Letters to the Editor
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Hey! -- What About Us?
I think Friedan's insights had a lot to do with gender equality, and I think our current culture is all but allergic to that concept.
I think there's no inherent reason why the lure of domsticity should be stronger to women than to men. We think it's so and therefore it is so.
Should I stay at home or should I work, we're told, is the dilemma of new moms. But it's a red herring. No partner is required to be primary, and there's no reason for there to be a sort of inherent bias in favor of mom. By arguing and debating this question, we are "taking the bait:" we are ignoring the real issues that pose real challenges on families.
In our society today, our rhetoric over asserts the loudest the opposite of what it really means. And is our rhetoric ever pro-family. Why, I sometimes wonder why single people don't rise up and protest at the shameless and endless pandering of our public leaders to the icon of family. But in fact our society remains adamantly anti-family.
When a child is born, its parents are given precious little support, and essentially none if there not a strong family support structure in place. Certainly, there's no ability to take off time from one's work to care for the child, at least for most people. (Smith alumna may have more choices, but this tiny fraction doesn't constitute a significant social challenge.) The daycare choices available to most families are often far below what we as a society should be demanding in terms of their quality. And far too many children (and their parents) lack the kind of medical care that a society as affluent as ours should expect as a matter of course. Finally, when the time comes for kids to begin an academic career, we offer them schools that have been financially starved to within an inch of their lives, guaranteeing the kids only the most basic level of education at the lowest possible cost. All in all, not terribly family-friendly.
The care and support of American families is not truly a "women's" issue. By casting it in those terms, we avoid the responsibility of dealing with the real issues. (Of course, I don't mean to mimimize the impact of fathers who abandon their families -- a serious problem with serious consequences. But I'd guess that it happens in a relatively small number of cases, and we could reduce those even further, I suspect, if we could do more to support families.) Helping moms, dads, kids, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas to be better able to grow their families and raise kids who are likely to succeed is something every citizen has a stake in. Nor should we let dads off the hook when it comes to the angst that torments so many women -- to stay at home, to work, to work part-time. There are all issues that dads should be wrestling with just as much as moms.
At the end of the day, feminism is not a movement about liberating women from the tedium of animal work; it is about ensuring that women are full partners in all aspects of our society, from work to home to politics and everything in between. And on that score, with so few women in positions of power and authority relative to the numbers of men, we have a long way to go, baby.