I don't think having children really fits well with the feminist paradigm. While tricky, it's certainly possible to change the world and raise children at the same time, I just get the sense that a personification of the women's movement might say something like "Well you certainly can do that, and more power to you if you can!". It seems like child-rearing is relegated to a hobby that distracts from the real work, like gardening or going to the symphony. I don't think there are many people actively hostile toward mothering, but it just doesn't seem all that valued in society.
For example, suppose an individual took child development and nutrition classes because it would help make them a better parent. Would that garner the same lever of respect as, say, studying for the bar or going to french club.
If parenting isn't valued, but a lot of it still has to go on, the result isn't a happy contented society.
I learned a lot about parenting from an amazing man I met in Barcelona. His son and he were staying in the same hotel as me, they were traveling Europe together after he just graduated college.
His son met a really cute Czech girl in Spain, so Dad rightfully gave him space. But the father and I really hit it off, so we'd sit at a Spanish bar and eat tortilla sandwiches and drink coffee and we had some really interesting chats. He's a very successful real estate developer from Los Angeles, even post-crash. He converts rental properties into vacation properties, which is a lot more work but can generate 3x-7x stable rents. (Of course, you've got to rent/clean/maintain/etc - definitely more active and risky money than standard landlording).
He told me about his family. After having his second son was born about 15 years ago, his wife got depressed and wanted to get out of the marriage and family life ASAP. She was breaking down mentally, basically, and wanted to run - fast.
So the man says, "I understand, that's fine, but you can't support yourself right now, and you'll need to be able to do that before we can get divorced. Even if I take the kids, they'll still spend a lot of time with you and you need to have a clean, nice place and income so they can have a nice life with you and be proud." She got into a nursing program, and got either a certificate or a degree in nursing. By the time she finished 2-4 years later, she's cleared up. They had another child and went on to both be very happy and successful. She pulls down $80k/year now as a nurse, and they've done very well investing too. His son seems like a hell of a guy, thoughtful, mature, intelligent, cultured, poised. The Dad's a very cool guy too. A good family.
One thing he told that made a lot of sense - "Sebastian, you've got to understand, kids are the most selfish, ungrateful creatures in the world when they're young. All they do is demand, demand, demand things, and they're not grateful at all. Later they realize and appreciate what you've done for them, but a woman who just raises kids pours in so much effort for so little gratitude and appreciation and respect...." He goes on to explain how the regular praise, promotions, and the steady paycheck are instant rewards and validations from work, and help a person's self esteem. He thinks any woman would do well to have at least some part time work or project that she gets respect, appreciation, and validation from - because kids won't provide that until they're 20+, and you need to not go crazy in the meantime.
Maybe now in the West, society doesn't value parenting as much as traditionally, so women get even less respect for being a good parent now. Not sure about that myself - if that's true, then it's even harder to raise children than historically. But his points really resonated with me - I've talked about it with all the girls I've dated. I personally date two types of women - hyper-driven, top of the game, ambitious high performance girls, and quite traditional, feminine, nurturing girls - and usually not much in between. But all of them, with some talking to, come to agree about keeping a part time project to help women stay sane. If I make my life with a traditional woman who is happy to be just a good mother and keep a good household, it'll still be good for her to do a little bit of work for the validation that comes from that. Even something small like teaching a one hour class twice a week, or doing some flower arranging for a couple local small businesses. Same with driven women - they'd go crazy if they completely hung up their spurs and only raised kids.
I'm probably a bit more traditional than most American men from the international cities - I place a lot of respect and value on having a woman who is very in tune with my emotions after a long day, can cook well, can clean and mend clothing well, and has mastered the other domestic skills, which I consider quite invaluable. It's less important to have hyper-intellectual conversations with my girl or play Chess with her - I get plenty of that with my male friends anyway. But even if I take the most traditional, old world European or Japanese girl to make a life with, I still think something that provides her that instant positive feedback is very good for happiness.
>> So the man says, "I understand, that's fine, but you can't support yourself right now, and you'll need to be able to do that before we can get divorced..."
The wife was well within her rights to say "screw you" to the guy, file for divorce with a contingency lawyer, and get a bunch in child support and income equalization from the guy - and probably custody too if she put a bit of effort in.
I'm with you on how ugly the family court system can be, but this one's a bit different. She didn't want the kids - she wanted to leave because she was going crazy. I'm pretty sure he/they weren't wealthy yet at that point either. She wanted to leave the kids with him, end the marriage, and move on. She was in a full blown panic/depression/something like that.
Most men would freak out there. Instead of taking it personally, he was practical about it and helped put her through school, saying that the kids came before both of them, and she needed to be able to support herself. He didn't make her feel trapped or beg her or insult her, he just set about practically so they could run two households effectively if they needed to. It turned out, they didn't need to, now they run one very successful household.
I really admire his stoic practicality there. In a place where a lot of men would freak out, he was calm, sympathetic, yet unfailingly practical. He was willing to have his marriage end on a practical note, but instead it wound up keeping his marriage together and building a very strong family. A very, very insightful guy, I was very lucky to cross paths from him and get the opportunity to learn some really important lessons.
He was clever. If he invested that time and money and she still wanted out, her salary would be much closer to his, which would have worked out in his favor when it came time to calculate child support or alimony. It's possible (maybe unlikely) that if she had made more than him that _he_ could have ended up receiving money in the divorce.
In fact, I can't see a down side in this case for either (adult) party -- being poor and uneducated with child support is inferior to being relatively self-wealthy with modest child support, so it was a win for her.
There's a value to raising your children yourself; a stay-at-home parent can focus on the needs of the children and spend more time on giving them a first class childhood experience. If the relationship is headed for the wall, however, it surely is superior to do this at the expense of trying to continue stay-at-home parenting.
People play endless games with the word "right" here, to the point that the word is meaningless. Do you have the "right" to be as dedicated to work as a childless 21-year-old whose primary goal in life is to climb a corporate ladder? Then, perhaps, "feminism" says "no children for you!" Or perhaps it demands free child care, then demands that your relationship to the child not suffer when you're not the primary caregiver.
Note how I scarequoted the word "feminism" since it would only be one particular variant of an itself-poorly-defined word. (That variant definitely does exist, though.) Such a variant would argue that you have lost a multitude of such "rights", which you may not agree with.
Nobody (or close enough it doesn't matter) is saying that you've lost anything like "the right to free speech" or any such "natural right" because you have a baby. (I personally would say you have a responsibility to it, but that goes equally for the father too. I say this as a father, but then, "parents have responsibility to their children" shouldn't be too controversial to most people.)
I beg to differ. Feminism is described as a poorly defined term only by people who wish it were so, probably out of the irrational fear that equal rights for men and women will somehow lead to the end of the world as we know it. Let's look at facts here:
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Feminism: The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
Encarta Dictionary:
Feminism: Belief in the need to secure rights and opportunities for women equal to those of men
Encyclopedia Britannica:
Feminism: Social movement that seeks equal rights for women.
Wikipedia:
Feminism: A political discourse aimed at equal rights and legal protection for women.
Likewise, when people talk about equal rights, they usually mean equal rights under the law. What's the point of discussing silly made-up rights such as "the right to be as dedicated to work as a childless 21-year-old whose primary goal in life is to climb a corporate ladder"?
I'm sorry, I hate to break it to you, but citing dictionary definitions doesn't actually prove anything. Go out and look at real political discourse, and tell me that, well, almost any political term is actually well-defined in practice. Conservative, liberal, democrat, republican, socialist, fascist, feminist, racist, you name it, the term has been virtually stripped of meaning. People slinging the term like an insult, people wrapping themselves in the term to score political points, academics deconstructing the term for fun. See also: denotation vs. connotation
Heck, I'll even cut you a break and let you just use the discourse that appears in those gloriously-editor-mediated "major media outlets" without having to muck about with the hoi polloi that wouldn't know what the OED was if you (laboriously) hit them with it; it's still the same result.
"What's the point of discussing silly made-up rights"
Well, to take one silly made-up right that has been the topic of much recent political discourse, there's the "right to healthcare" that has been making the rounds, which certainly can't be found in the Constitution or any discussion of rights of any significant age (such as the classic discourse of the Founding Fathers or Enlightenment philosophers), unless you squint really, really hard.
And, if you feel that isn't a silly, made-up right, well, I'm sure you can manage to find someone who will say "the right to pursue a career unfettered by non-gender-fair obligations like childbirthing" isn't either. "Right" has been ill-defined for a long time; it fits right in to that list I gave above. (Which, by the way, is a heavily abridged list; as I said, you name the term it's probably been stripped of all meaning, used to signify group membership more than any original denotation it may have ever had, with only rare people using it "correctly", and they not understood by any but those other rare people who use it "correctly".)
Like jerf said what dictionaries say does not matter.
In practice I see that feminists are like various fonbois seen here, they go on and on about their pet topic, they are very easily provoked. It is as if they are finding an excuse to start a pissing contest of arguments.
I don't think a woman who is a happy and proud 'housewife' (and there are _many_) fits well with the definitions of those feminist fonbois. And about equality: aping men is not equality its lack of self-worth. Women are different. What their traditional role was was and is respectable too. The way they were (even now in some regions) treated by society is very deplorable. The ideal society would certainly be when women are given equal rights and respect. But they shouldn't be expected to get a full-time job to prove anything.
Men and women aren't equal. Men can't have babies. Who is going to secure the opportunity for a man to give birth?
And they don't have equal rights under the law. For example, say a man and a woman have sex and make a baby and the man says, "I can't support this child, I think you should have an abortion." Well, he can't make her do that, but she can still sue him for child support. But if he says, "I do not want you to have an abortion." She still can.
Would you argue, that with equal rights under the law, a father of a child should have equal say in whether or not a child he has conceived should be aborted? Do you think a man should have the right to force a woman to give birth to the child, take custody of it, then require her, by law, to pay child support?
If you ever want to understand the differences between men and women, read some books by women who have received testosterone to undergo sex changes to become men. They say things like "I became more interested in my career and earning money. I understood math and science better. I became more interested in technology and machines and less interested in people, etc."
It's quite fascinating stuff and makes you realise how different the sexes are.
I've never heard things like this. Do you have some sources? Something like that would be a real hit to our social system that fired Larry Summers from Harvard for saying there may be differences in aptitude in the sciences between men and women for biological reasons.
It is relatively easy to measure the outcome of studying for the bar or going to French club. Clear benefits seem like a good explanation for society's willingness to ascribe high value to these activities, compared to activities with less measurable results.
"it does not take well-developed political skills to rule over creatures smaller than you are, weaker than you are, and completely dependent upon you for survival or thriving."
Truly spoken as someone who has not spent much time caring for children. At least, I hope not. The implication that being smaller than you gives you more power, only makes sense if you are going to consistently use physical force to ensure compliance. The fact they are completely dependent on you only gives you power if you are willing to keep basic necessities from them to coerce them into compliance.
Otherwise, political skills are going to be pretty darn handy at times.
Isn't the talk about feminism mostly useless? I think technology is what really drives things forward. Frozen food, washing machines, dishwashers, industrially produced cheap clothes and stuff like that is what "frees" women, not some philosophical discussions.
In former times it was not just evil, suppressive men that constructed society as it was. The role models were necessary for survival.
In these post-Lisa-Belkin-New-York-Times-Magazine-“Opt-Out” years, we’ve now learned the worst: even female Harvard graduates are fleeing high-powered careers for a kinder, gentler Martha Stewart Living. Not only does the Problem Have a Name, it has its own line of Fiestaware!
What? Huh? This article is written in such überhip language, I can't tell what it says.
Same here - after trying hard to read each long, pointless paragraph I was wondering: what is she saying? I gave up after the first third of the article.
There are few things worse than reading an article consisting almost entirely of obscure references, proper names, and (presumably) complex ideas, linked together by an extremely subjective thought process, and expressed in such an idiosyncratic style that only the author herself is likely able to make sense of it, while to anyone else it resembles the output of a victim of Wernicke's aphasia.
For those curious, as I was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptive_aphasia (also known as Vernicke's aphasia). Basically, these patients get words mixed up and speak funny sentences like the article.
I too thought it was superfluous hipster talk and got bored reading it. The point of the article in my mind was that after women's fighting for the choice to work, now they want to choose not to work.
Men are not better than women or the other way around. But we are different, that's just a fact. We have to behave accordingly then, instead of trying to ignore those differences.
Feminism gives women the right to choose their destiny in life. If they want grueling 8 hours in a cubicle over the "comfort" of being "taken care of" by a loving, all-providing Man, so be it.
Men constantly choose to have their cake and eat it too. They have careers, but they also have families. Men's right to choose the life they want is never questioned, so why are the life choices of women under such scrutiny?
"Men constantly choose to have their cake and eat it too. They have careers, but they also have families."
There's not much special about have-ing a family. Almost anyone can create children and/or get married. The question for both men and women is: what are we missing by allowing ourselves to be taken out of the home and sent our separate ways?
I (a man) ended up leaving my cube job fully convinced that a startup run from or very close to home is the next step towards my goal of a family business.
It's in the hands of the couple to choose which one of them needs to stay at home with the kids at any given day. (e.g. a female executive need not quit her high-paying job of if her novelist husband can stay at home during the day with the kids.)
However, it's often the case that women end up sacrificing their dreams and quit their jobs to raise kids, when the division of household labor is in fact an artificial one, a remnant of cultures and societies past.
In Russia, this problem was solved maybe in 1960s: A thick network of kindergardens will take care of children during workdays, while both parents work full-time.
You can also hang your children on their babushka, if she lives somewhere near.
Yep, I went to one of these kindergartens. They were highly functional, rather pedagogically rigourous (compared to American daycare / kindergarten), and kept your children from about 8 AM until about 7 PM. You could start sending your children there at about 2 1/2 and it was provided free by the state. Very convenient and good for all.
EDIT: Some of the most enjoyable moments of my entire life played out there. And I only went until I was 6 1/2 and we left for the US. Now I'm 23. So, the fact that I still remember them should tell the reader something; they were anything but drab in the way that Soviet institutions are sometimes imagined to be.
You can send your children into Ясли before they reach 2 1/2 - just another part of the same kindergarden. I don't remember being there, tho, but I doubt I could remember anything at that age.
I didn't really like kindergarden - I didn't like food and how you was supposed to sleep for a hour near noon. Toys were fine, tho.
It has its ups and downs. But it was engaging enough, socially.
This is one of the biggest cultural differences between Americans and Russians. In the Soviet Union, households in which women also worked arose a lot earlier (1920s), on the back of socialist reform specifically directed to the effect of women's equality. Obviously, certain things had to be done to make this logistically possible.
Meanwhile, Americans, despite their willingness to send their children to school-as-daycare at later ages, are notoriously unwilling to "have the state raise" [their children] at a very young age, and make much of the importance of supervising them prior to school age, in principle, even if they have to resort to expensive and largely useless daycare sometimes.
This approach doesn't prepare the children for the realities of their subsequent abandonment once they reach school age, whatever one thinks of it. In the USSR I remember it was common for 6 or 7 year old children to be latchkey kids, and they were generally deemed self-sufficient and functional, especially when backed by a community in which they certainly knew some neighbours and had somewhere to turn if they needed help. In contrast, the statutes of most US states deem it "child neglect" to leave your child unattended at home until 10 or 12, usually the latter.
I consider the "child neglest" laws to be a major consideration against having children, ever.
Unfortunately, they seem to spawn here and there like a plague.
I had a single mother and she loathed the feminist revolution. She said it was because of the feminists going back to work and creating dual income families that it was financially more difficult on single parents.
Before the feminist revolution, most families survived just fine on a single income, that of the father.
Well, that's just a single anecdote isn't it? I am a fucking Arab and I can tell you this; our economies are paralyzed because Arab nations are operating at half speed since women are pretty much outside the work force (or if they're working, they're underpaid, under utilized, or most bloody likely, worked to exhaustion but uncredited.)
The fact that here we have a group of men discussing the "problems" of feminism doesn't mean feminism is bad. It just means you guys don't like it; which is fine, you're not supposed to like an ideology that's out to make your social model of a benevolent-patriarch-at-the-helm obsolete. I come from a place where men's judgment and leadership has consistently failed.
Was it presented as data? I didn't realize that. Also, I didn't see any real data on your theory of Arab nations being at half speed because of the lack of women in the work force.
The fact that here we have a group of men discussing the "problems" of feminism doesn't mean feminism is bad.
Did anyone make that conclusion here, even implicitly?
You're not supposed to like an ideology that's out to make your social model of a benevolent-patriarch-at-the-helm obsolete.
Who are you talking to? Who here has put forward an ideology like that?
You obviously have very strong feelings on this subject. Let's keep it real and civil.
Allow me first to apologize to pj, he bore the brunt of my harsh out pour against a problem that I have to face on a daily basis. And in the same breath, allow me to express my disinterest in discussing feminism as a movement any further, without the presence of a good representation of its sole subjects, i.e. women. Without a sizeable representation of women in this forum there could never be a good dialogue about feminism ("good" here being highly subjective.)
I say this because I remember the days of the Bush administration, when an inbreeding of ideas and a biased "discussion" amongst a gang of highly like minded outsiders delivered the final verdict on the future of "us" Muslims, their de facto colonial subjects. I read columns from across the American political "divide" everyday, each supporting the last in mutual self-congratulating orgy, each explaining our "problem" and proposing very similar "solutions" to impose upon us; sometimes threatening, other times sympathetic, but always patronizing and paternalistic in its tone.
I never was a feminist, not still (I couldn't be even if I wanted to!) but at least now I understand not to "think" for the Other. Women's demand for self-empowerment is an issue squarely in their hands. They could argue amongst themselves all they want, but I as a man have learned better not to offer any unsolicited "feedback", having never experienced their condition.
Now let me answer you sofal.
Also, I didn't see any real data on your theory of Arab nations being at half speed because of the lack of women in the work force
I said above that I was addressing a "problem that I have to face everyday". The problems of the Arab world are numerous, but one thing we can both be certain of: the total absence of the female voice from every kind of leadership. Even with the lack of sufficient research and data, I can look across the landscape, or at least my Thunderbird contact list of several hundred executives, and I can't help but wonder if things would have been better with just one woman in their midst.
Also, asking for data about the Arab world is akin to sophistry, seeing how half of the nations there are U.S.-sanctioned tyrannies, and the other half are closed despotic regimes that would never allow for unfavorable research to see the light of day (you could do it once, but that's the end of your presence there.) Western "press" is safe to ignore the BIG offenders and abusers of human rights, and it can only wiggle its little "democratic" tail against a few, hand-selected and Western-approved "bad guys".
I've never crunched the numbers myself or seen any formal studies, but the perception that the second income in dual-income families usually goes right into costs that would have been avoided had someone stayed at home is pretty widespread. I don't mean to be rude by asking, but did your mother have the kind of help that married couples can take for granted (say, from extended family), or did she have to do it all herself?
"When I was in junior high school in Japan, I read an essay in a textbook by a Japanese woman who was critical of American feminism. To her, the American feminists cheapened the value of the traditionally female roles by implicitly assuming that traditionally male roles were nobler human endeavors. Instead of focusing on the value of traditionally female roles, they all focused on their rights to take on traditionally male roles. In that effort, they reinforced the notion that traditionally male roles were superior."
My grandmother helped watching me sometimes. Financially she did it all herself.
I had a step dad two times, neither of them worked much though. Contrary to the idea that two parents are better than one, I thought life was better when it was just mom and me. My grandmother was around a while. She watched over me during the summers sometimes and lived with us a while, but she wasn't reliable, so mom paid for baby sitting a couple years. The rest of the time I was latch key.
She also finished her degree while I was growing up. She'd take me to the college library with her. I was always frustrated by the lack of books for kids my age, but somehow I endured.
From the time I was 5, she had a good job with the government, so life was pretty stable. Except for the name calling, I only felt the effects of not having more money once. We were on the way back from her university and we stopped at a convenience store and I asked for a sandwich. She said we couldn't afford it. They were a special sandwich I really loved and not being able to afford it, I thought they must have cost $20 or something. Years later, when I was in high school I stopped and got one of those sandwiches for $2 and it hit me all of a sudden that we didn't have a lot of money.
Except for that, I always felt like I had all I wanted. Looking back, had we had more money, I probably would have had a computer growing up. Maybe I'd be better at programming, or maybe I'd have gotten bored with it. Who knows. I lived pretty rural, so our house was more than big enough. I worked during the summers as quickly as I could, so I had my spending money.
I think it actually helped me to be honest. Not having a lot as a kid and finding happiness anyway has helped me live frugally as an adult as well. I find cheap ways to run my startup as well.
I think today, most families have dual incomes and both parents are away most of the day. Mom was at home with me as much as parents are at home now, maybe even more. I never really felt like anything was missing.
For example, suppose an individual took child development and nutrition classes because it would help make them a better parent. Would that garner the same lever of respect as, say, studying for the bar or going to french club.
If parenting isn't valued, but a lot of it still has to go on, the result isn't a happy contented society.