Part III: What Is to Be Done? or Male Teachers, This Is Your Lucky Day
Part III of the Homeward Bound article is entitled “What Is to Be Done?” and includes three rules that women should follow in order to get more access to positions of power.
The first rule is to “Prepare yourself to qualify for good work,” by using choosing college courses based on your future career goals and avoiding “the liberal arts curriculum.” I disagree. I went to a liberal arts college and most of my friends were liberal arts majors. Many who went on to law school, medical school, business school, or graduate school, believed that their writing and critical thinking abilities were greatly enhanced by the liberal arts curriculum. I always thought that college was the place where a person learned how to think, and that the actual classes (unless you wanted to be an accountant) were not as important as the abilities you developed while taking them. Since college I have worked in several different fields related to chemistry, the last one being chemical weapons demilitarization, and although I knew nothing about it going in, I had confidence that I would figure it out and excel over time.
Ms. Hirshman states that after college comes on-the-job training or further education. I agree, in fact, I think a very useful time for furthering education or developing other skills would be while out of the workforce and raising small children. Kiddies nap, daddies like to play with them after work, there is time to put toward personal development. Although Ms. Hirshman belittles volunteer work, a person can develop skills, gain responsibility, and sometimes even make a difference without getting paid. It does not need to be a lifelong full time commitment, but it doesn’t need to be seen as wasted time either. Similarly, part time work may not speed career advancement, but it does keep your foot in the door for the time you are ready to come back. I worked part time and managed to maintain my standing and respect in the workplace, because I took on the jobs I was able to do, and did them without making continual excuses about a late babysitter or a sick child. If I had gone back full time, I might not have performed as well.
My experience segues into the second rule which is “treat work seriously.” I agree that even when I was a working mother, I was a bit annoyed when someone had to regularly dash off because she (or sometimes he) had a child emergency. This was not very empathetic of me and was probably a hangover from my single days, but I felt like they had not planned enough redundant help to avoid the situation. One reason I will not go back to work full time right now is because I don’t want to be an employee that dashes off for every kiddie emergency. I’d at least like to have my husband as a back up, or perhaps a stay-at-home mom friend. For now, I’m willing to be a stay-at-home mom friend for the few women that I know around here that are working.
According to Ms. Hirshman, women are too idealistic which leads them into volunteerism or “indentured servitude in social-service jobs,” not toward money. Again, I agree that women should treat work seriously, but I disagree that money is the only marker of success. Unfortunately for everyone who knows me, I am still reading “The Power Broker” about Robert Moses, the most powerful man in New York for 40 years. He never cared about money, only what he wanted to do with his life, so he took on jobs without pay or for miniscule amounts of money. Rather quickly he had become a subject-matter expert in drafting laws and city planning, he had met and impressed many powerful people, so he was handed more and more power because he had the knowledge to back up his ambitions and was more worried about accomplishing his goals than getting paid. Of course the moral of his story is that with all his power he ruined New York City for generations to come, but it does illustrate that freed from financial worries (as many of the aforementioned New York Times brides are), a person can find ways to gain power.
The third rule is “don’t put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.” By this Ms. Hirshman seems to mean, “do put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.” Women should marry liberal men who are younger and poorer or older and richer. Where do you find younger, poorer, liberal men? Teaching school of course, so things are likely about to get much better for the average 6th grade math teacher. Where do you find older, richer men? They seem to be a rather scarce commodity. The fatal flaw in this marriage advice, is that you can’t help who you fall in love with, all you can do is make sure that you talk about how things will work in the marriage before you commit.
An interesting point that Ms. Hirshman makes in this section and that should be considered by women who want to go back to work is to avoid the “economic temptation to assign the cost of child care to the woman’s income.” I never thought of it that way before, but we did it too (of course, I went back to work and the HP had to stay in the Army, so it was mainly just a calculation not a turning point). The cost of childcare should be considered against the whole family income since some advantages of a woman staying in the workforce are not always quantifiable in dollars.
The final point of this section is one that I have already embraced wholeheartedly even though I’m not back at work: let the house get dirty. When you stay at home, it is harder to overlook the clutter and debris because you are in it all the time. When you are working, you are generally too tired to worry about the clutter and debris when you get home. The HP did a lot more around the house when neither of us was home during the day, and chances are he’ll do the same when I go back to work. I clean up more now because I don’t like to look at it. But we don’t have the sort of relationship where he judges what I do on the housework front, because he knows every complaint about the state of the house can be met with only one response “If you don’t like the way I’m doing it, please feel free to do it yourself.”
What is to be done? I think the main positive outcome of the outrage over Ms. Hirshman’s article would be for everyone to take a stab at developing strategies to support women that are attempting to achieve greater positions of power in society. Some women have no aspirations in this realm, but most women would probably recognize that if we don’t have women in positions of power, no one will be looking out for our interests or the interests of our children (has anyone seen the recent developments regarding the national debt, environmental policy, energy policy, etc. etc. etc.). We take great pride in keeping their children safe and happy at home, but the world currently being prepared for our children is rather horrifying, and the people in power now do not seem concerned with what will happen in 40 years. An article I read about the mommy wars made just this point, and it was one I hadn’t considered. We can’t expect single women to take on the whole responsibility, working mothers are needed too, and we stay at home mothers should try to find ways to help them (until we are ready to join them), rather than criticize their method of parenting.
The first rule is to “Prepare yourself to qualify for good work,” by using choosing college courses based on your future career goals and avoiding “the liberal arts curriculum.” I disagree. I went to a liberal arts college and most of my friends were liberal arts majors. Many who went on to law school, medical school, business school, or graduate school, believed that their writing and critical thinking abilities were greatly enhanced by the liberal arts curriculum. I always thought that college was the place where a person learned how to think, and that the actual classes (unless you wanted to be an accountant) were not as important as the abilities you developed while taking them. Since college I have worked in several different fields related to chemistry, the last one being chemical weapons demilitarization, and although I knew nothing about it going in, I had confidence that I would figure it out and excel over time.
Ms. Hirshman states that after college comes on-the-job training or further education. I agree, in fact, I think a very useful time for furthering education or developing other skills would be while out of the workforce and raising small children. Kiddies nap, daddies like to play with them after work, there is time to put toward personal development. Although Ms. Hirshman belittles volunteer work, a person can develop skills, gain responsibility, and sometimes even make a difference without getting paid. It does not need to be a lifelong full time commitment, but it doesn’t need to be seen as wasted time either. Similarly, part time work may not speed career advancement, but it does keep your foot in the door for the time you are ready to come back. I worked part time and managed to maintain my standing and respect in the workplace, because I took on the jobs I was able to do, and did them without making continual excuses about a late babysitter or a sick child. If I had gone back full time, I might not have performed as well.
My experience segues into the second rule which is “treat work seriously.” I agree that even when I was a working mother, I was a bit annoyed when someone had to regularly dash off because she (or sometimes he) had a child emergency. This was not very empathetic of me and was probably a hangover from my single days, but I felt like they had not planned enough redundant help to avoid the situation. One reason I will not go back to work full time right now is because I don’t want to be an employee that dashes off for every kiddie emergency. I’d at least like to have my husband as a back up, or perhaps a stay-at-home mom friend. For now, I’m willing to be a stay-at-home mom friend for the few women that I know around here that are working.
According to Ms. Hirshman, women are too idealistic which leads them into volunteerism or “indentured servitude in social-service jobs,” not toward money. Again, I agree that women should treat work seriously, but I disagree that money is the only marker of success. Unfortunately for everyone who knows me, I am still reading “The Power Broker” about Robert Moses, the most powerful man in New York for 40 years. He never cared about money, only what he wanted to do with his life, so he took on jobs without pay or for miniscule amounts of money. Rather quickly he had become a subject-matter expert in drafting laws and city planning, he had met and impressed many powerful people, so he was handed more and more power because he had the knowledge to back up his ambitions and was more worried about accomplishing his goals than getting paid. Of course the moral of his story is that with all his power he ruined New York City for generations to come, but it does illustrate that freed from financial worries (as many of the aforementioned New York Times brides are), a person can find ways to gain power.
The third rule is “don’t put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.” By this Ms. Hirshman seems to mean, “do put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.” Women should marry liberal men who are younger and poorer or older and richer. Where do you find younger, poorer, liberal men? Teaching school of course, so things are likely about to get much better for the average 6th grade math teacher. Where do you find older, richer men? They seem to be a rather scarce commodity. The fatal flaw in this marriage advice, is that you can’t help who you fall in love with, all you can do is make sure that you talk about how things will work in the marriage before you commit.
An interesting point that Ms. Hirshman makes in this section and that should be considered by women who want to go back to work is to avoid the “economic temptation to assign the cost of child care to the woman’s income.” I never thought of it that way before, but we did it too (of course, I went back to work and the HP had to stay in the Army, so it was mainly just a calculation not a turning point). The cost of childcare should be considered against the whole family income since some advantages of a woman staying in the workforce are not always quantifiable in dollars.
The final point of this section is one that I have already embraced wholeheartedly even though I’m not back at work: let the house get dirty. When you stay at home, it is harder to overlook the clutter and debris because you are in it all the time. When you are working, you are generally too tired to worry about the clutter and debris when you get home. The HP did a lot more around the house when neither of us was home during the day, and chances are he’ll do the same when I go back to work. I clean up more now because I don’t like to look at it. But we don’t have the sort of relationship where he judges what I do on the housework front, because he knows every complaint about the state of the house can be met with only one response “If you don’t like the way I’m doing it, please feel free to do it yourself.”
What is to be done? I think the main positive outcome of the outrage over Ms. Hirshman’s article would be for everyone to take a stab at developing strategies to support women that are attempting to achieve greater positions of power in society. Some women have no aspirations in this realm, but most women would probably recognize that if we don’t have women in positions of power, no one will be looking out for our interests or the interests of our children (has anyone seen the recent developments regarding the national debt, environmental policy, energy policy, etc. etc. etc.). We take great pride in keeping their children safe and happy at home, but the world currently being prepared for our children is rather horrifying, and the people in power now do not seem concerned with what will happen in 40 years. An article I read about the mommy wars made just this point, and it was one I hadn’t considered. We can’t expect single women to take on the whole responsibility, working mothers are needed too, and we stay at home mothers should try to find ways to help them (until we are ready to join them), rather than criticize their method of parenting.
posted by Shannon at 11:05 PM
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