The radio station is coming along great! I still don’t have a great procedure for updating, but I am working on it. We tried to change some songs every day, but I’d like to change the whole playlist every day if I can figure out how to do it efficiently.
There are some readings and story telling by the girls in the lineup. How’s that for homeschooling!
If you’d like to learn more:
Add comment August 26th, 2006
As I stated in an earlier post, the Washington Post ran an editorial on June 18 entitled “Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms”. In this article Linda Hershman defends her earlier article “Homeward Bound” in The American Prospect. I gave my reactions to “Homeward Bound” in Tuesday’s post Upward or Homeward?.
After reading the original article, this follow up opinion piece leaves little of interest to be dissected, but I have additional thoughts to add to this.
Ms. Hirshman starts the article by stating:
… I said that the tasks of housekeeping and child rearing were not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings. They do not require a great intellect, they are not honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings.
I argued yesterday that not being invlolved in a paid career does not mean that one dedicates her (we are mostly discussing women here) full time and talents to housekeeping and child rearing. The fact that I have time to read and think about what I’ve read illustrates that I do have interests that require me to use my “talents of intellect”. This assumption that “staying home” does not allow us to continue to be thoughful people can arguably be one reason why it is difficult for women to re-enter a career after having “opted-out” at an earlier point in her life.
Specifically, I did not know that you can say almost anything about how great it is for a woman to give up her job; standing up for staying at work is the big taboo.
I’ll admit that for many women, the benefits of working are greater. But the statement “That working women have the better life,” is simply not true. You see, “wokring women have the better life” is not equivalent to “standing up for staying at work.” One is combative, the other is supportive.
Hirshman goes on to discuss what the mommy bloggers said about her American Prospect article. Did she quote one single well-thought out blog post? No, she only quoted the snippets that were the knee-jerk reactions. I then have to wonder if there is any point to her rebuttal except to advertise her new book.
These so-called liberals and feminists, who were once in the forefront of making social change, declared that people could no longer suggest that women should change their lives.
Okay, then let’s hear more about why you disagree with them? If you don’t give me any reasons, then how can I consider what you have to say?
I guess working women are too busy at work to blog about their lives… They’re doing what beleaguered, overworked people do. They’re publishing a manifesto. Using the samizdat of the modern world — e-mail.
Why is it that working women e-mailing the article to one other is better than bloggers discussing and debating the finer points of the article? Why should I join the “elite workforce” if it means that I will be beleaguered and overworked? I’d rather be among those who are working to understand the issues of our lives and delve deeper into the forces behind them. Moreover, she says that women at home cannot flourish intellectually, but then goes on to make fun of the mommy bloggers who are doing just that!
From reading more on various place on the internet, it appears that Ms. Hirshman claims to be supporting working women, but she does it in a way that reduces the stay-at-home mother to “someone who has wasted their life”. She argues that no, we can’t all agree to get along to fight for better options for women since we all want different things. She compares asking that these two “competing” forces to get along is akin to asking liberals and conservatives to get along.
I think what she is missing is that mothers and even fathers, in general, want some form of balanced lives. Many of us don’t want to dedicate ourselves to our careers, but we need creative intellectual outlets. Unlike “left versus right”, many of us want the ability to move back and forth from each “side” at various times in our lives. I see work, then staying at home (or working part-time) when the kids are young, then going back to full time career work as a very common sequence for parents. There may be times when a “worker” has to cut back at work due to family needs as well. It is not as simple as “sides”. I am sure there are just as many working moms who wish for more choices as there are stay-at-home moms who wish for more choices. And I suspect that dads would also appreciate more flexibility.
I have read many intersting blog articles regarding Linda Hirshman’s opinion piece. These different posts are more eloquent and insightful than anything I could write, so I’m not going to reiterate the points made in them. I encourage you to read at least the first one in the list.
3 comments June 28th, 2006
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Washington Post ran an editorial on June 18 entitled “Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms”. In this Linda Hirshman defends her earlier article “Homeward Bound” in The American Prospect.
My first reaction to the Washington Post article was extreme anger. Stepping back from my desire to immediately launch into a diatribe, I read her American Prospect article to undertand to why the “wrath of stay-at-home moms” was being directed at her. This earlier piece gave me more insight into what she believes, and, while I can respect some of her points, I still believe that she is causing more harm than good with her commentary.
From the Prospect article:
“Among the affluent-educated-married population, women are letting their careers slide to tend the home fires. If my interviewees are working, they work largely part time, and their part-time careers are not putting them in the executive suite.”
Perhaps they don’t want to be in the executive suite? I wonder if all affluent-educated-married men want to be in the executive suite too? Or maybe they are headed there just because that is what is expected of them? Ms. Hirshman goes on to detail some of the data that she has collected with regards to women and work. Eventually, she gets to the part where I feel that her argument has turned from possibly supportable data to opinion. She states:
The family — with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks — is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, “A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.”
Hold on a minute! I was not assigned to the “homefront”. I jumped into it with both eyes open! Admittedly, I still work for the same company from which I jumped, but now it is part-time from home. Would I be happy to go to work all day and have my husband take care of kids and house? I know that I would not. Working full time would leave me very little time to enjoy the things that mean the most to me. My children. My friends. My pursuit of knowledge. My time when I am not working is when I can fully flourish as a human. I have time to read interesting articles, debate topics with my husnband and friends, learn more about the world, volunteer for organizations that I support. My career work is interesting and challenges my brain in some ways, but not in the philospohical manner that my non-career work does!
Ms. Hirshman then goes on to list rules for “Prying women out of their traditional roles.” The rules are laughable. They give no worth to the most valuable things in life. I think she would prefer to have robots than real humans with real feelings who want to live real lives.
Here is one of her “rules”:
You can either find a spouse with less social power than you or find one with an ideological commitment to gender equality. Taking the easier path first, marry down. Don’t think of this as brutally strategic. If you are devoted to your career goals and would like a man who will support that, you’re just doing what men throughout the ages have done: placing a safe bet.
Yes, right, that’s how I wish to choose a husband. I fell in love with someone who respects me as a person and supports my choices.
She also states:
Yet somewhere along the way the women made decisions in the direction of less money. Part of the problem was idealism; idealism on the career trail usually leads to volunteer work, or indentured servitude in social-service jobs, which is nice but doesn’t get you to money.
Is money the only reason for life? Am I here just to make money? If that makes me idealistic, then I am proud to be an idealist. Maybe one day men will also make these highly-enlightened choices that she claims women make now. Perhaps the gender equality should come from the other direction. Let us let men step down from their ladders and have more time to enjoy the finer things in life!
Finally, these choices are bad for women individually. A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one’s capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one’s own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives.
As I argued before, I do not agree that I have a lesser life because I spend more time with my kids than at an office or in a courtroom. I have the better life, according to her definition of a “good life”. Moreover, I think she is missing some vital parts of a good life which include making connections with others.
I do undertand is her point that the fewer women there are in places of power, the fewer advances that will be made to support those women who do want to “be in power”. I can respect that opinion. However, I am not willing to sacrifice my life to that cause. I will let my friends and colleagues know about issues facing women. I will fight for the sub-issues that I feel are worthy. You want more resources for breastfeeding in the workplace, I’ll be there to support you. You need better childcare options, okay, I’ll write and lobby about that. In fact, I believe that I have made the company for which I work more family-friendly in some small ways.
I am not making a mistake by not climbing the ladder to the executive suite. I may be making the path to the executive suite a little more difficult for those women who wish to pursue it by not performing some of the trailblazing, but I am not willing to sacrifice who I am for Ms. Hirshman’s vision of the world.
Tomorrow I will be taking a look at her Washington Post article. To leave you with one final, inflammatory quote from the “Homewad Boundnd” article which insinuates that every woman who is not on track for the executive suite is fixated on baby poop :
Not two weeks after the Yalie flap, the Times ran a story of moms who were toilet training in infancy by vigilantly watching their babies for signs of excretion 24-7. They have voluntarily become untouchables.
3 comments June 27th, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars by Miriam Peskowitz. While Ms. Peskowitz made some very interesting points, I did not feel that the book offered enough concrete solutions to the current social problem of the lack of choices in balancing family and work.
She claims that the media (our favorite scapegoat) has created the mommy wars and continues to encourage women to judge one another for their individual choices. She goes on to say that this clouds the real issues that women (and men) face in reagrds to unpaid “care” work and paid “career” work. If we can work together to find better solutions, we will all have better lives.
One of the problems that face us today is that “The powerful acts of opening up better jobs for women weren’t accompanied by other powerful acts of social change that would have fully supported us in these new positions.” How many hours a week to these jobs require? How can working these jobs be balanced with other aspects of life? Perhaps for families with no children, it is still possible to balance demanding careers and healthy family and community life, but for families with children it is quite difficult. Different families look for different solutions to find some balance, and we all wish that there were more options available.
Ms Peskowitz quotes Amy Hackney Blackwell “The opt-out revolution isn’t about motherhood; it’s about quality of life and rejection of a system in which long hours have been confused with quality work.”
Personally, I believe that even without children, I would not have wanted to climb the corporate ladder. The pressure and the time demands would have eventually taken their toll on me regardless of the fact that I was a mother. Perhaps becoming a mother gave me a very handy excuse to take a step back and not devote myself to corporate life.
One question that stands out for me is why is it usually the mother, not the father, that ends up cutting back at work. I certainly don’t have the answer to that old question, and I am sure there are many reasons. For me and mine, I can say that pregnancy and breastfeeding left me tired. I could not balance full-time work and family. Being with my children, I discovered that for the most part, I enjoy being home and being with them. Perhaps men generally feel that they do not have the choice to opt-out. Perhaps they would be penalized even more harshly than the women who reduce their hours at work.
The work I do for my family is much more meaningful and rewarding to me than my for pay work overall. Why should I be made to feel guilty for wanting to spend time with my children instead of hiring a nanny who would get to spend time with them?
As for the social change that is needed, I believe that we need more choices for part-time work and part-time childcare. Benefits should be available for those who chose to work part-time. In the case of families with two adults, all benefits should be shared, whether it be retirement funds or Social Security credits.
To close, I will quote Ms. Peskowitz: “And why is it impossible to imagine that some women and men really want to be with their kids?”
10 comments June 23rd, 2006
And now, for the final installment!
Chapter Nine of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard? by Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, and Nicole Wise is called “What Really Matters?”
This was the chapter that clinched it for me. I really appreciated what the authors wrote in thiis conclusion and have started to spend more time thinking, pondering and pursuing interests that do not involve my children. I still do spend time learning about and with my children, of course! I’m not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.
What are the big questions in life? Are we so busy doing that we forget to consider them? “It seems possible, even reasonable, today to live a full life without ever facing an existential question bigger than ‘What’s really better, buying or leasing a Ford Explorer?’” Oh my goodness, did that make me cringe. I know at times I’ve felt that it was so much easier to websurf than to sit down and really think. I’m going to make this my goal. Even writing this blog, where I work to put together thoughts into a somewhat coherent essay has been a challenge. I read what others write and become discouraged that I am not as literate or eloquent as I want to be, but I hope that with practice, my thinking and writing will become clearer.
I will finish off with some quotes from this last chapter:
Life’s big questions “are important because, even without conscious thought on our part, the answers to them define what our lives are about, and direct the decisions we make every single day.”
“Staying busy makes it easy for us to evade introspection.”
“We each must find a purpose to our life, a reason for being on this earth, a mission that transcends both the good and bad days, that sustains us in the verdant spring times of our lives as well as in the bleak, dark winters.”
“To become independent and successful parents, to give our children the real tools they need to go through life well, to teach them to think for themselves, we have to think for ourselves, to decide what life means for us.”
1 comment June 22nd, 2006
Chapter Eight of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard? by Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, and Nicole Wise is called “What About Us?”
Have I lost myself in trying to be the best parent I can be? What does it mean to be the “best parent I can be”? Can I parent well enough and be satisfied by that?
Would my kids be better off if I engaged in more outside interests? Is it fair to the kids to make them a parent’s reason for being?
Are we so busy doing that we forget to be? “A parent needs to be there and relaxed to really listen.”
Add comment June 21st, 2006
Chapter Seven of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard? by Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, and Nicole Wise is called “Is Winning Everything?”
My answer is no. And I want my children to know that. While I am still working on (and will always be amending) my definition of success, it does not include being a winner in the traditional sense. Success for me includes balance, happiness, serving others, being reflective, learning, …
I’m not raising superstars. I’m not willing to give up my life completely in order to raise a superstar. I don’t judge my own success on whether or not my child is a “Superstar”. Does that make me a bad parent? No, it absolutely does not.
I question myself, what do I want my children to get out of life and how can I help them to get there while retaining my notion of self? To be clear, some things that I do are are not my first choice on what I’d do if I were without children, and I do not completely ignore the presence of my chilren. However, I will try not to be pushed, pulled or guilted to the point where I feel I am giving up who I am to help them be who they are. In order for my kids to thrive, I need to stay intact.
What do you think entails success for you and your children?
2 comments June 20th, 2006
Chapter Six of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard? by Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, and Nicole Wise is called “Custom Kids.”
I have nothing to add regarding this chapter as most of the points were touched upon eariler, so I will just give a couple of quotes that illustrate and leave it at that.
“By urging our children to fulfill every iota of their potential, as viewed from where we stand, we parents end up devoting an inordinate amount of attention to all the things that are wrong with them.”
“Remember, childhood is the preparation, not a performance. Our children’s lives belong to them We need to stop trying to live their lives for them.”
“Stage parents” stereotypes come to mind when I consider these quotes. I hope to spend more time trying to know what my kids are like rather than telling them who they should be.
2 comments June 19th, 2006
Chapter Five of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying Too Hard? by Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, and Nicole Wise is called “Whose Life Is It?.”
Shlould we plan our children’s lives completely, shielding them from every disappointment? Should we be sure that they have something to fill every monent? No. These are their lives. They must learn to live them without constant interruptions from us.
What really should be beginning to happen as children get older is that they start to take over more responsibility for their own lives, and their parents start to let go. If the goal is for children to develop the skills they need to be independent and self-sufficient, they need practice.
Absolutely. Sometimes people seem surprised at how much my kids do on their own. They pick out their own outifts and make their own food (not every meal, but some meals and snacks). My eldest does much of her homeschool studies on her own, with guidance from me. The list goes on, but that isn’t the point.
“…our earnest effort to be good parents deprives our children of this sense of joy and discovery.”
If my kids have a question for an adult, I tell them to go ask for themselves. If it is uncomfortable for them, I will go and stand by them, but I want them to forge the bond with the other person without me acting as intermediary. I don’t need to find answers for them. I need to guide them into learning to find and critique the answers on their own.
In quiet moments, the mind often works on its own, under the surface, to solve vexing personal problems….So down time may not be entirely down. But real boredowm and personal responibility for your own free time also teach children other lessons.
This is something that I strongly agree with and is one of my reasons for wishing to homeschool my kids. They get plenty of free time to discover themselves and enjoy their own pursuits. The words “I’m bored” are almost never uttered in our house. As the girls are used to having to find things to do, they have become quite proficient at it and don’t feel the need for external entertainment.
2 comments June 18th, 2006
Sorry for the interruption.
As I am still in the middle of my review of Hyper-Parenting (see my recent posts), I probably won’t get to my review of The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars by Miriam Peskowitz until next week. By then, the Washington Post article “Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms” may no longer be available.
It is currently available here. I think you need to subscribe with free membership to be able to read it. It’s worth it. I’m angry, very angry. I will be saving the text to pick it apart right after my review of Peskowitz’s book.
Addendum: As The Washington Post is linking to this post, I feel that I must write at least a little of what made me so angry. What has upset me is not that Ms. Hirshman has “come out full blast for women who work” but that she has added fuel to the fire of the “Mommy Wars” without doing anything to help reduce the divisiveness perpetuated by today’s media and without offering some real solutions to mothers (and fathers) who wish for more varied opportunites to combine paid work and unpaid “care work”. Stating “You make me want to vomit too” is not going to help us get anywhere with this important social issue.
6 comments June 17th, 2006
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