Before the list mothers step in and tell people to take the stay-at-home vs.
working mothers flame war to private email . . . . . .
The real questions are not "Should all mothers stay home with their
children" or "Should mothers feel fine going back to work" or even "What
percentage of mothers REALLY need to work to survive economically?" or "What
constitutes a good daycare situation?"
The real questions are "Why do we live in -- and accept and promote -- a
society where work and breastfeeding (and childrearing in general) are
incompatible?"
"Why do we not DEMAND more flexibility for women's work so that it is
compatible with child care?"
"Why can't all women have on-site child care?"
For most of human evolutionary history and still in most traditional
societies around the world today, women WORK and they TAKE CARE OF THEIR
CHILDREN at the same time. They work in the homestead or village, they work
in the fields, they work in the factories and even in offices, and they have
their children right there with them.
We do not have to accept the artificial dichotomy that work is "public" and
childcare is "private" or domestic. But most women do accept it, and buy
into the idea that work women do in the home isn't really work because it
isn't given an economic wage, and that work women do in reproduction
(childbearing and rearing) isn't as important as work women do in production
(wage labor).
The American style is most often one of childrearing in isolation -- where
women are stranded out in suburbia, or in apartments in town, or out on
farms, away from the satisfaction of productive work, the camraderie and
conversation of other adults (especially other adult women), and the support
and help with work and childrearing from other mothers that many women
around the world can take for granted (women we often pity because they have
so little "stuff").
As long as most American women buy into the division between home and work
-- as long as we perceive our only options to be "Stay home by yourself with
your kids" or "Leave your kids in daycare and work for a wage outside the
home" -- then we are doomed to perpetuate the system. Neither of these
options are particularly good or useful -- not for the children, not for the
parents, not for society at large.
Women should not have to apologize for their choices, no matter what their
choices are. Those who go back to work for whatever their reasons may be,
should not have to apologize to anyone. Those who stay at home with their
children for whatever their reasons may be, should not have to apologize to
anyone. All women work. Reproductive work is important. Productive work
is important. Not all daycares are awful. Not all stay-at-home moms are
wonderful. Leaping off the soapbox and into the fire . . . . . . .
Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D., who works more than full-time (often in the
early morning or late at night, or on the weekends, from home) and who
always meets the school bus at 3 pm
mother to Miranda, born 8/8/80 -- mother and baby back at school/work
full-time by 9/1/80, with occasional babyminding help from husband,
professors, secretaries, and graduate student friends, with a nanny 1/2 time
in Mali from 1981-83, in preschool 1/2 time from 1984-85, then in school 2/3
time, now away at college
mother to Peter, born 5/17/85 -- mother back at work fulltime 9/85, baby
with dad at home for first year, in daycare 1/2 days in 1986-87 for the
social stimulation, in special ed preschool 1/2 day and daycare for 2 hours
from 1988-90, in school 2/3 time from 1990 to present
mother to Alexander, born 8/10/91 -- mother and baby back at work full-time
by 9/1/91, including all day at the office every Monday (office hours,
tutorials, faculty meetings and dissertation defenses -- all done while
latched on), with a babysitter for 4 hours each Tuesday/Thursday, in daycare
1/2 days beginning fall 1992, 2/3 days beginning fall 1993, in school 2/3
time from 1996 to present
---------------------------
"We get what we accept."
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