Women, working, and mothering
My wife showed me an article by Nancy Bilyeau in
Ladies Home
Journal that summarizes from Leslie Bennetts'
book The Feminine
Mistake. She's seen other articles like this
and the two of us aren't terribly impressed.
Here's why: whereas feminism used to
tell women that they
can
have it all - a career and motherhood - this new brand tells women that they
must
have it all or else they will be at serious personal risk; i.e., moms are making
a foolish choice if they do not continually develop a professional career path
while raising children. The reasons are:
(1)
You husband could divorce you or die young.
(2) being a mom is a temporary job. 15 years
outside the work force (if you go back to work when all of your 2.3 kids are
teenagers) will leave you at a disadvantage trying to get a good position.
(3) Even if childcare chews up all of your
income, your career is an investment in your future.
(4) Even if the job adds to your stress
level, you'll be happier doing lots of things well than just doing one thing -
being a mom.
So, the motivations are
personal fear and self-development. The goals for being a mom are somewhat
different: the good of the children, which doesn't enter in any significant way
into Bilyeau's article. Ironic that this is what's in the
Ladies
Home
Journal.
It may be that the conclusions were
foregone before the article was written. Alternate solution approaches for some
of the above problems that were ignored in the article include:
(1) Savings: American's are awful at saving
money. Common advice is for 6 months salary in savings.
(2) Plan for retirement: for some screwy
reason, moms who stay at home are not permitted to have their own IRA accounts.
That's ridiculous.
I don't think that
a Christian viewpoint is contrary to a mom being involved in business; a casual
reading of Prov. 31 indicates that the woman in question is not to be trifled
with. Nevertheless, "her children arise and call her blessed" is likely more a
result of other activities than her business dealings.
Posted: Fri - September 21, 2007 at 08:13 PM
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