More Stay at Home Mom Bashing from the Woman without Kids

I've stated previously what a delight Pandagon is to read. I can't count the number of people who've read my blogging and asked me, "Are they for real?" I always tell them that, yes, there really are nutballs out there who think that way. It's just too hard to make this stuff up.

Today's installment of Moonbats in Space is this gem from Amanda (of course! Who else?) on how SAHMs (stay at home moms) aren't really doing it because they enjoy it. They do it because they are forced to: either at gunpoint, by a selfish husband, "societal pressures," or getting laid off and not finding another job. OK, I made up the "at gunpoint" excuse, but the others are things she actually said.

E.J. Graff at the Columbia Journalism Review has an article about the “opt-out revolution” and how it’s a myth. Basically, the “opt-out revolution” is a patriarchal myth headily promoted in places like the NY Times, where readers are relegated with wishful stories about the supposed majority of female Ivy League graduates and other high paid professional types who want nothing more than to get married and give up their careers to be support systems and full time stay-at-home wives for their oh-so-much-more-important husbands. Basically, conservative upper middle class types are still pissed off about The Feminine Mystique and will spend a lot of money trying to demonstrate that women really, truly have no other aspirations than being full time moms, which means full time wives, since your time spent as an active wife ideally lasts a lot longer than when your children are small and need attention 24/7.

It's more of the typical Amanda drivel. Hyperbole, hyperbole, hyperbole followed by a few choice mischaracterizations and a dash of lying.

I don't know that "a majority of female Ivy League graduates" want "nothing more" than to stay home and raise their own kids, but there are enough women out there who were raised by the career women of the 1970s (the ones who weren't home) to know that having one's mom home is a better deal than only seeing her when you've been asleep for two hours. These are women who have decided two things: (a) taking care of the people you cared enough about to bring into the world is more important than billing another 1,000 for a client who can't remember your name and (b) the work world isn't going to change significantly until enough people say they aren't going to work this way anymore.

If we really live in a country that needs better educated people for its workforce, then having enough highly-educated people refuse to get on the hamster wheel will help change that. And guess what? More associates want fewer billable hours and are willing to take the paycut. And more companies are responding to that demand.

But this post isn't really about changing the culture of corporate America, although that will happen because the American workforce is changing. The post is about how a woman without kids (and some unsuccessful relationships, if you read her posts enough) thinks she can speak for mothers.

The post is rife with the typical feminist anti-SAHM stuff we've come to love:

--Women don't really choose to stay home. They stay home because they are either "forced" to by their husbands (who use what? Guns?) or they are "forced" to because they get laid off and don't find employment.

--Women who stay home aren't happy there. After all, why would anybody want to stay home and take care of their own children?

--Women who stay home are depressed and isolated. I guess SAHMs forget how to drive, use the Internet or the telephone, and they lose all friends and family once they decide to stay home.

--Women who stay at home are going to end up divorced and destitute. Well, maybe Amanda hasn't read the statistics that well-educated women are less likely to divorce than women with only a high school diploma.

--Women who stay home are in a perilous financial situation. Oddly enough, there are plenty of working mothers who think they are in perilous financial situations, as well. In other words, having a "perilous financial situation" isn't really connected to both spouses working.

I guess after ranting for several paragraphs about how badly SAHMs are treated, Amanda must have realized that there would be some blowback for her screed. Humorously, she ends with this:

For all the women who stay home and are about to get angry, I don’t think you’re in the wrong or anything to stay home. In fact, the opposite—I think that women who make the decision to stay home because there aren’t any other realistic choices for them are simply being human. You’re right to do what’s good for you. This is an issue of discrimination and a social situation where women don’t feel free to keep on working if they want to, and where men very rarely have this quandary that so many professional women have.

There aren't any other realistic choices? There are plenty of choices for everybody. In fact, most women (including myself) who stay home are doing so because we made a choice. It wasn't that they were "forced" to stay home. It was that of the choices available (working full-time, working part-time, not working, etc.), we decided being home with our kids was the best choice for all of us. We made the same choice, btw, for my husband to continue his job.

The problem with Amanda's--and most feminist--arguments I see concerning staying home or not staying home is that they pretend that these decisions are only about the individual. Few of us have the luxury of being concerned only about ourselves. Our lives are about the shared commitments we have to other people, whether they are spouses, children, parents, siblings, or others. With those relationships come decision-making that benefits them. Sometimes, that means doing things other than what one would do if one were single. Because Amanda is neither married nor has children, I suspect it would be impossible for her to understand this.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.