When will WAHMs be counted in the discourse?
Today, as I worked on the July/August issue of theWAHMmagazine, I received an e-mail from Nancy, one of our contributing writers. (Look for Nancy’s two-part series on the issues of overscheduling in the next two issues of theWAHMmagazine.) Nancy directed me to the Wall Street Journal’s recent blog post in it’s segment The Juggle, “Women ‘Opting Out’: An Overblown Myth, New Study Says.“
The blog post/article was about a recent study out of Princenton University by Christine Percheski and published in the June 2008 issue of American Sociological Review. Percheski’s study of work-force trends of women who are mothers and not mothers over the 45-year period between 1960 and 2005 also prompted Pamela Stone to write the feature article “The Rhetoric and Reality of Opting Out” in Contexts, another publication by the American Sociological Association.
Are we really opting out?
Percheski’s study sheds a lot of light on the labor force trends of women in the United States, and questions whether there is even an Opt-Out phenomenon or revolution occurring among professional women of child-bearing years. While Percheski recognizes that more women are entering the work-force in professional roles that require a college education or higher, and recognizes that paterns have not changed significantly over the last four decades in household/family roles for women with or without jobs, what is not taken into account the number of women who are work-at-home moms and have neither opted-out nor opted-in, but have opted for something different. The department of labor includes WAHMs as part of the labor work force, so why were they not included for the purposes of Percheski’s study, a subset of the working-woman/working-mother population that might have shed additional light on the issue of opting out.
Percheski’s study is excellent, and at the end of it, she even broaches the notion that to understand the work-life issues of mothers, new questions need to be asked that not only include the issues of work-family conflict (that lead many mothers to make the employment/family-related choices that they make) but to move beyond it, especially if “we are to better understand gender inequality in the workplace.” (Percheski, p. 514) Of course that would mean counting WAHMs and redfining how the workplace is percieved not by the definitions created by corporate culture, but by what it means to be active, full-time, year-round participants in the labor force as defined by the Department of Labor. (Hint: the DOL counts people who work from home including telecommuters and those with home-based businesses.)
In-fighting and Questions
The problem with such studies (and people not RTFA), is that they lead to more negativity and mommy wars among the SAHMs, WAHMs and WOHMs as the commentary at the WSJ’s post shows. Instead of embracing the fact that feminism has given us all the “permission” and right to make the choices that we do, whether it is to stay at home, work from home or work out of the home, the claws come out, hackles raised and defensiveness over lifestyle and parenting-style choices ensue.
Is it so hard to accept that another person has chosen a certain path and is okay with it, even though it may not be your cup of tea? I ask this to my fellow sisters regardless of work-life/family-life lifestyle. Is it so hard to respect another person’s choices and celebrate the fact that without feminism, many of us might not have the choice to work or not to work, however it is that we choose to do so?
And for the researchers out there, isn’t it high time that WAHMs are included in the discourse?
Erika-Marie S. Geiss
Editor-in-Chief
theWAHMmagazine
Amazing post Erika-thanks for imparting this important information. In Po Bronson’s book a few years ago, he stated that regardless of any revolutions taking place, people do not generally change jobs unless there is a crisis. I would argue that the word “crisis” needs to be defined. As working women with children, only we can define what is right for us and for our children. ~Karen
Karen L. Alanizs last blog post..The Talkers in the Family
July 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pmErika,
When I was younger, all I wanted to do was work. I used to look at women who stayed at home with the children as a cop out. That was so long ago. When I hit the thirties, I realized the importance of women staying at home (working or homemaker-which is a full-time job itself).
Yes the family can function with mom out of the house, but there’s something in me that believes that it is so important to have mommy home when the child gets home from school.
There so many other influences raising our children, I think it’s very important that mommy hang around as much as possible.
Caroline Wilsons last blog post..Our First Weigh-In
July 8th, 2008 at 5:48 amKaren and Caroline, thanks for your comments. You both raise important points: Caroline about the influences raising our children and Karen about whether there is a crisis. One could argue that with some of those influences (and it’s not like when many of us were kids and there was a veritable village of neighborhood folks and extended family members who had our best-interests in mind), that maybe that is part of the crisis. Although, that might end up being an entirely separate discussion.
July 8th, 2008 at 5:53 pm