Are children, elders, families in general, the poor better off than they were in 1968, at the start of the Second Wave of Feminism? Are you outraged with a society where 2 month olds are cared for by strangers for 10 hours a day because there is no genuine paternity and maternity leave? Are you outraged that childhood bipolar disorder has only been discovered in the United States?Are you outraged that 2 year olds and 3 years olds are pushed into early academics, that 5 year olds are perceived as backward if they can't read before leaving kindergarten? Do you outraged that teaching for the standardized tests is replacing art, music, recess and gym? Are you outraged that our four year olds are taking dangerous anti-psychotics not proven safe for chronic schizophrenics? Are you outraged that poor immigration women are exploited as nannies and home health aides? A nonviolent revolution as sweeping as the civil rights movement is required to make the US a child-friendly, family-friendly, elder-friendly, human -friendly society. Join me.
When I was an active young feminist in the late 60s and early 70s, the upper middle class nature of New York feminism was profoundly disturbing. Only a tiny minority of women could afford to become doctors, lawyers, college professors, corporate executives. The needs of women of color were ignored.
African American women had always worked and taken care of their children. They were more dubious about abortion, since the babies were more welcomed and taken care of by family members.
Unlike many women with my intellect and education, I stayed home with my four children full-time for 15 years and part-time until the youngest was in high school. I also care for my mother in my home 24/7 during the last four years of my life. Both my husbands made career and financial sacrifices to make that possible.
I involved myself in nonsexist childrearing, childbirth education, breastfeeding counseling, parent education, toddler playgroups, babysitting cooperatives, cooperative nursery schools, school libraries, a campaign to save the local public library, the nuclear freeze movement, mental illness support and advocacy, parent advocacy for playground upkeep and a preschool playroom, the War Resisters League, Pax Christi (Catholic anti-war group)--the list is endless. When I made the mistake of attending library school and social work school, I naively assumed my qualifications would be obvious and no one would dare to treat me like a beginner. Instead, I was given the the salary, benefits, authority, and respect of a beginner and the responsibilities of a long-term employee. Several bosses seemed threatened I wanted their jobs.
I recall one infuriating incident during my first social work placement; my childless 29--year-old supervisor earnestly instructed me, the oldest of 6, the mother of 4, how to interview a client with her two year old present. I had frequently run La Leche Meetings with 20 moms and 30 babies and toddlers. Women social workers who had taken very short maternity leaves and worked full-time during their children's childhood too often acted like all my knowledge and wisdom had been attained by cheating. I got more respect from male professors.
The situation has worsened; women are terrified of taking only a few years off from work. And yet the men who fought World War II left their jobs for several years and did not suffer economic consequences. The government even paid for their college and grad school education.
When my mom went back to college in 1963 and work in 1968, after having raised 6 children, she was accorded more respect and her experience was more honored than mine was 20 years later Full-time childrearing is frequently belittled as beneath the time and attention of intelligent, well-educated parents, who presumably should have exploited immigrant women of color to love and understand their children while they pursued their more important jobs.
In the 70s parents were going to have flexible work schedules so both could raise their children. Instead , in New York City both child care and elder care are lovingly performed by women of color, mostly immigrants, some with irregular immigation status.. When I take care of my grandson in the same New York City playgrounds where his mother frolicked,. my companions are mostly nannies from all over the world. An older white woman with a toddler is assumed to be his grandma, not his nanny. I am often appalled how little highly successful two-career couples pay their nannies; many fail to provide the caregivers with any benefits, Social Security, least of all health care. They think nothing of calling the nanny on Sunday and telling her they don't need her that week or forever.. As one dedicated women from the Dominican Republic told me, "the more I love the children, the more it hurts my heart." Imagine loving a child as your own for three or four years and then never seeing them again when they go to school full-time or the family finds a cheaper nanny.
The aides who helped us take care of my mother during the last years of her life had tragic stories. We paid the agencies about $18 an hour (2001-04); the aides got less than half of that. Most did not have cars and might have to take two buses and a subway to reach their client's homes. Many had left their children in the Caribbean with their families.
I agree that most women with college degrees, graduate, or professional degrees have made enormous strides in most major professions and in the workplace generally. It is only when women have children or have to care for aging parents that they fully realize that women have mostly gained the right to follow the traditional male life style, emphasizing work over relationships, caregiving, community activism.. As women chose to have children at an older age, the realization is late in coming. At that point their lives tend too become too frenzied and exhausting to leave any time for political activism. Nothing has changed to make full-time or even part-time child care by fathers more financially possible.
My four well-educated, successful daughters are only having their consciousness raised as they begin to have children. Before they became mothers, they believed feminism had won its battles. You might make over $100,000 a year, but you might still have to pump breastmilk for your infant in the toilet One daughter was told she could not store her pumped milk in a company refrigerator for a day because it was a biohazard. If you work at Walmart's or a department store, you won't be able to nurse at all, no matter how vehemently your doctor argues that breastfeeding is best for your babies.
How do we make a revolution that will benefit all of the American people?
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V.Corso
Gerald Andersen
Piper Hoffman
jlsathre
podunkmarte
Jimmy Zuma
Salon.com
Comments
That's not to say that I believe their economic opportunities will be as good as ours were, but that's a different (albeit related) problem than the one I think you're raising.
We have the care of both sets of parents, and I believe they, too, are better off. Their care will not fall solely to daughters (which my husband's parents do not have) and daughters-in-law; their male relatives participate far more actively than their brothers did in the care of our grandparents. They have far more options to help them retain their independence as long as possible and then transition into many different configurations of care.
As for the poor, that's harder for me to calculate. I grew up in the era of poor farms (which are the next step up from debtor's prison), and I see more programs designed to alleviate poverty and address its causes. I do not think many of them are effective, but I see value in the attempts. Again, our economic situation is far from ideal, and I am horrified by some of the actions our governments have taken. All told, though, I think that some families, at least, are adjusting well and we're better off for having the breadth of choices that our parents did not have.
My husband expected me to combine full-time work and child care. It was a shock to both of us that I fell in love with raising and educating children and we were poor. But he absolutely supported my choice. He very well might have stayed home if there wasn't such a disparity between our earning capacity.
I was confident I could resume my editororial career. I so regret those two master's degrees. One aunt had gone to law school at 40 and had a superlative career.
Now that they are mothers (mostly far more affluent than we ever were), my daughters, my sons-in-law, and their peers don't feel they have the option to take time off for child care. They have been brainwashed that they would be destroying their careers. That bullshit becomes reality as the educated elite comes to believe it and not work for political reform. None of them have time to join the revolution.
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One thing I've learnt from being in Europe is that maternity leave alone isn't necessarily the answer - where I live, which has three years of maternity leave, women of childbearing years face great workplace discrimination. In France and Scandinavia, on the other hand, where children are seen as a social good, there is tremendous help for parents. In Scandinavia, a father who didn't use his paternity leave to bond with his newborn kids would be looked at askance.
If we honestly believed that children were valuable, the policies and practices would evolve to work for their benefit. But we don't, so women are left making these awful career/parent choices, as though the rest of society had no stake in it.
My grandma, my single aunts, and my young uncles were available for babysitting, went with us on vacations. Things were not so different when my girls are young. Now 3 daughters and 2 grandkids are in Boston. One daughter and granddaughter will be moving to DC and won't see her cousin three months older all the time. Grandparents live in Maine, Long Island, Brooklyn, and Florida (2 divorces). Two brothers are about a 90 minute drive; the others are in upstate NY, Maine, and NorthCarolina.
I see so much more of my grandkids in NYC than the other two. Working parents need to spend weekends with their family, not visiting NY or having visitors.