:27 PM
The sound of a crying baby is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Motherhood was never in my ‘true nature’. I had to work at it. My true nature prefers the company of animals and adults. I ENJOY working-even if it’s just some piddly Walmart job. Spawn was raised by his dad because I just wasn’t cut out to be a full-time mom. Spawn’s a great guy and we have a great relationship…now that he’s an adult.
annoyinglittletwerp on March 19, 2013 at 10:26 PM
DangerHighVoltage on March 19, 2013 at 8:31 PM
THANK YOU!
annoyinglittletwerp on March 19, 2013 at 10:27 PM
Working on it.
Biblically, yes.
My wife thought I’d be better at raising the kids at home than her. In many respects I’m more patient. That said, six years + on, I’m ready to be out of the house and around the same time she realized she’s ready to be home.
Logus on March 19, 2013 at 10:39 PM
Feminism failed to deliver from the start because it trashed womanhood as it pertained to family and home, and never acknowledged that “women’s work” was, well….work. The demands of family, home, and the household are enormous.
Feminism demanded that women take on a masculine role in society in order to have worth and to achieve “equality”. The whole concept is fraught with deception. Why not try to be the best woman that any particular woman can be, and stop falling for the model that suggests that being “equal” to a man is the highest honor a woman can achieve? It is so belittling, I am more surprised when women, smart women, fall for it.
Saltysam on March 19, 2013 at 11:06 PM