Battle Ground of Feminism: The Home
August 21, 2008 by Tracee Sioux
Filed under Parenting
The Battle Ground of Feminism is the Home.
Because I don’t necessarily want to have that battle in my home today, I’ll stick with citing examples from FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?, by Leslie Bennetts.
“This opt-out thing is about false choices,” says sociologist Barbara Risman. “If you’ve been raised thinking you can do everything, and your husband works eighty hours a week, and you work eighty hours a week, and he’s not willing to budge an inch, and you never see your chilren, so you opt-out – that’s not really opting out; that’s being pushed out.”
” If you hate your job, you’re overwhelmed with work, the workplace is family-unfriendly, you want to have another child, and your husband won’t share the workload, then do you begin to convince yourself that quitting your job is a reasonable choice because you can depend on your spouse. . . But thesse women are not exploring other options . . .like ‘How can I get my husband to share more of the workload?’”
“From a female point of view, the problem with the self-sacrifice model of marriage is that it’s usually the woman who’s being asked to sacrifice.”
“Here’s a newsflash for you: Jeremy (not Tracee’s Jeremy) may be wonderful, but it’s not as if I’m sitting around with my feet up. He performs a reasonable share of the labor generated by our home and children, which I would argue are as much his responsibility as mine. But I have almost always done more. The sainted Jeremy may look like Husband of the Year in comparison with a lot of other guys, but that just goes to show how low we set the bar for men in this society.”
Maintaining some semblance of equity in your marraige can force you to deploy all those nasty tactics you swore you would never stoop to as a parent. . .Bribery and punishment work; so do yelling and complaining. Threats are also effective, as long as everyone knows you mean business. . . These strategies admittedly take a lot of energy, but not as much as performing all the functions necessary to maintain home and family by yourself.”
“In one revealing study, the found that male managers blood pressure and stress-hormone levels dropped dramatically at five p.m., but the women managers’ levels actually jacked up as they turned their attention from their “first shift’ jobs to their ’second shift’ responsibilities as wives and mothers.”
The question is: Are you winning or losing the battle?
It’s a good point. I actually feel guilty sometimes about asking my husband to do more around the house because I feel like he does so much already. He, on the other hand, has actually told me I need to nag him more, and that he feels he tends to be lazy if he can get away with it.
So maybe if we both feel we’re not doing enough and the other is doing too much, that’s balance?
I don’t know about that Susanna.
Women are consumed with a feeling of “not doing enough” and an unrealistic quest for perfection. You see it everywhere and I’m writing about that on So Sioux Me tomorrow and Monday.
If that’s true, you’ll ALWAYS feel you’re not doing enough – not matter whether you’re doing twice as much as hubby – who doesn’t feel compelled to strive for perfection.
With that logic it makes more sense to keep a rational log of who is doing the labor and to strive to equity. Then to work on your feelings so that you can let enough be enough.
“that’s being pushed out.”
This is so true. This book was a wake up call for both Aaron and I. I understand the harm I’m doing myself, and he understands his part too. Before we were just living in the right now, and not thinking so far ahead. It was innocent. Neither of us were looking at it in terms of what it really is. Pushing one of us out (me) and propelling the other one forward in their career (Aaron.) I think a lot of people do that. He’s financially upholding all of us, but wants me to be able to do the same should disaster strike. Right now, I couldn’t maintain our lifestyle if it came to that, or even provide for our kids if something happened to Aaron.
It’s a good thing to weave a solid safety net. This is a hard pill to swallow. It blows a lot of peoples parigdims to bits.
Oh, and I would like to agree that if I knew while I was working that someone else I trusted and loved were taking care of the kids, the Dr. visits, paying all the bills, overseeing the plumber at 2:00, going to the parent teacher confrence, cooking dinner, and folding laundry I could damned sure perform better at work and feel relief come 5:00 instead of anxiety.
Where’s my “I need a wife” t-shirt?
Gulp – that was me swallowing that pill.
Check my Cafe Press store later this month for the I Need a Wife t-shirt!
(p.s. tell your friend her BUSINESS cards should read “Professional Wife: Every mother needs a wife.” )
Excellent, excellent, excellent! I read through all of these yelling “YEAH!!!” inside my head and am typing now with purpose! Everything in those statements are so true it’s scary. So many women give up what they want to make life easier while their husbands (or boyfriends, manfriends, life partners and so on) do not budge because they simply are not expected to. So much burden is placed on women and it’s ridiculous. I need to read that book.
Buy it here Holly and I’ll get 4% commissions – help a feminist out. I’m trying to get onboard with the financial independence!
Oh and this book – changed my life and changed the life of everyone in my bookclub.
Say bye-bye to working mommy guilt. Say hello to motivation and self-preservation!
Does the using-your-link to buy books just work with amazon.com, or .co.uk as well? I mean, I would, but I imagine the shipping would be horrific.
This post makes me worry – or rather the content does. I’ve always wanted to be successful in work and earn enough to support myself and the people close to me, but sharing a house (student housing, yeah) with my boyfriend is showing me that however brilliant a lad is, he’s going to expect you to do all the domestic work. At the moment it’s essentially getting split between the three girls in the house, with him washing the dishes every so often and expecting a pat on the back for it. What happens when there /aren’t/ the other housemates to share work with?
say no. refuse the role