"Great post. I
am a feminist housewife. I have a masters in English literature and a minor in
women's studies. I love staying at home with my kids. My only beef is the idea
that we stay at home moms are underpaid/deserve a salary, as though money
equals intrinsic value. I think it is a great luxury to be able to stay at home
with my children and my husband and I have made a great deal of sacrifices to
ensure we can. I understand some people are stay at home due to lay offs, etc,
but, for the most part, we stay at home parents choose. We should not have a chip
on our shoulder because we feel society does not value our contribution. Our
identity needs to be internal, rather than external. This is true with all
occupations, not just stay at home parents."
And this is the post
where I'll try to figure out what ruffles me about that comment.
I have suggested
before—or have come close to suggesting—that I deserve a salary for the
human-raising that I devote my life to, but it's a suggestion I've made in
frustrated jest, which is not to say that I think stay-at-home parents are
undeserving of a salary. Full-time parents' deservedness of pay is not my
issue, but I imagine I could be compelled by an argument made in favor of it.
It just seems like the kind of thing I would be pretty sympathetic to.
As Caroline points
out in her post, staying at home with a child is a job, and as I've mentioned
before, it's the kind of job where you might not get a lunch break. Anne-Marie
Slaughter, in a fairly lengthy Atlantic article called "Why Women
Still Can't Have it All" (which I recommend reading if you have a
spare hour, which I had over the course of a few days), presents an interesting
thought experiment:
"Consider the
following proposition: An employer has two equally productive and
talented employees. One trains for and runs marathons when he's not working.
The other takes care of two children. What assumptions is the employer likely
to make about the marathon runner? That he gets up in the dark every day and
logs an hour or two running before even coming into the office. ... That he is
ferociously disciplined and willing to push himself through distraction,
exhaustion, and days when nothing seems to go right in the service of a goal
far in the distance."
Slaughter asks us to
"be honest" when we consider whether we suppose that the employer
would make the same assumptions about the parent. Caroline noted in her blog
that childcare workers often earn meager wages, which is telling of how much—or
how little—we value their work. (Of course childcare isn't the only difficult
job with an inadequate wage attached to it.)
Caroline's post and
Slaughter's article make me feel that I'm in good company when I doubt that the
difficulty of being a stay-at-home parent is fully appreciated. (Slaughter's
article pertains to mothers who work outside the home, but she makes a number
of points about societal attitudes about parenting in general, which of course
has implications for stay-at-homers too.) Parents themselves seem at a loss to
explain just how difficult it is to have a child . It's not just about time or
chores, although I always feel like I have no time and endlessly many chores.
But it's more than that. It has been said that having a child is like having
your heart walk around outside your body. That's the situation of parenthood in
words, but the situation of parenthood in feelings—stress, hope, joy,
exhaustion, worry, pride, astonishment—is really incommunicable.
You may be more impressed to meet a marathon runner than a mother. But the assumption that a marathon runner works harder than a mother isn't the only fact that intimates a broader underappreciation of parenthood. Stay-at-home parents work, but stay-at-home parents don't get paid. I'm not arguing that they should get paid, but to point out that they don't doesn't mean that I have entitlement issues. It means that I've noticed that other people who work as hard as I do—or less hard than I do—get paid, and I wonder where the difference lies.
You may be more impressed to meet a marathon runner than a mother. But the assumption that a marathon runner works harder than a mother isn't the only fact that intimates a broader underappreciation of parenthood. Stay-at-home parents work, but stay-at-home parents don't get paid. I'm not arguing that they should get paid, but to point out that they don't doesn't mean that I have entitlement issues. It means that I've noticed that other people who work as hard as I do—or less hard than I do—get paid, and I wonder where the difference lies.
Maybe children are
like lawns: I don't get paid to mow my lawn, even though mowing the lawn is work, because my lawn is my responsibility. But I would pay my neighbor to
mow my grass because he'd be doing work that isn't his responsibility. Maybe
that explains why, insofar as analogies explain, I don't get paid for raising
Graham and why I would pay whomever I might temporarily delegate that duty to
(like a daycare or a nanny). But of course lawns aren't citizens, and even
lawns in rainy regions probably don't need to be cut more than three times a
week, and if a lawn isn't read to and cuddled it'll still be a fine lawn, and
no one cares if a lawn learns empathy or the alphabet. I didn't introduce the
lawn analogy just to point out what about it doesn't work. It seems to offer a
conceptual correspondence that I find personally useful: Graham is my
responsibility, and that might be why I don't get paid for raising him. And
it's not like I have a contract with the nation to procreate. The United States
didn't ask me to get pregnant.
But I still have a
chip on my shoulder, and it feels heaviest when people suggest that it
shouldn't be there at all. It's fine to not get paid; it's a little less fine
to hear anyone adamantly reject the idea that what stay-at-home parents
do deserves pay (which isn't exactly what the comment I originally quoted was maintaining).
I wouldn't mind hearing that I don't get paid because American citizens already
feel too heavily taxed. It wouldn't upset me much to hear that the majority of Americans
would prefer keeping more of their paychecks over easing the financial
hardships of a family with only one parent whose work earns a paycheck. I
already assume that's true. If what I hear on Facebook, in family
conversations, and in class is representative of America, people would rather
keep more of their paychecks than have the option of food stamps available to
poor families. No one says, "Poor people don't deserve to eat." They say, "I don't deserve to have money taken out of my paycheck so that poor people can eat." There's a difference, it just may not be a very morally significant difference. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear that people don't want my family stealing from their paychecks to pay for my choice to have a baby even though
we're poor. That's saying something different than saying parents don't
deserve pay, period.
I'm not even really
addressing or taking issue with the comment I originally quoted. Like the
commenter and her husband, Aron and I have chosen to keep Graham at home rather
than in daycare. It's true that we couldn't afford daycare on our own, but it's
also true that the state provides daycare assistance so that mothers can work
out of the home and earn an income. And I agree with the commenter that the
value of raising children is intrinsic, but of course joy and pride over a
child's accomplishments don't buy bread, which is why Aron and I have had to be
on WIC. (And anyway, plenty of people who work for monetary pay remark that
they enjoy their job—that doesn't mean they stop getting a paycheck.)
The welfare mother
is one of the most hated cultural figures. There's Arab terrorists and the
welfare queen. You can say that stay-at-home parents don't deserve pay, but in
the same paragraph of your mind where that belief lies I would hope there also
exist thoughts that make you cringe over the fact that the Walton children are
millionaires. I hate to put the words American and dream next to each other, because I think it sounds
cheesy, but it's worse than cheesy: it's misleading, and it may even be
untrue. But people do—in classes, on television, in general conversation—talk
about the American dream: hard work pays off, in a financial sense.
Stay-at-home parenting is hard work that doesn't pay off in a financial sense.
Being a stay-at-home parent—a job that is immensely and endlessly fulfilling
emotionally—has put my family in a financially precarious situation, one where
we have required vouchers from WIC to pay for groceries. Maybe stay-at-home
parents don't deserve a wage, but not earning a wage for my work has meant that
we've been reliant on welfare, and that means that the condemnation of an
American dream-driven culture has been heaped upon me. When people complain
about welfare recipients, they're complaining about me. It can't be that I both
don't deserve a wage and
don't deserve groceries. It reminds me of when I hear the same Republicans who
complain about lack of jobs also complain about food stamps. Well, if it's true
that there aren't jobs, how's it a bad thing that there are also more food
stamp recipients? Isn't that a necessary combination of facts, morally
speaking?
None of this has had
much to do with feminism. I'm an aspiring feminist. I read more books by men
than women, more of my favorite authors are men, I've only taken two women's
studies classes, I've never protested for a specifically women's issue: those
are some of the reasons I'm reluctant to call myself anything more than an
aspiring feminist. I wouldn't
call myself a vegetarian if I ate meat but had an emotional aversion to chicken
farms and slaughterhouses. I feel limited in the home but also feel that it's
not as if working outside the home would make me more involved or persuasive in
women's issues. I'm planning to raise my son to be a very good man, and that
is, I think, a feminist project. I'd like more of them, but I just don't have
the time. If I worked outside the home, I likely would still lack the time.
Maybe we just need more time, all of us. Maybe I'm a blabby pants. Maybe I want
an occasional five-day weekend, but that would only feel like a break if it
meant that Aron would be able to be home to help me.
I don't have a chip: I have chips.
I don't have a chip: I have chips.
You made me smile.
ReplyDeleteI can relate more than I'd like to admit. ; )
I'm fascinated that my comment spawned such a post and I was very interested to read it. You were on Caroline's feed so I clicked over. Strangely, and perhaps naively, it felt like I had come in on someone gossiping about me. However, you are more than entitled to your opinion, angst, and dissatisfaction with what I said and/or how I said it.
ReplyDeleteI still maintain that money does not equal value and that, if I am reading your comment correctly, is what upset you. No one is paid for parenting. Being a parent is, for the most part, a choice, as is being a stay at home parent. (I understand and feel horrible that some children are born under egregious circumstances and I am, or course, excluding them and their mothers from statement.) In capitalism, we are paid for services rendered and, though our kids may never appreciate being the recipient of our efforts, they will not pay us. It is, by nature, pro bono, altruistic, and deeply personal. In your idea of the perfect world, I would be interested to know what a paycheck for this looks like or from whence it comes. I realize that can be read to be pugnacious, but my intentions are curiosity and not offense.
I cannot imagine how what I wrote made you think I am anti-social justice or despair those on WIC, Medicaid, food stamps, or any other social programs designed to assist those in need. On the contrary. I find it morally, ethically, and socially reprehensible to not have social programs to assist people in need. Capitalism is designed to have a poor class and this has always bothered me. Back to my point, though, I am a huge (HUGE) advocate of caring for the least of these and, by these standards, also fit into this idea. We are poor. We struggle financially. We struggle financially because of our choices, some circumstances beyond our control, because my husband's occupation is not monetarily valued in the American social structure, and, of course, because I choose to stay at home with our children. However, all of this is moot. It seems like, and again, I might be reading your post incorrectly, that your feelings of offence have anything to do with what I said, but a feeling of not being valued prior to my opine. I find that sad. Not because you focused this on me, but because I think we mothers, especially stay at home mothers, need each other for support, not the breast guilt or the competition of whose kid walked/talked/whatever first.
I imagine you will delete this comment and, if you feel so inclined, you should. I am surprised, to say the least, that my idea of our choices spawning consequences should alleviate us all, not just stay at home parents, of having a chip on our shoulder regarding them and that it gave rise to such a post. Weighing the consequences of our decisions is a painful part of adulthood and parenthood, but an unavoidable one. You have some interesting points and some great ideas. I hope that, where ever this leads you, you find fulfillment, an internal locus of identity, and the break and rest that you need and want. Your son is most fortunate to have such a thoughtful, passionate mother raise him, paycheck, chip(s), or not.
Thank you so much for your reply! I originally thought I would leave a comment on Caroline's post linking this post, but then suddenly I doubted that anyone would care, and I also feared that it was impolite or too forward to link my post--it felt a little too "Look at me!" And now I realize that being forward, even too forward, would have been better than making you feel like you were being gossiped about. I'm sorry for being snakey (no offense to snakes).
DeleteYour points about my psychology are right: my feelings of offense existed prior to your opine, and they also exist beyond what you originally wrote. (I did use your chip-on-the-shoulder line as my title, because it's very much the same language commonly used to express disdain for the recipients of welfare. My topic was "entitlement.") And your comment stated my thinking, but much of my angst, as I say in my post, stems from what I hear in classrooms and on television. Maybe I'm mad at a hypothetical hybrid of your argument against paid parenting and arguments against welfare. But I don't actually think that a hybrid like that is hypothetical. Plenty of people who think stay-at-home parenting doesn't deserve a wage are also against welfare. I'm sorry for caricaturizing you as one of those people. That was sloppy, simplistic, hasty and, since it's evidently far from the truth, mean. I'm glad you support programs like WIC. You are an intellectual asset to the community of welfare supporters! I shouldn't have immediately doubted that. :)
Do you think it's preposterous for a stay-at-home parent to be paid? It sounds like you do. I have as hard a time imagining where the check for it would come from as you do. As far as what it would look like, I assume just like other checks. But you probably want to know whose signature would be on it, from whose bank account it would be drawn. I know it would be logistically complex, but I assume taxes would have a lot to do with it. I think it would require creative thinking. (I definitely don't think children are responsible for paying their parents, if that's something you in seriousness wondered.) But "no one is paid for parenting" is not a good reason why no one is paid for parenting. That's the condition itself. I want to know why it might seem outlandish for a parent to be paid. And I don't know that stay-at-home parenting is "by nature" pro bono. It's not a logical impossibility for a stay-at-home parent to be paid. I'm not untying the fabric of reality by suggesting that stay-at-home parents COULD be paid. I am asking why the fabric is the way it is. And I disagree that it has anything to do nature or the natural order.
(sorry, had to reply in two parts because of a word limit in commenting)
DeleteSo is it because it's an altruistic job that stay-at-home parenting doesn't earn a paycheck? I don't know that I buy that reason. I don't think firefighters should only put out fires if a homeowner pays them directly, but I do think that firefighters should be paid. Where, then, would the money come from? I wouldn't mind a tax (on my husband's income). Firefighting isn't a one-to-one correspondence with motherhood, but I think it addresses the altruism claim. You can do a good thing without the goodness of the thing you do making you poor. I actually think that the more morally worthwhile a job is, the more deserving of financial security is the person who performs it.
You also say that parenting is "deeply personal." That's true. And it may also be true that the government, from whom I guess the parenting check would come, shouldn't involve itself in the deeply personal aspects of citizens' lives. I feel most sympathetic to that argument. It may be that if taxes paid the wages of stay-at-home parents, then stay-at-home parenting would become regulated in a way that would contaminate the parent-child relationship. I wouldn't want to get a paycheck for parenting if it meant that I had to follow a handbook on how to do it. That being said: I enjoy free things like going on walks with my son and taking him to the park, but I do feel like poverty limits the things we can do together. I wish I could afford gas to drive him to the mountains. I'd like to put his feet in the ocean. There's a lengthy list of things I would like to do with my son that I, not earning a wage, can't afford. I don't want to say that poverty contaminates the parent-child relationship, but it certainly limits it.
It's easy for me to get away from logic and into emotion. Maybe I'm confusing things. I know that I gave birth in a world that doesn't pay its mothers, but I don't think that means that I consented to poverty. But you seem to think that the choice to have a baby spawns certain consequences, and one of those consequences, in my case as well as yours, is poverty. But if I thought that the injustices of this world were beyond redress I certainly wouldn't have brought a child into a stagnantly bad world. And it does feel like economic injustice to me that my choice to stay home with my child means that he and I are precluded from the possibility of family vacations that require two incomes to take. If I suggest that I deserve to take my child to Disneyland even if that means the government has to pay for it, I sound petulant, right? (I don't have any particular interest in Disneyland, incidentally.) What I don't understand is why I am left out of the group of people able to enjoy some financial freedom and its corresponding perks of vacations and meals eaten in restaurants. I know that's the way things are for me, but I'm not satisfied with the way things are, and knowing that things are the way they are doesn't mean that I have consented to keep them that way. I'm not revolting. I'm just blogging.
I was so happy to get your reply and to understand your reasoning. Thank you responding and for not taking offense at my questions. I see why you choose to do this in this location, rather than in the original venue. I do hope you can forgive me for assuming the worst of you.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think stay at home parenting is altruistic because of its lack of pay. That keeps brining motives back to money and I mean to separate them. Senses of self and meaning cannot be tied to money. Money is a fantasy, as is the American Dream, which really just means “I have a lot of money.” I meant more in a “I’m home with you kid(s) who will ultimately reject me and my ideas and, rather than thanking me, this will be a point of contention,” which you said, more eloquently in your Community of Good Mothers post. There is no thanking in parenting. We do it because we love. We love without any illusions of it being returned. It is a selfless thing, working or not.
I’m interested in the correlation of firefighters /public servants (police, etc) and stay at home parents. I ultimately reject that on two grounds. The service we parents do is just for our family and perhaps society benefits in an indirect way, but not in a put out a fire/stop a bank heist manner. (As a side note, I also dislike how venerated firefighters are. I would also never classify a firefighter as doing their job for altruistic reasons. Perhaps I don’t know many selfless firefighters, but those I know (my brother-in-law and his coworkers) do it for the glammar. I’m sure he’d love me to use that word in connection with his ego, but facts are facts. ) The second, and most important to me, is if stay at home parenting were subsidized, it would turn into a men in the work place, women at home mandate, spoken or unspoken. I think that robs women of choice and I think that the government is too involved in women’s choices as it is. I would hate to have the government weigh in on my fitness as an out of the home worker based on my child bearing or parenting philosophy. What if, to be a subsided stay at home parent, goals had to be met or rules had to be followed? There are no manners of making money without strings attached. Where would government involvement lead? This may seem like leap (and conspiracy theory, now that I read that again) and it might be, but, logically, if there were a subsidy, those weakened from the birthing process and those who choose to/were able to nurse would have to stay at home and those not weakened physically by those factors would be in the workplace to maintain a productivity level to maintain the subsidy. I’m thinking right now of the flack surrounding the new Yahoo CEO and her pregnancy. There’s a public debate on whether or not she should have maternity leave and for how long, given that she just took over a company. If a man fathered a child, there would be no debate on how much time he should take off to bond with his child. There is an illusion that a woman’s body is for public consumptions, whether it is sexualized or moralized and I think subsiding staying at home would make that worse. Does this make sense?
Blast! Cut off by my verbosity.
ReplyDeleteBut again, I keep coming back to choice. Liked or not, stay at home parents choose to stay home knowing there is no pay for it. And I do stick by my “our consequences are in part of our own making” assertion. If I had a job, we might be a lot better off than we are, but, for me, the question is at what cost. There is also the idea that I have very little chance of making enough money to cover my kids being in daycare and then having anything left to make it beneficial. Is it my idea of personal choice and responsibility that makes me seem like a heartless person who believes people are in the socioeconomic class they want to be in? I am quite the opposite of heartless but I am also not ruled by my emotions. I value logic almost as much as I value love and service to others.
You are correct. Poverty limits everything. I agree that our social structure is damning for the (us) poor. There are limits on the culture, outdoor, and educational access a child in poverty can receive and it breaks my heart. I despise capitalism because of the mindset that the poor are lazy and want to stay that way, like we/they somehow deserve whatever struggles they have. (However, every monetary philosophy ultimately fails due to greed.) I dislike the idea that the rich or comfortable work harder. I think that may the case in some instances, but honestly, I think socioeconomic class depends largely and mostly on where and to whom you were born and who you know. I agree with your earlier assertion that no one says “the poor should go hungry” but they instead bemoan that they should be the ones to assist in doing it. I am not pessimistic enough to say things cannot change, but I am too logical to think that they will. Because, as much as it annoys and grieves me, money will always motivate and will always be tied to senses of self and being. And who will care for those effected by the injustices but those in the injustice and who will listen to them/us?
I feel like I am trying to put my car in drive and reverse at the same time. I'm certainly no defender of capitalism, but wanting to be paid for stay-at-home mothering seems now, after reading your comments, to mean that I'm more willing to play its games than I thought. Do I really want to the market interfering with motherhood? No, I guess I really don't. Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses! I am so glad we had this conversation, even though I lost. :) Your responses will continue to occupy my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteOh no! I don't want you to feel like you "lost." I am sorry if my responses made me seem like it was a competition. We can agree to disagree and both be "right," if there is a right. :)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my name's Angela. It must feel odd to have such a personal conversation with a typewriter avatar. Thank you again, Amy. I appreciated your responses and that we could have this conversation, too.