Alte has a good post up about homemakers today that reminded me of a thought I’ve had for a long time. For those who haven’t read any of my earlier posts, my extended family is pretty strongly feminist. My sister would qualify as the “feminist man-hating lesbian” stereotype except that I don’t actually think she’s a lesbian – just a very, very unhappy woman because no man exists in the real world who is both a) high status enough for her and b) would put up with her bullshit.
Anyway, back to the point. One of the main pushes of modern feminism is the idea that women should have careers and should be pushed into work roles that are traditionally or historically male. They often won’t come out and say it, but there’s a strong undertone from feminists that stay-at-home-moms aren’t acceptable – that they’re holding back the sisterhood. My mother, the only one of four sisters who chose to be a SAHM definitely felt this throughout our childhood, and spoke up about it on occasion. I’ve seen a lot of other SAHMs voice the same feeling, and I’ve seen a lot of men frustrated because their career oriented wives are causing family issues (as Alte points out, there are also a lot of men these days who view even the hard working SAHMs as free riders).
Alte correctly points out that part of the problem is that we, collectively as a culture, no longer value anything that can’t be monetized. I’ve hashed this out with friends and family before. I’ve made some pretty unorthodox choices in my life because of my firm belief that there are lots of things with what economists call “non-monetary value.” In other words, there are things in life that you can’t really put a price tag on in terms of dollars but that nevertheless are very, very valuable.
There’s another angle, however, that’s just as insidious. Modern feminism’s take on this issue started from completely the wrong point. They noted, probably somewhat correctly (if we’re honest with ourselves), that women homemakers were underappreciated and sometimes lacking in rights. They set about “fixing” the problem in entirely the wrong way, however. By trying to convince other women that they should have careers, and convincing men that they should be allowed to, they implicitly bought into the very notion that they were trying to fight: the idea that “women’s work” was somehow demeaning and beneath anybody to do. Our culture has now accepted a stance that raising children and managing a household is low-status work. This is partly because it’s not monetized, as Alte points out, and partly because we’ve been culturally taught that no woman should be forced to be “stuck there.” OK, sure, nobody should have to do it if it’s not what they’re great at. But it shouldn’t be looked down upon the same way it subconsciously (or consciously by some) is now.
The result is that we have men stuck in careers as they have been for a century or more, and now we have women stuck in careers too, and nobody is raising the kids because everybody’s too busy doing “important” work. As a consequence, we have half a generation that essentially was never raised. They just kind of grew up on their own. Not a very great place for our culture to be.
If feminists had taken the correct choice and made a point of demonstrating that such work was of equal value (despite its lack of monetization) to “men’s work” then we could conceivably be instead in a situation where it’s acceptable for men to do that work as well, and it would be a lot more common for one parent to maintain their focus on raising the children. I do believe that part of the reason there are so few stay at home dad’s is because men biologically aren’t as fond of child rearing as women. But I still think we’d have more of it if being a stay at home parent was viewed as a higher status, more socially acceptable role. Instead, our culture largely views it as a low status position. Women, therefore, want to get out of it if they can, and their hypergamous instincts push them away from relationships where their husbands do it.
