I was referred by a friend to an article on "Feminism and Politics." While I usually like to avoid political posts, this one intersects somewhat with my musings on motherhood and work from a while back. Here's an interesting side note--when I read the "I'm a Woman" song that the author reprints with reference to a perfume ad, I was reminded of Miss Piggy. Seriously. There's a Muppet show sketch with Miss Piggy and some has-been brunette (offhand, I forget who!) with whom Piggy was competing for Kermit. Hardly an emblem of the woman's movement, even for the sake of argument!! This is also kind of funny given the reference in the quote to bacon.
What questions does this article raise for me? I'm not sure. Perhaps what it says about what we want to believe women are, or do, or whatever. The point seems to be that, while ostensibly, all choices for women are equally valid, in the political arena, this is not the case. This is no new news. Certain "choices" are definitely represented as being "rights" more often than others. However, I'm not entirely sure when the correct choice for professional women became to have a family and a career. Or, indeed, to have a family before a career, which really seems to be what the women in question represent. Rather, career first, family later has seemed the way to go, which is why unplanned pregnancies, and especially unplanned pregnancies before a certain age are deemed damaging and burdensome. Or did I misunderstand something all this time? I don't think so. So is feminism rethinking itself (again)? Is it in crisis? Is it obsolete? Or is it just imperfectly represented for political expedience?
Or am I, in concert with the author of the article, merely focusing too hard on meaningless offhand remarks that likely meant very little except for image-building purposes? Probably. And I can even make a literacy-orality reference. In our era of recording technology, remarks uttered in a specific context, that otherwise would have evaporated after being spoken, whose context could not have been recreated after the utterance was spoken, are preserved. We can hold those who spoke the words responsible for their offhand remarks as if they had been written. We can, of course, alter the context through selective editing, but then written words can be taken out of context also. However, the fact remains that we have the words, and the lives of the women who are holding themselves up as our role models. Would they have represented themselves the same 10 years ago? 20? And does this say more about what the women of the country want to hear, or what message these women want to convey?
Lest anyone consider too conservatively the assertion that "[m]ore young women at elite colleges are planning to stay home with their children," it should be mentioned that doing just that is becoming a status marker among young women, at least in certain parts of the country. The idea seems to be, why work if you don't have to? An extension of why should I take an elective if I don't have to? or why should I pay for my own car/apartment/college/etc. if my parents are willing to do so? I'd like to follow-up on that survey and see how many of those who decide to "stay home with their children" have them in child care before the age of one year for one reason or another that is not economically-based. Is this the rise of the family, or of a voluntarily leisured class (instead of involuntarily chained to the home, or voluntarily working)? Who knows?
I apologize if your self-righteousness meter is off the charts, here. The article raises a number of questions, and I have related them with a hearty measure of cynicism. I will not say, with the author of the Post Chronicle quote, "O.K. now, ladies, stop the cat-fight!" I think that what is at stake here is larger than bi-partisan sisterhood. I think it has to do with how each and every one of us views family in general and motherhood (or mothering) in particular, how our politicians think we feel about these issues, and how our media thinks we ought to feel. Now, who can tell me which is which?
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