The 'Feminist' or 'Retro' Housewife: What's the Problem?
Thursday, April 11, 2013 
A couple of weeks ago, New York Magazine published an article initially called "The Feminist Housewife" (and later changed, it seems, to "The Retro Wife"). The subtitle reads "feminists who say they're having it all - by choosing to stay home" and the article features the story of Kelly Makino, a mom who decided to stay at home full time.
What's wrong with that, you may ask? In my opinion, choosing to stay home has pros and cons. I would never judge anyone for their decision, one way or another. So Kelly's choice didn't rub me the wrong way, per se, but the article certainly did.
Let me give you a few examples...
She believes that every household needs one primary caretaker, that women are, broadly speaking, better at that job than men...Women, she believes, are conditioned to be more patient with children, to be better multitaskers, to be more tolerant of the quotidian grind of playdates and temper tantrums; "women," she says, "keep it together better than guys do."
Regular readers of my blog will know that this type of gender stereotyping bothers me. It is opinions like these that make it more difficult for women to achieve equality in the workplace, in society, and at home. If women are better at all these things, then obviously it makes sense for them to stay home instead of the men. And if it is okay to stereotype women and men this way as it relates to child rearing, what is to stop us from saying something similar about how men are simply better suited to corporate jobs than women (oh wait, people do say that all the time and we're trying to show that it isn't true...just as stay at home dads or couples where parenting is shared equally are trying to show that women aren't naturally better parents than men).
Then there is what she wants for her daughter. The article explains:
Kelly calls herself “a flaming liberal” and a feminist, too. “I want my daughter to be able to do anything she wants,” she says. “But I also want to say, ‘Have a career that you can walk away from at the drop of a hat.’ ”
But wait...Kelly and Alvin have a son too. There is no mention of him needing to have a career he can walk away from at the drop of a hat. Even the photo used for the article not only emphasizes the gender roles that Kelly and Alvin have chosen for themselves, but also shows their daughter playing with a (albeit headless) Barbie while her son wears a cape and plays with a soccer ball.
Those are some of the words and opinions of Kelly, but there are also those of the article's author, Lisa Miller.
But what if all the fighting is just too much? That is, what if a woman isn’t earning Facebook money but the salary of a social worker? Or what if her husband works 80 hours a week, and her kid is acting out at school, and she’s sick of the perpetual disarray in the closets and the endless battles over who’s going to buy the milk and oversee the homework? Maybe most important, what if a woman doesn’t have Sandberg-Slaughter-Mayer-level ambition but a more modest amount that neither drives nor defines her?
What if we replaced woman with man, husband with wife, and Sandberg-Slaughter-Mayer with Gates-Page-Zuckerberg?
In the example of another family given in the article, the author writes: "Her husband's part of the arrangement is to go to work and deposit his paycheck in the joint account." While I recognize that in some families one parent may work more than the other, reducing a father to nothing more than a paycheque (and a sperm donor, I guess?) seems dehumanizing. Ah yes, and then there is "home, to these women, is more than a place to watch TV at the end of the day and motherhood more than a partial identity." But what is home and fatherhood to the men, I wonder?
Let's look at the research...
The article isn't all just skewed opinions, it is also sprinkled with some research.
Before they marry, college students of both genders almost universally tell social scientists that they want marriages in which housework, child care, professional ambition, and moneymaking will be respectfully negotiated and fully shared.
But that is just a pipe dream (or a "contemporary mating call"), apparently. Men don't really mean it and women are just dreaming in technicolour.
Despite their stated position, men still do far less housework than their spouses. In 2011, only 19 percent spent any time during the average day cleaning or doing laundry; among couples with kids younger than 6, men spent just 26 minutes a day doing what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “physical care,” which is to say bathing, feeding, or dressing children. (Women did more than twice as much.)
These statistics don't lie, but I don't think that means that women are simply more suited to child rearing and housework than men. I think it means there is still as much (if not more) inequality in the home as in the workplace. So how do couples handle that? Apparently plenty of conflict, the woman simply taking on more (i.e. a full time job plus most of the housework and parenting), or the woman opting out for the more rewarding lifestyle that Kelly opted for. Tackling the inequality through respectful cooperation and shared ownership of the household and parenting is apparently just not possible.
Passing on Values to Our Children
Kelly says that she, and other stay at home mothers, are "standing up for values, such as patience, and kindness, and respectful attention to the needs of others, that have little currency in the world of work." Those are important values for sure, ones that should be incorporated into the workplace and ones that should be passed on from father to children as well.
Showing our daughters that they can choose a career or to stay at home is important, but showing our sons the same thing is important too. Tackling inequality in a marriage and finding a respectful cooperative way to manage the household and raise the children isn't just good for the marriage. It will also help show our children that there are different ways of doing things and that a belief in equality is more than just an empty mating call.
That doesn't mean that being a stay-at-home mother is bad or unfeminist. It just means that for every home where a woman stays home, we also need one where the man stays home. If we don't do that, then we can't ensure that for every male CEO, there will also be a female CEO. Ann Marie Slaughter was right, women can't "have it all", nor should they. No one gets to have it all, but by working cooperatively and justly in our families and our communities, we can collectively have it all.
Image credit: vonderauvisuals on flickr
Gender Issues and tagged with feminism, gender, stay at home dads, stay at home moms 
Reader Comments (20)
Showing our daughters that they can choose a career or to stay at home is important, but showing our sons the same thing is important too.
That quote is my belief. Thanks for that.
'It just means that for every home where a woman stays home, we also need one where the man stays home. If we don't do that, then we can't ensure that for every male CEO, there will also be a female CEO. Ann Marie Slaughter was right, women can't "have it all", nor should they. No one gets to have it all, but by working cooperatively and justly in our families and our communities, we can collectively have it all.'
Annie, do you think this is the only way that we are going to achieve equality? Couldn't we ask more of workplaces instead?
Also, more controversially, do you think that aiming for a 50/50 split (between men and women generally, rather than in the one relationship) is currently realistic?
Cristy,
With regard to your first question, I think we need both. We need to ask more of workplaces, but if some women are going to choose to stay home while their husband's careers propel ahead, we'll need an equal number of men doing the same thing to support their wives careers. Otherwise, it'll always be the guy with the wife at home who can stay for the late meeting, put in the extra hours, take the client out for drinks, etc. No matter how supportive workplaces are, I think it will still be the people who can give it their all because they don't have other commitments who will get ahead.
I'm not sure I understand your second question, but would love to respond if you could explain further.
Do you think that we are going to reach a point (soonish) when 50% of fathers want to stay home with their young children, while also reaching the point where 50% of women want to work for money outside of the home full time while their children are very young? (And, of course, both lots finding themselves in a relationship with someone of the opposite inclination, or, at least, one person feeling ambivalent...)
I ask this, because I think there are a lot of social and non-social reasons that women will be in the majority in wanting to stay home in the early years (for the time being), and - if I'm correct - I think that our version of equality probably needs to explicitly accommodate this fact.
So only stay at home moms can stand up for patience, kindness, and respectful attention to the needs of others? Do these women hear themselves? Come spend 30 min in my special ed class for students with severe autism, Kelly. You might reconsider your attitude, or at the very least, your choice of words. Other than that, nice article, Annie.
Kelly Makino says that she was thoroughly misrepresented (particularly regarding the gender essentialism):
http://jezebel.com/5991961/women-profiled-in-feminist-housewives-piece-say-new-york-misquoted-and-misrepresented-them
"reducing a father to nothing more than a paycheque (and a sperm donor, I guess?) seems dehumanizing ... what is home and fatherhood to the men, I wonder?"
Thank you for consistently reiterating this. I am a woman with some ambition who also cares about her home and children, always lovingly taken care of by my SAHD husband. I am not an egg donor and a paycheck, either.
What I try to teach my children is the importance of finding a career path that they will enjoy and be able to combine with actually also having a life, whether or not that life includes having a family of their own.
I was glad to read the link that Cristy posted. I got the feeling reading the original article that it had a lot more to do with the writer's beliefs than those of Kelly herself.
I've played several mothering roles since my daughter was born 7 years ago. I went back to work early (by Canadian standards) when she was 6 months old, and my husband took parental leave. I went right back to my 60-hour a week job.
Later, I dropped down to a 4-day work week, hoping that that would allow me to "have it all". Ha. All that got me was more stress because clients didn't like having a consultant who didn't work one day a week.
After my son was born, we decided a parent should stay home with the kids. I wanted to, my husband didn't really. So that was easy. I don't "have it all" now either. I have a small etsy-style cottage business, and I do a bit of contract writing. Everything's always being balanced.
In these debates, and I've said it before, there seems to be a complete lack of people saying "I stay home because we can afford it and because I like it". There always has to be a justification - that it's better for the kids, that it's better for families, that mothers need to bond with their children etc etc. It doesn't have to be a feminist issue. Sometimes it's just about someone (male or female) who enjoys being with their children more than they enjoyed working. There's nothing wrong with that, and as long as that decision is revisited regularly to make sure both parents are still on-board. It's too bad it needs to turn into a debate about who's doing it better.
Feminism is important. I believe I am a feminist - I believe in equal pay for equal work, the right of women to choose their career path, etc etc. And feminism should give me the right to choose to stay home with my kids while they're young if that's something I want to do (and something that's right for my family). Just as, hopefully, my husband is also able to take a turn at that if it's something he would enjoy.
And again, this is an argument of privilege. We are on a tight budget to make this work. Our lifestyle has changed drastically since I resigned - in fact if my husband had stayed home and I had returned to work, it wouldn't have changed quite as much. But we're still very privileged that we CAN afford for a parent to stay home for a short time. Many families simply cannot. And other families choose not to, and that's okay too.
After reading the Jezebel article, and the articles that came out after Are You Mom Enough, I'd never be interviewed for any magazine article. I may not recognize myself in the final comments.
Thanks for clarifying your question, Christy.
I'm not sure what the best answer is with regards to the percentage of women versus men who should stay home, but I definitely think we need the percentage of men who do it to be much higher, for several reasons:
1) To remove the imbalance in terms of who gets ahead in the workplace, so that we are not disproportionately putting women at a disadvantage.
2) So that employers are more willing to accept the idea of men needing to take time off and men needing to strike a balance between work and home (e.g. picking kids up from daycare, staying home when one is sick, taking them to doctor's appointments, etc.)
3) So that men are more accepted in the community as caregivers and not looked upon as odd or incompetent.
4) So that more children have the benefit of a close relationship with their fathers.
Does it need to be 50/50, especially for very young children? I don't know. In our case, I took 3 months of maternity leave with our first child and 6 months with our second child, and then my partner took over from there. Certainly it is easier to be home when you are breastfeeding exclusively, but after that I don't think it really matters which parent it is and I think it more often needs to be the father.
Oh, and thanks for sharing that article Christy. Someone else shared that with me on twitter late last night too. I'm glad to see that she didn't mean things exactly the way they were portrayed, but I still see the article itself as problematic.
As Juliette said, it is articles like these that make me turn down interview requests all the time. I only grant them to reporters that I trust explicitly and almost always do the interviews in writing so that I can carefully craft each sentence to be sure nothing can be taken out of context and made to look like something different than what I intended.
Anne-Marie Slaughter recently spoke here at Dartmouth and in her lecture she re-iterated the point that in order for women to be fully liberated and really be able to have a chance at being equals at work, we need to also free men from the role of Breadwinner and Provider. That we need to not just tell girls that they can grow up to be whatever they want to be in the workforce, but also tell boys that they can be caregivers, that they can be the one to be at home with their children one day. On the work front, that we need fathers as well as mothers to be asking about paid leave and flex time so it's not just viewed as something that mothers need but PARENTS in general.
She also made a point that you don't necessarily have to have one parent at-home full time, but that if one parent is going to work a more demanding career the other should be designated the "more available" parent which can still mean working but will need a more flexible schedule, maybe working only part-time (and, of course, one issue there being that we need more decent positions like that). But, my main point, I really liked that she focused not just on what women can/should do, but included men in enacting change as well.
My brother was a stay at home parent who raised both of his boys, one now in a graduate program at university and the other finishing high school. He did an amazing job raising two decent, well-balanced, respectful, intellegent and creative young men. They had the same routine as other children raised by their mothers, such as play dates, play groups, library visits, after school activities and the added benefit of fishing trips and helping their dad with his home based computer business as they got older. My brother is an excellent cook, better than both my sister-in-law and myself, and his boys had everything they needed and most of what they wanted. In all honesty, my brother is an example of what many parents can only aspire to, mothers included. I see absolutely no added benefits of female care-giving over male care-giving with the exception of the mother being able to nurse her baby early on. Both my nephews were breast fed babies, which continued into the evenings even after my sister-in-law returned to work full time at her day job. These boys have had a happy, healthy upbringing with plenty of care and love.
I work from home, and I really hate it when people assume only moms are going to be any good at being the stay at home parent. Two of my sisters work outside the home while their husbands are stay at home dads. It generally works well for them so far as I can tell
For me, I'm glad the option to be at home and work is there. It's tough, and there are days that I feel both the disadvantages of working and of staying at home, but there are also days where the advantages of both are clear.
I completely agree with what you are saying about how the system needs to change for men also, Annie. Currently I do believe women are penalized (mommy-tracked) for needing to do daycare pick-up etc., but I almost think it's worse for men, therefore they don't do it, and the cycle continues (though, the numbers of dads I see at drop-off and pick-up at school is pretty high, so maybe things ARE changing?) I don't want my sons to have to choose between career success and spending time with their families outside of work hours, and I want them to have the option of staying home if that is what works for them, as much as I'd want that for daughters.
I did take the entire year mat leave both times with our children, in part due to breastfeeding, and in part because I wanted to (and my husband claimed he didn't--I'm honestly not sure I believe him or if he just said that so I could take the time!) I'm home with them now too, but that's not entirely by choice--and you know what, many times I think my husband would be the better parent to be at home. He is amazing with the kids, more hands-on in terms of playing with them etc., arguably more patient, more creative. Aside from our personal situation though, it wouldn't happen because I could not have supported us on my previous income, nor will I be able to once I'm back in the workforce.
So yes, I'm annoyed by assumptions that mothers are always best suited to the role of stay-at-home parent. By all means, do that if it works for your family and as Juliette says, you have the privilege of having a choice at all. But dads can be awesome caregivers too. (And if both parents have to or want to work outside the home, let's support them too!)
Stating that women are better suited to child-rearing is influenced by some 20.000 years of patriarchal agricultural society. For me, that sounds as true as stating that blacks are second-rate citizens because some part of bible alludes to that. It is nothing more than prejudice.
I have mentioned before that feminism started as a movement to make women equal to men. From (relatively) banal (wearing pants) to having same career opportunities and rewards. But now, I'm more and more starting to doubt a goal - woman wanted to "have it all" same way that men had it in (roughly) '50s. Men that worked 9-5, came home to arranged newspaper and slippers next to favorite recliner and played with kids on weekends (if not consumed by work or fishing). Women got the opportunity to get any carrier and somewhat more equaling pay, but nobody from the other side bothered to pick up the laundry and cooking and pediatrician visits... I am not deriding man of nowadays, they are much, much more involved then just a generation ago, but I think that for feminism to be successful, the privilege of having a career has to be balanced with privilege for HAVING a family (with all the glory of dirty dishes and cat litter). For both genders. Same as woman have been preconditioned to think of "bonding with kids" as most important role in life, man have been (sadly) preconditioned (limited? locked out?) to view house work as a chore. We need to liberate both sexes, and articles about virtues of picking to "just be a girl" (her words) are sad gauge on how far away are we from the goal.
If words woman/girl/man/boy are removed from the article, we get elaborate description on why family rearing is more important than career. And that is the realization that needs to dawn on men. Women have had a taste of both, and to make the last step into equality, they need to persuade themselves that 20.000 years of cultural imprint is not correct. And that does not come with simple burning of bra. It can only truly become reality when opposite sex gets the same message on importance of family rearing.
Annie,
Brilliant response to the article and well placed. The "better parent" argument needs to end as it only feeds the gender war that is currently waging in the media.
Gender does not define who the better parent is!
What defines a parent is articulated in how the best interests of a child is met by a parent:
The love, affection and emotional ties between a child and parent, the ability and willingness of any parent to provide the child with guidance and education, the necessities of life and for any special needs of the child. Basically the ability of the parent to act as a parent.
Hetrosexual men, hetrosexual women, lesbians, gays and transgender parents can all meet their child's best interests. Gender and sexual orientation does not define who the better parent is!!!
In support of your position Annie, and possibly taking it to a more extreme level, the "mothers are best" supporters should consider what to do when a "mother" unfortunately dies say from cancer? Should child and family services come in and remove the children from the father and place them in a home with another female because well, the father is simply not a good parent? There was a time when this bias existed and fathers did just that... It was a very sad and dark time for children and society.
The presumption of joint custody and equal access of children is the first step to possibly changing the bias against males (gay / heterosexual / transgender) being "bad parents". All the talk from many of the posters to this site about how men need to "step up" and "take responsibility" is fine and dandy but, how about these "in-activists" contact their government officials and demand that the laws be changed to explicitly state that parents, no matter what gender, race, religion or sexual orientation are equally responsible?
As a lesbian female who has seen the bias that fathers face every day, I am very happy that the man (gay) who contributed to bringing the child we love into this world is equally involved in *our* child's life - even though we are not in a traditional "relationship". He is just as good as a parent as I am. The sad thing is so many people tell me how easy it would be for me to get "sole custody", get piles of child support and other benefits from him... Total strangers on the street. It is so disappointing to see how our society see's the father of *our* child as a walking ATM machine but, doesn't see the *equal* contributions he makes to the emotional well being and needs of *our* child!!!! I have even had women roll their eyes at me and even verbally abuse me when I tell them that the father is equally involved and has been since birth.
Since birth we have shared every decision and time with our child. Even through breastfeeding our child spent an equal amount of time with both parents living at two different residences.
The sad thing in my situation is that this only happened because I, the "woman", allowed it to happen... Not because society would or our laws. I want to live in a world one day where this is NOT the case.
Thank-you Annie for bringing attention to this much needed subject matter. Your efforts do not go unnoticed!
Great article!! I agree completely. Keep pushing for more discussion of men's roles in family, boys' career vs. family aspirations, etc.--it's long overdue!
I'd like to add to the cautions about the possibility of being misrepresented when you are interviewed by the media. (Thanks, Cristy, for sharing that link!) Several years ago my partner and I were interviewed by Redbook magazine as an example of heterosexual parents who refuse to get married, and while the final piece was not distorted in any harmful way, it was really quite different from what we'd said. We posted the complete original interview: Why aren't we married?
As a full time stay at home husband and Dad I find articles like this really frustrating. We SAHD's have to deal with a lot of condescension already without the myth of "magic nurturing mommy" constantly in the background.
As for how we get more of us guys in the home, well I liked your suggestion above
Because that is exactly the situation that we find ourselves in. My wife has a position with a big corporation that a generation ago would probably have gone to a man. Thanks to her job, we could make the sensible decision to have me stay at home full time. Of course we are lucky to be able to afford such an arrangement, (full disclosure, I was actually a stay at home husband before we had kids).
One worrying trend I see is the effect of long term unemployment on job prospects. I found this article really chilling.(http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-terrifying-reality-of-long-term-unemployment/274957/)
In an economy that is depressed like today's, how many men (or women ftm) are going to be willing to end up in that class of employees if they take 2 or three years away to be a SAHP?
I really want to know out of any of that, what makes this woman a feminist? And I'm not saying she's not a feminist because she's a SAHM, I'm saying it because pretty much every statement she makes is not.
To me, feminism isn't the belief that women are better than men, it is the belief that we are equal, or at least that we deserve equal opportunities and equal treatment. And I think it goes both ways. In some ways, being a strong woman from a line of strong women who have never cared what people thought of us and always done what we wanted, I think the world is harder on my husband and my son. So when I hear a woman say things like women are better at raising kids, it raises my hackles. I am an amazing mother, but my husband is infinitely more patient with the kids than I am. He is more fun. He is better than I am at getting them to help out around the house. And, despite the fact that I am (on the surface at least) a SAHM, he does housework and a fair amount of primary care giving. Because I am more than a SAHM. I'm on two boards, in two choirs, and (sporadically, I won't claim any professional drive I don't possess) run an Etsy shop. He works full time, then he comes home and feeds and cares for the kids most nights. He takes out the trash, loads the dishwasher, folds laundry, monitors the kids' chores... He is far more than a paycheck. So not only does an article like this do a huge disservice to feminists and women in general, it does a huge disservice to men.
yikes re: the career you can walk away from at the drop of a hat. i’m not even sure how to parse that. you can walk away from pretty much every career at the drop of a hat, as long as you’re willing to wait until you’ve closed up the patient. it seems to imply that you shouldn’t deeply connect with your work, which would be terrible advice. there’s plenty of room in a life for both meaningful work AND raising a family, sequentially if not simultaneously. why take away possibilities from our children? it should be enough to add them.