A Woman’s Place . . .
December 2, 2007 by Tracee Sioux
Filed under Parenting
Women are not made out of cookie cutters. I suspected this when as a child, I saw my role as a woman very carefully outlined, “Be a wife and a mother, your place is in the home.”
Not that I think that’s a bad place to find yourself at certain times in your life.
But, all women are not the same. My place is where I decide it is.
People just see things differently and it’s maturity that allows us to see that and respect it.
What I don’t like to see is women doing something they don’t want to be doing.
According to Pew Research Center Survey more than one-half of women are doing something they don’t want to be doing.
- 60% of women who work full-time wish they worked part-time (19% wanted to not work at all).
- 50% of women who stay-at-home wished they worked, (33% part-time, 16% full-time).
The feminist revolution held lots of assumptions that well, they just didn’t pan out quite like we thought.
The child-care situation isn’t as rosy as we predicted and maybe we underestimated our own mother-love.
Whatever our personal assumptions were or our economic realities turned out to be - we don’t have to hate the past to change our present.
What we do have to do is get proactive about making what we want our reality.
- Paid family leave so no mother has to go back to work days after giving birth,
- Public universal pre-school,
- Major investments in child care so having a child is no longer the top reason American families have “a poverty spell”,
- After school programs for all kids who need them,
- Health care for all children,
- Benefits for part-time workers, and
- Telecommuting incentives so parents have more flexible work options.
Women are a special interest group that makes of half the population. We need to get serious about voting for our own interests.
Interestingly,73% of men are happy working full-time (and doing only 25% of the housework and childcare). But, most likely they are sick of hearing us complain about our unhappiness with our work-home balance, so this is in their best interests too.
Momsrising is telling every candidate that women want a family-friendly America.
I’m ordering the Motherhood Manifesto DVD for my book-club right now.
Awesome post. I agree completely but especially with this, “My place is where I decide it is.” Too many of us get so caught up in where we should be that it’s lame. I love being at home with my son. But certain people try to make me think that’s not a feminist choice. It is when I say it it is! Best written post I’ve read all day.
I agree Jennifer. I think some of us get caught up in thinking “feminist” = “full time job.”
Time to expand the expectation. The more we expand our expectations the more choices we have - and wasn’t CHOICE the whole point to feminism in the first place?
The statistics seem to be saying that women are collectively making DEFAULT choices again. Which isn’t what we really want to do.
We have a right (by virtue of making up half the population and half the workforce and half the economy) to insist that the choices expand to meet us where we choose to be. And for some of us that’s at home, at least part of the time.