The Politics of Motherhood

...Feminists have not asked the questions that matter: Why stay at home...

...Unfortunately, this issue transcends economics...

...But the heart of the matter—how women can lead rich and independent lives at home—is left hanging...

...10:28...

...The women's movement has not yet had the time or made the effort to understand and explore what life at home can be like for women today...

...They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rug-hooking class in adult education...

...This need not imply what Schlafly suggests— that women who make such preparations are spurning their families...

...Once again, Phyllis Schlafly is a remarkable example...

...How can the family afford to lose its main breadwinner...

...Because most women earn less money than most men, when it comes time to decide which spouse stays home, the choice is obvious...

...magazine...

...The withering comments are familiar to every at-home mother: "What's an educated young woman like you doing at home...

...If you think diapers and dishes are a never-ending repetitive routine," says Schlafly, "just remember that most of the jobs outside the home are just as repetitious, tiresome, and boring...

...Feminists have pushed for legislative reform that directly assists homemakers...

...Having spent the last three years in such an effort myself, with my children ranging from as young as one year old to as old as seven during that time, I know the difficulties of writing with children around...

...Unlike Schlafly, Marshner has seen life's rougher side...

...Still, their battles for political and economic equality have inevitably led them to prize achievement on the job above all else...

...On the way out, she asks me, in a sister-to-sister tone, "Well, when are you going to go back to work...

...In part this is a practical economic problem...

...But none of this addresses the question of spirit and tone...

...Why did I feel that...

...She counsels mothers to "draw out the venom inside a person" as a tactic for dealing with a recalcitrant child...

...To understand Pogrebin's pride in these accomplishments, it helps to examine some specific examples...

...Day care has become a permanent feature of American life...

...In the "ideal family"-a concept referred to routinely in pro-family literature—the husband is the breadwinner and decisionmaker...

...A mother can see the results of her own handiwork in the good citizen she has produced and trained," Schlafly writes...

...Right-wing sweetheart Phyllis Schlafly, leader of the anti-ERA movement and founder of the conservative Eagle Forum, reigns as first lady of the pro-family movement...

...What are women to do then...

...Find recognition with an official-sounding job...

...This is not necessarily evil—it is the situation in my household, by my husband's and my own choice—but it requires something more than Schlafly's pacifying assertions that little ladies should not trouble their pretty heads with thoughts about money...

...Women should also at least be thinking of contingency plans for intolerable situations at home, such as infidelity or physical abuse...

...Millions of children will spend billions of hours in these institutions...

...On the other hand, nonworking mothers assume that working mothers look down on them, making them feel like weak sisters who just can't keep up...

...From talking with her, I soon knew many things about Schlafly's personal life: for example, she worked her way through college toiling in a munitions factory and taught her six children to read...

...Half the women getting married today can expect to be divorced...

...Feminists may officially say that "choice" is at the top of their agenda for women, but there are too many hints suggesting that this talk comes fairly cheap...

...Throughout my years at home and well before that, I have gotten the message from the feminists that there is only one "right" choice that a progressive woman and young mother can make...

...To be fair, an occasional insight slips into the feminist literature...

...Those from the mainstream of the movement have taken care to point out that many of their guiding lights are young mothers...

...Later, each would receive pensions based on his or her own personal account...

...But, she says, "ideal" comes with two large qualifications: if a family can afford for the mother to stay home, and if she can be fulfilled at home...

...How does life at home fit with important things in my family's life or the fabric of a larger community...

...Like Schlafly, however, Marshner lives something of a contradiction...

...Yet this is the burden Schlafly seems to put on mothers who spend all their energy raising children...

...You can do your best while raising your child, but you can't claim or bear complete responsibility for the life your child leads...

...But if the care of our children is important, we should find ways to improve day care that do not add to the federal deficit— perhaps by enlisting businesses to subsidize day care, or by using our talents more creatively in volunteer efforts...

...it is important that she be there (to her family, she is irreplaceable...

...the wife has a responsibility to be there (to husband and to children...

...It sounds like an effort to raise honest, generous children—something all of us, conservative or liberal, strive to do...

...A mother who works or who is divorced or single, according to Marshner, can still raise a "traditional" family...

...The technique might work for a ten-year-old, but it certainly won't— and shouldn't—for a child of three...

...But Marshner's definitions of "traditional" morality are more specific than this and include prominently her staunch belief that, when push may come to shove, the father is the figure of authority in the family...

...In insurance and pensions, women's groups have worked to reform rates, terms, and conditions that discriminate on the basis of gender...

...It would seem to me that in the second stage we should move for some very simple aids that make it possible for mothers (or fathers) who want to stay home and take care of their own children to do so, with some economic compensation that might make the difference...

...Every woman needs to make sure she can take care of herself, and the children, if circumstances should change—and to this need the conservatives seem blind...

...The host of the show, a droll, forthright character named Joel E. Spivak, points out that on every show with a prominent feminist, at least one caller asks some version of this question...

...Sat down again...

...She ushered me into her Capitol Hill office, like a hostess having me in for coffee...

...Pregnancy and childbirth are often excluded from coverage or qualify only for very inadequate coverage...

...I am speaking with a spokeswoman for the National Women's Political Caucus about Social Security and insurance as well as about my children and my book...

...Women owe it to themselves and their children to make financial provisions for such unforeseen but common occurrences as divorce or illness or death...

...It discourages women from seeking challenges in the world beyond the home, thereby reducing the spiritual resources that could enrich mothers' years with their children...

...Pension reform and enforcement of child-support orders will allow parents to care for their children without becoming too vulnerable to fate...

...replies with a straight face, "We were surprised to hear this...

...magazine and elsewhere, I expected her to be a harpy, or at least an excessively brisk woman...

...Deborah Fallows is the mother of two sons...

...I have heard many more speeches about inflation, taxes, the deficit, nuclear war, and the Sandinistas than about parenthood...

...The responsibility of caring for children, consuming as it may be, has limits even while it is going on—and someday it will be over...

...Third, we must recognize that if spouses—for the time being, mainly mothers—are to stay out of the work force for a while, they need certain practical protections...

...And I do just that...

...That should be the case...

...Still, other conditions being equal, children are more likely to thrive when they spend most of their day with a parent rather than a hired caretaker...

...Everyone in the world has a boss of some kind...

...Social pressures certainly do play a large part in many women's decisions to work, but Kramer underestimates the depth of feeling and the scope of the ambivalence that many women have about their desire to broaden themselves beyond motherhood...

...When a close friend spanked his three-year-old for hitting the baby, he did it in a loving way," Morgan writes...

...As she tells it, she was able to write books while her children played contentedly at her feet...

...it is their simplistic notion that it can and should be enough for all women...

...Surely Schlafly has forgotten: could her children really have colored or built with blocks around her feet for sustained periods without interrupting with questions, requests for glasses of water, trips to the bathroom, or fights...

...Money talks...

...The women's movement and the pro-family forces seem to agree that a woman who ends up at home with the children ("by choice" according to the feminists, "by natural order" according to the right) has stepped off of life's main road...

...One of our political goals, therefore, should be to create the circumstances that allow more parents to care for their young children themselves...

...their only fight to get and keep their husbands...

...They offer an important message to full-time mothers of small children: "I was beginning to understand why raising children was so much harder than working in an office...

...Conservatives may love their kids, but their view of children is remote, studied, and at odds with the reality of daily life...

...it may also be a network of extended family or friends, who can help absorb the shock...

...Lazarre professes a closeness to Broderick, but the closest the writer comes to finding a key to Broderick's spirit is to focus on two things: her strong Catholicism, which has a lot to do with becoming a mother of eight children but very little to do with feminism, and Broderick's explanation that she sometimes finds it necessary "to hide...

...This article is adapted from her book, A Mother's Work, soon to be published by Houghton Mifflin...

...During a phone-in session, a caller asks, "What do you really think of women who stay home...

...With no grasp of how tearing an issue this is for many women, the right blithely offers an array of milquetoast alternatives for ways of keeping yourself busy outside the home...

...According to Marshner, women work because they are called upon to work, either for economic reasons or for community needs...

...I can't claim that conservatives don't love their children as much as anyone else does...

...Not everyone can find a life of fulfillment in volunteer work, just as not everyone can find fulfillment in a boardroom, a courtroom, a university, or at home...

...the average woman, $308...

...Much of the right still ignores the basic truth about women at home: that they are in a state of financial dependency...

...A career offered all the answers: Dependent on your spouse...

...Lazarre describes a meeting at the crossroads of feminism that takes place in a Long Island kitchen...

...Women, being "other-oriented" by nature, as Marshner describes them, are responding to a call from others to work, rather than to inner drives...

...The women's movement has not done the same for women at home...

...For instance, women often pay more than men for the same health insurance coverage...

...In her sequel, The Second Stage, Friedan writes: "We must at least admit and begin openly to discuss feminist denial of the importance of family, of women's own need to give and get love...

...But the exhortations feminists direct at careerists—to bring out the best in themselves, to be responsible, independent, and strong—should also be issued as challenges to women at home...

...Get out of the house and in with interesting people...

...Everyone taking you for granted...

...Although its origin is in politics, the hostility is also personal...

...One of the reasons to push ahead with the feminist campaign for fairer pay is that it would make it more feasible for fathers to take a few years off to care for the children...

...We all have children ourselves and know what it's been like to face the decisions!' To prove its bona fides, Ms...

...These inequities arise, the feminists say, from historically low wages for working women and an undervalued estimation of homemakers' contributions to a family's income...

...The idea of "tradition" rests much less on the structure of the family or the detailed division of family labor than on a sense of mission about moral standards...

...But wise precautions do not imply any less love, trust, or confidence in a marriage or family situation...

...And yet, only minutes earlier, perhaps forgetting that housewives are listening, she has referred to the "narrow and stifled" lives of women at home...

...What if a child is born ill or impaired in some way...

...How can I find satisfaction there...

...The right ignores not only these provisions for the unexpected but also plans for the inevitable...

...The tensions between the women's movement and nonworking mothers stems from politics, but the hostility is deeply personal...

...Does it mean you have failed if you have nothing to show off to your friends and neighbors...

...Lazarre, and Ms., are content with the superficial view and do not search for any real insights into full-time motherhood...

...No power to back up your opinion...

...Diapering is man's work What, then, am I recommending...

...In The Feminine Mystique she wrote that housewives "baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children's clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day...

...It also kept me from having any blocks of time for projects of my own...

...A full-time mother of eight, Broderick lays out her positions on feminist issues: birth control, child-rearing, housework...

...A full-time mother writes to Ms., complaining, "I get the feeling you look down on me, condescend to me because I'm not working!' Ms...

...It may be education, which would equip them to earn a living, even if they prefer not to while the children are young...

...Sam asked me to watch her turn somersaults...

...Rita Kramer, author of In Defense of the Family, suggests that some feminists "attempt to substitute one form of tyranny [childrearing] with another [working at a job] ." She argues that a mother's "natural desire to be with her baby may give way to the social pressure to 'be somebody' in a society that is increasingly telling women that what counts is achievement, however trivial, outside the home, just so it is outside the home and apart from childrearing...

...Moreover, there isn't much room for bad luck in the pro-family world...

...I think there is...

...The right presents an abstract, peculiar sense of what children are like...

...Over the past 20 years, the women's movement has carefully proclaimed its intention to give women the "opportunity to choose" their own lives—as professionals, as wage earners, or as housewives...

...But, as any woman under the age of 40 knows, there is an imposed incompatibility...

...Simply stating that as a goal would be important in itself...

...Many conservatives have also succumbed to the familiar temptation of the comfortable to forget about or condemn those on whom fortune has not smiled...

...All these avenues provide opportunities for women to perform useful services to the community—and in so doing to become happier, more interesting, and more fulfilled ." Volunteerism certainly meets a basic human need...

...In her book, The Total Woman, Morgan recommends, among other things, that women lift the spirits of their tired breadwinners by greeting hubby at the front door clad only in saran wrap...

...But the details of the right's position—for example, pro-family opposition to day care (see sidebar, p.45)—reveal a seeming lack of interest in children and their needs...

...On her desk sits a photo of one of her sons bathing her infant daughter, who, she tells me at a difficult moment in our talk, has died from heart disease...

...she enjoys security in her position (her right to support by her husband...

...And become whole again ." One of the reasons to push ahead with the feminist campaign for fairer pay is that it would permit fathers to take a few years off to care for the children...

...In 1982, WEAL points out, the average man received $430 per month in benefits...

...Feminist leaders are quick to deny this accusation, arguing that the press is to blame for unfairly depicting their position as being hostile to homemakers...

...Understanding as they might be of women who choose not to work, feminists tend to see such a choice as a step backwards for the cause...

...Over one-fourth of the women who are legally entitled to child support payments do not receive them...

...The right offered women a clear, complete explanation of the wife's place at home...

...We have tried to present topics of interest to women at home—childbirth, pregnancy, housework, daily lives, etc...

...For people who are troubled by the blind spots and omissions in the standard political formulas, is there a better alternative...

...The husband is the head of the household," she says...

...They are as responsible as their wives for finding a way to reconcile their professional ambitions with the welfare of their children...

...Perhaps she closed her study door and the children knew not to enter...

...Women who stay home with their children should feel just as great an obligation to use their intellect and energy wisely as any young doctor or teacher of either sex...

...To correct the situation, WEAL has supported a system of "earnings sharing...

...Bearing and raising a child is far more complex and far less programmable than Morgan or Schlafly would have us think...

...One thing was missing from this strategy, however, and that was a concern for how it would affect the children...

...The first principle is that parents should strive to care for their children themselves...

...she should find all of her satisfaction there (from raising her children...

...For the homemaker, earnings sharing could also provide disability benefits and survivor protection through the Social Security system, even though she may never have worked for pay...

...I can do it only when my children are away—taking naps, at school, at friends' houses...

...She has a company phone in her car so she can conduct business on her long commutes from Washington to Virginia, where she lives with her husband, who is a college professor, and her two elementary school-age sons...

...Instead, she is attractive and professional-looking— calm as an executive, warm as my best friend's mother...

...Sorry to keep you waiting...

...In the late 1970s, conservative forces coalesced to challenge feminism...

...Marshner, like many conservative young women raising families, speaks with more realism than Schlafly does...

...But life doesn't work for most women the way Schlafly thinks it should...

...In between the lines of her conversation lurk the prerequisites to the "perfect" life she has led: education, money, a healthy family, and a supportive husband...

...Betty Friedan has come closest to taking the scorn out of the word "housewife," much of which she introduced in the first place with The Feminine Mystique...

...To hear the right's hymns of praise to the family, one might guess that the welfare of children is the first and last item on their list of concerns...

...It will not always be possible, and many children will get along fine in any case...

...He should have responsibility for making final decisions...

...Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers...

...The women's movement has addressed many issues of concern to women at home...

...Too many men view the parenthood/career balance as their wives' problem, of no concern to them...

...Parenthood" is supposed to be one of our bedrock societal values, but it really isn't...

...Those hours can be relatively productive, or they can be actively damaging, depending on how the day care centers are run...

...The shortcoming of the conservatives is not their recognition of the merits of volunteerism...

...For their self-protection, women need some form of insurance...

...Somewhere between Schlafly and Marshner the conservative pendulum rests...

...What if you raise a plumber or a short-order cook instead of a lawyer or a business executive...

...Just be alone with myself...

...1985 by Deborah Fallows...

...She implies that a perfect life with a perfect mother will automatically produce a perfect child...

...sends writer Jane Lazarre to spend a morning with Jane Broderick, author of the challenging letter...

...Retired female workers averaged $335 per month compared to $438 for retired male workers...

...She congratulates mothers on successes they aren't responsible for—and implicitly charges them with failures they can't control...

...I was allowing my children to dominate my life with trivia, and that left no time to do the things I wanted to do with them, like painting and hiking...

...In coming to grips with the realities of motherhood, women will have to see through the symbolism and rhetoric of both sides of this debate...

...Took Sam to the toy store to buy birthday present for Tim while the boys stayed home with Bill ." Her days are not that interesting to read about, but the insights she gleans from examining her own diary are...

...Stopped to feed the cat because she was making so much noise...

...She's spending these years "at home," and there's not much more to say about her...

...I was able to compose and write with children right around me," she explains, adding, "My husband can't do that...

...Here, many of the steps toward reform already have been proposed by the feminists...

...Afterward the child hugged him and said, 'Thank you for saying no, Daddy!' " As any parent knows, this scene is make-believe...

...For the sake of the children, and the mothers, and the fathers, we need to remind men, day after day until it takes, that it is their concern, too...

...Because of signals like these: • Gloria Steinem is promoting her latest book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions on a radio talk show in mid-1984...

...The family must live by "a system of moral norms which, once well-defined, are taken to be without exception" In some general sense, it's hard to quibble with Marshner's morality...

...Women who take time off to raise children don't fit the rules and provisions of retirement systems...

...Attending community service club meetings, participating in museum benefits, doing library work—all have their place...

...From what I'd read about Schlafly in Ms...

...5:10...

...It is possible at least to outline a political approach to children and parenthood that would emphasize the things that make a difference in children's lives...

...Fourth, we must have day care—more of it, and more of high quality...

...It is "good" to be there (it is traditional, Christian...

...By questioning women's place in society, the women's movement threw motherhood into the political arena...

...If we are serious about improving day care, we must raise the regulatory standards imposed on the centers and put more money into their operation...

...She even says that staying home is just as valid and reputable a choice as working...

...While some leaders of the so-called "profamily" forces concede that women may have to work for economic reasons, this doesn't shake the right's faith in an "ideal" division of labor and authority in the family...

...I really have to sit very still...

...Feminists offer women in the workplace a great sense of having asked the difficult questions about life: whether to work, what to expect on the job, what professional goals to set...

...Under earnings sharing, a husband and wife would, for Social Security purposes, each be credited with half the family's total earnings during the marriage, whether both of them were working or not, plus individual earnings gained before or after the marriage...

...She wrote and published her own numerous books, lives in financial security with her wealthy husband, and has waged several unsuccessful campaigns to hold political office...

...Her husband is much older than she is, and she employed a governess for her children for at least one summer...

...Liberal women's groups include strong contingents of women at home...

...Neither the women's movement nor the profamily movement offers an adequate, or even honest prescription for mothers...

...She writes that "if you complain about servitude to a husband, servitude to a boss will be more intolerable...

...Her issues are our issues," says Pogrebin, citing child care, healthcare, drug addiction, divorce reform, domestic violence, displaced homemakers, and comparable worth...

...Recognizing the potential political power of a rational approach to parenthood could lead to many practical steps: for example, encouraging businesses to change their policies on maternity leave, paternity leave, part-time work, and job-sharing...

...many of their leaders are mothers themselves...

...In the area of Social Security, feminist groups such as the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) advocate improving the fairness and adequacy of provisions for all women...

...Infuriating," says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founder and editor of Ms...

...Ms.-ing the point While conservatives have in recent years reasserted a vision of the ideal homemaker, the women's movement has continued to look with a suspicious eye at women who stay at home...

...And we can pretty well guess that during the days when divorce was rare and when women kept their own counsel, similar discontent and trouble existed—only secretly...

...The right preaches complacence and subservience...

...We know these things to be facts...

...It can be deeply satisfying to help others when they cannot help themselves...

...Hello, Debbie...

...it may be extra money, from an insurance policy or pension...

...To its credit, the women's movement has made great progress for women in general, including mothers at home...

...Marshner is an attractive, kind-looking woman in her mid-thirties, with dark, shoulder-length hair pinned back from her face...

...She characterizes the provoking call of the feminists as: "Come, leave your home, husband, and children and join all those unhappy females in a new sisterhood of togetherness...

...Once you stop moping around the house and letting yourself get big ideas about meeting challenges in the outside world, then your troubles will disappear...

...What Schlafly would have for all other women is her version of a perfect life— that is, a life much like her own...

...The deepest tensions between the women's movement and nonworking mothers are based on the attitudes the mothers perceive in the movement...

...Finally, we should insist on a principle missing from all the political manifestos about women and families I have seen...

...All mothers can recognize that sitting very still is Broderick's gimmick for maintaining sanity...

...She complacently advises wives to stay home, resting assured that "since God ordained that women have babies, our laws properly and realistically establish that men must provide financial support for their wives and children ." Connaught Marshner, director of the Family Policy Division of the Free Congress and Education Foundation, is a generation younger than Schlafly but, like her, a mother and a major power in the conservative movement...

...It is not a goal or an opportunity or a promising development...

...by 1990, one child out of four under ten years old— almost nine million children—will have lived with a single parent at some point in his life...

...But their view of children is remote, studied, and at odds with the realities of daily life...

...Bored and lonely...

...Next to him is his wife, a helpmate but not an equal...

...For Marshner and many younger conservative women, the fact of working mothers is just that—a fact...

...The second principle is an insistence that the balance between parenthood and career be worked out by both parents...

...In hard economic times, husbands will lose jobs, and women can still expect to earn about 60 percent of what men earn...

...For example, in a diary of a day with her small children, published in Ms., Phyllis Rosser describes motherhood minute-by-minute: "9:50...

...She agrees with the right's version of the "ideal" family, in which the mother stays home with the children...

...Get an income, become self-sufficient...

...Increased federal spending is unlikely at a time when government programs of all kinds are being cut back...

...They perceive homemakers sneering at them for being irresponsible toward home and family...

...There is, of course, no inherent incompatibility between women reaching out for equality and women staying at home...

...Some mothers boast that this is their secret to working at home and "caring" for their children at the same time...

...It is easier for most women to achieve a harmonious working relationship with a husband than with a foreman, supervisor, or office manager...

...It's not a club with membership cards on behalf of women's interests," Pogrebin tells me one afternoon in the New York offices of Ms...

...But Schlafly ignores statistics like these, and turns a judgmental ear to the stories of troubled women...

...Just as you can't control the sex of your child, the skills she is born with, or the beauty he inherits, you can affect but not determine your child's future, his personality, her "success...

...The proprietor of one women's bookstore I called told me she didn't know whether Schlafly had written anything, adding, "and we certainly wouldn't carry it if she did...

...Schlafly implies that such concerns stem from women with attitude problems— "whether you wake up in the morning with a chip on your shoulder or whether you have a positive mental attitude...

...Leaders of the women's movement have never quite said that jobs should come before family...

...Steinem's answer, of course, is that the feminist movement created the choice for women to lead their lives as they want to...

...What if you raise a liberal instead of a conservative...

...But they also understand that it reveals little about her method of sustaining herself as a mother to eight children...

...Working mothers often feel that nonworking mothers are trying to drown them in guilt...

...The reason that mothers and fathers must take their assigned places in the family hierarchy is that the children will thereby benefit...

...I have read her biography, Sweetheart of the Silent Majority, and many issues of her monthly newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report, although neither publication is easy to locate...

...their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house...

...Schlafly proposes that women try volunteer work: "welfare, hospital, educational, cultural, civic, and political...

...The women's movement, with which I sympathize much more than I do with the right, defines success in terms of professional achievement, thereby implicitly downgrading the idea that parents should care for their children themselves...

...Have you got a copy of Sweetheart...

...Schlafly's reminiscences of children greatly resemble those of Marabel Morgan's...

...Tell me about your book...

...Or: "I'd go out of my mind if I stayed at home all day...

...Behind every statistic of divorce, widowhood, or poverty, is the story of a woman whose life did not turn out the way she planned...

...But in feminists' eyes, the real challenges lay outside the home—in the workplace...