But the truth is, I'm a little housewifed out. My formal review of Darla Shine's Happy Housewives was just published on Literary Mama's Reviews page. In order to write a fair review, I felt the need to read the book a couple of times which, to be frank, was a couple of times too many. And then there was the writing, rewriting, and editing of it all.
And now, I feel the need to read something -- anything -- that does not try to get me in touch with my inner need to vacuum.
As I wait for my copy of Caitlin Flanagan's To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife to arrive in the mail, and await the publication of my review of Darla Shine's Happy Housewives book later this month, I'm happy to report on some decidedly non-housewifely news:
Literary Mama managing editor Andi Buchanan's essay appears in the May issue of CHILD magazine, which is hitting the newsstands now.
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture (bitchmagazine.com) will be in the spotlight in Intersection for the Arts' series Independent Press Spotlight on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 7:30 pm in San Francisco. 446 Valencia (between 15th and 16th), (415) 626-2787. Admission ranges from $5-$15.
Once again, the Literary Mama editors have been busy over the last month.
While in Virginia for the VA Festival of the Book, Managing Editor Andi Buchanan, Miriam Peskowitz and Barbara Ehrenreich spoke on a panel about "Women, Family and Work: A Candid Discussion" at the UVA Bookstore. Andi discusses the panel in more detail on her blog.
LM Editor Jennifer Margulis hosted a live web chat at Pregnancy.org on Why Babies Do What They Do, based on some of the findings from her recently published book, Why Babies Do That.
There has been a lot of chatter recently about Alison Wolf's Working Girls piece published in Prospect. So I was not at all surprised to see the article reprinted in the Toronto Star. The Star is renowned for its liberal point of view, as outlined in the famed Atkinson Principles to which the paper continues to adhere today. Its editors would know that an article about the negative repercussions of women in the workforce would be of interest to its readership, if only to give us the opportunity to say "Can you believe this article?" in an informed way.
What is interesting is that The Star chose to change the article's title from "Working Girls" to "Working Girls, Broken Society". And the little introduction provided by the editors reads as follows:
"While the benefits of career equality are axiomatic, its negative repercussions are wilfully ignored. In a contentious essay that is sparking fierce debate in Britain, a King's College professor argues that we must confront the losses to society when women choose work over family."
Choose work over family.
My, my.
The article continues on another page and the headline they have chosen is "The downside to equality" in bold one and a half inch font.
And the accompanying photo -- three bob-haired, power-suited, faceless business women, one with her fingers crossed behind her back as if she is lying.
It is a rather loaded way to present a contentious article, no?
The article itself argues how "women, at least in developed societies, have virtually no career or occupation barred to them." Now the author, Alison Wolf, does state right upfront that this has brought "enormous benefits." But she goes on to argue that there have been negative consequences including: "the death of sisterhood" or the division of women among class lines to a greater extent than in the past, the "erosion of "female altruism"" whereby women are not so willing to provide caregiving without remuneration, and how we "ignore -- sometimes [note: not always as The Star's preamble implies] wilfully -- the extent to which educated women bear disincentives to bear children."
Some of Wolf's arguments are compelling although I disagree with most of her conclusions. Interesting was her discussion of how the divide between rich and poor becomes more pronounced after bearing children, as the women with high-paying careers tend to return to work immediately after maternity leave (making 88% of her spouse's earnings over a lifetime) whereas women in lower paying jobs tend to work part time or leave the work force altogether (making as little as 34% of her spouse's income over a lifetime). I would have liked to have seen discussion of how state-subsidized daycare might alter this figure.
Some of her arguments were, in my opinion, just plain wrong. She distinguished between the minority of ambitious, well-educated women who have "careers" and the majority of women whose "families are top priority" as though ambition and motherhood are somehow mutually exclusive. Her discussion of how at "the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, some women can even be "married" to the state and live on benefits in a way no previous society could have imagined" feeds into the myth of the 'welfare moms' living the high life.
And her argument that society is worse off today because women are working instead of providing unpaid caregiving services out of the goodness of their hearts and a sense of religious duty is a little scary. She writes that the average amount of time "today's British citizen, male or female, devotes to volunteer activity is four minutes a day." Male or female. So it's not necessarily that women are doing too little volunteering these days; perhaps it's that men -- who have had the burden of being the sole income provider lifted from their shoulders and should therefore have ample capacity for altruistic endeavors -- are not doing enough. And she touches on the role of capitalism (which for me is the true bad guy) in all this but only in her discussion of how second wave feminism seemingly embraced capitalist values.
Her conclusion that "families remain central to the care of the old and sick, as well as raising the next generation, and yet our economy and society steer ever more educated women away from marriage or childbearing" is troubling since it places the erosion of our society's moral fabric squarely on the shoulders of women working outside the home. And though she is clear in stating that she has no desire to return to the "kitchen sink," her conclusions support the Good Housewife crowd that believes that there is something morally superior about staying at home with one's children.
Because if a left-leaning newspaper like The Star can read this piece and conclude that it is all about the "losses to society when women choose work over family," then, my god, what fuel is she giving to the conservatives who have been trying to prove this sort of thing all along.
There's nothing like a pre-nap triangle of PB&J and a glass of milk on the couch with some old friends on Sesame Street. That's how I spent my afternoons after a hard day at kindergarten, but lately it seems too much to ask for our nation's kids.
These are difficult times, after all, and sacrifices must be made. Surely our kids can live without the extravagance of watching Big Bird and Snuffy wasting valuable airtime discussing their feelings. That's what parents are for, right? Don't tell me you've been falling down on the job. Next thing you know, you'll be using PBS as a babysitter while you try to get dinner going. No worries, though; the government is here to help.
For the second time in ten months, the Bush administration is proposing major budget cuts to public broadcasting. Last June, the House of Representatives voted to reject a $100 million cut after the American people reacted to the potential cuts with an outpouring of support for PBS. According to the Association of Public Television Stations, this administration now proposes to cut $53.5 million in fiscal year 2007, another $50 million in 2008, and to withhold funding completely for 2009.
Apparently, this administration knows better than anyone else what's best for American families, or they would have embraced the decision of the bi-partisan majority who supported public broadcasting last June. So what do they know that we don't?
Maybe it's not good for kids to have a safe haven on television. Perhaps we should start them early on a steady diet of CNN and Disney so they fully understand what life is about: violence and consumerism. It's probably in our best interest to get them good and angry, ready to fight for their right to brand-name goods and services. If only Nixon had succeeded in gutting PBS, our military recruiters wouldn't be in such a pickle right now.
Yes, the kids will go quietly (they'd rather watch SpongeBob than Caillou anyway). But what if I told you that entire communities will suffer the loss in ways that even public broadcasting's strongest advocates rarely discuss?
Stations around the country use the national PBS programming as the backbone of their operation, that's true. Still, each station is as unique as the community in which it is based. Unlike commercial stations, each local station has a staff whose sole mission is to use their programming and outreach resources to better their community. An individual can come to the station to volunteer or to voice concern, and know that their involvement makes a difference. The programming office is housed locally, so programming decisions are based on what people want locally -- not just what's popular in New York or L.A.
Most stations thrive by reaching out to other community organizations in strategic partnerships to give voice to those who need it. If our local stations go dark -- and without federal funding, it is likely they would -- there is no other local outlet for such conversation. It seems that an administration that values small government ought to be willing to invest in communities to allow them to help themselves. Our leaders are not only doing the public a great disservice by slashing funds, they are missing out on a huge opportunity to encourage the use of television as a tool to bring people together, strengthen families, and empower our children.
In addition to the broadcast, PBS provides many services for parents and teachers. The government should be thankful for services like the PBS TeacherSource website. This service puts thousands of lesson plans (geared toward curriculum standards) at the fingertips of America's overworked teachers. PBS Parents is another site loaded with child development information and expert advice. In addition, PBS has been a leader in literacy issues for years. Many local stations have partnered with organizations like Head Start to provide literacy workshops and emotion coaching for kids and their families.
A few years ago, the PBS slogan was "If we don't do it, who will?" The tagline was dropped when the History Channel and Discovery and TLC became commonplace on cable systems everywhere. It seemed that even PBS was unsure of what they could offer in the face of more commercial channels, but I think the tagline fits now better than ever. If the funding cuts go through and PBS loses its federal funding, no one will look out for local communities. There will be no voice for local concerns.
The Bush administration is hoping that if they keep proposing the cuts, eventually we will tire of fighting for PBS. But what's at stake here is not money. The battle is over what's left of childhood innocence. It's about empowering our families and communities. We are the mothers of this country, and if we don't fight for those values, who will?
When any polite woman learned I was pregnant with twins, she'd ask, "Were you surprised?" I would say, "Yes, totally surprised!" The next question would inevitably be, "Do twins run in your family?" "Yes," I'd say, "My aunt had triplets for her third pregnancy, and they're 33."
This conversation was, of course, code. If I weren't surprised, I'd be admitting to fertility treatments. And my cousins are old enough that no one would assume that my aunt had any help conceiving them. The code allowed me to cover.
Covering, as defined in the brilliant article by Kenji Yoshino in the January 15 issue of The New York Times Magazine, is what you do when you're not part of a dominant group but don't want to stand out. You don't hide the thing that makes you different -- say being black or gay -- you just keep it from being too obtrusive. If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of women who've had trouble conceiving, you're not alone but you're not in the majority either. And if you've conceived because of fertility treatments, you have not conceived the real way. You have something to cover.
And make no mistake, if you're straight and in a stable partnership, there is "a real way" to get pregnant. If you're someone for whom pregnancy didn't just happen, you remember hearing about this kind of conception in high school health class. It doesn't involve anyone other than your baby's father. No doctor, no ultrasound technician, no phlebotomist. This kind of pregnancy, a pregnancy achieved by simply having sex, is natural. It is a pregnancy that is authentic and uncontaminated by the modern world. If you're not sure of this, hop onto any twin moms' bulletin board, and I'll bet you'll find some woman identifying herself as the mother of "natural" twins. Do not confuse her with the unnatural kind. Unlike that other woman, the mother of natural twins did not need any help conceiving; the womb did not fail her, and she as a woman has fulfilled her destiny, for free.
The dominant culture wants to preserve this ideal of conception. It wants the narrative of pregnancy to be man meets woman, man and woman make love, woman becomes pregnant, pregnancy is lovely. The very fact of fertility treatments is threatening. It creates moral dilemmas about how far humans can wade into mysteries of reproduction. It stokes fears of cloning, frozen embryos, and trait selection. Reproductive technology makes the story of having a baby complicated and sad. It reminds everyone just a little bit that what we take for granted -- that we will grow up and have children -- won't necessarily play out the way we expect.
And so, even though we know that nature and biology are not clear-cut, the narrative norm of man and woman meet, man and woman commit, man and woman have baby, adheres. And even if we reject that norm intellectually, we affirm it emotionally in all kinds of ways.
We affirm it by repeating the urban legends of women who became pregnant after adopting. ("And after all those treatments! It just happened.") Or by telling the stories of women who became pregnant accidentally, very quickly after giving birth to a child conceived by fertility treatments. These are stories of redemption, not only from the pain of a childless house but from the pain of a childless womb. It's an arc as breathy and predictable as any Hollywood Cinderella story and one that even the most thoughtful women cannot resist retelling.
I personally affirmed the simple, normative pregnancy narrative each time I told someone I was surprised by having twins and didn't follow it up with, "And you should've seen the look on my doctor's face!" I became pregnant with fraternal twins after transferring one frozen embryo. We transferred the embryo in what's called a "natural" cycle, which means I didn't take any drugs to suppress ovulation. So, I probably became pregnant with one child who began life in a Petri dish, while the other was conceived between the sheets. And, no, we don't know, nor will ever know, which is which. Because no matter how they were conceived, one of my kids is not more real than the other.
So, you see, every time I admitted surprise and didn't describe the look on my doctor's face, I was covering. And I was furious. Partly, I was furious at the questioner (does it matter that only women asked this question?), but mostly I was furious at myself because in covering I denied the authenticity of my own experiences. In covering I could never begin to articulate that I was thrilled and grateful to be pregnant, but that I no longer thought of pregnancy as a necessary step to parenthood and that I was losing the child I imagined I'd adopt. And, finally and most regretfully, in covering I was thoughtlessly stoking my need for everyone to know that I didn't conceive twins by fertility treatments alone. That I was a woman capable of doing what women are just supposed to be able to do: meet a man, fall in love, get committed, get pregnant. Naturally.