{"id":3937,"date":"2012-02-29T21:53:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T02:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=3937"},"modified":"2012-02-29T21:53:15","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T02:53:15","slug":"mama-wpen-occupy-working-motherhood-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2012\/02\/29\/mama-wpen-occupy-working-motherhood-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"MAMA W\/PEN: Occupy (Working) Motherhood, Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for The Forward<\/em> titled “Occupy (Working) Motherhood, Anyone?<\/a>“, which generated a, shall we say, interesting<\/strong><\/em> comment.\u00a0 The post began like this:<\/p>\n

Susan B. Anthony was born 192 years ago today; we share a birthday. I am 43. The late great suffragist once said: \u201cOur job is not to make young women grateful. It\u2019s to make them ungrateful so they keep going.\u201d Much of my Jewish practice these days is about gratitude. But in light of our shared birthday this week, I\u2019ve decided to dwell on some serious ingratitude.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the 1970s listening to \u201cFree to Be You and Me,\u201d and singing joyfully that \u201cMommies Are People.\u201d Who would have guessed, now that I\u2019m one of those people, that the dilemmas my own working mother struggled with would become mine? In middle school, when I\u2019d call home sick my mom would try to talk me into returning to class, so that she wouldn\u2019t have to leave work or find a sitter. I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s what I\u2019d do, too…. <\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The post ends with the following birthday wishes:<\/p>\n

1). Affordable quality childcare, paired with a change in the cultural expectation that women\u2019s careers are expendable. That ingratitude is owed to President Nixon, who vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Bill.<\/a> That piece of legislation would have provided a multibillion-dollar national daycare system that would have circumvented much of our struggle.<\/p>\n

2). Workplace structures and a society transformed to allow for the fact that workers have families, too. Though we\u2019ve made progress, we\u2019ve still got a ways to go. Ingratitude to employers who put paternity on the books but support a culture that makes The Daddy Track anathema to all but the bravest men.<\/a> And why does it have to be a track, after all? Haven\u2019t we learned that the women who opt out eventually, in various ways, opt back in?<\/a><\/p>\n

3). A future so bright on the work\/life satisfaction front that neither my daughter nor my son will have to write this kind of post.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(You can read the full post here.)<\/a><\/p>\n

The comment in question was in response to the wish for more affordable (meaning, yes, subsidized) childcare.\u00a0 It went like this:<\/p>\n

“By ‘affordable,’ I assume you mean ‘subsidized by others outside my family.’ Thanks, I’m spending enough on my own kids (and my wife chooses not to work outside the home) without having to subsidize your parenting choices.” -morganfrost<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, there’s nothing I appreciate more than when, just as I’m considering a response, the perfect retort pops up in my Inbox.\u00a0 In this case, a number of folks emailed me comments directly, though they experienced technical trouble posting them on The Forward’s<\/em> site. Here’s what some of them said:<\/p>\n

“‘Affordable’ means ‘subsidized by all of us.’\u00a0 We need to have a society where people can have children AND careers without having to face too many impossible choices.\u00a0 My career isn’t optional–it’s what pays the bills in my family.\u00a0 The same is true for my husband’s career.\u00a0 So we must have childcare, and we’d prefer that it be quality childcare, because our child–like EVERY child–deserves to be well cared for.\u00a0 This should be a value that our entire country embraces and will help to support.” -Alison Piepmeier<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Susan B. Anthony did her job well. I’m glad you make the point that childcare should be subtracted from parental income, not maternal income, one of my pet peeves. \u00a0what matters most in a relationship, I think, is not necessarily that domestic\/parental tasks be divided evenly but that each partner respect the other’s contributions, whatever form they take.\u00a0 That’s harder in a society that, for all its talk of ‘family values,’ makes childcare the responsibility of individual familes.@morganfrost, relax. We’d like fewer predator drones and bank bailouts, not a crack at your piggybank. And keep in mind that your wife has a choice that many do not.” -Ashton Applewhite<\/strong><\/p>\n

YEAH.<\/p>\n

And hey, morganfrost’s comment also inspired a wonderful post by Cali Yost over at Forbes, titled “Think You Don’t Benefit Directly from Childcare? ‘WIIFMs’ That Will Change Your Mind”.<\/a><\/p>\n

So thank you, morganfrost.\u00a0 You inspired some great stuff.<\/p>\n

And thanks Alison, Ashton, and Cali.\u00a0 I get by with a little help from my friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post for The Forward titled “Occupy (Working) Motherhood, Anyone?“, which generated a, shall we say, interesting comment.\u00a0 The post began like this: Susan B. Anthony was born 192 years ago today; we share a birthday. I am 43. The late great suffragist once said: \u201cOur job is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21107],"tags":[13676,8959,2715,21351,21554,3109],"class_list":["post-3937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mama-w-pen","tag-childcare","tag-families","tag-fatherhood","tag-feminist-history","tag-marriage-today","tag-motherhood"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}