Reflections on International Womens' Day

[jlc2k2]

Working parents can’t trade their kid in either.

Dang! I even paid extra for a return policy. The hospital ripped us off!

 

[pianistclare]

But don’t you see, Feminism is based on Pride. It’s masked in “equality” but depends upon comparisons and one-up-menship. “Women are just as smart as men.” “Women are just as strong as men.” “Women can do the jobs that men do.” It’s never about raising a woman up for who they are, but always has an underlying message that tries to compare women to men. It’s about what ever a guy can do, I can do. Feminism, from its beginning, was about defining women based on a male standard. This lead to the denigration of men (who was the dope in every family show? Or commercial? The dad.) I now see this underlying model of comparison that drove the beginnings of feminism to now extend to all persons. Achievement can’t be recognized unless we can simultaneously degrade another. Pride.

Whose side are you on? I never said or advanced any of that.
The whole thread is ridiculous.

 

[Crown_of_Stars]

Personally, I’ll never respect being a SAHM the way I respect women who work…

Isn’t that rather snarky? I think that was an awful thing to say, actually. Pretty awful. You don’t respect them at all? Well, naturally, when the modern mentality is that they’re all slovenly, and go around with food spilled all over their clothes, and drag screaming toddlers around with them. If this is what you think is a just a wife and mother, then the only ones you know must be real slobs.

 

[Xantippe]

QUOTE=BlueEyedLady;13750859]

I’ve read your posts since you joined the site. You’re clearly a very intelligent and very wise woman who I have a lot of respect for. I have no doubt that if you had the inclination and your family circumstances allowed, you could and would excel at pretty much whatever you wanted. It’s also clear that you work very hard and pour your mind and heart into your family.
**
But if your little girl told you on her 18th birthday that she was getting married now and going to stay home and start having kids right away, you would be horrified. If she started explaining that she didn’t need college job skills because she found her career and this was it, I don’t think you would buy it - for a hundred reasons.**

A career doesn’t make someone who they are. Some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known have never had careers or even worked in any skilled position. But it is something distinct, that we recognize and respect people for. We recognize and respect mothers and fathers too, and even more so, but it is different. On IWD in a Western nation, female accomplishments are what should be, and generally are, recognized. It isn’t a societal achievement that women can stay home, because they’ve always been able to. It is a societal accomplishment when women start making it in STEM and business. Individually, it takes a lot to be in the type of position the OP described, and the barrier to entry to SAHMing is very low in comparison. When its done, it’s usually only because the husband/father has succeeded enough for it to be possible. Great for him!

That’s really all I’ve been saying all along.

Thank you!

That’s quite true about the hypothetical 18-year-old daughter, but it’s not entirely because of the value of the career for the sake of a career.

Here’s why I would feel that way (apologies in advance to all CAFers who married at 18 and are ecstatically happy):

–I think 18-22 is a very good time to get a bachelor’s degree.
–We can put kids through a decent college in our town relatively inexpensively, so it would be a waste not to take advantage of that.
–I think it’s good to have at least a year living in an apartment and being 100% in charge of one’s own basic survival (shopping, cooking, laundry, cleaning, finances) before getting married
–I think it’s a good idea for her betrothed to have a realistic sense of her domestic abilities.
–If she is going to be an SAHM (which usually means a lot of financial responsibility), she’ll have a better sense of the value of a dollar if she’s been earning and spending her own.
–it’s much harder to travel internationally after starting a family (barring an improbably wealthy husband)
–it’s easier to learn languages when young
–having a bachelor’s degree gives one more confidence, for instance when dealing with school teachers
–she’ll be better prepared to help children with their school work and speak to them authoritatively about college and work
–18-year-olds have a high divorce rate.
–non-college educated women have a higher divorce rate
–I would have a lot of concerns about the wisdom of an older man that would want an 18-year-old wife
–a large age gap between spouses is associated with a higher divorce rate
–I would have a lot of concerns about the ability of a younger guy to support a family.
–we bring to motherhood everything we did before–and I think it’s better to bring more, rather than less (but of course at some point the law of diminishing returns strikes)
–a SAHM with an education and a work history has more to offer her family

This is very hypothetical, as my oldest is planning to be a spinster with one horse and one cat. The 3-year-old has not shared her views with me.

And while I’m thinking of it, you should read “The Honest Toddler: A Child’s Guide to Parenting.”

 

[Xantippe]

Many, many times it’s just impractical to have two parents work with children under 5. Most times, one parent will have to take time off unless one or both parents have an especially flexible schedule and/or they work opposite shifts and/or one company has a daycare on site. And if you’re having actively growing your family, it can be impossible to work for a year, take a few months off, work another year, take time off, and so on. I’m much more referring to SAHMs who stay at home even after their kids are in school.

It really wasn’t clear that you were talking about mothers of school age children. When you run into mothers like that, a lot of the time, there’s some combination of a) a larger family b) homeschooling or c) special needs kid d) mom’s health or disability e) dad has a career that interferes with mom’s ability to work (for instance, because of frequent relocations).

A lot of mothers SAHM for just a few years. Also, a lot of working mothers are only working part-time. Plus, a lot of SAHMs work from home. So, it gets very murky–who exactly is a SAHM?

 

[Rose71]

I have been wondering whether to post about this for a couple of days!

I’m really disappointed in the way the company I work for has marked International Women’s Day. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of having an IWD in the first place. I’d rather there was an international Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself Day instead - regardless of gender, race, orientation etc.

This is a time of limited resources, where all pulling together, focussing on our goals and working as a team has never been more important. drawing atention specifically to one gender at a time like this is, I feel, not just a waste of time, but also devisive.

It’s not just devisive between men and women either. The women within the company who were chosen for a special IWD feature on the intranet were all working mothers. Now, I have to stress, I have no problem with working mothers in principle and I feel this is a very personal choice that is nobody’s business to comment on. For some it is a choice motivated by financial necessity and for others it is a lifestyle choice - but in every case, it isn’t really anyone else’s concern.

The articles that went up on the Intranet on IWD were all very smug, preachy and self-congratulatory ***accounts of how women had ‘put themselves first’ *and taken promotion opportunities that meant they missed seeing their children develop. One lady wrote, "we were in London at the time. My wage would barely cover childcare, but it was impotrant to me that I **progressed in my career." Another gushed “My husband sees the children off to school and when I get home, I see them a couple of hours and then I willingly get my laptop out again when they are in bed, for a couple of hours” All very noble if you are struggling to make ends meet, but this was someone at almost the top of the tree! She’s also someone who colleagues can never get hold of, because her hours are so ‘flexible’ that (like many other working mothers here) she is allowed to contravene the contractual arranagement that working hours are any 8 between 7am and 7pm.

It just drives me mad that the ladies selected to represent all that is ‘brilliant’ about modern womanhood are the ones who present their stories as 'look how well ***I ***am doing! Look how I get what I want!’ and not the ones who truly demonstrate kindness, compassion and courage in the workplace - regardless of their marital status, orientation, ability to conceive or anything else.

Then there was my plea not to turn the thread into working vs SAHM…

Can’t someone put this thread out of its misery now? I didn’t post it to prove that days like IWD were more divisive then cohesive,by showing what ‘divisive and unpleasant’ looks like, but that is what most people seem determined to demonstrate! All anyone needed to do was either agree that it could be divisive, or disagree and say it isn’t!

I posted to express my view that IWD is mostly PC-nonsense anyway and the way it was marked in my company was in my opinion inappropriate, because the women featured didn’t demonstrate any thought or comapssion for their families of colleagues in what they wrote.

I’m truly sorry that there is so much bickering and so many people feel the need to explain and justify their lifestyles because of that. I feel this thread is just bringing out the worst in everyone now and my heart sinks each time I log in. I said pages ago that I wasn’t going to post on it again, but I’m making one last request to have it shut down for good.

I think the only purpose it is serving now is to make our CAF cohort of disillusioned young Catholic men feel they may be better off without a wife after all…

 

[Xantippe]

Then there was my plea not to turn the thread into working vs SAHM…

?Can’t someone put this thread out of its misery no I didn’t post it to prove that days like IWD were more divisive then cohesive,by showing what ‘divisive and unpleasant’ looks like, but that is what most people seem determined to demonstrate! All anyone needed to do was either agree that it could be divisive, or disagree and say it isn’t!

I posted to express my view that IWD is mostly PC-nonsense anyway and the way it was marked in my company was in my opinion inappropriate, because the women featured didn’t demonstrate any thought or comapssion for their families of colleagues in what they wrote.

I’m truly sorry that there is so much bickering and so many people feel the need to explain and justify their lifestyles because of that. I feel this thread is just bringing out the worst in everyone now and my heart sinks each time I log in. I said pages ago that I wasn’t going to post on it again, but I’m making one last request to have it shut down for good.

I think the only purpose it is serving now is to make our CAF cohort of disillusioned young Catholic men feel they may be better off without a wife after all…

I know you labored over tone, but unfortunately your OP came across as really judgy and critical. (And yes, you did rather explicitly criticize your one colleague for working when she was just breaking even on childcare–so the SAHM/WOTH stuff did not come out of the blue.)

That’s why your thread went where it went.

 

[Xantippe]

Rose71,

I also think you overestimate the degree to which “I need to do XYZ for my kids” is welcome to employers. The women you are talking about may do better by saying that stuff is for them, not for their children (even if it actually is for the benefit of their children). I don’t know this from personal experience, but in one of my favorite books (Vicki Iovine’s Girlfriend’s Guide to Getting Your Groove Back), Iovine specifically counsels working mothers to fake a broken tooth or a breast biopsy for themselves in order to get out of the office for important kid stuff. I think that’s probably not a great idea, but it does suggest that some women will not mention kid or family stuff as a motive for doing stuff for fear of being seen as unprofessional or not dedicated enough.

I guess I see the personal statements differently than you do. You see it as selfishness, I see it as attempts to demonstrate that they really are very dedicated to the company. Rah rah–I will give a kidney for the company! That’s how I heard it.

Working ladies, what do you think?

 

[Irishmom2]

I know you labored over tone, but unfortunately your OP came across as really judgy and critical. (And yes, you did rather explicitly criticize your one colleague for working when she was just breaking even on childcare–so the SAHM/WOTH stuff did not come out of the blue.)

That’s why your thread went where it went.

I don’t agree. The thread went that way because people seize on any opportunity to pounce on people, pick on their words and continue to pounce even when the OPs restate their intentions. Then, the snowball just keeps rolling off on tangents they were never meant to be. Even when valid points are made on both “sides,” the fact remains the thread went off course.

I believe the OP was lamenting the fact that the IWD “event” where she worked only celebrated working women, not ALL women.

 

[PhiloMed]

I don’t agree. The thread went that way because people seize on any opportunity to pounce on people, pick on their words and continue to pounce even when the OPs restate their intentions. Then, the snowball just keeps rolling off on tangents they were never meant to be. Even when valid points are made on both “sides,” the fact remains the thread went off course.

I believe the OP was lamenting the fact that the IWD “event” where she worked only celebrated working women, not ALL women.

And, really, why would it? It’s a company. Employing women. Working outside of the home. Why would they find women who are SAHM’s to profile?

To Xanti’s point, the whole “I have to do XYZ for my kids” will vary by manager and employer but in general you are absolutely correct.

For example, when I worked at an academic hospital on clinical service and even when I was doing research I would sooner tell people I was going to have a GYN appointment than that I was taking the kids to the Little Gym because the nanny was out for the day. After all, Gym and GYN sort of rhyme, right? Even when my daughter was in the emergency room of the same hospital and I was running down to check on her I was still getting “Well, when are you going to have the consult done?” instead of “Oh, by all means, take your time with your baby who is having trouble breathing.” I worked for women and they were unsympathetic and, basically, didn’t want to hear about the fever, the pediatrician appointment or whatever. Even when I was pregnant with my daughter and I had to tell my director I was having my 2nd baby in 2 years she said “Was this intentional?”

The environment there was that you should be so grateful to be there that you will do anything to please the ivy league gods.

Fast forward a year and I’m now in a big corporation. A big corporation that is afraid of getting sued. It’s also a big corporation where if I’m not there for 6-8 weeks of leave, someone else can pick up where I left off and hand it back to me when I return. Nobody is going to have to work an extra weekend or carry the pager overnight because I’m not around. I can work from home and they encourage a flexible work arrangement. My manager doesn’t want to hear about my OB appointments. Not because she’s a nasty person who finds my pregnancy inconvenient, but because she’s a busy lady and if I’m working from home today because I have an afternoon Dr appointment that is my problem to work around teleconferences and emails. Same goes for kids dr appointments, sick kid at home I want to keep an eye on, or just a beautiful day that I want to be home before dark to take the kids to the park.

Even so, if someone asked me to talk about my job for a company profile I would probably focus on my dedication to the company, how I often log on at night after 9pm to get additional work completed, and my future goals.

And yes, >80% of my take-home pay goes to childcare. Throw in the occasional babysitter for a late night or weekend date, commuting, and clothing for work I am probably just breaking even or even losing a little bit.

 

[Crown_of_Stars]

I’m neither a wife nor a mother, just a single lady working in a library, and I’m very content. Some women are working and not wives or mothers. But I would never say I refuse to respect the stay at home mothers the same way I respect working mothers. I would never say being a mother is just “biology” and hasn’t “accomplished” anything.” I don’t get impressed the way some do, obviously, over the fact that someone went to college and got their degrees. As far as I’m concerned, that means nothing. To say a wife and mother hasn’t “accomplished” anything or worked hard toward something is extremely degrading, judgmental and discriminatory. I say the home mother has accomplished just as much as the working mother, each in her own way. There IS a such thing as accomplishing something in your own way, not just to say she either has or hasn’t. The stay at home wife and mother I’m thinking of is, certainly not the lazy kind, but a very dignified person who maybe doesn’t HAVE to work because her husband (heaven forbid) makes enough as a doctor or any other high position. Maybe THIS kind of stay at home wife and mother doesn’t just laze around the house in her robe and slippers all day, with spilt food and screaming toddlers, but is out involved with things, such as volunteer work at the hospital, church, ladies committees, etc. THAT is the kind of home wife and mother I admire. Certainly not the degraded lazy stupid kind like what some people obviously think they all are. And I admire the women who worked in times when most didn’t, as well, such as the ones who took in sewing, or helped other women in some way. It doesn’t mean you have to have a CAREER. Why do we have “Mother’s Day”? It seems to be in honor of women who are mothers, or mother figures, simply FOR that reason alone. Because they are mothers. Not just “biology” who didn’t “accomplish” anything. They raised one or more than one child, had to teach them, had to guide them, and didn’t just leave them for a babysitter. They WERE real mothers to them. THAT is an accomplishment in its OWN way.

 

[bitterhope]

I don’t agree. The thread went that way because people seize on any opportunity to pounce on people, pick on their words and continue to pounce even when the OPs restate their intentions. Then, the snowball just keeps rolling off on tangents they were never meant to be. Even when valid points are made on both “sides,” the fact remains the thread went off course.

I believe the OP was lamenting the fact that the IWD “event” where she worked only celebrated working women, not ALL women.

I agree with you. This happens a lot on family life and in parenting. The moderators won’t allow things like this to occur on the other forums. I wish they would stop it in here as well.

 

[pianistclare]

• 1 to Crown of Stars and Xantippe.

The OP was a rant, so people ranted.
I get it. It’s regrettable, but it is what it is.

I doubt it will be pulled.
Live and learn.

Just unsubscribe. I’m going to right now!

 

[Sarcelle]

I don’t agree. The thread went that way because people seize on any opportunity to pounce on people, pick on their words and continue to pounce even when the OPs restate their intentions. Then, the snowball just keeps rolling off on tangents they were never meant to be. Even when valid points are made on both “sides,” the fact remains the thread went off course.

I believe the OP was lamenting the fact that the IWD “event” where she worked only celebrated working women, not ALL women.

To the OP, were you able to get an answer on why your company chose to honor certain women and not others? I am curious why they all chose working mothers instead of single mothers or women who are not mothers.

 

[Irishmom2]

PholMed, I suppose my wording was not clear. I was not suggesting her company honor SAHMs. If you read my post, by the way, I never used the words stay at home mom, you did. I said both sides had valid points but that was not the point of my last post. It was about how or why the thread got derailed.

As someone else may have asked earlier: what is the actual intent of IWD? I also have never heard of it until this thread.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

And yes, >80% of my take-home pay goes to childcare. Throw in the occasional babysitter for a late night or weekend date, commuting, and clothing for work I am probably just breaking even or even losing a little bit.

It’s been a while since I’ve priced it out, but this is one of the reasons I did stay home after my son was born. I needed to pay for childcare (what I was able to find was convenient, just a few doors down, a woman who cared for children in her house, she had just 2 other kids)

But I needed her for 10-11 hours a day (commute time and work time). Just paying her would be about half my take home. Then the costs of clothing, commuting, my pay check being taxed fully because I was DH’s dependent, etc. I don’t think it reached 80 % but maybe 65%.

But the thing is I worked in an office. I wasn’t a doctor. If I were I think my choice would have been different.

My kids pediatrician had twins. For her to continue working, she and her husband moved to be closer to her in-laws so grandma would be with the kids during the day. She also was able to cut her hours to 3 days a week in the office and one day a week hospital. But I think her commute increased by a large bit.

just adding. the is because you have to pay so much for childcare, not because you work.

 

[PhiloMed]

PholMed, I suppose my wording was not clear. I was not suggesting her company honor SAHMs. If you read my post, by the way, I never used the words stay at home mom, you did. I said both sides had valid points but that was not the point of my last post. It was about how or why the thread got derailed.

As someone else may have asked earlier: what is the actual intent of IWD? I also have never heard of it until this thread.

No idea and I never heard of it until I logged in to my company web site that morning.

It seems like in some countries it is an alternative version of Valentines Day and in corporate USA it is a day to profile accomplishments of working women?

Either way, I’d say the adaptation to the workplace has been an epic failure if it isn’t abundantly clear what the purpose is.

 

[Rose71]

We’ll have to agree to disagree on whether my OP was judgmental, Xantippe, because I don’t think for a moment it was. Opinionated, yes (in that it offered my opinion) but the way I read it, even reading it back to myself now, it is certainly not judgmental.

Perhaps it is true what they say about America and England: 2 nations divided by a common language!

Likewise, I didn’t say anywhere that it was wrong to use one’s wages to cover childacre costs. I made it clear that such decisions are very personal choices. My specific criticism was that the lady writing the article justified it by saying it was to enable her to do what she wanted.

My bosses and colleagues all have a very tolerant and flexible approach to combining parenting with working. It’s not unusual at all to see messages on shared Outlook calenders that say, "Flexi - kids to dentist " of similar. Nobody, but nobody is ever made to feel that they ought to be ashamed of combining parenting with working. We’re just not like that as an organisation!

The only bit of my OP that was critical of one particular working mum was where the person in question routinely worked outside of the contractual hours that we are all signed up to. This does cause an inconvenience and in my opinion (fine if others don’t share it) it crosses a line, because it has a negative impact on the ability of others to do their jobs too.

 

[ThePCWife]

I think things got off the rails because one poster was waving around the “SAHMing is the hardest job in the world” bloody shirt when nobody had said that at all. So you had one person making a straw-argument that nobody brought up and SAHMs responding to that because they didn’t think of it as the HAARDEST JARB IN THE WERLD, but they did think of it as something they took seriously as a vocation and worked hard at.

Anyway, all around the world, working (outside the home) mothers respond to the demands of balancing kids and work by waiting as long as they biologically can before having kids and then having 1 or 2. See Singapore, Germany, Sweden, most of the United States, Canada, etc. And since most women work outside the home, mothers or not, the world of having more kids that that shrinks and becomes socially invisible outside of narrow subcultures.

I certainly would not be posting on this thread if I had one child. I’d be in better physical health and bedridden so many days, for one. The experiences of mothering are different when you have very few children very late in life and allow the paid-village to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

 

[PhiloMed]

It’s been a while since I’ve priced it out, but this is one of the reasons I did stay home after my son was born. I needed to pay for childcare (what I was able to find was convenient, just a few doors down, a woman who cared for children in her house, she had just 2 other kids)

But I needed her for 10-11 hours a day (commute time and work time). Just paying her would be about half my take home. Then the costs of clothing, commuting, my pay check being taxed fully because I was DH’s dependent, etc. I don’t think it reached 80 % but maybe 65%.

But the thing is I worked in an office. I wasn’t a doctor. If I were I think my choice would have been different.

My kids pediatrician had twins. For her to continue working, she and her husband moved to be closer to her in-laws so grandma would be with the kids during the day. She also was able to cut her hours to 3 days a week in the office and one day a week hospital. But I think her commute increased by a large bit.

just adding. the is because you have to pay so much for childcare, not because you work.

I’m in a similar position, but it’s more the future earnings and benefits. 401K, Pension, health insurance that costs 1/4 of what my husband would pay at his small company and we have better coverage, bonuses, long term incentive program, and the fact that if i left the workforce for the next 4-6 years i would likely not be able to go back to where i was and even if i did I would be way behind in earnings.

I’m working today for the paycheck I will earn 10 years from now and the retirement options I will have 25 years from now.