Saturday, February 21

Caitlin Flanagan cites The Equality Trap, where she writes that Mary Ann Mason
reveals that there were in fact two distinct groups of mothers who entered the work force in the 1970s, for two distinct sets of reasons. There were middle-class women, fed up with housework and eager for the challenge, the respite, the intellectual engagement, of work....It is these women, and now their daughters...who have driven a tremendous amount of the public debate and policy on the subject of working mothers.

But there was a second group of women, a quieter and more invisible group, who were not at all pleased as punch. Mason writes,
The dramatic shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, which occurred in the seventies, rendered the concept of a "family wage," earned by a relatively well-paid union member father, an anachronism. Their husbands' lower wages were driving mothers into the labor market in unprecedented numbers.
The feminist movement, from its earliest days, has always proceeded from the assumption that all women—rich and poor—constitute a single class, and that all members of the class are, by virtue simply of being female, oppressed. In many regards this was once entirely true: all women were denied the vote; employment law discriminated against all women; and all women lacked the right to legal abortion. But this paradigm has led to a new assumption: that all working mothers—rich and poor—constitute a single class, that they are all similarly oppressed, and that they are united in a struggle against common difficulties. At its best this is vaguely well-intentioned but sloppy thinking. At its worst it is brutal and self-serving and shameful thinking.
Typical sanctimonious bullshit, where certain parties, in this case on the left, presume to know what is better for everyone else.

On the other hand, although much of what Flanagan says seems to be the product of much soul-searching, I can't help but feel some of her concerns about caring for children, as nuanced as they are, are a little overwrought. That's what she gets for the nuance!

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