I’ve written about this before, but this article just supports my thesis: that what people are calling the “mommy wars” really still all harks back to pay inequity between the sexes, which is based in the expectation that women will always be the primary caregiver.

Inflexible workplaces offer socially mobile women a devil’s choice: they can advance in their careers or they can have families… But more often women don’t have that choice, and take the financial hit. Much of the “wage gap” is in fact a baby gap… Pretty much every aspect of women’s reproductive work is punished economically in the American workplace. And that affects all two-earner, nuclear households — the ideal to which we’re all supposed to aspire (the wage gap is estimated to cost working families $200 billion dollars per year).

While there has been an increase in the number of women working outside the home, that *hasn’t* translated to the same kind of increase in involvement *in* the home by most men. Yes, men are doing more – but women still take on the majority of domestic and childrearing tasks.

So organisations still operate on the presumption that it’s okay for women to be offered lesser jobs, or receive fewer benefits because their primary role is still as caregiver at home. I think in order to understand just how dramatically that impacts things like pay parity and families’ economic well-being, we need to start picturing what things would be like if the “men’s” and “women’s” roles were reversed.

I bet there are plenty of men who *would* like to take time off to be with their children – and if it made financial sense, would do so. In treating both men and women as potential primary caregivers, you make it easier for parents to return to work if they choose to do so, and you do away with the disparity in treatment (i.e. “wouldn’t you prefer admin work”). You empower people to reinforce strong families, solid working roles, and undo so much of the traditional caregiver stereotypes (”I won’t hire her because she’s likely to leave to have a baby and never return, or if she does, only work part-time”).

We’ve said it’s okay for women to have kids and work – but we’ve never said it’s okay for men to have kids and stay home.

And paradoxically, I think that even though we’ve said it’s fine for women to choose either way… we still *expect them to choose* to spend at least some time at home. Which means it’s no longer really a choice again, is it? Men almost never have to make that choice because usually it makes more financial sense for them to stay in the workforce. That’s incredibly unfair, to both fathers and mothers. Aside from the obvious example of breastfeeding directly, no one has ever determined that somehow a) women perform some sort of magical service at home that can’t be done by an equally attentive and caring and loving father and b) that these stereotypes don’t reinforce the traditional uptake of roles, reinforcing the gender pay gap, becoming a self-perpetuating cycle.

This is where the conflict amongst women over the gender-political impact of their own personal choices comes into play. We all intellectually believe that choices should be made solely on the basis of what’s best for a woman and her family. But in real life, it’s hard not to feel that one woman’s decision (either traditional, or non-traditional) makes it more difficult for the women who come behind her because of the expectations it reinforces. We become personally invested in how other women balance their work and home lives, because we feel it directly affects our ability to do the same. The decision to work or not carries so much more weight because it becomes a value-laden representative stance on families and feminism, rather than just an individual preference or path. The personal becomes political.

The workplace becomes a warzone and the homefront becomes a battleground. Instead of channeling time and energy into those things which we hold dear, we squander time and energy attempting to defend our choices by attacking others.

what a sad sad waste. and it will be even more tragic if all the infighting only means that 20 years from now, my nieces will be faced with the same agonising decisions.

you’ve come a long way, baby.

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feminism, women, workplace, sahm, mommy wars, family values