I’m a little late to this party, but I’ve been reading a blogstorm that erupted recently over an article that I think of as “No More Ms. Nice Feminist.” The author basically argues that if women are going to achieve social parity, just leaving careerism or motherhood up to individual choice isn’t going to work. It’s time for feminism to return to its “early judgmentalism” against the role of housewife, and prepare women to seek money and power from a young age.
Given my readership, I probably don’t have to explain what’s hinky about the value system here. But the particular substrand of the debate that interested me, which Kim-Loi Mergenthaler nicely rounds up, has to do with whether full-time childraising is somehow less fulfilling of your human potential than work and other roles outside the home.
A few months ago, a co-worker of mine was worrying about exactly this point. She was the latest of several women I’ve worked with who got pregnant thinking it would just be a blip in the smooth flow of her work life, but found that it pretty much brought everything to a screeching halt. She was contemplating quitting to go freelance, but worried that if she spent most of her time in the company of a young child, “my brain will melt.”
I had no idea what to say to her, not having any children. But a few days later I mentioned this to my mother and asked what she thought. My mother said she worried about the same thing initially; she’d just gotten her master’s degree when she had my older sister, so it was definitely a step down intellectually to hang out with us. But she went on that once she was able to let that worry go, she found a whole new realm of experience, which she believes made her a fuller person. “I felt things I’d never felt before,” she said. “I felt things that I didn’t realize anyone had ever felt before.” This also changed her priorities, she said. “The things that used to seem so important just weren’t anymore.”
My mother hardly lost interest in her intellectual pursuits. After we grew up, she went back to school and got her doctorate, and is now a professor. But it does seem to me that, as long as a significant number of women experience childbearing that way, they aren’t going to behave the way Hirshman wants them to.
Yet the elephant in the room is, what do men feel? All the romantic talk about the bonds of motherhood carries the unspoken hint that men love their children less. This being such a subjective matter, there’s no good way to compare, since no one can try out having a child in both genders. But it must be admitted that it squares with a fair amount of actual behavior. What do you all think — do men love their children less? The same? In a different way?
I think both men and women have the drive to hold their kids tight and spend time with them, and to go out into the world and get them food and protect them.
But I think men lean a little bit more toward the latter, and women a little bit more toward the former. There’s nothing wrong with either impulse; kids need parents that have both.
Comment by Maureen — December 7, 2005 @ 7:03 pm
I’m a Stay At Home Dad (SAHD) for the last 5 years. I have two little boys who are almost 2 & 5. I don’t believe that Men (or Women) love their kids more or less then the “other” gender. I “stay home” with my kids because I think I have something special to give to them… My Love.
With that said my wife (who is AWESOME) goes to work & brings home the bacon She does this because she also loves our kids and she wants to provide for them even though she wants to be at home with us as well. Since we can’t both stay home she sacrifices for us so that we can have the family lifestyle that we as a family chose. Did I mention that she’s awesome?
In answer to does staying home with the kids make your brain mushy. I’d say Yes & No. Kids suck up all your energy with asking the same question 50 times a day, every day. Never going to bathroom alone (or having a moment – really not even a moment to yourself), Playing Chutes & Ladders (all day) and making totally cool spaceships out of tinker toys and play dough. All this with out talking to another adult for a full day or more. Can school be done with all this? Sure, but will it be easy. No, probablly not but what was the last thing that you did that was really fulfiling that was easy?
Are men and women different. Yeah, I think we are but I think that as parents we both get to the same place. Sometimes by different routes but still the same place.
Anyway, just my two cents.
/Steve
Comment by Steve — December 7, 2005 @ 10:22 pm
The substrand of the debate that interested you is, I think, also at the core of what Hirshman is arguing. She writes, “Here’s the feminist moral analysis that choice avoided: The family — with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks — is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, ‘A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.’”
Of course a lot of people see it differently. St. Benedict, for one, who divided up the monastic life into equal parts physical labor and spiritual exercises. Wendell Berry comes to mind as a contemporary example. His anti-technology lifestyle isn’t just in the service of ecology. He thinks we’re better people for sweating and getting our hands dirty. Shoot, anybody who’s able to drop Thich Nhat Hanh’s name into the BS session at the local Starbucks knows that enlightenment begins by washing those dishes as if you were created for no other purpose.
But if flourishing can occur through the very tasks that Hirshman denigrates, why don’t more men take advantage of them? Maybe women do love their children more than men. I’ve seen more than a few marriages break up in my eleven years of ordained ministry, and it’s astonishing how easily men can walk away from their own progeny. Maybe women take the spiritual life more seriously than men, which explains why there are more women in church than men, more women wiping baby bottoms than men (“I am among you as one who serves”), and fewer women wielding corporate and political power than men.
I was unaware of this article and its accompanying firestorm, even though I read the Prospect’s blog relgiously. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. You don’t have to agree with the author to enjoy her “Rules”-based advice: Women, in order to succeeed, don’t major in art history; marry someone who did!
Comment by Marvin — December 8, 2005 @ 5:11 am
The other elephant — or rhino — in the room is culture: Whatever men or women “feel” will be affected, mediated, and evaluated (at least in part) by the cultural milieu within which they live and by their own particular resources for resisting or buying into that milieu. I was the primary caregiver for our daughter while she was an infant/early toddler, although we did leave her with a caregiver during the day so that both of us could work. (Infancy is my favorite stage of a child’s development, so perhaps I’m speaking from something of a skewed perspective.) I was given very little social support (in terms of understanding or approbation or even role models) for leaving work early, for taking on fewer clients (I was working as a lawyer at the time), for staying home when our child was sick. That colored my sense of whether I was “fulfilled” and probably contributed to my relief when she (our child)didn’t need so much maintenance.
My brain went mushy only when I allowed it to do so, frankly. (During sickness bouts when I was a short-term, stay-at-home dad, I compensated by telephoning, reading, and the like. But it was not a long-term process, I admit.)
As for whether there are wired-in differences, I’m sceptical. The anthropological data seem mixed (although the majority of reports support a female-role connection to caregiving). I think it’s easy for us to underestimate the strong-hand influence of cultural “role expectations,” values, pressures, and the like.
In the legal world, I think there is much more understanding (if not approval) for a woman’s preferring a “mommy track” to a man’s opting for a “daddy track.” I have never met a big-firm lawyer (male or female) who thinks that a daddy track would be considered in their firm.
Given no socialization to be caregivers, it might not be surprising that boys/men tend not to adopt or feel “fulfilled” in such roles.
Dwight P
Comment by Dwight — December 8, 2005 @ 6:43 am
OK, Dwight, but the extent to which socialization matters is the extent to which instinct fails. In other words, if the approval and support of other adults is what really matters here, then that’s not saying much for the inherent parent/child experience. And in fact, what I’m noticing that makes me ask this is how men are assumed to need all this social egging-on to be responsible for their families. Conservatives tend to see it as men requiring a special “headship” role, liberals more in terms of guilt-tripping, but either way, it isn’t taken for granted that men will bond with their kids, the way it generally is with women.
Since you and I are believers in “embodiment”, it does seem reasonable to think that the fact that women go through a physical change when they have children would change them in some way. When I was a child I watched our cat have kittens, and act a lot like my mom in some ways, with no socialization at all. I think that this goes with my observation of women I know (including my mom) being surprised by the impact motherhood has on them. Yet whether this change should be properly characterized as love, is an interesting question. The fact that Christians and Jews have traditionally identified God as Father suggests that they see paternal love as somehow more congruent with agape, maybe precisely because it’s less of an animal instinct …? Hmmm.
Comment by Camassia — December 8, 2005 @ 9:59 am
Quite a pass we’ve come to when an ostensible left-winger says that wielding corporate and/or government power is the pinnacle of the good life! Makes me feel like some kind of hippie idealist!
I do wonder if the brute biological fact that women are the ones who provide for the essential needs of the baby (feeding, etc.) in the first years of life has some kind of emotional correlate in terms of their getting more satisfaction from care giving. It would be kind of surprising if it didn’t.
Comment by Lee — December 8, 2005 @ 10:50 am
So what do we think about military parents?
I was once a Naval Aviator, an occupation that involved traipsing off on a large gray ship with 5,000 of my closest pals into parts unknown, for six to thirteen months at a time. I was devastated after the birth of child #1 to realize that there would be huge gaps in his — and later his brother’s — development that I would just never see.
Eventually the loss of family-present time and other factors pressured me out of the military. With women tackling both a uniform and motherhood, there have to be similar factors (maybe even more difficult) pressing on them.
Comment by Jim — December 8, 2005 @ 12:18 pm
Well, the danger in the biological argument is that adoptive mothers must love their babies less than biological ones… and coming from a family where I’ve seen incredible love lavished on adopted children, I’m quite convinced that there is little merit to the pregnancy=more nurturing argument.
Comment by Hugo — December 9, 2005 @ 3:38 pm
This is my second week back at work from maternity leave, and I haven’t asked my husband yet, but I kinda doubt he’s sobbed in his car on the way to work, “I want my baby, I want my baby” as I have. I don’t think that means he loves her less. Perhaps my emotionalism is related to leftover pregnancy hormones or something, (or maybe I’m just an emotional person). I’d agree there’s a biological element to it, though I don’t think saying that means adoptive parents love their children less. If humanity, as a whole, was created with the capability to have children, it makes sense there’s something wired into us to take care of them – even if they’re not biologically or genetically ours.
If what I said doesn’t make sense, I plead “brain mush.” I’m not getting very much sleep. : )
Comment by Jennifer — December 16, 2005 @ 1:20 pm