Letters to the Editor
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So get a job already
Yawn, yawn, the tired old "war" between stay-at-homers and working mothers rears its head again. Yes, parenting is hard. But it's about compromises as much as ideals--just like any relationship is--and so its incredibly disheartening to see a whole magazine devoted to an imaginary model of parenting that pits organized, loving, clever moms against doofus, lazy dads and that seems to yearn for the 50s as if everything was somehow easier then.
What's the point of a magazine venting and whining about how the choice to be a CHO sucks? So get a job outside the home already. Oh, oops, the editors _did_ that, putting this mag together.
This whole enterprise reminds me of the bunkum stories that surface about "stay-at-home-moms" inventing useful and wildly successful gadgets, when it turns out they had past lives as patent attorneys and engineers and marketing bigwigs and spent thousands on developing gadget prototypes.
Even if it _is_ well-intentioned, the whole magazine seems like a nasty gimmick. It's creating a community based around irritation and frustration and non-communication while the original CHOs ditch the much-vaunted fulltime home life for something else they're also "passionate" about.
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It's the economy, stupid
Somehow, I end up fuming about postfeminist, terribly worried Traister articles over and over. The great Dowd-y debate keeps swirling around perceived social shifts, with extremely skimpy lip service paid to the fact that, just like in the beloved 1950's, what we're really looking at are the difficult, unequal economic constraints on families, as well as the residual, barely acknowleged, rampant sexism on which American culture proudly rests. Someone - some woman, apparently - has to take care of the kids, despite the fact that fewer and fewer families seem to have the money to do it. We're looking at the low value put on child care, and our lack of inventiveness in making it better. Klett's defensive protests that she wishes everyone had great child care don't combat its absence and her profiting from her husband's high-paying job, and her offhand references to careless working parents' neglect as the cause of all social ills are chillingly familiar, straight out of 1950's scare-tactic propaganda.
I wish Salon, and more writers at large, would concentrate less on the battles between the postfem stay-at-homes and the Dowdies, and more on the origins of the feuds. Women feel undervalued because they are, in fact, undervalued - whether they're working in the household, or attempting to balance career and family, they end up defensively protecting their decisions in order to hide what a raw deal they're getting. Women are settling for partnerships in which shared responsibility is ridiculed as an impossible ideal, instead of a goal to actively pursue, using witty Sex and the City-With-Kids banter to take the pain out of being used. We're dependent on the vision of the successful single-family household, whose single or combined income takes care of everyone's needs, while the number of families in this situation are dwindling. We're bad parents. We're bad partners. Can all of the intellectual power of this, and other, publications find different ways to pose questions about American family dynamics? Hot-button or not, I can't take much more of June Cleaver vs. Hillary Clinton. It's not helping.
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Yawn Redux
I can't believe that I read this stuff.
Each woman has her own malodorous pile of self-righteous tripe, and each woman has the gall to rip up some other fellow being when she perceives a pile of tripe with a different smell.
Pheh.
So this is what feminism has become: women making choices they're not entirely comfortable with who choose to piss all over other women who made choices as best they know how but somehow end up in a different place.
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re: "The stay-at-home mystique"
Just reading Rebecca Traister's article about the new stay-at-home-mom magazine Total 180 scared me, and I am a mostly-SAHM with three kids. (In the interests of full disclosure, I work 16 hours a week, mostly while my husband is home with the kids.)
Yes, my other mom friends and I kvetch about our husbands and our kids (as you do about anyone with whom you spend that much time), but I can tell you this: not a single one of our husbands would "step over the garbage bag to get a beer." Whether our husbands are more sensitive, more involved, or maybe simply have been asked more directly to do something, they are without exception working as hard as we are - financially supporting the family, yes, but also feeding, cleaning, doing the neverending laundry, running errands - the list goes on and on, and my husband plugs away at it as resolutely as I do.
Maybe Debbie Klett and her colleagues need to stop writing, however "humorously," about everything they feel is lacking and start talking to their husbands, family, babysitters, whoever, and ask nicely for some more help. Then they can all kick back with a glass of wine in front of the fire.
And Rebecca, if you want to read a magazine that explores these sorts of topics clearly and thoroughly, right on target, check out Brain, Child magazine. It's not just for SAHMs but not a single issue is read without my feeling like they have my life with its joys, frustrations, and fears covered.
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Total 180
I'm a SAHM, and Total 180 scared the Total Crap out of me too. What planet are these women from? What the hell do holiday baking and suffering through office parties have to do with raising a child? What is this about constantly crying? And worse, husbands who are "single men who happen to have a wife and kids"? I'd kick a guy like that out on his ear. I'm sure other people have said the same thing; I didn't have time to read all the letters. But Rebecca Traister should not be afraid of partnering and having kids. She will *not* turn into a hysterical slave who gets "let out" (eeesh) once a week to "vent." That's not my life or the life of anyone I know.
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Give me a break
Wow... another magazine about self-absorbed, elitist, rich white people and their daily struggles. Quick! Someone fetch me a tissue, a bottle of sparkling water, and an Enya CD!
Klett (the editor of this �magazine�) is so entrenched in her little Wonder Bread world that she doesn�t even consider the fact that there are many, many people in this country who don�t have the luxury of staying at home. In fact, she had to have it spelled out to her before the idea could make it past the Christmas cookies that apparently take up most of the space in her head.
What a joke. Hopefully her husband will let her out of the subdivision some day so she can see the rest of the world.