article on opting out of parenthood for financial reasons

alh · November 16, 2012, 11:54pm

pg: If you and your husband were both working in challenging careers while your children were young, someone was taking care of the children. Correct? Wasn’t the individual or individuals taking care of your children “supporting” you (and your husband) in your work? Wasn’t childcare a necessity? Now - how did you in turn support that individual or individuals? With a salary? Let’s consider the difference between your salary (and your husband’s salary) and the usual salary of a childcare worker. If the childcare worker happens to have children, who takes care of them? Does she have to pay someone out of the salary you pay her?

Maybe your mom or mil took care of the kids. But it is sort of the same point. You probably didn’t get to have children and a career without support from some source, even if you were hiring it.

If you have small children and a job outside the home - someone has to take the responsibility for day to day hands on childcare for you to do your job.

Is that someone to value? and support?

the message board mommy wars are just a distraction
most mothers have to earn money to survive

Pizzagirl · November 17, 2012, 6:44am

Yes, i had paid childcare help to be able to work. To me, that’s a different relationship. I think we are using the word “support” in different ways.

alh · November 17, 2012, 9:03am

poetgrl Quote:

pg Quote:

Yes we are using support in different ways. We may not need the support and approval of society at large (or the other ladies in our neighborhood or the men in our offices) for our personal decision to either work outside the home or stay home with small children. We may need the support of others to realize that personal decision.

Having the ability to see that decision as a choice already means we belong to a very small slice of society.

poetgrl: I really liked that post.

Pizzagirl · November 17, 2012, 9:05am

Of course. But that’s still within the context of my family / household. 
What I’m asking is – all I hear is “we all need to support one another’s choices.” And my question is – how does that support manifest itself? If the woman down the street is a SAHM, what does it look like if I “support” her choice versus I don’t “support” her choice? Either way, she’s going to go do her thing as a SAHM. I’m just not understanding how “support for a choice” manifests itself, and why THIS particular choice requires that all my neighbors “support” it. We all make lots of life choices where no one cheerleads us and says you go girl.

The support that I need for my choice to work is support that I have to choose to go get (in the form of childcare, etc.). But the verbal support of women down the block who have nothing to do with my life – I’m not sure how it impacts me.

Put another way. I have zero idea if the women in my town “supported” me being a working mother or not. If they sat around and gossiped about how awful it was, well, I didn’t hear any of it, and it was the tree-falling-in-the-forest. But the same could be said if they sat around and gossiped how they didn’t like the color of my living room or the car that I drove. What is it about THIS choice that makes women feel that they need the approval of other women / mothers?

Pizzagirl · November 17, 2012, 9:20am

OK, fine - we cross-posted. But I don’t see how that’s different from any other life decision. I don’t need the “support” of the ladies down the block to buy a new car, but I need my husband’s support, since it’s a decision that impacts him and our finances and I’m not going to go buy a new car without his input and agreement. So now I feel we’re getting back to a statement of the obvious – of course we all need to take into account those who are personally affected by decisions in order to make them. But the working/SAHM decision isn’t just about that. There’s this broader need to want others who AREN"T CONCERNED feel “good” about the choice which I don’t get.

mythmom · November 17, 2012, 9:21am

pizzagirl: I understand your point, but in some towns the attitudes of other women can make a difference to a woman and her family’s well being.

Case in point, though from the dark ages.

My mother never drove us to school. We walked our half mile and that was that. One day there was a torrential downpour. (Worse than rain from Sandy but now wind. Really torrential.)

All the other kids got driven by their moms. None of the moms would pick us up because they disapproved of my mother.

Two very wet, bedraggled kids (my brother and me) struggled into school and shivered for an hour.

My mom claimed that she was “teaching us to be tough like she learned in Vt.” She claimed these suburban mothers were coddlers.

Fast foward a bunch of decades. What if those kids were walking to school because both parents had to leave early and the kids were home alone – left to get to school on their own. A supportive neighborhood would pick the kids up in the rain understanding that the mom was doing her best and did love her children and they supported the woman’s choices.

If the SAHM’s didn’t approve of the mom’s choices (for whatever reason – maybe they didn’t think she needed to work financially, maybe they thought she could provide better for the kids in the morning – whatever) they might let those kids get drenched. Fair to the kids? Of course not, but people can be strange.

I think it is noble to be a SAHM and run a household if one is so inclined and has sufficient means.

I think it is noble to be working to provide for a family.

I remember crying when I went back to work. One child was 4 and one was 2, and contractual leave was over. It was work or lose the job – a tenured, college teaching job – not something to lose.

I said to my H, “I can’t believe I am doing this to my kids.” His reply, “What if you are doing this FOR your kids?” which did turn out to be the case. I’m not sure it made me feel better, but it did introduce a new perspective.

I think we should all come from the assumption that without evidence to the contrary, moms love their kids and are making choices in their best interests.

I don’t think the kids suffered from me being at work; I think I definitely did, but that’s the role of a mom, to absorb some blows so her kids can thrive.

If that means a loss on the career ladder, so be it. If it means trudging to work every day – same.

Both can be sacrifices. Both can be joys.

I agree that we don’t need the support and cheers of other women, but it can be nice to have if it’s a tight knit community.

People unfold their own destinies. A daisy can not bloom as an iris and vise versa. I’d be lost without irisies, lilies, roses, daisies – you get the picture. We can only manifest ourselves and do the best we can with that.

Both my kids are following in my footsteps as academics (if they can get jobs.) This is an unforeseen consequence of all those early visits they made to my classrooms.

At the time when it was Columbus day I just wanted to be home with them pumpkin picking.

Pizzagirl · November 17, 2012, 9:27am

I think we all make our choices. And part of my choice to work at a reasonably high powered career involved making the choice that I simply wasn’t going to have / participate in any kind of neighborhood community. I’ve lived in my home for 20 years. I don’t know my neighbors much beyond superficial hellos, I don’t rely on them for much other than perhaps borrowing a ladder or something, I have never been to any of their homes for dinner and vice versa. It’s isolative in one regard, but it’s also protective in another, because I had only so much energy for my family and my job and my other friends (who don’t live in this immediate area) that I made a deliberate choice that I wasn’t going to be part of a neighborhood community. I like my town; it’s pleasant enough and all and the people are pleasant enough, but I just don’t have much to do with them in general. Most of me likes it that way, and a small part of me doesn’t but accepts it as the price I chose to pay.

mythmom · November 17, 2012, 9:27am

PS: I didn’t mean to imply that mothers who work outside the home for others reasons than stark financial pressure aren’t noble too.

They are modeling behavior for the children, demonstrating how to make one’s way in the world and maintaining a career that in most cases serves society in some way. I think that’s noble, too, and didn’t mean to imply anything to the contrary.

poetgrl · November 17, 2012, 9:33am

When I talk about “supporting” each other’s choices, it is a simple acknowledgement that, and for me there is no way to completely divorce this from political discourse, there simply isn’t, that, as a culture we are still figuring it out. When my grandmother was born it was the year women recieved the vote. She always told me, “I’ve been able to vote my whole life.” She didn’t take this for granted the way my kids do.

So, I say, everyone needs to make their own choices, and we all need to support this. Of course, as Alh points out, the fact is most women don’t have choices. I don’t believe that there’s a lot being written these days about men and their “choices,” though I know there has been some research and inquiry, lately, into the way their lives have been changed over the course of the last 40 years. However, I do not think that my supporting a woman’s choice to stay home with her family or to go to work or something inbetween is not political and global.

For women, like it or not, we are still figuring it out. And, between us, we are frequently our own most critical enemies.

More importantly, most importantly, the personal is political. There’s no getting away from that even if we attempt to pretend it is not so.

mythmom · November 17, 2012, 9:34am

pg: Well, that’s fine, if that’s what works.

We are in a tiny town. The graduating class at the HS was only 80 both years my kids graduated. I’m not sure someone can opt out, even if s/he wants to.

The mommy wars aren’t fierce here, so it’s a moot point here. We have three hospitals in a four mile radius and Brookhaven National Labs within a ten mile radius. We also have a major university four miles away.

So we have women scientists, professors, doctors. We also have SAHM doctors wives, scientists’ wives and professors’ wives. Of course, there are people doing other things, too. We are lucky that everyone gets a long, and everyone seems focused on the well being of the kids.

No lifts an eyebrow if a woman is off at a conference halfway around the world and no one lifts an eye brow if a woman has kids in for milk and cookies every day.

I do think it made raising the kids really nice that this amount of tolerance and cooperation existed.

Because there were so few kids in the graduating class, there were no class divisions and little academic competition. Jocks were friends with musicians (often the same people, sports teams and orchestras needed to be staffed) and there is a lot of personal choice.

I do think it improved life that we could all cooperate. Maybe not be a lot, but definitely perceptibly. Is that necessary for a happy life? No. But it was very welcome.

Pizzagirl · November 17, 2012, 9:35am

Ok, but I’m going to push back (nicely) - if moms who work are noble, and moms who SAH are noble, then what’s the definition of nobility? Then every one of us is noble just for getting up and getting through the day. Which is a grander sense is likely true, but makes it feel superficial to give someone plaudits for working or not working. Life is hard sometimes and we all slog through stuff. Does that make us noble? Or just human? I go back and forth on this.

mythmom · November 17, 2012, 9:36am

poetgrl: You are so young! I am making an assumption. My grandmother was 21 and a naturalized citizen the year women got the vote, and man or man, was she proud of casting that first ballot.

Pizzagirl · November 17, 2012, 9:40am

I guess given how I"ve structured my life, etc. wrt my community, if someone were to “lift an eyebrow” at me if I’m at a conference halfway around the world, I would have no clue whatsoever – and therefore their lifted eyebrows mean nothing. That’s the benefit of being more introverted. You just don’t need to be aware of whether other people not directly concerned “approve” or disapprove.

You know the threads we’ve had about showing up in the grocery store or Starbucks in sweats? Those of you on the one side have always talked about - but I don’t care if the other people in the grocery store don’t think I’m Miss-Put-Together all the time. That’s their problem, not mine. That’s kind of how I feel on this issue. I do recognize that I’m privileged enough to be able to put into place the kind of childcare help where I didn’t need to rely on neighbors (as in the driving-in-the-rain example).

poetgrl · November 17, 2012, 9:42am

Mythmom: I was born in an artist’s commune, if that helps you to date me. I’m not a babyboomer.

I don’t think supporting the rightness of women choosing (and men choosing, for that matter) the way they want to live is about finding others noble or not noble. But, I do find it kind of like the “my kid is special” statement. “Yes your kid is, and so is everyone else’s.”

But, I’m not personally looking at it as some elevated situation. I think we all do noble and not so noble things over the course of a lifetime. But, frankly, I did not go back to work for any noble reason. I went back to work because I could not have been a SAHM and stayed sane. Nothing noble in it. Just my choice.

ETA: Just for the sake of clarity, I really do not care what anybody thinks about the choices I make. I’m self evaluative this way.

zoosermom · November 17, 2012, 9:58am

I think the key is to be respectful and appreciative when we all cross paths. When my son “graduated” from fifth grade, there were a couple of moms on a graduation commitee who came up with the most creative, fun ways to celebrate over the entire year. Really amazing. I couldn’t have done it and my kid got to take full part even thought wasn’t a part of the planning or work. At the end of the year, I sent the moms a small gift with notes from my son and me. His life was better for their presence and I think it’s important for those women to know that what they did was appreciated. To me, welcoming my son is supportive of me and acknowledging them is a way of supporting a different option.

alh · November 17, 2012, 10:05am

This thread is really making me think about how we support each other. Basically, don’t we want women to be able to make any choice: mother or childfree, career or homemaker, etc.? At the same time, recognizing that choice is really a luxury for most?

I guess I think it very important young women have every sort of opportunity and choice in life, and all kinds of role models, and that we don’t put a higher value on any of those models, except as to how it is an individual “fit” for our personal inclinations and lives.

To make those opportunities and choices possible, it helps if society supports them. I am thinking about society encouraging women to work outside the home in industry during WWII. This was met with great approval in the media. PR campaigns were built around this need to get women into factories. When the men came home after the war, the PR campaigns did a 180 degree turn. The “right” place for women to be was in the home.

When the media glorifies homemaking, I get very uneasy and fear I’m being manipulated. Same thing tv or a news story says it’s a waste not to “use” my education in a real career.

So I think the question may be turn out to be much broader than whether we need our immediate neighbors approval.

The other thing I wonder about is how we frame the discussion. If I stay home with my own small children that isn’t “work” but if I go to an office it is. Someone takes care of my small children for me to work and that turns out to be her work. I am not an island. I need other women (usually women:)) to make my choice possible. Unless I choose to be childfree, which is going to solve a lot of problems for me. I can still “mother” the children of others if I have that desire. And maybe I become the best customer service worker in the universe!

Maybe once society acts like childcare is actually really important work and doesn’t just give lip service to the idea, the status of all women improves, including those who do childcare for a living. And we no longer debate SAHM vs working mom because we really do believe both choices are real work. When we try to say that now it frequently turns into bickering over whose choice is best. If childcare really is seen as work, because someone really has to do it, there seems to me no need for bickering. imho

It is difficult to take the emotion out of the whole discussion.
…

I don’t know if any of that made the least bit of sense and I don’t have time to post anymore today (hooray! hooray !!you are all thinking;) ) Have a great weekend.

poetgrl · November 17, 2012, 10:11am

Well said, alh.

mythmom · November 17, 2012, 10:52am

I guess I do think life is so hard that just getting through the day in a constructive manner is noble. Sorry if my rhetoric is too florid.

I like the reminder that most women ( including me) don’t have economic choice. And our economy may be taking choices away.

I’m not sure that most people have many choices anyway, but the question if free will us something to debate another time.

I really don’t care about how other people evaluate my life either, but I am empathic and sensitive to what others feel. I think it’s more comfortable to live in a community that values a plurality of lifestyles than in a community that devalues some lifestyles. I just like the people better, independent if the judgments about me.

Zoozermom: I think your note was lovely.

And I do think we’re all connected, whether we experience it directly or not.

Of course the biggest issue is the women who need jobs to feed, house and clothe their children and are unemployed.

And here we get back to the heart of the article. Many young people aren’t convinced that the means to provide for their children will always be there, and maybe they are right to make this a factor in their decision whether or not to have children.

DonnaL · November 17, 2012, 4:51pm

Mythmom, I love both the way you write, and what you have to say.

Donna

mythmom · November 17, 2012, 5:38pm

Donna, that’s so sweet of you to say. I value your opinion. I know this is off-tippic, but how is your boy doing. Did he graduate last year? I can’t remember what he studied at Chicago.

article on opting out of parenthood for financial reasons

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