May 14, 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

Back at my desk

Family matters have diverted me from blogging for the past two weeks. Things are calming down - and summer is nearly here. This will be my third summer devoted to a writing project, and actually the second one devoted to Slave Nation. My ultimate hope for this manifesto is to have it published, and here in my daily blogs I am doing the closest, finest editing of the material I have been putting together for almost two years now. Ideally, the blog will also stimulate discussion which will help me to hone my points.

As a result of some of this continuous editing some of the posts you have previously read will have been altered in form, though certainly not in substance. New posting will begin this week, possibly as early as today. Thank you again for reading - and would love to hear your comments on the state of the family in your country, and how women particularly are treated (economically, politically, culturally). Most of all, I would love to hear from both sides of the aisle - are you a stay at home mom? Are you a professional working mom? I know and love people on both sides of that aisle, and would love to take a moment to clarify that I am not in the rabble-rousing (or judging) business. This is a serious discussion about some pretty bad stuff that is going on in this country that is not being seriously addressed by policy makers or by media (except when they can wrangle a juicy Mommy-wars story out of it).

That isn't what this about, here on this blog. This is about the economic, political and health reasons why the vast majority of women would be better off as practicing homekeepers than they are in the wage-earning market place. I provide facts to back up my thesis from reliable and reputable sources, which I will cite as appropriate (please comment anywhere you would like a cite; I do try to embed further info in links, but if I miss something you would like to see - lmk).

Women and children are not doing well in America. Families are not doing well in America. That is what this discussion is about - that and brainstorming about how to change the paradigm.

Here is a link to an article from NBC News, 05.13.13, discussing the economics of staying home, a choice being made increasingly by lower-wage earning women (the majority of working women) who have seen in their own lives that it costs them more to work than to stay home: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/opt-out-or-left-out-economics-stay-home-moms-1C9881635

April 19, 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

Because so many women (un-choicers) must leave their children in daycare because of true financial necessity this debate is guaranteed to ignite a firestorm of frustration and emotion whenever it rears its ugly head. Defensive about our choices (and frustrated due to our lack of choices) we commit to defending whichever “team” we belong to, be it working or stay at home mother, with the resulting nasty free for all that can be seen in the comments section of any online commentary on the topic.  

Because of this one-dimensional angst-driven focus on the outcomes for children and inflammatory debates over the appropriateness or inappropriateness of our childcare or work choices we seem to entirely miss the forest for the trees – all of society is harmed by the loss of a traditional homekeeper, not just children. Men are harmed, women are harmed, elders and children are most certainly harmed – the entire family suffers, as do entire communities. Our stubborn, childish refusal to discuss the realities of this truth will only further delay the work we must eventually commit to doing to restore the health and wealth of our families and our country.

We have harmed ourselves from the bottom up for the past fifty-plus years in the wake of deep anti-marriage gender feminism that swept through American society in the late 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s. The disdain for marriage, seen by a divorce rate that doubled in ten short years, coupled with the loss of working-class manufacturing jobs set us on an unsustainable social course. The present-day fruits of those anti-family choices and anti-family economics are now painfully clear, from the explosion of new “diagnoses” of children who “need” to be medicated for “attention” disorders, to the childhood obesity epidemic that plagues the children of even our middle income families, to the deepest child and female poverty ever known in America, and lastly to the unchecked greed and materialism which has become the signature of life in our times. 

These are only a few of the many ways that I will prove that we have been harmed by our disintegrated division of labor tradition which draws heavily on shared and separate responsibilities of parents and an inherent frugality and self-reliance which allows for the one income earner model.

http://livingwage.mit.edu/