<p>" The fact is, no matter what level of economic status a mother is, she will likely be impeded by motherhood in her career."</p>
<p>That is, unless motherhood/homemaking IS her chosen career.
Raising children used to be respected as a full-time career. Now, motherhood is an impediment to a woman’s REAL career? (fwiw, I have been both a working mom and SAHM. I have dealt with the daycare issue. I have also provided childcare to others.) </p>
<p>I’m all for fathers supporting their children and wives. I think women deserve special consideration and support for doing the work men cannot do–pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding. We all want high quality childcare to be available–but do we respect those who choose to provide it to their own children without pay? What are the best, most important, most fulfilling things in life? (Not everything can be measured in dollars-- “income lost when out of the paid workforce,” titles, status, promotions, etc.) What is the most important role we play? Isn’t our family the only thing we’d give up everything else for? What should our priorities be, then?</p>
<p>When? Even when SAHMs were the norm, that was NEVER considered one’s “career”.</p>
<p>ETA: Just to be clear, I think people should be able to pick whatever path fits them and their family best. I’m just not in favor of revisionist history. </p>
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<p>Sure, but not everyone defines families the same way. Not all families include children. Not all families with children include our own biological children. </p>
<p>I already know that I am likely going to be a workaholic. It’s how I am. I don’t much care for children but my partner wants to be a SAHP. I could not see myself giving up too much for “pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding”. It is what it is. </p>
<p>Mothering/homemaking NEVER a career? LOL. OK–how about a “full-time job” then, or an “occupation.” Or a “profession.” Or something worthy of spending all of your time on. . . What definition of “career” do you want? Websters: “a job or profession that someone does for a long time.”</p>
<p>I’m not defining your family. No way of knowing what you’ll give up until you’ve experienced these things. If you don’t much care for children, don’t have them.</p>
<p>Staying home full-time with children, running an orderly, pleasant and economical household, and managing the childrens’ education used to be acknowledged as a full-time task that was not compatible with paid work. I also realize that this ideal was class-based, and that poorer women have always worked “outside the home.” But I also think my mother’s and grandmother’s generation got credit for doing things in the home that women no longer get credit for. Technology has made housework easier, but the demands of preparing children for entrance into the educated middle class have done nothing but increase, while at the same time the time available for cultivating children and home life has decreased. Now women are expected to fulfill a dual role: prepare the next generation for a competitive educational and economic environment by providing supervision, stimulation, and nurturing, while also bringing in money and maintaining/developing one’s own professional career. It is actually very difficult to do all of these things at the same time without paid help (another class issue). </p>
<p>My mother disliked second-wave (Betty Friedan-style) feminism because she felt it devalued everything she had striven to do. She was a college graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, who worked for IBM at a time (early 60s) when most women did not have professional careers. She quit when my oldest sister was born and devoted herself to motherhood and volunteer work. She felt insulted by 70s-style feminism telling her that she was some kind of dumb pathetic parasite. Yet at the same time, she was always extremely supportive of her daughters’ educational and professional ambitions (as was my father).</p>
<p>Feminism, to me, does not mean that you have to act like a man to be taken seriously. I still think we have some work to do on that point.</p>
<p>On the other hand, whenever women in numbers enter professions that have been historically dominated by men, the pay tends to go down. This certainly appears to be happening in law and medicine.</p>
<p>One of the great things about being in a union. I don’t get paid one cent less or more because I’m a woman. I’m a number, and I get promoted when enough people ahead of me retire or die. And no, having women in this profession has not made the pay go down. Seniority is the ultimate equalizer in jobs where it is difficult to decide whom to promote. I love being a number.</p>
<p>Can’t cut and paste from the article, but the pay gap is NOT occupation based, it is within occupations</p>
<p>And @NJSue I agree with your mother. I think the biggest mistake feminism made, and I am a feminist, was to devalue the work women were already doing raising children and in life, just in general. I also believe the culture devalues it to such an extent that a woman leaving the work force to raise her children is effectively leaving her career and had better get a post nup about it. </p>
<p>That said, I’m sure our daughters haven’t “missed” this. Few of them seem enthusiastic about the idea of having children. </p>
<p>My father to this days tells my mom that the greatest family accomplishment they have is the 5 kids she raised. My father was a big factor in all of his kids lives but there is no doubt that the biggest single influence and the individual that raised us was our mother.
My father was named man of the year by 3 different civic and work organizations over my childhood. He coached us in sports, did chores with us, took us fishing etc but it all pales in comparison to the time we spent with our mom.</p>
<p>“Mothering/homemaking NEVER a career? LOL. OK–how about a “full-time job” then, or an “occupation.” Or a “profession.” Or something worthy of spending all of your time on. . . What definition of “career” do you want? Websters: “a job or profession that someone does for a long time.””</p>
<p>Something you spend time and care and effort on, or something that you have responsibility for, isn’t necessarily a career. Part of what defines a career is that it’s valuable enough to someone outside your household that they pay you for it, and that there are standards for it that if you don’t meet, you’re fired.</p>
<p>I can clean my own house – but if I don’t, no one fires me. If I have a job as a housekeeper in a hotel, and I don’t clean satisfactorily to the standards that the hotel has set, I get fired. </p>
<p>I can cook a gourmet dinner for my household – but if I decide to bring in pizza instead, no one fires me. If I’m a chef at a restaurant and don’t cook, I get fired. </p>
<p>Tasks that one does for one’s own household don’t rise to the level of a career. No one says that a 85-yo-widow “has a career” because she cleans her own house, does her laundry, pays her bills, etc. No one says that a 25-yo single man who has a job has a “second career” if he cleans his own house, does his laundry, pays his bills.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that it’s not valuable to do the job of homemaking and caring for children, but words have meaning, and a career implies performance standards and value to others outside your household.</p>
<p>“I also believe the culture devalues it to such an extent that a woman leaving the work force to raise her children is effectively leaving her career and had better get a post nup about it.”</p>
<p>But I don’t really know how to get around this. The bottom line is – if you leave the workforce for a few years, you AREN’T as valuable to me as a potential employer as if you had stayed in the workforce. Technology, terminology, the world changes so rapidly. I know plenty of super-well-educated women who made that choice to SAH and that’s totally great for them – but they do so in full knowledge of the fact that they are then “stepping down” and won’t be as valuable in a few years when they decide to go back.</p>
<p>And they don’t do the “oh, look at the skills I gained from being at home, look, I organized the 2 yo’s birthday party” schtick. If they want to stay professionally relevant, they either freelance, or they take on other leadership positions in a community (such as being on the board of a volunteer organization or somesuch). Homemaking involves skills, but they aren’t necessarily skills that are transferable to the workplace unless your workplace is indeed cooking, cleaning, decorating, etc. </p>
<p>"Mothering/homemaking NEVER a career? LOL. OK–how about a “full-time job” then, or an “occupation.” Or a “profession.” Or something worthy of spending all of your time on. . . What definition of “career” do you want? Websters: “a job or profession that someone does for a long time.” "</p>
<p>I plan on retiring about a year from now. I have tons of things that I want to do – work out more (perhaps train for a marathon??), some volunteer / community organizations, some classes in areas that interest me, learning how to cook / bake better, doing some organizational projects around my house that I haven’t gotten to, etc. Those aren’t my careers, though. It’s not my career to work out unless I’m a pro athlete or a personal trainer. It’s not my career to do genealogy; it’s just a personal interest. It’s not my career to learn about Shakespeare or music theory; however, it is the career of the professor at the front of the room, who is being paid to teach me about Shakespeare or music theory.</p>
<p>If you define homemaking as a career, then what you’re saying is … when you go to the grocery store and the clerk is ringing you up, that both you and she are “working.” No. She’s working; she is paid by the grocery store to ring you up. You are consuming. That’s not a career (unless you are the procurement manager for a business). That doesn’t mean it’s not valuable or that it doesn’t need to be done (otherwise the family will starve), but it’s ludicrous to say that both of you are “equal” in your work status at that moment. Likewise, when I pay my bills, the person at the bank or the person at the utility company who processes the statements and payment are working. I am not. I am doing work, but it’s not a career. It’s just a responsibility.</p>
<p>It seems to me historically there have only been brief periods of time when a certain class of woman had the luxury to make homemaking/child rearing their life work. I do see it as legitimate life work, just as I see writing, painting, composing as legitimate life work, whether or not someone is paid for that work. I think it is an art. Those of us in a position to follow these paths are fortunate, because making money doesn’t have to be our life’s priority. More likely than not, we come from the sort of background where we can afford to make these sorts of choices. I had the luxury of making that choice. However, we made the decision to give up half our potential wealth, since my lifetime earning capacity was equal to my husband’s and we chose to forego it. This was easier to do in a period of much less economic uncertainly than our children are experiencing.</p>
<p>I really liked the posts by atomom, NJSue and poetgrl and wish I could give them multiple likes. For me, the most important point is the one poetgrl makes: we devalue women’s work. If we pay childcare workers the lowest wages, we can’t value women who choose to care for their own children, because we don’t see that time or skill as worth very much. Second, NJSue regarding second wave feminism: I think they missed the boat. Joining the patriarchy isn’t that beneficial to most women, imho. I like what some of the third wavers are writing. We have to change the model. Dstark and my self-employed male neighbors who are doing the child care are changing the model in a very positive way. And I don’t care if they call themselves “feminist” or not. One of my older friends has two 40something year old sons who have been the primary caregivers of their children. Now that the kids are off to school, they are attempting to start home based businesses (so they have free time for all the after school activities) with other stay at home dads of their acquaintance. I love this.</p>
<p>“For me, the most important point is the one poetgrl makes: we devalue women’s work. If we pay childcare workers the lowest wages, we can’t value women who choose to care for their own children, because we don’t see that time or skill as worth very much. Second, NJSue regarding second wave feminism: I think they missed the boat. Joining the patriarchy isn’t that beneficial to most women, imho. I like what some of the third wavers are writing. We have to change the model.”</p>
<p>It strikes me that by calling childcare women’s work, that’s where the devaluation occurs. There is NOTHING about raising children (other than the actual physical childbearing) that “needs” or can only be done by the female. My husband is just as capable of scrubbing a floor, shopping for groceries, reading to the kids, making a meal, etc. as I am / was. As long as we see childcare and homemaking as a “woman’s job” or “woman’s work” - that’s where I think the trouble occurs. It’s responsibilities that need to be done – but they don’t require a certain configuration below the belt to do. </p>