Dammit, Feminism!!

[notsocommon]

Because of Feminism, we have had less training, and less mental preparation for motherhood and daily care of the home than any other generation before us. The vast majority of us did exactly what you have outlined here– got our degrees, and were prepared to use them in a sterile, professional environment.

jessconnell.com/unprepared-for-motherhood-thanks-feminism/

[feministxtian]

Of course, I couldn't let that one go...

Comment as follows:

Feminism had nothing to do with being unprepared for motherhood. I was 18 when my oldest child was born. I was unprepared for anything! However, in the ensuing 32 years, I’ve managed to get married, raise three children, finish college and have a career. Exhaustion was and is part of the game when you are working full time, have kids and are part of the “sandwich†generation where you are raising your children and being the full time caretaker for elderly parents.

And…even though my mother was NOT the most domestic or maternal creature around, I am a fantastic cook, can do almost anything around the house including the “domestic arts†and generally enjoy my life. I could not and can not see myself staying home all day, I’d go stir crazy. The few times I did stay home, I felt as if the walls were closing in. I prefer an active life, using my talents, abilities and education for the benefit of my family.

And yes, I am a feminist, working in a male-dominated world. I love it!

[CynicMom]

The fertility rate per woman in the US is 1.9 children. If they have these kids three years apart that means they'll spend about eight of the seventy-four years of adulthood with small children. [average female lifespan in the US: 82. Also assuming they're considered 'small' till they go to Kindergarden at 5.]

So I don't think it makes sense to abdicate college in favor of child-care for what is ultimately about 10% of adulthood.

[FloraKitty35]

Of course, I couldn't let that one go...

Comment as follows:

Feminism had nothing to do with being unprepared for motherhood. I was 18 when my oldest child was born. I was unprepared for anything! However, in the ensuing 32 years, I’ve managed to get married, raise three children, finish college and have a career. Exhaustion was and is part of the game when you are working full time, have kids and are part of the “sandwich†generation where you are raising your children and being the full time caretaker for elderly parents.

And…even though my mother was NOT the most domestic or maternal creature around, I am a fantastic cook, can do almost anything around the house including the “domestic arts†and generally enjoy my life. I could not and can not see myself staying home all day, I’d go stir crazy. The few times I did stay home, I felt as if the walls were closing in. I prefer an active life, using my talents, abilities and education for the benefit of my family.

And yes, I am a feminist, working in a male-dominated world. I love it!

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

[fun2beme]

What rankles me about their thinking is that every working woman, especially those without children (like me), picked this lifestyle. I would have liked to have been a stay-at-home mom if the opportunity arose, and would have loved to have 2 or 3 children. But here I am, two months shy of 40 and no chance of motherhood in the foreseeable future. So, I use my degrees to work and support myself. It's not like I set out to be 40 and single and come home to an empty house and watch friend after friend who swore they never wanted kids have baby after baby. *eye roll*

Don't get the wrong idea - I like my job and have a full and happy life but hate the assumption that I decided to be a materialistic, baby-hating, career obsessed person (though there's nothing wrong if that's what you want).

[NjoyingNsanity]

How mentally deficient do you have to be to need years of "training" to cook, clean, and raise a kid? Most of us learn this stuff on the fly when it becomes a necessary skill. Most of us could handle a higher education and learning how to cook and clean. Then when the kids came along no matter how sleep deprived we were we learned to juggle baby care, housework and a career. We did it because we either had to or chose to. Our homes may not look like they belong in an issue of House Beautiful or Southern Living, but they're not a dump either. Every meal might not be a from scratch, gourmet, whole foods, feast and our kids may act up from time to time, but we aren't completely clueless as to how to run a home and raise our kids. This coming from a SAHM who wonders what the ever living fuck they think is so hard about housework and child-rearing that a young woman must give up a college education, and a career to learn it?

[salex]

How mentally deficient do you have to be to need years of "training" to cook, clean, and raise a kid?

Watch Pris in the video from Prisilla and pecan and you'll get a taste of what they may be dealing with.

[RosyDaisy]

These stupid, ignorant fundies don't understand that poor and working class women had to work, whether it was on the farm or in a factory.

[freehannie]

I've been thinking about this recently. The idea that women need to train for housekeeping and child-rearing rather than attend college and work outside the home. I agree that it isn't that time consuming to learn to cook, clean, etc. But what we don't learn if we become educated and participate in the workforce is to place everyone else's needs ahead of our own. And to me, it seems like that's is what is so upsetting to fundamentalists. How dare women have their own priorities and goals because eventually it will interfere with submissive marriage and motherhood martyrdom. I think they are right in that women who haven't had to focus on others all the time expect more from life than that. I just disagree, like most of us here, with the notion that being unwilling to sacrifice everything for family is selfish and leading to downfall of humanity.

[RosyDaisy]

Personally, I think everyone (male or female) should have basic homemaking skills.

[feministxtian]

I've been thinking about this recently. The idea that women need to train for housekeeping and child-rearing rather than attend college and work outside the home. I agree that it isn't that time consuming to learn to cook, clean, etc. But what we don't learn if we become educated and participate in the workforce is to place everyone else's needs ahead of our own. And to me, it seems like that's is what is so upsetting to fundamentalists. How dare women have their own priorities and goals because eventually it will interfere with submissive marriage and motherhood martyrdom. I think they are right in that women who haven't had to focus on others all the time expect more from life than that. I just disagree, like most of us here, with the notion that being unwilling to sacrifice everything for family is selfish and leading to downfall of humanity.

I don’t know if the idea of “placing everyone else’s needs above our own†is necessarily a good thing. I tried that…ended up exhausted, burnt out and just this side of a breakdown. There needs to be a balance between the two. I know that if I don’t have my “me†time, I’m no good to anyone else. I think these fundies take it to an extreme, claiming that those of us who have careers come home, sit on our butts and order our spouses around like they were the hired help. That’s also not true. I know many, many career moms who find that balance between kids, career, family, hobbies, etc. I break it down like this. I work 40 hours a week. My commute is about 30 minutes a day. I take an hour lunch to run errands. So…daily I spend about 9.5 hours out of the house. 9.5 x 5 = 47.5. I’m home no later than 4:30 every day. Since I run errands during lunchtime, I have no reason to do that when I get home. I go to bed about 10 pm. That gives me 5.5 hours after work to cook, clean, do laundry, etc. Then I have the weekends to do whatever I damn well please. So…I’m gone 47.5 hours a week, sleep about 56 hours a week. That still leaves 64.5 hours of “free time†per week. That’s MORE than enough to do what I need to do around the house, have “me†time, have hubby time, friend time, etc. I expect a lot from life and do what I need to do to make sure my life meets my expectations…

[DGayle]

But what we don't learn if we become educated and participate in the workforce is to place everyone else's needs ahead of our own.

There are other ways to become educated than spending 4 years in college. Some of the most educated people I've ever met have spent their whole likes reaching for more education independently, and some of the stupidest people I've ever known have masters degrees and above, and no idea how to relate to people in the real world, and only scraped by in the academic world and can't related to people in a college or university setting either. And some people with degrees and who are in the workforce still think they have to put everyone else's needs ahead of their own.

What continuing to learn and getting work experience offers is more opportunity, whether or not you take it.

[alba]

What rankles me about their thinking is that every working woman, especially those without children (like me), picked this lifestyle. I would have liked to have been a stay-at-home mom if the opportunity arose, and would have loved to have 2 or 3 children. But here I am, two months shy of 40 and no chance of motherhood in the foreseeable future. So, I use my degrees to work and support myself. It's not like I set out to be 40 and single and come home to an empty house and watch friend after friend who swore they never wanted kids have baby after baby. *eye roll*

Don't get the wrong idea - I like my job and have a full and happy life but hate the assumption that I decided to be a materialistic, baby-hating, career obsessed person (though there's nothing wrong if that's what you want).

I find it offensive from the opposite perspective, because I did choose this lifestyle. I enjoy my job, and I have no interest whatsoever in having children. The notion that as a woman I should have been denied the education that led to my career in order to be taught childrearing skills outright horrifies me.

Fundies: Offending people from all walks of life since time immemorial.

[feministxtian]

There are other ways to become educated than spending 4 years in college. Some of the most educated people I've ever met have spent their whole likes reaching for more education independently, and some of the stupidest people I've ever known have masters degrees and above, and no idea how to relate to people in the real world, and only scraped by in the academic world and can't related to people in a college or university setting either. And some people with degrees and who are in the workforce still think they have to put everyone else's needs ahead of their own.

What continuing to learn and getting work experience offers is more opportunity, whether or not you take it.

I have an AAS degree (2 year) from a place known as "Harvard by the highway". Yet, I'm able to converse relatively intelligently on many subjects...because I'm a curious person. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting here watching the Science Channel while I cruise the internet. I know a lot of people with a helluva lot more formal education than I have...and they're stupid.

[antwan]

What rankles me about their thinking is that every working woman, especially those without children (like me), picked this lifestyle. I would have liked to have been a stay-at-home mom if the opportunity arose, and would have loved to have 2 or 3 children. But here I am, two months shy of 40 and no chance of motherhood in the foreseeable future. So, I use my degrees to work and support myself. It's not like I set out to be 40 and single and come home to an empty house and watch friend after friend who swore they never wanted kids have baby after baby. *eye roll*

Don't get the wrong idea - I like my job and have a full and happy life but hate the assumption that I decided to be a materialistic, baby-hating, career obsessed person (though there's nothing wrong if that's what you want).

I was a college educated career woman before choosing to stay home to raise my family. I was not blessed with a single pregnancy, but I am mother of 4, today. We adopted through the foster care system. Contrary to what is said about it, we experienced the following:

-the opportunity to minister to a family in crisis

-a great way to use our lives and our home to make a difference in our community

-while very difficult at times (it's painful to know what the children are going through, and to know that the first goal of CPS is reunification when you don't believe the home environment is stable/healed enough to guarantee their physical/emotional/psychological well being when the go back home)...in spite of that reality, it also brings new, positive experiences into your home and the children's lives

-infants ARE available for care, and it does sometimes lead to adoption

-the whole "damaged goods" stereotype is very unfair. The fact is, the vast majority of adoptions (fostercare system, international, private) included the face of a woman in crisis.

-Yes, some children are very,very affected by their trauma. No, it's not true that "most" cannot overcome.

-if you select a state licensed daycare, CPS often picks up that tab. And if you adopt, the state picks up that tab. It's a very affordable way to adopt, if one is interested in doing so.

You may well be satisfied and truly fullfilled, at this point, with life as it is. Just wanted to share what my own (similar) experience has been, fwiw.

[Maggie Mae]

Personally, I think everyone (male or female) should have basic homemaking skills.

I agree to an extent. But I also think that there is nothing wrong with paying someone else to do those things. My talents aren't in keeping a beautiful home and I prefer to spend my time doing other things.

The idea that someone needs to attend university to be smart and educated is outdated. A four year degree tells me nothing as an employer, other than the applicant was able to spend money and time at a university. This is based on my own experience as an undergraduate, where I saw a ridiculous amount of grade inflation and some pretty ignorant people with degrees. And in the workplace, I'm constantly meeting people who have diploma mill degrees who make more money than me. It's so frustrating and classicist to assume that degree = better employee.

[fun2beme]

I was a college educated career woman before choosing to stay home to raise my family. I was not blessed with a single pregnancy, but I am mother of 4, today. We adopted through the foster care system. Contrary to what is said about it, we experienced the following:

-the opportunity to minister to a family in crisis

-a great way to use our lives and our home to make a difference in our community

-while very difficult at times (it's painful to know what the children are going through, and to know that the first goal of CPS is reunification when you don't believe the home environment is stable/healed enough to guarantee their physical/emotional/psychological well being when the go back home)...in spite of that reality, it also brings new, positive experiences into your home and the children's lives

-infants ARE available for care, and it does sometimes lead to adoption

-the whole "damaged goods" stereotype is very unfair. The fact is, the vast majority of adoptions (fostercare system, international, private) included the face of a woman in crisis.

-Yes, some children are very,very affected by their trauma. No, it's not true that "most" cannot overcome.

-if you select a state licensed daycare, CPS often picks up that tab. And if you adopt, the state picks up that tab. It's a very affordable way to adopt, if one is interested in doing so.

You may well be satisfied and truly fullfilled, at this point, with life as it is. Just wanted to share what my own (similar) experience has been, fwiw.

Your children are very lucky to have you! I'm single and adoption as a single person can be a bit more difficult. I have married friends who've struggled with the process, and I'm not sure what role my chronic illness would have in the process. But I am fortunate to have a wonderful nephew and darling God-daughter to love and dote on. Then hand back to the parents when my nerves are shot. LOL

[DGayle]

I agree to an extent. But I also think that there is nothing wrong with paying someone else to do those things. My talents aren't in keeping a beautiful home and I prefer to spend my time doing other things.

The idea that someone needs to attend university to be smart and educated is outdated. A four year degree tells me nothing as an employer, other than the applicant was able to spend money and time at a university. This is based on my own experience as an undergraduate, where I saw a ridiculous amount of grade inflation and some pretty ignorant people with degrees. And in the workplace, I'm constantly meeting people who have diploma mill degrees who make more money than me. It's so frustrating and classicist to assume that degree = better employee.

This is so annoyingly true! I had an old friend who boasted about how his family donated a lot of money to a university with a very recognizable name, and so it guaranteed him passing grades. My roommate of the time was his girlfriend, and she ended up breaking up with him because she got tired of him blathering on like he knew more than everyone just because he as a masters from a prestigious university, yet he didn't understand some very basic concepts, like how being born makes someone alive (he thinks pregnancy is 4 trimesters, and the last ends 3 months after birth, and mothers should get to abort in that time, which most people call MURDER of a born child), and traffic laws really do apply to everybody, not just everyone except him, since he knows when it's safe to blow red lights without even slowing down. He was so pompous too, and claimed to be a feminist, when he really thought feminism means being submissive to men because we women are on a pedestal that way, and he thought this should be law that we don't have the say. I don't get how we have equal rights by being forced to relinquish our rights.

But there you have it, someone with a masters who is very stupid, but who society says is educated because of the degree he got only because of the money his parents donated to a university, which I see more as them buying his degree for him.

[ILoveJellybeans]

He thinks that the first three months of the baby's life counts as an extra trimester of pregnancy in which abortion was possible and moral?????? There is a big difference between a newborn baby and a fetus. A three month old baby can exist independently of the woman who carried it in her uterus, and although babies that age need a lot of looking after, there is nothing saying that this is the sole responsibility of the mother-she could leave the baby with a babysitter while she goes out for a bit, have dad bottle feed and change them, or could give the baby up for adoption, with no harm done to either mother or baby. A fetus is not independent of the woman's body that it resides in-if someone is pregnant, they cannot just give the pregnancy to someone else, even temporarily, it is either keep the pregnancy until the fetus is ready to be born, or abort. It is still attached to her body and cannot live when removed. Also a baby has feelings and an awareness of what is going on, but when most abortions happen, a fetus does not have any awareness at all. Late term where it is viable, its likely done because the fetus would die at birth or shortly after anyway, and the mother feels she is doing the best thing by ending its suffering.

In short, murdering a three month old is way different from abortion.

[August]

It's almost as if there's a whole range of human experiences and preferences and as if the one thing that would benefit everyone is work/life balance, flexible workplaces and dependent care assistance.

Fancy that!

[RosyDaisy]

I agree to an extent. But I also think that there is nothing wrong with paying someone else to do those things. My talents aren't in keeping a beautiful home and I prefer to spend my time doing other things.

Nothing wrong with that either. But it doesn't hurt to have basic homemaking skills if your financial circumstances change. I should have put that in my original post.

[feministxtian]

This whole "homemaking is a full time job" thing drives me crazy! I live in a fairly large house...it STILL wouldn't take me 40 hours a week to clean the whole house. Well, right now having a whole week would be nice, I just moved into this house and I'm still tripping over boxes (been here 2 weeks). It takes me maybe an hour to pick up, wash dishes, tend to the critters and toss a load of laundry in. Even when I still had kids at home it didn't take me long to clean up, pick up, cook meals, etc. Where do these women get off on believing that "homemaking" is the end all and be all of a woman's existence and can't be done if she has a full time job?

Color me confused here...

[salex]

This whole "homemaking is a full time job" thing drives me crazy! I live in a fairly large house...it STILL wouldn't take me 40 hours a week to clean the whole house. Well, right now having a whole week would be nice, I just moved into this house and I'm still tripping over boxes (been here 2 weeks). It takes me maybe an hour to pick up, wash dishes, tend to the critters and toss a load of laundry in. Even when I still had kids at home it didn't take me long to clean up, pick up, cook meals, etc. Where do these women get off on believing that "homemaking" is the end all and be all of a woman's existence and can't be done if she has a full time job?

Color me confused here...

I believe that the bolded is part of why quiverful and homeschooling became a thing. Because in a standard Christian home with say 2 or 4 kids,wife/mom may stay home with them when they are smaller but once they went to school, what is the excuse to keep her from participating in society-- no kids at home, a house that should not require all her time and once she's gone through the list of crap ideas of gardening, canning, etc, often she and her husband will often say "sure, why not get a job or a part time job" which means she is out around evil feminists, or not as fundy as her christians and worst of all, is not 100 Percent reliant on her husband.

She may even want a say in how the money she earns is spent! And once you open the door, she may no longer view her husband as Jesus on earth.

So, defining contraception, women working outside the home and public schools as evil seem to me to be ways to "bind women's feet." Very few people can or will justify paying child care for 3 or more children. Homeschooling can last for decades. Both add to the reasons a family would have one person staying home. .

It also traps the husbands (who can afford child support on 9 kids?) So, divorce will become less frequent, though staying together does not mean the marriage is happy, only that it continues. I believe the recent spate of books and sermons on how marriage isn't meant to make people happy, but to teach them duty (and possibly suffering) reflects how very unhappy a lot of people in the "Traditional QUiverfull Fundie marriage" may well be.

And why not? Our grandparents and parents didn't just go willy nilly into women working and men and women renegotiating how they lived their lives-- it was impacted by less need for a full time person at home once veggies were cheaper to buy than to grow, technology changed cleaning a carpet from dragging it to the yard to running a sweeper to setting the roomba do to it. And work changed. So, life and marriage and what we do to make a living all changed, and we all changed with it, just as people have been doing since fire and the wheel came into play.

Quiverfull and Patriarchy a way for people already so inclined to feel justified and a way for people less so inclined to feel they were doing something for God--and most of all, it is a way for a group of people to sell books, have radio and traveling shows and earn a living off those who are looking for something. Saying God backs your ideas makes it an easier sale, because there will always be a market for God.

[GolightlyGrrl]

Shorter Jess Connell:

"I'm a coddled twit who went out into the real world, faced people and ideas that were different than mine. And because I was raised to think I was the most special snowflake in the universe and refused to put on my big girl panties and conduct myself like an adult, being a mommy was a challenge."

[Coco]

I've been thinking about this recently. The idea that women need to train for housekeeping and child-rearing rather than attend college and work outside the home. I agree that it isn't that time consuming to learn to cook, clean, etc. But what we don't learn if we become educated and participate in the workforce is to place everyone else's needs ahead of our own. And to me, it seems like that's is what is so upsetting to fundamentalists. How dare women have their own priorities and goals because eventually it will interfere with submissive marriage and motherhood martyrdom. I think they are right in that women who haven't had to focus on others all the time expect more from life than that. I just disagree, like most of us here, with the notion that being unwilling to sacrifice everything for family is selfish and leading to downfall of humanity.

:clap: so true.