nannies and others

My new reading group got together to discuss this article today: The Atlantic | March 2004 | How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement | Flanagan. So, OK, leaving aside for a moment the lameness of a reading group that only has time to discuss MAGAZINE ARTICLES instead of whole books (yes, we're busy, yada yada)...it was an interesting discussion. Only one of us doesn't have children; two had nannies, two used daycare and other options with small kids. Only one of us has a child in daycare or with a nanny now--the rest of our kids are all in school.

Of course I hate Caitlin Flanagan because she has the job I want. Or maybe Adam Gopnik has it, but today I'm thinking it's Flanagan. But besides that, we talked about how the history on which this article rests is pretty shaky--it's not as if women just started working in the 70s, for example. (Not even middle class white women--given the opportunity, they have always worked, and the historian among us pointed out that even in the 50s their percentage in the workplace kept rising.)

And then there's her own smugness. Even those of us who employed nannies didn't have them cleaning for us!! Where does Flanagan get off generalizing from her own experience, using her anecdotes as some kind of yardstick against which to measure other women?

But the thing that irritated us the most was the assumption that women are necessarily competing with each other, oppressing each other, divided. Where are the men in this article? Do the dads hire care, or are they simply irrelevant to this story? Do they feel guilt? Do they agonize over their choices?

Actually, I think they probably do, but you wouldn't know it from this piece. You might also take a look at this one: MOTHER COURAGE by Elizabeth Kolbert, which is similarly dismissive of the problems of white middle class women but seems at least a bit more sympathetic to me, and maybe more on the money, at least in her last paragraph: "Choosing between work and home is, in the end, a problem only for those who have a choice. In this sense, it is, like so many “problems” of twenty-first-century life, a problem of not having enough problems."

I think I want to say more about choice, but I'm not sure I'm thinking clearly enough to do it now. The thing is, even the question of a women's (always a woman's!) choice to work outside the home is rather vexed: I need to work because I make the primary income. But then again, if I didn't, my husband probably would. Or we'd figure something out. So do I really NEED to work? As much as I do? Well, if I want this kind of job, this is how it's done, how much time it takes, etc. But there are other jobs, no doubt, that I'm qualified for. (Stop laughing! PhDs in English are highly employable!) And maybe they would take less time, give me more leisure, more time with kids or the house or my husband (hmm, interesting order there...). Or maybe not. But I think we are kidding ourselves, sometimes, about what's a choice and what's a necessity. And that's all I'm going to say about that right now.