A mom and a feminist
This is a doozy; more rant than article, because I have had this discussion quite a few times. It is not anti-feminist to want to be a mom, and feminists are not destroying the American family unit.
First, let me start off with a little background. My mom is the biggest feminist I know. But, she fits none of your feminist stereotypes. She isn’t loud — in fact she pretty rarely speaks. She worked about 30 hours a week when I was little, deplored the idea that her kids would be raised by a nanny.
In the car on the way to the airport, we talked about her career. In truth, she said she would have preferred that my dad remain as a senior vice president of fidelity with her working at 60% and taking care of the kids. She preferred that to working full time on her own career. My mom wanted to be a mom.
Yet, I consider my mom to be a feminist. She wants me to be brilliant, and doesn’t give a damn about how I look — expect when she tells me my hair looks nice. She wears less makeup than I do — which is none day to day. In short, she is a classic New England woman. She is super well educated: Yale BA, Harvard MA, Harvard PHD. She was acknowledged in Nudge by Nobel Laureate Richard Thayler. She has always placed a premium on me being smart like her. She loves — I mean LOVES — her job. If you’d asked me where I got my strong ideas about what a woman should be, its from my mom. Sorry, I like to brag about her — I feel bad for all those times I yelled at her in high school about how she didn’t understand me.
It is “giving up a career” to raise kids. You cannot have one before, after, or during kids. It is immoral as a mother to work part time while you have kids. It should only be done when your family needs the financing. It would be your husband’s failure if you were to work. In short, you must choose between the 1950s household model, and the feminist model of high powered woman CEO. There is no middle ground.
If it was lost on you, the above paragraph is in deep sarcasm.
I digress for a moment to explain the context of this next anecdote. This weekend, I was a friend’s date to a wedding. It was a WASP wedding — white anglo-saxon Protestant, the character of New England old money. My mother’s family is vacationed with the Vanderbilts; went to boarding schools; went to Harvard (her going to Yale undergrad was a scandal). In short, they are the people who give New England its polarizing character.
Hence, I run comfortably with the circles of people at the wedding whom it was important to my friend’s mom that I impress. He knew few people there; he liked even fewer. Truthfully, the experience made me miss the New England ‘elite’. Mostly because they fawn over each other and I think its a combination of funny and flattering. All these people talking about deep issues in society and tax structure when they’re too petty to go to a wedding because they despise one of the other guests.
That being said, I love hearing tales of them overlapping with “American royalty” Rockafeller and Carnegie. I love the ‘small world’ stories that my mother’s brother is the best friend and was the 2 time best man of the brother of the ex of my friend’s mom. It’s a close enough connection we discovered it.
The pie is large but the crust is thin. Yeah we are pretty crusty.
However, driving from place to place, between receptions, and trying to stay out of the way, my friend Jack and I spent a lot of time talking. Politics, jobs, ambitions, and inevitably ambitions 10 years down the line.
Those who have met me will understand this: to say I am intense would be an understatement. However, I mentioned I would probably be working part time to raise my kids — see why I needed to go into my mother above?
He seemed surprised that I could rectify my “feminist crusade” with raising kids, having a husband be the bread winner, and raising kids. But, if all the feminists are out shouting in the streets, all the smart women working 100 hours at investment banks, and all of the driven women focused on working, who is going to raise the next generation of brilliant women.
In economics, there is a concept of capital v. consumption. (Note: if I were a boy from an Ivy Business School, I would have said “we have” rather than there is — as though I am in an elite crowd for studying economics, and I alone have these principles and ideas.) What you produce and use today v. what can you store for tomorrow, and the macro-economic struggle is always to optimize the consumption over an infinite number of periods.
The world needs smart and strong women to raise the next generation of smart and strong women. Girls cannot be looking up to their nannies because Mama never came home to share their values, read books, and play with blocks. So yes, I can believe women are powerful, brilliant, and that they should still be moms if that’s what they want to do. And it’s not anti-feminist.
In the home, men and women take on complementary roles so as not to “step on eachothes toes” as my mom puts it. She does the dishes — except when my dad’s mom is around, then he is on best behavior and does all the dishes. He does the yard work. If they wanted to switch, they could, but generally that is their preference, and also falls into the stereotype.
It is unfeminist to believe that women cannot do what men can do. Women cannot run a company, should not chose a full time job over kids, or “are bad at math”. (The final one hurts because I am a math major.) It is not unfeminist for a woman to make the contrapositive of one of these choices, to decide she would like to raise kids, does not want to work, or to personally be bad at math. These are traits of people not genders. That is what is means to be a feminist.
And so, I will be a feminist mom working part time. Before that, I will hopefully be a financial analyst, self support myself until I am married and having kids, and maybe work when they go off to college. But, I will still be a feminist, even if it appears I have chosen the life women were once forced to lead. This time I have chosen it. Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Katy Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Margaret Fuller (in no particular order) are the reason I can make this choice. Thank you ladies for ensuring my opinion on politics matters (in so much as anyones opinion does), letting me choose when I have children, ensuring that I am able to work despite my gender, and cannot be discriminated against.
Thank you to the woman who will ensure my daughter makes 99 cents on the mans dollar. Thank you to the first woman president, who I know is in my generation.
I will take advantage of my privilege from these women, recognize that I am not equal, and make the choice I am allowed to make because of these women. Yeah, I want a career, and I’ll get one. But I also want kids, and maybe I wont make it as far because of them. And that is okay, because it is a choice I am making, not one society has made for me.
That is what feminism has given me. Choice. And other women can make different ones. And I respect that too. Respect a woman’s right to choose how to live her life. That’s all feminism wants.
