April 18, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

I found that most discussions about mothers earning income outside the home focused on issues that never analyzed whether it was in the best interest of the woman or her family for her to work. Most of the discussion I found was focused rigidly and exclusively on strategies to get employers and government to provide more ‘family friendly’ policies and the provision of ever more and more low-cost ‘high quality’ daycare, carefully chosen buzz words which numb our consciousness into forgetting that we are dumping our children into stranger care, no matter how family friendly or high quality that daycare may supposedly be. Ironically, these magical solutions to all problems are framed against the actual reality that daycare workers are among the lowest paid, least educated and most transient workers in the labor force.

In bizarre contrast to these discussions were the ones I found centered on Linda Hirschman’s strident, anti-child, anti-woman, anti-man, anti-family platform aimed at highly-educated “choicers.” For their own good, Hirschman describes in painful detail the professional and financial toll that leaving a career long enough to care for young children would confer on a woman unwise enough to do such a reckless thing, including the potential for the unthinkable – that she might have to depend on her husband. In this choicer universe it is a disadvantage in the business world to have babies, leaving them to be born as unwelcome intrusions to be managed around, rather than seen as the tangible, joyful, proof that our species survives, and that there will be a generation after our own to care for us as we inevitably age and begin to need help.

The former discussions concerned with family friendly policy and ‘quality’ low cost daycare are unsurprisingly aimed at women who work for low wages, while the latter which darkly caution women against risky professional behavior such as childbearing or raising, are generally aimed at – quelle suprise – privileged, ultra-educated, ambitious women. These women who work for any reason other than that they must to survive, come mostly from the ranks of well educated ‘third basers,’ (born on third base and think they hit a triple), women such as Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and would-be founder of a movement which will teach women to Lean In, a consciousness raising ‘movement’ designed to help women behave more like men in the workplace. Make that the Corporate workplace.

My search for thoughtful analysis about the need for women to stay home to raise their families and care for their homes generally went unrewarded. The few discussions I did find about the wisdom of a culture that embraces homekeepers were mostly driven by unhelpful ultra-religious or ultra-conservative political ideology that did not have the inclusiveness necessary for a true grassroots movement. Very few moderate discussions address the real great American tragedy of our times – the loss of the homekeeper, and the traditional division of labor in the family business of child-raising and survival.

Because this very real tragedy has been conflated with the tragedy of millions of children spending their very early years in daycare facilities the focus of any debate about homekeepers invariably centers on whether or not it is harmful for children to be raised by paid strangers during their earliest years, or whether or not that duty should only be carried out by parents and family members. 

Unfortunately, that means that when these sporadic discussions occur, they only consider one facet of homekeeping - childcare - to the exclusion of thoughtful examination of most of the other significant losses we are suffering due to the loss of our homefront workforce. This myopic focus unfortunately has effectively short-circuited discussion and thoughtful analysis about the true nature of what we have lost, by diverting us with a cultural ‘shiny thing.’ 

http://livingwage.mit.edu/