Anne Marie Slaughter, "Unfinished Business", work/family balance, and related topics

Parent Cafe
61

“PG, do you talk with the SAHMs that you mentioned in #48, enough to get to know them?”

I know a lot of them. Some of them have their own challenges in life (chronically ill parents, “hidden” disabilities, etc.). Others would be the first to tell you that their lives are relatively easy in the scheme of things – if they have healthy children, a happy marriage, enough money to be able to outsource cleaning and go to restaurants frequently. Good for them! I don’t begrudge them one bit.

Some SAHM’s have it far easier than me, some (like frazzled2thecore) have it far harder. Some WM’s have it far easier than me, others (like the single mom who schleps her kids on 2 buses to daycare and gets docked pay if she’s 5 minutes late to work) have it far harder. t’s not a competition, though.

62

PG, I’m not saying it’s a competition. I think the comments that you posted about SAHM’s are a caricature of a small number of very wealthy women, if not zero once you get to know them.

63

Of course. Just like Alice at the diner and Sheryl Sandberg are both working mothers but their lives aren’t anything alike.

64

"Once kids are in full day elementary school, SAHMs have a lot of open time. Many then work part time, some spend a lot of time (almost equivalent to a job) on volunteering in the schools, on the PTO or in their kid’s activities. But the reality is that many that live in suburban enclaves have a lot of free time. No judgement, but that certainly seems to be what my friends do, especially now that their kids are in HS. "

Exactly. These women chose to SAH precisely because they wanted / valued that free time. After all, I’m retiring at the end of the year at the age of 50. Precisely because I too want more free time.

65

Alh - sorry I neglected to answer your q - yes I did read Fun Home and enjoyed it. Found it poignant and thought- provoking and wasn’t as put off by the graphic novel format as I expected. Thanks for asking.

66

PG: Do you think you might have time and interest to read this one?

FallGirl: Do you think AMS is trying to build consensus among everyone as to the importance of caregiving AND competing, and avoid the us vs. them routine sort of media spin? Do you think when she describes how she came kind of late to value the caregiving her female relatives have done, that was an exaggeration used to help readers identify with her?

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/09/anne_marie_slaughter_s_unfinished_business_getting_america_to_value_care.html

I think it is important to emphasize, she doesn’t present this as a woman’s problem. Over and over she gives examples of male caregivers. She is arguing for caregiving not to be gendered. And she wants to support everyone making the best contribution they can to society. She is quite offended by the idea she opted out or went on a mommy track.

adding:

67

"Slaughter seeks to dismantle what she terms “the competitive mystique”—the idea that jobs in finance and law are more difficult and fulfilling than teaching, nursing, or being a stay-at-home parent. "

False dichotomy.

Those things are not more difficult at a universal level - they are more difficult or more fulfilling (or less difficult and / or less fulfilling) at the individual level.

For some women, a job in finance is more difficult than being a SAHM and for other women a job in finance is less difficult than being a SAHM - because of who they are and how they are constructed and what makes them tick and where their interests are.

Similarly, a job in finance is more fulfilling for some women than being a SAHM, and for some women it’s far less fulfilling than being a SAHM.

I would find being a preschool teacher hard. Because I don’t particularly like a lot of little kids and a lot of noise. That isn’t a commentary on whether it’s “hard” in the absolute - it just requires a different skill set from the one I have.

My whole problem is that we’re trying to come up with some kind of absolute scale of difficulty and/or absolute scale of fulfillment and applying that to all people. Is being a costume designer on Broadway “harder” than being a therapist or a financial analyst or running a restaurant? It’s just a nonsensical question.

68

And again, it’s not a competition. If Francie Financial-Analyst decides that she wants to take it easier for a while and step off the career track and become a SAHM - that that serves her own / family needs at the moment - why is that perceived as a slam on Francie? If Francie’s husband is good with it, that’s all that matters. She needn’t wear sackcloth and ashes to prove how hard she’s working.

69

“Evolving to value care would mean that men do as much, if not more, housework and child care as women (and that women learn to cede control at home and allow men to step up).”

One thing I always, always felt was that my H was an equal partner in our parenting - the type of person he is, he wouldn’t have settled for anything less. This made it a lot easier - even though I handled more of the day-to-day stuff, and thought more strategically (who else enrolled the kids in soccer class, planned the birthday parties, bought the school clothes, etc.) I didn’t feel it was all on me.

70

@PG - I also thought frazzled H did his best in a difficult situation, even though I was the one who got the “come pick up your kid from school ASAP” phone calls. He was usually the one to get the other two out of the house, since it would have been overwhelming to come home from work AND then take care of a non-verbal child who needed constant attention. Sometimes he took our autistic child out alone or stayed up through the night with him on week-ends, and our S as a grown man continues to adore his father.

But, every time we explored the possibility that I might have been happier and healthier having a career outside of the house, we could not figure out the logistics that would have made that work. And onlookers still thought he should have been “doing more.” He really could not have dialed back his career any further, working less than around 60 hours per week and refusing travel, and still kept a job with benefits, though.

Now, frazzled D is quite frank that she would rather live the life that H has lived, than my life, and have a spouse as either a SAHP or anchor parent, even if there is no special needs child involved. We are not sure how that will be affordable even without a special needs kid, in this economy. For now, she is struggling to get herself established. At least she does not have student loans - that was our gift to her.

alh - just finished the book, it seemed to be a quick tour of what she sees from her own personal experiences and the experiences of those close to her, of similar educational backgrounds and SES, and with similar levels of care giving responsibilities.

I think she over-romanticizes care giving. There is plenty of competition among those in care giving professions.
There is also very high Gini among those in care giving even though the caps on highest income are lower than in other professions. (A psychiatrist makes less than an internist - who in turn makes less than a hedge fund manager - but far more than a behavioral therapist, who in turn makes far more than an hourly aide who might also have a Master’s degree.)

Part of my wish list -

I would like to see a career path open up that values skills gained from entry-level care giving positions. This type of thing has been put into place by behavioral therapists who work with families in homes.

I would also like to see more professionals in health care required to participate in this type of care giving in early stages of their career.

I would like to see more options open that do not entail contract labor, and provide good benefits.

I would like to explore the option of providing social security credits to care givers and assistance in re-entering the work force, although the latter would be stymied by the current economy of limited jobs and surplus workers, especially outside of care giving roles.

71

frazzled2thecore - Thank you for taking the time to read the book. I hope you are writing one of your own. We all need it. Thank you for posting your story.

YES. This social security credit/medicare credit issue has come up in my extended family for individuals who opted out to care for elderly parents.

I wondered if anyone was going to point that out. It struck me as well. Your wish list looks excellent to me.

72

I agree that AMS does romanicize caregiving professions.

I still don’t know what the solution is but I feel strongly that if a critical mass of men saw these issues as problems perhaps the workplace culture would change.

73

I think sometimes the discussion (not this discussion - the discussion in general) conflates the tasks of actual caregiving/caring for others with the tasks of homemaking.

74

PG: Please read the book :slight_smile:

75

DH are both engineers, and we managed raising our two kids. Usually we just had minor stresses. (The toughest time of our marriage was the year when he was unemployed, despite working hard to find another job. I was ever so thankful that we had good savings and benefits and my salary)

Things that made it easier

  • we both saw parenthood as a t bi-ionthly house cleaner
  • short commutes, workplace close to home and schools… child care center in school district
  • we could afford good childcare and bimonthly housecleaner
  • my mom lived in town and could do emergency coverage for a mildly ill kid if needed

These days with more job turnover, it will be harder for young couples to ensure short commutes long term.

76

@alh - I have thought of writing a book. The market is actually quite limited for stories such as mine, though, and far better writers than I have written accounts of living this type of life and gone unpublished, having been told by publishers that the market can only support a very occasional story of this kind among parent-authored stories of success and recovery, guides to interventions, accounts by high-functioning people with autism, and overviews of the history of autism.

I would suggest that anyone interested in how families might respond to this level of autism begin with Boy Alone (Karl Taro Greenfeld) or Far From the Tree (Andrew Solomon) or take a look at films such as The Black Balloon (Australian.) There are others, but these are my favorites.

A family with a teen who hopes to find a career working with this population might look for an opportunity for the young person to get paid as a mother’s helper in a family such as ours. We hired several, and a few have gone on to become professionals working with this population. Others might expect at some point in their lives to care for a disabled or elderly relative such as a parent with dementia, and still others have said that much of what they learned is very much applicable to more typical situations.

There is also the matter of privacy for my family and extended family, especially since few are self-employed or retired, and that of professionals who worked and negotiated with us with the trust and expectation that meetings would remain private. Years ago my lawyer suggested that I turn to fiction as a vehicle of discussing some of these issues, but I would not have the skill.

There is still the mountain of paperwork that families such as ours tend to accumulate, including professional evaluations, some boiler plate and some thoughtful, old iep’s mostly boilerplate but some ghost written by myself when special educators were willing or able to be cooperative but did not know where to begin, invoices from professionals, daily logs sent home from school with my responses, correspondence from agencies, schools, and attorneys, data sheets from our home program, notes taken at conferences, and progress reports from private therapists. For years, I also found a release through a personal journal. Quite a bit of it seems quaint and dated, in light of changing fads in autism treatment.

It is mostly in hard copy. I am going through this and wondering how much I should leave for my other children to examine through mature eyes, whether I should attempt to pass it on to a graduate student looking for a dissertation topic, whether I should annotate with what I have learned in hindsight, or whether I should shred because it would cause more pain to family members, or as part of my overall campaign to lighten up our load of possessions in preparation for downsizing.

77

@colorado_mom - Interesting to hear your perspective.

What seems to worry my kids and most of their peers is that “two body problem” - the difficulty two engineers or other STEM professionals anticipate in finding jobs in the same general geographical area, added to uncertainties about long-term employment prospects outside of engineering management (and even within.)

I will also mention that mothers with engineering degrees seem over-represented within the autism community. Perhaps it is that these types of parents are more likely to be visible. Few of these seem to maintain employment if their child has any significant degree of school difficulties.

78

Frazzled2thecore, Thank you for the book recommendations. Thank you for your posts. I understand your privacy concerns. Please think about all the ways your papers may benefit future generations before you destroy any of them. We have lost so many women’s voices. Yours is important.

79

The geographical area is a consideration. SIL is in a profession (health care management) which exists almost everywhere, but D’s profession (publishing) exists in more limited areas. They are taking this under consideration for the future. I have also discussed portability of “skills” rather than specific jobs with D in order to find future employment if they relocate. Not sure if this would be applicable in STEM fields.

80

I agree with @alh Please don’t shred. There must be a way to translate this into print that would protect your privacy. I think your story would be meaningful to many. If you feel that your writing skills are not up to the task, you might find a writer or scholar with whom you could collaborate. Quiet, daily heroism should not go undocumented.