We’ve talked a lot about The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennett’s here on Blog Fabulous. I’m thrilled to have the publishers send a copy of this fantastic book to Lindley from my post Gloria Steinem Got Married.

My book club read it and it was one of the very few books that nearly everyone finished and then changed their perceptions. None of us can stop talking about it.

This book talks about work and women. It examines the benefits to women and their families if women work. It examines the real and present dangers if women do not work.

Here’s the thing – I was prepared to hate this book and disagree with it’s premise. I quit my professional journalist job to be home with my kids. I was defensive about my Mommy War position and my reasons for “choosing” that.

Several of my book club friends have made similar choices. Several of my book club friends are professionals with higher education degrees who made the opposite choice as I have. I was kind of expecting it to be controversial within the club. It wasn’t. The only person who hated the book was the SAHM who didn’t read the book and kept feeling a need to defend the old SAHM arguments.

After reading the book – we all felt powerful enough to re-examine our choice in a more educated light. We didn’t feel trapped in our choices. We didn’t feel like we’d made permanent choices – we felt empowered to change our minds and reevaluate what we really want as women – wives and mothers.

Two of my book clubbies went back to college to pursue more ambitious careers.

One of the mommies quit looking forword to the day she could quit her job.

I let go of mountains of working mommy guilt and started accepting the feminine judgement that often has me feeling like I have to fence-sit to make everyone happy. Which really – makes no one happy – least of all me. Won’t half of you hate/judge me anyway no matter what I do? Making a choice to ward off judgement isn’t a “choice” it’s just cowardice.

I don’t know what your working/SAHM internal Mommy War is like. But, I do know this – every single woman I’ve ever met has some insecurity about it and it either makes them aggressive or insecure and defensive. This book will help you let go of that and re-examine your choices in a new less defensive light.

Or at least it did me.

More on themes of The Feminine Mistake:

Battle Ground of Feminism: The Home

15 Years – Suck It Up

Stress for SAHMS v. Working Moms

Motherhood is a Temp Job: The Feminine Mistake

Post from: Blisstree

The Feminine Mistake Winner

Did you see Gloria Steinem on Oprah? Oprah asked her why she got married in her mid-60s after she had been famously quoted as saying, “Marriage is death.”

‘Well, you know, … I’ve fought for 30 years to make marriage laws equal, so why not?’” the feminist icon said.

Mommy cried today, my daughter told my husband.

I saw Gloria Steinem on Oprah, I explained.

Truly, I was hoping to pass on to my daughter the profound gratitude I feel toward this woman for standing up to the status quo and insisting on women’s political, legal and economic equality.

My daughter has grown up in a world in which her equality is a given. Gloria held no magic for her.

We’ve lately, with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, have confronted our mother issues, our mommy wars, our equality.

I hope it’s clear to someone other than myself that now, our issues may just be our own. In Gloria’s day, it was the men holding us back.

But, because she spend 35 years changing their minds, I find the mommy wars are among . . . the women. Maybe a year ago I realized it was really an internal war – me against myself and the mother voice in my head and my fear of judgement from other women.

Then Sarah Palin made me realize that half of women judge me viciously no matter what I do so I should just do what I want as Gloria suggests.

There’s been lot’s of speculation about why John McCain would choose a woman with so little experience over someone like Kay Baily Hutchinson, the polling showed our own issues with our mothers highly influenced the women’s vote. It’s so complicated who dares hang an election on that?

In the workplace, it seems women are as many women wanting to hold women’s ambitions back as their are men. Certainly, we don’t create an emotional environment for each other where ambition and success are talked about or rewarded.

When asked whether young women today are ungrateful, naive, or entitled or wrong to take their equality for granted Gloria said No. “It’s part of the reason that women do get more activist, more radical, you might say, with age because we have to experience what the unfairnesses are in the workplace and who takes care of kids and who doesn’t,” she says.

The bar has been raised. Marriage laws are equal enough for Gloria to participate in. But, there are other frontiers – family medical leave act for instance. Women only get radial and active once they experience being 8 months pregnant and are then told: We’re sorry, we don’t offer 12 weeks maternity leave because we don’t have to.

Then, BAM – a Feminist is Born and Gloria Steinem becomes your personal hero.

This is a Blogtoberfest Post. I’m giving something away. If you leave a comment guessing what it is you’ll be entered to win.

Image Source: Oprah.com

Post from: Blisstree

Gloria Steinem Got Married

We keep hearing from heads of state, political candidates, senators, congressmen, businessmen, mainstream media and Wall Street that the United States is suffering from a labor shortage.

I call bullshit.

Look across the dinner table and see that beautiful wife? See your brazen sister, your wise mother and the really smart neighbor?

She’s not just a “SAHM.”

She has a masters degree.

She has a doctorate degree.

She’s got 10 to 20 years of experience in the labs, in the newsroom, in the office, in the market, on wall street, in the classroom, in virtually every sphere of industry that exists.

Women hold half the knowledge and a very high level of training and experience, not to mention the creativity and ingenuity this country needs.

This country is FULL of skilled and knowledgeable women who are waiting to be invited back into the workforce.

What are they waiting for?

Family-friendly working conditions and equal pay.

Instead of claiming they have to move their operations overseas or import workers for a qualified workforce, employers would be wise to look at the resource right in front of their face: WOMEN.

Qualified and educated women who are worn out from sexual harassment from coworkers, pregnancy discrimination, lack of family medical leave, working hours that extend 2 crucial hours past the school day, lack of sick days, etc.

Solution – employers should stop being so attached to the workplace policies and the rigid 40 hour work week that shut half their qualified workforce out and invite the women back.

They’ll come.

Visit Momsrising.org for information about what kinds of specific workplace policies will lure women back to their industries.

Post from: Blisstree

Qualified Workforce

You know what I find fascinating?

The religious conservatives, by which I mean the specific people in my life, who have always been the biggest influences on my own Internal Mommy Wars are in full, unequivocal support of Sarah Palin and have no doubts that can be both an effective mother and vice president.

Then why do you doubt that I can be both a great mom and fulfill my professional ambitions using the gifts and the calling God gave me? I wondered, as I lay sobbing during one yoga practice last week. If there is some distinction between she and I – and our worthiness for my family’s support – I don’t get it.

My whole motherhood and professional, experience would have been vastly different had these same people in my life been as unquestioningly supportive of me and my abilities to do both as they have been about Sarah Palin.

The economic and emotional toll of my own internal Mommy Wars can be added up to include: poverty and massive amounts of debt including a bankruptcy, unbelievable strain on my marriage almost leading to divorce, addiction to anxiety medication including a hospitalization that incurred yet more debt, severe post partum depression, not to mention the decision to stop having children so I could return to work without debilitating guilt and extreme economic “sacrifice” sooner.

But, at least I was a “good mom,” according to the specific narrow definition my family and cultural influences – religious conservatives, represented by Sarah Palin – have held out as the one virtue I must live up to above all.

Go figure.

They don’t even know her, they’ve never met her, they’ve never seen her with her children, they know very little about her politics even. Yet, they support her without reservation, judgement or criticism. If only I’d been worthy of the same support.

Thank God for Sarah Palin - I’m choosing to make their full support of Sarah Palin apply to ME and all other women. Her mission is no more important than mine, her abilities to both be a good mother and ambitious in her work is no more developed, her values no more sacred, and above all – she is no more entitled than the rest of the working mothers of this nation to respect, equal pay and working hours that adjust to acknowledge the existence of a family.

I’m choosing to let go of their judgement that has so effected my choices. It’s quite liberating really. Its like releasing a burden that has weighed heavily on my soul and tainted my experience of motherhood.

My motherhood experience has been about unnecessary guilt and sacrifice – false choices really. False choices that have made me teeter on a fence between working and motherhood, judgement and approval, fear and love, economic stability and poverty as sacrifice, powerfulness and powerlessness, economic independence and social acceptance - it’s not as though choosing to not work to be a good mom to acquire the currency of their social acceptance and approval came without serious consequences.

Forgive them for they know not what they do. I want to be free of their criticism and judgement, therefore I forgive it.

I don’t think they knew. They didn’t know they would feel this positively and supportive about a working mother character. They may or may not realize the kind of inner-turmoil they’ve caused in my own emotional life. Likely, it is only a reflection of their own inner conflict about themselves – not really about me at all.

I’m going to expect them to feel the same about my abilities as they feel about Sarah Palin’s and if they choose not to, well, this time I’ll perceive that choice as their failure, instead of my own. I’ll figure out a way not to internalize it.

Surely, I had this power all along – lots of other women have done it – but I wasn’t strong enough to apply it. So, I forgive me too.

Thank God for Sarah Palin, she’s liberating me from a social construct and false choices and a deep inner conflict about working and motherhood.

Image source: JohnMcCain.com

Post from: Blisstree

Thank God For Sarah Palin

I’m disappointed in you Barack Obama. No woman.

I guess you didn’t take my email very seriously.

Oh, and I never got the text message.

Image source: www.barackobama.com

Post from: Blisstree

Biden’s Not A Very Pretty Woman

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?

Post from: Blisstree

Battle Ground of Feminism: The Home

I figure we could solve a multitude of problems for American families by doing these two things.

* Reduce the in-office workday by 1.5 hrs (assume 3:30).

* Increase the school day by 1.5 hrs (assume 4:00).

This way parents can swing by and pick up their kids on their way home from work.

It’s insane that our school day and our work day aren’t aligned. Its like we’re pretending that our nation’s workers and our nation’s parents are two separate people. They’re not.

In reality, what we’re doing is pretending that our nation’s mothers are still houswives. They’re not.

This leaves the kids home alone for hours – studies show they’re doing drugs and getting knocked up during these hours.

It leaves parents feeling neglectful and guilty though they’re doing the best they can.

Our students would do better on standardized tests and they could get back recess, art, music and PE back in the every curriculum with the extra time.

Most of our nation’s workers can check their email, write reports, and complete busy work at home. This would also reduce the number of hours employees are just dinking around watching the clock and surfing the web for lack of anything better to do.

All in favor say Aye.

Can I get some Dads in the house to say Aye?

A family friendly workday is never going to happen without the men getting on board. Convince your husband to talk to HIS HR department. That’s how change we’ll see real change.

Post from: Blisstree

Change America in an Hour and a Half

If you’re a regular reader of Blog Fabulous you’ve likely read a comment left by my friend Rebecca. She’s the lawyer with the progressive husband Brett, also a lawyer. She’s coincidentally the one who recommended Hanky Pank Thongs, which I reviewed today. Hopefully, she took my advice about Hanes mens briefs for post-partum comfort. Steal Brett’s britches!

Well, she gave birth to Anders last week, a boy. But, he had to go back to the hospital for jaundice.

They’re home now. Hopefully for good. He’s a healthy baby boy and I have no idea who much he weighed.

Congratulations Rebecca & Brett! We’ll expect to hear a lot from you now that you’ll be home on maternity leave with “nothing to do all day.” LOL.

Images Source: Rebecca’s Facebook.

Post from: Blisstree

Hey That Girl – Rebecca’s a Mommy!

I find very few flaws in the logic of Leslie Bennetts in her book FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?

Her logic is such that I find myself saying, She’s right. Why did I make such a self-defeating choice to quit my fulltime professional newspaper job?

Until the chapter where she reminds me why, exactly, I did just that as she advises women that Yes, working fulltime with little babies is a hell on earth where everyone loses – but take the “long view,” it’s only for 15 YEARS!

15 YEARS! Is that all?

Seriously, I lasted less than one year of dropping my kid off at daycare and not seeing her at all until I dropped her off the next morning. And during that year I was popping Xanex like crazy to quell the ever increasing and intense feelings of, “I don’t want to do this. This is not necessary. I don’t give a shit about that pothole – I haven’t seen my kid all day.”

It wasn’t the working that got to me. It was the lack of flexibility insisted upon by my newspaper’s management. The rigidity about being in the office while writing at 11 pm. after a city council meeting. Why, exactly, can’t I do this at home?

The part that really got to me was how unnecessary the rigidity and inflexibility was.

With the invention of email and the cell phone many parents time away from home really can be minimized with little company sacrifice. But, corporations HATE change.

The bottom line is you need a wife if you’re going to make it in many professional environments. When you ARE the wife, and you don’t want to take on the role of “absent daddy,” it’s a bit of a problem.

Leslie Bennetts, a New York Times Reporter, says as much in her book.

Leslie Bennett’s is also right to say that professional women aren’t truly “opting out” – they are being pushed out by rigidity and hostility towards mothers who aren’t willing to make unnecessary sacrifices.

Her solution to this eat shit (work 60 hrs week) or suck ass (drop out of professions completely) dilemma mothers face? Don’t let them push you out – it’s only 15 years.

Compared to the 50 years of your career 15 years really isn’t that long, she says.

I agree 15 years out of the 50 years of a career doesn’t seem like that long.

But 15 years is your kid’s ENTIRE childhood. 15 years is also one’s ENTIRE motherhood experience.

Looked at that way it’s a bit more of a freaking sacrifice, isn’t it?

I’m taking the detour in Bennett’s “long view.”

Post from: Blisstree

15 Years – Suck It Up

I found these fascinating statistics in FEMININE MISTAKE, THE: ARE WE GIVING UP TOO MUCH?.

One Harvard and Cornell study found that

Women who were homemakers at the beginning of their three-year study and and then went to work full time reported a decrease in psychological distress.

A Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and Women’s eNews study found that

Women who were employed full time and then dropped out to stay home reported an increase in distress, regardless if they had children. Women who had a child but stayed in the work force showed no increase in distress. But women who had a child and dropped out of the work force experienced a major increase in stress.

Dan Baker, author of What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better, explains the

seemingly counter-intuitive decreased level of distress in working women by giving a high happiness priority to “a sense of freedom,” proactivity and security. A sense of working women feeling a measure of control over their own destinies.
Versus what he terms “the lesser life,” characterized by fear, a lack of options, a narrow focus, a sense of purposelessness, anxiety and depression. The emotional reality for many women who are economically dependent.

Other statistics report that working is physically healthier for mothers.

By the age of fifty-four, those who combined roles of employees, parents and parters were significantly less likely to report ill health than were those whose lives did not include all three roles. The women who had been homemakers for all or most of their lives were most likely to say that their health was poor, followed by single mothers and childless women. The study, which was reported in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, also found that 38 percent of the long-term housewives suffered from obesity, in comparison with 23 percent of the working mothers.

Another report by a Dr. Anna Fels in Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Livesreports,

Employed women are healthier than their homemaker peers, despite the pressure of their added responsibilities. They have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels and lower weight. Psychologically, working women have less depression than their domestic counterparts, and they have, astonishingly been reported to have less anxiety.

Post from: Blisstree

Stress for SAHMs v. Working Moms