The Pill and Working Women

I realize this blog is about working women and their children, but since yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the Pill I thought it would be important to think about how it made a change for women's decision to work. This is the article I found on CNN.com...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/06/pogrebin.pill.roundup/index.html?hpt=Mid

      A main point that's mixed into the article is that not only did the Pill give women more sexual freedom, but they also were able to plan their pregnancies in a way that allowed them to pursue their careers after college. Where employers used to be able to deny a women because she was pregnant, women now have more control over their pregnancy and don't need to be discriminated against because of their pregnancy status.
     How this effects their kids? Planned preganancies equals wanted children, and women who are satisfied by their career path before they decide to have children.

Just What I Was Looking For..

Of course! Right when I start complaining about the lack of information that combines feminist ideals with realistic experiences, I found a great source in Anne Roiphe's Fruitful. In this memoir, Roiphe discusses the every day contradictions between feminism and motherhood, and how she has worked to manage this clashing of ideas in her own life. While supporting many of the arguments made by feminists in the past and present, she also argues that some aspects of being a mother (guilt, fear, love) are simply undeniable.

She acknowledges the half-century old claims that "working mothers are hurting there children" as ridiculous, but points out the realities of what mothers still are responsible for. For instance, she notes examples of phobias, shyness, temper tantrums, food disorders - all aspects of emotional development with which mothers can be blamed. In this regard she questions how much the guilt faced by working women has really changed over the years. While the women in the article I posted last week sugar-coated the emotional side of their time working with children, Roiphe points out the real-life examples of how this guilt still persists.

"Despite the feminist call to leave the home, despite the economic necessities that shape our decisions, a mother feels guilty when she leaves her children" (99). In this regard, how much can feminism provide a sound solution? You feel guilty when you work, leaving your children behind, and you feel guilty when you stay at home, leaving your "sense of self" behind. Where's the middle ground?

She cites many studies similar to those that I researched, having to do with the effect of maternal employment on children. After reading much of the information I already know ("there's no negative effect found in the long run...") I realized that a big aspect of my research was missing: the psychological viewpoint. Roiphe cites many of these studies as well and concludes, "the social scientists tell us that it's all right to go back to work but the psychiatrists remind us how important attachment is" (110). How are women supposed to deal with this contradiction in advice when maybe there really is also an innate sense of guilt and protection?

Working Mothers Guilt

So I stumbled across this article on a website and it made me start to wonder more about how women are/aren't encouraged to pursue a career while raising children.

http://www.workingmother.com/web?service=direct/1/ViewAdvancedPortalPage/PortalBlocks/dlinkArticle&sp=S3131&sp=120

The article basically summarized the stories of guilt, struggle, and joy that has come from the lives of six different working mothers. What I found most interesting about all of these stories, is that each one of them ends with a "happily ever after" conclusion. For some reason or another, every story sang the song of "my children didn't like that I worked full-time when they were growing up, but now that they're older they appreciate and respect all that I've done."

While I've obviously touched on some of the positive effects of maternal employment, and support it thoroughly, I still wonder whether these stories are an accurate depiction of what working with children is really like. Maybe this source is biased, since it's been created to help support working mothers, but even so, why do they feel the need to tell women that everything will be okay in the end?

Raising children while you work must be a struggle and take a lot of time to figured out. So while I definitely don't agree with the idea that women should be advised to stay at home, I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the wishy-washy advice that everything will be fine in the end. I would just like to see that somewhere out there there is realistic advice that falls in between these two poles.

The latest from my women's studies class...

For the past week, we've been reading a book called The Package Deal by Nicholas Townsend, which focuses on the demanding expectations put on fathers in our society. In all of our talk about how women are confined by domesticity and feminitiy, I think it's easy to forget that male counterparts are facing significant pressures by our culture to perform in a certain way as well. That being said, something in my last reading assignment made my ears perk up and think of how women's work is being appreciated and defined.

First of all, the book discusses how fathers are generally expected to act as providers for the family - this means working long hours in a job or career in order to earn money for their wives and children. One part even quoted a man saying "I think that most of us turned out the way we did - strong work ethic and real feeling of responsibitlity for ourselves - because of him" (118). I realize that work in the public sphere has long been recognized as more valuable than work done in the private sphere, but is a woman's work in the home going completely unaccounted for? I know that my father worked 8-5 hours while I was growing up, while my mom stayed at home. Does this mean that he was working significantly harder than my mom, who let's face it spent up to 15 hours a day doing childcare and household work? It just doesn't sit right with me that we have become so fixated on the hours someone spends away from home and measure that on a scale of work ethic.

This thought made me think of the last book we read which focused on transnational families located in the Philippines. In these families, one parent or the other was often working across the world in order to provide financial support for their spouse and children. Interestingly, the men were seen as loving fathers merely because their absence showed their dedication to making money. Mothers, meanwhile, had to give much more to their children than the financial support to be considered good mothers. Where does this double-standard come into play? Do children actually view the work their parents do differently based on the gendered expectations that society has placed on them? I just really wonder what differences in child-rearing practices would change the perceptions children have of their parents' financial support.

The positive outcomes of working mothers

A couple days ago I talked about the different experiences my friend and I have had growing up in working/non-working mother households, but I wanted to talk about some of the academic research that relates to the trends I've seen.

Lois Hoffman's book Working Mothers gathers and discusses some of the research that has been done on how maternal employment can effect other aspects of children's development other than just the cognitive. Much of their information came from studies done in the 60s and 70s, so it's interesting to see how these perceived advantages/disadvantages of maternal employment have manifested themselves in the current working generation. Here are some of the main conclusions in Hoffman's chapter on the effects on children:

• Children of women who work were much more likely to approve of maternal employment, specifically girls reported their desire to enter the workforce when they got old enough. This seems appropriate considering the rising number of women in the workforcee over the past 50 years (rock on).
• A blending of traditional gender stereotypes. "Daughters of working mothers saw women as competent and effective, while sons of working mothers saw men as warm and expressive" (131). It's cool to hear that exposing children to something outside of the traditional male breadwinner/female home-maker environment might actually change the way they think about these expectations.
• Some of this information was wishy-washy, but I think worth noting. There may have been some correlation between daughters of working mothers and higher levels of self-confidence and independence. I think this is a really hard factor to account for, which is why the book doesn't make it an absolute conclusion, but there is definitely evidence for the argument. Along these same lines, "evidence suggests that daughters of working mothers have higher acheivement aspirations" (136).
• She found that children who are expected to help with household tasks (this focuses mainly on children of working mothers) exhibited positive consequences.

I'm not trying to say that all of these are absolutely true, but I think there is something to be said of what image mothers put forth for their children. I won't say that I grew up with low-self confidence and minimal aspirations, but I do think I was presented with an environment that required less responsibility. However, I think a lot of how we react once we're actually ready for the work/stay-at-home decision comes from far after the initial child-rearinig period that many of these studies focus on. I know that until I came to college I honestly believed I would finish school, work for a while, but give up my job when it came time to stay home with my children. I'm not arguing that this isn't okay, but I definitely think we are nurtured for so many years beyond our initial childhood. At least for me, being able to receive the education I'm getting has pushed my thoughts on this matter far past what these studies say about children of non-working mothers.

Ideal-Worker

In Joan Williams' book Unbending Gender, she discusses the notion of what is an ideal-worker in our economy. In general, the people who are able to perform as ideal workers are men, because they have the advantage of assumed caregivers at home. While their wives are expected to routinely deal with care for children, men are able to work longer hours with less work-family conflict and earn the higher wages. In the meantime, women are faced with so-called "mommy tracks" which leave little room for advancement in their careers. The ideal-worker image also dictates a 5 day work week with increasingly long hours - something that can be conflicting and difficult for a working mother.

Williams offers her solution in the restructuring of market work, involving shortening the work week, flexible hours and job sharing. Wouldn't everyone be better off if they worked only 4 day work weeks? In a time when we have all become so crunched for time, it would be nice to take that extra day off to relax. Not only would the extra time be useful for personal reasons, but it would allow for families to spend more time with their children and figure out easier childcare options. Along with this, letting workers cooperate to work out flexible hours and job sharing would make advancement in careers a task that's more agreeable with raising children. What should be important is the quality of the prodouct produced by a worker rather than the actual time spent doing the work. In order to accomodate for families yet allow growth in careers, job sharing and flexible schedules enable women to continue to do the work they're successful with and yet spend the time with their children.

Even though it sounds like some sort of idealistic world, it also seems something that would work tremendously well if it was accepted by everyone. Oh I forgot to mention, restructuring the work place doesn't only have positive outcomes for women, but men are also benefiting and potentially escaping some of the standards placed upon them as workers. If these things occured, I think it would make the decision for mothers to work or not much less daunting.

Experiences

I wanted to explain a little bit about why this subject matters to me and how my experiences have sparked an interest in women's choice to work.

When I was growing up, my mother stayed home full-time taking care of my brothers and I, while also keeping up the household tasks. My whole life she has been a stay-at-home mom and I've never known her to have a job or career of her own. Parts of this have been very, very nice - I have been very close to my mom my whole life, I've always had someone to take care of my everyday needs, and things seemed pretty easy. Although many aspects of having my mother at home were wonderful, I wonder how much I gained and how much I missed out on simultaneously. Is there any way that I was raised in a more nurturing environment that is conducive to learning, merely because my mother was at home with me all day? The research I've done clearly shows that in the long-run my cognitive development hasn't been any different from that of my peers who had working mothers. So if I didn't gain any advantage in my early development, what else was I missing out on?

One of my close friends grew up in a family where her mother and father worked full-time. Even from the point that she was born her mother chose to cut her maternity leave short in order to return to work. After getting to know more about her situation growing up, I started to wonder how having her mother at work changed the way she grew up. First of all, she talks a lot about having to assume responsibility from an early age. I'd like to think that I learned how to be responsible, but when comparing to my friend I've realized that I spent a lot of time being taken care of rather than learning how to take care of myself. She also talks about having her dad cook and share in many of the household tasks - something my father never did. I think by seeing these actions, she has been able to see how an egalitarian household can successfully work. Even though I completely agree with equal gender roles, I never had that model to follow after. Things were obviously very different for her but she and I ended up at the same place here at St. Olaf.

I don't know that these experiences can be indicative of how growing up in working and non-working mother households has an effect on children, but they seem to show some main differences in our mindsets. It'd be really interesting to see how these things differ across experiences.