Posted by: chandni | March 7, 2008

The hand that rocks the cradle…

…rules the world, they say.

Have been thinking about the debate on stay at home moms, that erupted in the blogosphere a while back. There were men ridiculing women who chose to stay at home and blog about their babies and suggesting that these are dumb women with nothing better to do than gossip all day long and are full of themselves and their babies. There were women questioning whether they really are feminists because they have made a choice which seems anti-feminist to some…

What is a choice? A decision made on free will, without any pressure and with one’s own comfort. Right?

Does being a feminist mean you have to work, be part of the economic workforce? Does choosing to work as opposed to staying at home differentiates a feminist from a non-feminist?

Among the other myths regarding feminism, this one seems to be coming up in a big way. Of women who ‘choose’ to be homemakers…when they guiltily discuss that they’re on a break or doing ‘nothing’. Of some working women who hold on to the thought as if their life depended on it and would announce, proudly, and I admit, rather smugly, that they had a career.

Why are so many homemakers in awe of other women who work? And why do some career women look down upon those who stay at home?

Of course choices are debatable too. One could argue that no choice is a free choice. That there are a number of reasons/circumstances/situations that might compel women to stay at home, or because of which they make that choice. But then, should one assume that only women who are choosing to work are ‘making a choice’ or worse, making the ‘right’ choice?

Coming to the fundas of women’s emancipation, feminism and equality…how come this issue reeks of some sort of female chauvinism?How come women are the first ones to belittle another’s choice? Ridicule them? Aren’t we branding “feminism” as some sort of monolith “owned” by certain individuals who view it as something specific and leave absolutely no room for anything else?

With the different thoughts and bodies of feminism emerging, where is the basic principle of feminism lost?  That which spoke of choices and being comfortable with those? Which spoke of respect for an individual, rights of an individual, not because they’re of a particular sex, but because they are human beings?

And between this kind of a battle, where men are blamed for “making” wives sit at home and become home makers, and women are blamed for “wasting” education and sitting at home doing nothing, where is blame that patriarchy should get? That is the enemy, not men or women!

Homemakers and mothers are accused of betraying the movement…to me, one would only betray the movement, if one doesn’t respect another’s choices, doesn’t understand the politics of decision making and doesn’t respect another individual or her circumstances.

Posted in I think..., Viva la Femme

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Responses

hmm..this is a hotly debated topic between me and my mother. I agree with you chandu, the choice is what matters. What my mom says though is very plausible as well..that she managed a job and me together, which means its possible, that women have a brain and an education that they have no right wasting by staying home. If you do something from home, that’s fine, but don’t waste that brain power in the “aaj bai nahi aayi” senario. Women tend to underestimate their capabilities, they can do much more than they believe possible.
What do you think of this viewpoint?

me: of course women underestimate themselves a lot…but really, is education ever a waste? A couple might make some choices together in terms of what works for them…but who’s to say its a ‘waste’? Some might not want to behave like super women with managing two very big responsibilities and screw them up…what about respecting another’s choice?

By: disha on March 7, 2008
at 12:43 pm

muah. (am practicing air kisses for when i become a gucci aunty) good post.

1. i dont know many SAHMs who are in awe of working mothers :D its mostly indifference. i dont care how another woman manages her life. just as i dont care how some man balances his life. my concern is that the OA and I do justice to the kids we bring into this world.

2. I think you get the first problem in your first comment - the ‘wasting by staying home’ statement. it says a lot for where we’re headed as a society if we demean another’s choices. we demean a choice if it doesnt bring in money. we demean choices ppl make to dedicate themselves to the wellbeing of their family.

if you want your choice to earn to be respected. you need to start by respecting other people’s choice and not calling their lives a waste. its almost like abuse. calling them wasters…

its also yet another way to suppress women if you ask me. expecting them to work, and balance home. the superwoman syndrome. let ppl choose what they want to do. to only work and not get married. to get married and not have kids. to have kids out of marraige. to earn and manage kids. to manage home and kids. there’s a variety of choices. we all need to expect them and not feel superior abt the ones we make.

me: yeah….the politics of economics really affect the way society views diff choices…and I am totally with you on “to each his own!”

By: the mad momma on March 7, 2008
at 12:58 pm

sorry * respect them.

By: the mad momma on March 7, 2008
at 12:59 pm

@disha, education can never be wasted. Using your knowledge to earn money is not the only purpose of it. A good brain at home will probably nurture a thinking family. Women can and do manage work and home and small kids (i do) but I dont think my years being home were wasted. I read, travelled, made friends with like minded people. That I could choose to stay back then and can choose go back to work when I feel ready is my idea of feminism. Later when my girls hit their teens, I may again choose to stay home to be able to be there for them, guide them and hear them.

By: Anamika on March 7, 2008
at 1:11 pm

I have been reading all the blogs about SAHM-s. I have nothing against them, I really respect them for their decisions, since I have seen my mom give up her career to bring me up and she never really looked back. Rather she had more time to presue her hobbies and live life not run after deadlines. Anyways I would like to state something here…

I am in US and may be the situation is different here. I am surrounded by these 22-25 year olds who are now SAHM-s before that they were just SAH-s. Married just out of college and sent to the US. Now my experience with these people are that they are extremely nosey about others affairs and look down and comment very very badly on Indian women who work. They would call up to ask questions about whats being cooked for lunch dinner etc etc and then would call each other in the SAH-s group and discuss the details of our lives, and suddenly people who dont even know me well would know the details of my home. If we buy a product like Chanel or Gucci I would hear endlessly about how we earning ladies dont value money and show off. And also we would need to hear endlessly on how we are neglecting home (most of us have kids so they cant comment on that) and husbands by chosing to work. And also how we are so wrong in delaying pregnancy. One of them actually gave me a magazine on how to conceive!!!!!!!
And this is not just me .. I have heard the same experience from other working Indian women in US.

But saying this .. I have NOT yet come across such type of women in India (I am from Kolkata and lived majorly in Pune and Mumbai).

But just wanted to say that this is another picture of SAH-s (some are moms some are not but they have the same attitude) I can tell you stories after stories about these women. They are different from what you come across in India but yes these people do exist.

me: Oh I am sure! But trust me, there are tgose kinds in India as well! As they say, takes all kinds to make the world!

By: P Gupta on March 7, 2008
at 2:45 pm

Sorry I didn’t read the whole post, neither the comments. I am sometimes very judgmental & rigid on some topics believing my view is the only truth ;-) hence the feeling of laziness when presented with such material to read!

Between feminist or otherwise, I think its all about respecting the choices. As long as a A accepts for who B is, A is good. Why even bring such adjectives as feminist into the picture. Shouldn’t just humans suffice? :(

me: I wish just being human sufficed!

By: ashish on March 8, 2008
at 2:27 am

this might be a ladies thingy, i was jst bouncing off the blogs n taught i might comment

*well , the policy of “i dont give a fuck” should be applied, cus its more of an choice than an compulsion,

working women never give total attention to their kids an, others should know that during early stages in life of the kid,

its when it requires the most attention, if Mum’s r away working or ..etc stuff then the kid turns to other sources eg ( grannies n stuff) which not always is way you wanna ur kid to grow up.

what most people dont understand, is once you start working , then stopping work wil make you feel helpless n etc stuff.

and when both the partners are working , the conversation on the table would be odd too, and during the weekend holiday or any other holiday , if either of them is working
-there u loose the bonding time too-.

Women working is a gud thing , but ,
when you get down to start havin babies, then the whole process needs to be rethinked and planned out,
as day care centers or grannies are not always the right choice.

PS: i didnt read the comments or the posts
was to lazy to read em all)

By: syedjunaid on March 8, 2008
at 10:40 am

Thought prvoking!

Lets say! Its hard juggling both work and home (esply kids). What the hell? Its hard just working!!! So cant think bout managing both. I have a working mom. And she brot my sis and me up. But then she had a 9-5 job, which is unheard of today. And she used to leave us at granny’s who lived in the same city. But not all women have this luxury! So is tuff juggling! Somebody will have to compromise. And then depends on u whether u look at as a compromise or not. If this is wot u wanna do, then nothing else should matter.

But Chandni, somewhere feminism and female empowerment is connected to financial independence. It might me very romantic to say whatever is mine is his, and whatever is his is mine. but married ppl tell me it changes after a while. I know women who had to quit their careers and are regretting it big time..

me: That is another issue altogether, of financial independence. I know I won’t give it up for ANYTHING, but my point is, for those who’ve made that choice, can I respect theirs and treat them just the same, as i would, any other working person…

By: Pointblank on March 8, 2008
at 12:35 pm

I am a feminist and a Homemaker by choice.I do sometimes wonder how life would have been if I was working, but given a choice I’d rather SAH.
Economic independence is essential, and many SAHM may lack that. I have friends who have found in their late thirties that they did not ‘grow’ with their spouses because they did not get the exposure their husbands did. They turn to their husbands for everything. Then there are others who used the time they had to learn…they think independently…

By: Indian Homemaker on March 8, 2008
at 1:23 pm

Homemaking is a BIG job, first of all. No point acting all pant-suity and farty with the bosses in the office. It’s not that difficult. Taking care of kids and cooking is a real job and one can’t take a break. And if working women do what they do simply to include themselves in the top-level bracket of the feminist cult, they are the ones making the wrong choice. You raised a very valid point. One doesn’t need to call oneself a feminist. Throw the tag away. One is always labelled according to how the other members of the group are. Who’s to say one day, just like communism, feminism loses its motive and just becomes an ideology or a political party? If one really feel for the rights of woman, that’s because you are a human, one doesn’t have to label themselves differently and act like the fat-bindi-ed women who turn up on “Big Fight” and practise any form of male-bashing they can

By: akshay on March 8, 2008
at 2:24 pm

Well said, Chandni. Fundamental respect for others and the freedom to choose what they wish to, given their own particular circumstances and inclination.

By: dipali on March 9, 2008
at 1:05 pm

Good post. I bought my children up. I chose to because I think/thought that no one else in the world was good enough! I was 31 when I had my first baby I had had the time before for career etc.

I respect that some women would go bananas stuck at home with small children all day; Some women can’t afford to stay at home and look after the children. We’re all different.

By: anjiknut on March 9, 2008
at 4:41 pm

Great post - definitely agree with u there Chandni. It should be about choice and respect not the Us vs. Them mentality.

By: Silvara on March 9, 2008
at 9:26 pm

Good post there Chandni. It is absolute personal to choose to stay home or to be working or the way you spend your money. Staying home is no small deal. It’s a 24/7 job with no break at all. I say it is the most difficult job. But yeah, decisions are not always free willed. Some might be situation driven and some compellingly taken. But if the person in question is comfortable with it then others have no business poking their noses. Finally it’s all about respecting the other’s choice. And yeah I dont think we even need to drag feminism here. We women work or stay at home according to our will because guys can’t get pregnant or have babies. So there…

By: Lively on March 10, 2008
at 12:05 am

This cloud over blogosphere concerning feminism showered on me too. Could not resist posting on this. :)

By: Pragni on March 10, 2008
at 2:53 am

have u heard the song “Mr Mom” by the band “Lonestar” ?? check it out, u will love it.

By: divyan on March 10, 2008
at 3:11 am

Far as I can make out, a baby is a full-time job.
Which is why I never intend to have one. Even if I don’t have to get hitched to get one.

me: LOL! That’s such an AQC kinda comment! :D

By: Arthur Quiller Couch on March 10, 2008
at 4:25 am

Excellent take on the matter. A lot of us unconsciously or otherwise believe that we are superior because we choose to excerise our empowerment in terms of careers, personal freedom and relationships. Till you pointed it out, I never thought about the fact that choosing to be a homemaker can be just as empowering, fulfilling and complete for a woman. Besides running a household is such a gargantuan challenge that some of us might prefer to stick to the relative safety of corporate politics. Thanks for a great post! :-)

me: Thanks for visiting, I love your blog :D

By: IdeaSmith on March 10, 2008
at 4:41 am

[...] Can any one group lay a claim to being ‘more feminist’ than another? Chandni has a unique perspective on this question. Does being a feminist mean you have to work, be part of the economic workforce? Does choosing to [...]

By: A Broader View of Feminism | DesiPundit on March 10, 2008
at 5:03 am

for ages…the model of working man-house wife woman has worked and worked successfully…and that did not make our mom’s any smaller..running a house is actually lot more challenging, involves 24 hrs-7 days a week commitment..

By: Vibhash on March 10, 2008
at 5:37 am

[...] I’m most intrigued by the aspect that Chandni brings up. There certainly is a definite “I’m so much better” attitude among the [...]

By: The Right To Choose & The Freedom To Decline « XX Factor on March 10, 2008
at 10:10 am

Yes, feminism should only be about creating a world where the woman has a choice in everything.

Some of your points are just perspective. For example, from where I stand (childless, working), I can only see working women being dismissed as selfish and money-minded. I love my work and resent it being dismissed as a means to earn income. Some SAHMs (not all!) also seem to think their choices make them noble.

Not that all this matters, but just to show you the other viewpoint.

me: Exactly. That’s ehat I was trying to say…A lot of women - whether homemakers or creer women, look at another with contempt or judge them!

By: Suchi on March 10, 2008
at 9:31 pm

I’m not sure its as simple as “any choice is a feminist choice.” My understanding of feminism is gender equality i.e. both sexes should have the same freedom. One of the bases of such equality and freedom in modern society is financial independence. With financial independence one’s freedom as an adult increases dramatically: one can walk out of a bad marriage, can decide not to get married, can even negotiate better arrangements within a marriage.

Further, in order to change systems in society, it is necessary to have leaders that work within those systems. Unfortunately, modern industrial society is structured in a way that such systems exist outside the home i.e. in the workplace. So having women in the formal, paid workplace will ensure that systematic changes are made.

One may choose to be a stay-at-home parent with no income but I find it hard to figure out how such a choice is promoting either financial independence or eradicating systematic gendered inequality. (Note: I am not speaking of parents who work from home because I consider these as working parents). Therefore, I find it hard to reconcile a pure SAHM option (i.e no income) with being feminist.

Feminism is about free choices, sure, but those choices shouldn’t be myopic i.e they should ensure that the freedom continues, even in the long term. And from what I hear, its extremely hard to regain financial independence once one has lost it. So, in effect by making a free choice now, one restricts one’s lifetime freedom. Is this an increase or a decrease in overall free choice?

Have much more to say but I have already hogged the comment space so I will stop now.

Regards

n!

me: Hi n! I completely agree with you…..but as I said earllier in some comment, I ma not debating the importance of financial independence at all1 In fact, I live by that rule and will not compromise for any reason.

My post was more about how women look at other women and their choices. A lot of working women develop an image of home makers as completely uselss women who have nothing better to do than get their nails painted and discuss saas-bahu sagas, ojn TV or otherwise! A lot of homemakers might look down upon career women as people who are not bothered about family, “neglect” them etc…these are all politics of choice!
My only concern is that women should be in this together, and understand another’s situation!

By: n! on March 11, 2008
at 11:24 am

well said. Choices and respect cover pretty much everything ‘feminism’ might require. If choosing to stay at home and be a fulll time mum / home maker is a waste of education, then so is quitting an investment banking job to travel the world and work in non profit.
I mean, really.

By: shakester on March 12, 2008
at 1:56 am

Not to belittle someone’s true ‘free will’ or choice, but honestly, how many stay-at-home mothers/women really decide to do so out of a free, equal, fair, rational, completely unbiased set of circumstances? How much of this proclaimed ‘free will’ is actually free and not driven by sub-conscious socially-acceptable roles that people, men and women, model themselves after?
A few years ago, my business school in India had conducted an informal survey to see how many women alumni were reaching CXO positions over the next twelve months. The results were startling and even humiliating - 85% of alumni that had graduated 5 years ago or earlier were now staying at home - and this in a premier, top-tier, highly competitive business school. Obviously, the corresponding number for men was less than 5%, and driven majorly by ill-health, disability or other dramatic circumstances.

This is not just humiliating for the institute or the education system - how many of those women, do you think, could go back to the workforce and cite their years as mommies to claim experience credit for those years? If they choose to step back into their old companies, most of them would, no doubt, be rehired (if) only at their earlier positions. Which means that while these women may think of their current work as valid, fulfilling, and demanding, society and industry clearly do not place an equal value to this work. A parallel situation would be if all women, and only women, voluntarily and suddenly took up a much lower paying, significantly lower ’status’ job for no apparent reason but their gender.

And beyond working/non-working, where is the line drawn? Setting aside for a moment the illegality of suicide, is it still a feministic choice if a woman says ‘hey, I’m free now to do what I want, so let me commit Sati’? By the same metric, parents who want their daughter married to a particular man can well say, ‘hey it’s our choice to pay him a big fat dowry, so there!’ Dowry or prostitution is a transaction between two consenting adults, yes - but is it really a true ‘choice’ with equal cost/benefit implications on both sides of the choice?

And finally, this may sound extreme, but when 85% of women make this choice to stay at home, it becomes even more difficult for a woman who truly dislikes a life of domesticity to make that difficult, uphill choice to continue working. So if for nothing else but for the cause of ’sisterhood’, most women need to understand how their individual choices are creating a more restrictive world and taking the whole feminist revolution backwards. No pressure, but… :-)

Sorry to be long-winded, but this is an important distinction - a choice is a ‘feministic choice’ or an ‘enlightened choice’ only when it is driven by a re-shaping of authority structures, stereotypes and expectations. Not when everything else is unchanged and people just have a wider vocabulary to justify their bigotry.

By: Chevalier on March 12, 2008
at 10:16 am

Chandni, I think you’re being very simplistic by refusing to get into the larger question of financial independence and emancipation and just asking people to ‘play nice’ and ‘don’t judge’ - of course we judge other people by the choices we ourselves have taken, its natural. Just ask two moms - of any genre - on their child rearing methods for example, and you would find people convinced they are right and that the other is wrong.

Looking at it from an emancipation point of view, of course a woman is more emancipated when she is earning an income and is financially independant rather than deendant on someone else. I have a daughter and I would hate to think that one day she may not earn her place in the sun by using her own abilities, but get someone else to pay her way.

Just a few thoughts on the comments above - yes, being a working mom is incredibly hard, its not just about putting on a fancy suit and going to office. Running a household I don’t think compares to it - not these days when you have bais and nannies to help you out. If there were some stay at home wives who manage to run their household entirely on their own, they would have my eternal respect, no question.

Also, with all the jazz on kids etc, beyond the age of 3 or 4 or 5, they are full time in school anyway. After that, I don’t think there’s any excuse for SAHMs NOT to be involved in some productive activity. The real truth is that women who stay at home get lazy, get inward-looking, more comfortable in their own ways of doing things - and so do not take that route when the time is right.

I am speaking as one who has been both - and this is the reality - whitewashing it and ‘playing nice’ will not help the women who need it.

By: Nasha on March 12, 2008
at 12:53 pm

[...] exactly is feminism? Chandni offers her insight on what constitutes feminism [posted by [...]

By: Popular Weekly Links: Mar.10 - Mar.22 | DesiPundit on March 23, 2008
at 12:21 pm

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