kenw@lcuxc.UUCP (K Wolman) (02/28/85)
> It is interesting that there is a consensus about "the place of a woman > in society". In 1981, 54 percent of children under 18 had working mothers. > In 1980, 51 percent of families had two wage earners. Certainly these > numbers have not changed significantly in the past 5 years reflecting this > "majority" to which Arndt refers. > Okay, some of it is social change, and that's undeniable. A lot of it is also money. I would bet (unscientifically) that most of the working or career mothers in the survey live in or near major metropolitan areas where the cost of living is so high that it is difficult to maintain a reasonably comfortable [i.e., middle-class] lifestyle without the additional income. How many of these jobs are "careers," undertaken from a love for and need for the tasks involved; and how many are "just jobs" that help stretch the budget? For that matter, how many MEN do you think have real "careers" as opposed to "just jobs"? > But then maybe Arndt refers to the "majority" of women in his social sphere. > Could it be that Arndt does not know women who are single-heads of households > or women in families where their income raises the family just above poverty? > Possibly Arndt's sampling is skewed to a white, middle-class "majority". > Are we going to hear all about the poor and oppressed of the earth? I too know they are there; I used to work on their behalf in the New York Department of Social Services (not a credential for my liberalism, but a fact to establish some degree of knowledge) in the late '60's. My wife spent 10 years doing social work among those same groups outside Arndt's "skewed sampling." I have news for you: that situation was then what it is now. It only became appropriate to discuss working mothers and single parent families when WHITE people got involved as well as Black. And nobody made a Movement out of my mother, who returned to work in 1954 when I was 10 ("latchkey child"!) because my father had died earlier that year; you did what you had to do because it had to be done. This wasn't liberation; it was SLAVERY. Perhaps, a lot depends on how parents define their responsibilities to their families vis-a-vis themselves. Our understanding was that once the kid came along, a lot of the fun-time of Do What You Want When You Want was over. That's not being noble, just responsible. My wife voluntarily took herself out of what an outsider might see as a 10-year "career" in public welfare work, but which she saw as ten years of working at a profession she did well--in favor of one that was more important to her. She, as well as I, grew up with a working mother (a small-town newspaperwoman and columnist); and perhaps BECAUSE of that experience she insisted on being home with our children until they were at least in the first or second grade. This is not easy at times to handle financially. Northern New Jersey is an expensive place to live; and there are times when I personally would dearly love to have a second paycheck in the house. But you make a choice bearing in mind that children are involved; and that "quality of life" does not necessarily refer to private schools, expensive camps, summer vacations, and "career fulfillment," but on love and BEING THERE. > But then, even in an admittedly unscientific sampling taken of the NYT > engagement notices last week, it was found that only one of the women in > the 20 or so notices did not list a career. > That's an unscientific sampling, all right. We generally read the engagement and wedding announcements in the "Times" for laughs. I consider myself "white middle class"; but I don't know ANYONE who attended Choate or the Sorbonne! -- Ken Wolman Bell Communications Research @ Livingston lcuxc!kenw "You mean he agreed with ARNDT?" "Yeah, can you believe it?!" "What's with this nut anyway? I can't read him." You can't 'read me' because I'm not a book. . . .