work/life

There’s been a huge spike in the number of SAHDs (stay-at-home-dads, for those not in the know). From 2003-2006, the number actually rose a full 62%–that’s really high! And this was before the current tsunami of layoffs. I’d be so curious to see what that number is now.

Jumping on the trend, yesterday The Today Show featured a segment called “The New Face of Mr. Mom.” Some good stuff, but my question is this: When will a SAHD become something other than a “Mr. Mom”? You can watch the video here and see what you think (and let me know!):

Seven point two. And counting. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports, the most recent unemployment rate is 7.2 percent. On February 6, we will get the next installment of bad news. The big number gives us a backdrop for what bloggers like Deborah have been reporting on in a more personal way–that the Great Recession we’re in requires that us all to learn new things about ourselves. The downturn also helps us understand some old things, like inequality.

In the New York Times the other week, a blogger took a look at gender and unemployment and put the following together: the rates of unemployment are increasing for everyone, but they are increasing at a higher rate for men than for women, and at a higher rate for African Americans and Latinos than for other groups. As men fall out of their jobs at a higher rate, women are coming very close to being 50% of the workforce. The Times blogger asked, is this “A Milestone for Working Women?” The question is meant, I think, to be ironic: could it be that this bad news for the economy is kinda good news for the ladies?

Like so many other things, though, this employment question is not a a zero sum—in other words, men’s losses are not women’s gains, or any one else’s. As an alternative to any kind of zero-sum thinking, I suggest that we think about the meaning and function of work.

The meaning of work, as well as of “unemployment” and “employment,” continues to be something different for men and women. As I pointed out in November, recent research shows that on the job women work harder for less pay their male counterparts. And not because women have less experience. (For the latest on this, see Center for American Progress’s Equal Pay for Breadwinners report by Heather Boushey.)

Here’s an idea. Working status might best be understood as lying on a continuum: there are the unemployed (want a job, can’t find one), the underemployed (have some work, want more), the employed, and the overemployed (let’s call it the second shift category). (By the way, the BLS offers a bunch of alternative measures of unemployment; that 7.2 percent figure is called “U-3″—the official unemployment rate. But there’s another number, the “U-6″—or the underemployment rate, which in December 2008 hit 13.5 percent.)

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Just went up over at AlterNet: Will Creativity Become a Victim of the Economy?

This is the layoff that just keeps giving–writing-wise, at least 🙂

Have a good weekend, everyone!

As readers know, I just can’t seem to stop writing about this recession — ever since hubby got laidoff last week.

A piece I wrote in response to that NYTimes article from Sunday (“Daddy’s Home, and A Bit Lost”) is now live at the Women’s Media Center site. It’s called “Masculine Mystique, Meet Feminine Mistake”. Thanks for passing it on!

We just had to do a full-on review of Mama, PhD here at GWP (better late than nevah, we say!).  And I just had to post this trailer.  Because I laud authors who get savvy to using new media, and because, well, as an aspiring Mama PhD (got the PhD part, still working on the Mama part), I just can’t seem to get enough of this book.

Hello again, Girl w/Penners!  I’ve been sequestering myself this fall as I finish work on a book of my own but I am very glad to jump back into getting the word out about some of the amazing new books that explore the realities of contemporary women’s lives.

You know that feeling when you sense a new book, acquaintance, or connection is going to be deeply important to you and you’ve stumbled onto something that will be profoundly affecting? That’s how I felt when I first saw the title Mama, PhD— putting together two terms that aren’t usually seen in conjunction – which is, of course, the whole point of this collection. Its rich collection of essays explores how these two topics mesh (and more often crash and contort).  By the time I finished reading, my book had as many underlines, post-its and corner-turned-pages as any of my graduate school texts and I daresay had far greater an impact.

The contributors in this book, edited by Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans, break the seal of silence that suppresses the intense difficulties and institutionalized prejudice that academics who want to be more than just a “head on a stick” – but rather a whole person, including a maternal body – experience. And the pressures that result for women as their likely prime childbearing years meet squarely with the ticking of the tenure clock is intense.  The book’s contributors, from a range of academic fields and even generations, outline in often poignant and sometimes excruciating detail how they are forced to choose between career and family, or find creative, often exhausting, and most likely just plain lucky ways to tie the two together.

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Wow — some very cool authors speaking on the radio together tonight. Tune in to City Visions Radio, 91.7 FM, KALW or online at www.cityvisionsradio.com at 10pm ET to hear Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life coeditor Caroline Grant in conversation with Mary Ann Mason, author of Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers, and Joan Williams, author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It.

You can participate too.  During the show, call in with your questions and comments to 415.841.4134 or email feedback@cityvisionsradio.com

Tonight is the This Is What Women Want Speak Out here in NYC. So here is what I want, what I’d like to tell the candidates, what I want them to hear. And a bigtime thanks goes to the National Council for Research on Women for their Big 5 website – a motherload of information for those of you similarly wanting to put it out there and help bring our issues to the candidates’ attention.

As a woman hoping to bring a child into this world, I have a lot of wants right about now.

As a working woman, I want guaranteed leave. Yes, it’s true, some limited unpaid leave is made mandatory under the Family Medical Leave Act. But I find it pretty disgusting that the United States is not among the 168 countries worldwide that provide paid maternity leave. And did you know, dear candidates, that mothers without paid leave in our country take fewer weeks off from work after childbirth than women with leave benefits, putting both mothers and infants at risk for health complications? And while we’re at it, nearly half (47%) of private-sector workers and 22 million women workers do not have any paid sick days. Nearly half the women who take off from work to care for a sick child give up their wages to do so. Three-quarters of women living in poverty sacrifice wages to look after sick children. If I sound frustrated, it’s because I am. Fix this, puleese?

When I become a mother, I’m going to want affordable childcare. Did you know, dear candidates, that nationwide, nearly 12 million children under age 5 are in childcare each week and, in every region of the United States, childcare fees surpass the average amount families spend on food? And of course, childcare costs are particularly weighty for poor and low-income families, who pay a significantly higher share of their income for care than higher-level income groups. Providing childcare subsidies reduces work schedule-related problems for single working mothers by about 56%. So why not supply more of these?

As the future mother of a future daughter or son, I want a personal promise from you that Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. And I want you, dear candidates, to take the lead in promoting women’s reproductive rights and health, especially the preservation of reproductive rights and health for low income women and women of color. I want honest sex ed in our schools, and an end to this federally-funded abstinence-only hoohah.

That’s for starters. What do YOU want? Tell it to mic tonight at LaGuardia Community College if you happen to be in the NYC vicinity. The “This Is What Women Want Pre-Debate Speakout” is taking place tonight @ 7:00 PM and it’s free: Mainstage Theater, 31-10 Thomson Avenue, LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City, Queens. More info available here.

Just when you thought that with the interesting yet complicated angle Palin is injecting into red state feminism, we might onto something new, Christina Hoff Sommers is back fanning the flames of the mommy wars by arguing that in building her case, Betty Friedan made a fatal mistake that undermined her book’s appeal at the time and permanently weakened the movement it helped create.

According to Sommers in a New York Sun article titled Reconsiderations: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Friedan not only attacked a postwar culture that aggressively consigned women to the domestic sphere, but she attacked the sphere itself – along with all the women who chose to live there.

I seriously can’t wait for Stephanie Coontz’s reconsideration of TFM (which is in the works). We need it, bad.

And while we’re at it, Newsweek reports that a new study finds that children of privileged families fare worse when the mother works outside the home–but what does the research really tell us? Read it and see.

(Thanks to Steve Mintz and the Council on Contemporary Families–on whose Board I now sit!–for the links.)

A quick hit on a new study: The Clayman Institute at Stanford University has produced a report exploring hiring and retention issues for dual-career academic couples, and how they differ from those issues for faculty in other kinds of relationships. The full report is available for download here.

See also: Mama PhD–the editors of which will be here in NYC next month! Deets:

Monday, October 20th , 7:00 PM at Bluestockings Bookstore
Tuesday, October 21st, 7:15 PM , KGB Bar