Dr. Laura on employed women and SAH mothers

First, from "Ms." Oct. 1987 (which DL probably never read) :

(Anonymous LTTE about the complaints that feminism doesn't support
housewives)

"Six months ago I too was a self-described "happy homemaker" I baked
bread, grew roses, played with my toddler. Then I woke one morning and
found my husband ( and our car, our stereo, our checkbook, etc.) gone.
I was COMPLETELY surprised; I had assumed he was as happy as I was!

"I had to immediately find a job (which pays a third what his does);
arrange for day ca try to scrape together enough money for food,
mortgage, and utilities.

"Housewife is NOT a valid career option because you have no control
over your own life. If you lose your husband you can't go down to the
employment agency and apply for another one!"

And DL's column from this spring:

http://www.drlaura.com/blog/2007/04/...thing/#more-39

"(Vanity Fair journalist Leslie Bennetts) is coming out with a book
pretty much telling women not to stay home with their kids."

Last two paragraphs:

"You go home and take care of your babies. That's how you'll be of
service to all the world - a better chance of raising good kids to be
decent citizens, to go out and do wonderful things in the world.

"So, my comments about Leslie Bennetts' book are not vengeance. I have
gone on to be happy, functional, secure, and continue with my career.
That's my vengeance on what she tried to do. But warning you that
women's magazines, and this sort of book, do not function in the best
interests of families, children, or women is important to me.
Encouraging women to do the wrong thing by making them paranoid about
disasters, so they should only strive to be good-enough moms when
they're around, good-enough wives if they have the time, but the work
is everything, is exactly what for decades and decades women
complained their men were doing. And paranoid feminists like Leslie
Bennetts are telling you to go backwards in history and hurt the
family... just like men who were never home and never involved did."


OK. So she has a point there.

However, she's suspiciously vague in this paragraph:


"Meanwhile, Leslie Bennetts is paranoid about divorce, your spouse
losing a job, and widowhood, as though the only answer to that was
across-the-board 'do not be at home, do not take care of your kids, do
not be your husband's girlfriend'....get your job, be secure, just in
case something horrible happens. Well, my answer to something horrible
happening is find another way to deal with it if and when it does,
rather than knee-jerking, giving up on your family."


That is, sure, maybe it's a good idea to put at least your spouse
(whether male or female) ahead of your job, so long as your boss
doesn't know that - and your paid-work performance doesn't slip.
HOWEVER, DL doesn't offer even one letter from a listener or anyone
who (besides herself, maybe) can work outside the home and still be
considered a responsible parent. No happy mediums here, so far as
she's concerned!

Lenona.

I can see both sides. If your field is one where getting a job after time
away would be difficult or impossible, then quitting to stay home is very
risky, which, I assume is what the original author is stating. And it's also
true that working 60 hours a week isn't a good situation for raising a young
child.

But what both of these extremists seem to be ignoring is that you can plan
for disaster before you leave to raise a child, and that you can work
without being work-focused.

In my case, I'm a mostly SAHM, who also teaches part time at a local
university in a badly paid adjunct position that mostly keeps my resume
active and gives me some professional outlet, as opposed to really bringing
in a substantial amount of income. I do bring in enough to allow us a nice
vacation a year and pay for my DD's preschool, but that's about it. Until I
had DD, I taught music full-time for the public school system.

Believe me, I considered the possibility that I could be left without an
income if something happened. And for me, it's not a big concern. I've got
up to date teaching licensure in multiple areas, including ones which always
have openings, even mid-year. I have my security paperwork up to date with
the largest school district in the area, so could start substituting almost
immediately if needed. And I can pay the mortgage and everyday bills on a
teachers salary, although we wouldn't have as many extras as we have on an
engineer's one.

Financially, we have a substantial cushion in savings, well over a year's
salary for my husband, and that's not counting disability and life
insurance, so if he dies or can't work, we'll be OK while I get things
straightened out and get back to work myself.

And, if my husband of 14 years who I've known for 20 is the type who would
suddenly leave and abandon his child with no resources, well, then I'm the
worst judge of character that ever lived! Yes, it's possible, but it's
pretty unlikely-and, if it did happen, a great deal of our savings can't be
accessed without both signatures, and I have both credit and savings in my
own name (something that both of us agreed was a good idea from day 1 of the
marriage). DD and I would get by.

I don't need to be paranoid, because DH and I have always kept the "what is
the worst that could happen" in mind.

On Nov 16, 2:17 pm, wrote:

No happy mediums here, so far as
she's concerned!

Someone once told me that by the numbers, the moms working part-time
are more satisfied and happier than both the SAHMs and WOHMs. The
middle path though doesn't lend itself well to grandiose position
statements. Granted, depending on your skills and education, part-
time work may or may not be an available or economically feasible
choice, but most of the people in this debate are those who do have
choices. The rest just do what they need to do to get by, whether or
not they're happy with it.

Kate, ignorant foot soldier of the medical cartel (quite happily
employed at ~75% time now, after 3 years employment at 150-175% time)
and the Bug, 4 years old
and something brewing, 4/08

In article ,
Akuvikate says...

On Nov 16, 2:17 pm, wrote:

No happy mediums here, so far as
she's concerned!

Someone once told me that by the numbers, the moms working part-time
are more satisfied and happier than both the SAHMs and WOHMs. The
middle path though doesn't lend itself well to grandiose position
statements. Granted, depending on your skills and education, part-
time work may or may not be an available or economically feasible
choice, but most of the people in this debate are those who do have
choices. The rest just do what they need to do to get by, whether or
not they're happy with it.

Yeah, I agree that is the workable path for a *lot* of families. And yes, it's
a bit harder to come by (or even know where to look for it). But someone does
not have to be a full-blown career person, or even working full time, in order
to maintain some employability against the unknown future. And have other
benefits as well.

A good friend of mine works part time tutoring for the local school system.
Her students are kids that can't go to school temporarily because of physical
illness or injury or discplinary action from the school (suspensions). She
wants to work full time at some point, she fessed up that it's looking at my
life that makes her appreciate working part time LOL. But there's truth to
that, she has two teens, and she can make for a more relaxed family life if she
works part time. On the other hand, what I have socked away for college is very
different from what they have. There's a lot of tradoffs.

Banty

In article
,
wrote:

First, from "Ms." Oct. 1987 (which DL probably never read) :

(Anonymous LTTE about the complaints that feminism doesn't support
housewives)

"Six months ago I too was a self-described "happy homemaker" I baked
bread, grew roses, played with my toddler. Then I woke one morning and
found my husband ( and our car, our stereo, our checkbook, etc.) gone.
I was COMPLETELY surprised; I had assumed he was as happy as I was!

I think she must have been growing (and smoking) something other than roses.
He must have made a bit of noise getting the stereo etc out; why didn't she
hear that, or the toddler screaming when Daddy drove off?

However, she's suspiciously vague in this paragraph:

"Meanwhile, Leslie Bennetts is paranoid about divorce, your spouse
losing a job, and widowhood, as though the only answer to that was
across-the-board 'do not be at home, do not take care of your kids, do
not be your husband's girlfriend'....get your job, be secure, just in
case something horrible happens. Well, my answer to something horrible
happening is find another way to deal with it if and when it does,
rather than knee-jerking, giving up on your family."

Is that an accurate picture of the book, I wonder?

I see lives that are a lot more varied than these extremes and in which
external factors have made a big difference.

In Australia, with our particular structuring of taxation and various
benefits, a wife's starting work can sometimes send a low-income family's
finances backwards rather than forwards, or forwards by such a small amount
that it isn't worth the inconvenience (the work not being at all interesting
and child care being sometimes difficult to manage).

On the other hand I've seen some intelligent but rather high-strung women
whose children might be better off if Mum was working rather than hovering
over their every move.

I also have a friend who has an honours degree in English Lit. She has never
*ever* worked at a job remotely commensurate with her intelligence, and for
most of their marriage hubby has been the only one in paid work, while my
friend has stayed home with the two kids and done lots of voluntary work.
Hubby ran a small business which depended for most of its income on work
flowing from ONE particular company and using ONE particular software package
-- I know, Blind Freddy could see this wasn't ever a good wicket. Of course
one day, the large company decided to drop all its external small contractors.
They are still getting out of the financial hole, but if my friend had done
*anything* apart from have babies, her income could have tided them over the
bad patch.

I have another friend who ended up in a worse state when she finished her
Engineering degree and never worked in the field, choosing the
marriage-and-babies path, even though her husband didn't have academic tenure.
Which was fine until her by-then-tenured husband left her, leaving her with
their three little kids in a place where employment was hard to get and she
had no family to help with child care, or in any other way. She did meet a
nice man and marry again, but I bet she's got a paid job now...

It is one thing to want to be The World's Best SAHM. It is quite another to
fail to consider your likely future financial circumstances when you make that
decision.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

Chookie wrote:

On the other hand I've seen some intelligent but rather high-strung women
whose children might be better off if Mum was working rather than hovering
over their every move.

Which would have been us, if my mother hadn't had a job. Fortunately,
she is too much of a workaholic ever to have considered a long-term SAHM
path. I know she felt plenty guilty when we were young over not
spending time with us, but it was totally wasted guilt - for me, my
mother's job made the difference between her being a fairly level-headed
mother and being smothering. I didn't feel cheated or upset by not
having her around when I got in from school. I never had any doubt that
my sister and I were her number one priorities and if either of us ever
*needed* her, she'd drop anything and everything to be there. There
simply wasn't any need for her to hover around trying to prove something
so obvious on a daily basis, and, if she had made me and her sister her
life, I for one would have found it way too stifling.

I have no doubt that there are families in whom it works just as well
for the mother to be a SAHM. And families - ours for one - in which
what works is for the father to be a SAHD, a solution that I think far
more families should consider. Horses for courses.


All the best,

Sarah
--
http://www.goodenoughmummy.typepad.com

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell

In article , Sarah Vaughan says...

Chookie wrote:

On the other hand I've seen some intelligent but rather high-strung women
whose children might be better off if Mum was working rather than hovering
over their every move.

Which would have been us, if my mother hadn't had a job.

It *was* us, and my mother usually didn't work. The expectations of the '60's
and '70's being really agasint that.

When my father was between jobs and she *did* work, it was much better. Even
though I was the eldest, a young teen, and expected to take up a lot of the
house work. What a relief it was just to do a chore and get it done without
being second guessed about it or having it undone and done another way.


Fortunately,
she is too much of a workaholic ever to have considered a long-term SAHM
path. I know she felt plenty guilty when we were young over not
spending time with us, but it was totally wasted guilt - for me, my
mother's job made the difference between her being a fairly level-headed
mother and being smothering. I didn't feel cheated or upset by not
having her around when I got in from school. I never had any doubt that
my sister and I were her number one priorities and if either of us ever
*needed* her, she'd drop anything and everything to be there. There
simply wasn't any need for her to hover around trying to prove something
so obvious on a daily basis, and, if she had made me and her sister her
life, I for one would have found it way too stifling.

I have no doubt that there are families in whom it works just as well
for the mother to be a SAHM. And families - ours for one - in which
what works is for the father to be a SAHD, a solution that I think far
more families should consider. Horses for courses.

Geeses and ganders, too!

Banty