As I’m sitting down to read some Lacan (mofo is dense) I’m flashing back to a conversation I had last night which was like the 15th time I’ve had that conversation in the past few weeks. What do I want to do with my MA. Be a stay at home mom? But I will be wasting my degree!
*blink*
What the fuck is an MA in English supposed to be used for? Oh, teaching. Well, I know how much time and energy teaching takes and I think that energy would be better spent raising my kids. Oh! That makes me a traitor to feminism! Awesome. I hadn’t heard that feminism means having to tow the party line and work outside the home no matter what I want and no matter what is best for me and my children. I hadn’t realized that it is only ok to be a SAHM if I am uneducated and fit for nothing better. (Better? Is teaching better?) Although I have been assured that I could work at a variety of different jobs. It’s just a matter of finding the right one. But what if the right one for me is staying home with my kids? That’s not good enough.
I feel like asking people if it would make them happier if I just dropped out of school.
Breeder! 😉 Welcome to the club.
Chica, it’s an arts degree! Nobody who gets an arts degree is doing it for the money, they’re doing it for the degree its self! What you do with it has nothing to do with whether or not getting it is the right thing!
I say fuck ’em.
I would question your statement and say: so it’s ok for me to get an MA just for the sake of getting it, but would an MS be any different?
Not at all! Getting an MS strictly for the sake of the degree is a perfectly valid reason. However, there are many people who get the BS strictly as a payroll boost, which is relatively rare in the arts.
Yeah, I know, generalizing again… Sheesh, Anselm, you know better! 😛
😉 I like to generalize so I understand. To slightly bastardize a quotation:
“Don’t knock generalization. Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who’d get through the day without two or three juicy generalizations. They’re more important than sex. Have you ever gone a week without a generalization?”
I LIKE it!
In a perfect world, I’d never leave school. I wouldn’t even need degrees – just learning cool new stuff would be fine.
This is my current rant. Why does feminism mean I have to work outside the home, I have to want to wear pants and no makeup, etc.
It frustrates me.
Seriously: has anyone ever told you that? Or did you make it up out of some poorly understood mishmash of media portrayals of old-style feminism?
I’m a feminist. Moreover, I’m old enough to have been a second-wave feminist. And I have never heard any feminist say or suggest that you have to work outside the home, or wear pants, or go barefaced in order to be a feminist.
I *have* heard some feminists suggest that feeling like you need to be a SAHM or dress femme or wear makeup in order to be worthwhile as a woman is antifeminist. They say this because it’s true. But that’s not exactly the same thing, is it?
I have been lectured extensively about how my desire to be a SAHM is a betrayal of feminism. How I am letting a man have power over me and I’m setting back “the cause”.
I’ve never been lectured about my appearance (I like dresses and hate makeup) in terms of my feminism. I think that telling a woman she needs to be anything in particular is anti-feminist. It shouldn’t matter where I work, what I wear, etc. The point is that I get too choose for myself what is right for me.
I don’t feel like I need to be a SAHM because that will make me worthwhile as a woman. I feel like daycare and public schools do a fairly shitty job of raising children and I want my kids to have a different experience. I don’t think that plays into my gender value.
“I think that telling a woman she needs to be anything in particular is anti-feminist.”
I think this is the crux of the issue for me.
I have been recently re-examining my feelings about feminism, and femininity, and what, if anything “being a strong female role model” means. I realize that a great deal my of efforts to reject “feminine” roles and images are in fact counter to what I believe feminism means. Aspiring to the more classically masculine roles and characteristics in the name of being a “strong woman” implies that the feminine is weak.
If I believe a woman should be free to choose whatever path pleases her, then I should be able to accept all paths and roles equally, as equally strong and valued. I can’t allow myself to feel that I am somehow betraying the feminist movement because I have an affection for corsets or pretty shoes.
I think it is most important to be a POSITIVE role model, which is about encouraging girls to believe that they have the choice and the capability to do or be anything, and to recognize that BOYS AND GIRLS can fill roles interchangeably if they so desire.
I have actually been told the following:
That my desire to have a husband who works and stay home with our children so that they can have a parent who cares for them before/after school and on vacations is “unfeminist”. (If I had a job I love doing as much as the person who I am considering marrying, I would ask him if he wanted to stay home instead, but somehow *that* didn’t come up in conversation.)
That my love of Mac makeup and stiletto heels is “anti-feminist” because heels just ruin your feet. I have no idea what the reasoning behind the makeup thing was, as I walked away from that conversation before I could get into it.
That choosing to read chick-lit instead of serious “heavy” literature is unfeminist. (This one, amusingly, was said as I was taking a break between books for my English course.)
Since this is‘s journal, I don’t want the conversation to get too contentious. I will say that as a younger person (I turn 26 this year) I had these conversations (except for the first) a couple years ago with women in my college who were, I suspect, just discovering “feminism” and wanting to break out of the parent created mold they were in. In the case of the first, I suspect some personal frustrations (around not having the career she wanted, and instead being in a field that made her upset) mixed with the desire to make a point in the strongest way possible.
Hey–have fun. 🙂
“That makes me a traitor to feminism!”
I was always baffled by this. To me, feminism is about CHOICE! You are CHOOSING to be a stay at home mom. I got this a lot when I came out as a submissive…how could I betray feminism in allowing a man to dominate me? My answer was, “I am a feminist. And this feminist CHOOSES to take on this role because it is what feels right for me.”
Whatever. You support women who choose to work. They should support you for your choice to stay at home, raising your children, which yes, is a full time job…there is no 9-5 thing here! If anyone is betraying feminism here it is the person who tells you what you “should” do as a woman, taking away your right to choose…
Okay, I will get off of my soapbox now….
From a practical viewpoint, having the degree will give you all sorts of options, and those options will be available to you later in life.
If you reconsider homeschooling at any point, having that degree will make it much easier for you to get some sort of job. Heck, even if you do homeschool, you could find part-time work (there’s a decent market for help with writing and editing theses, and lots of people *need* the help); having the MA will make it easier for you to get that work.
Of course, that’s completely ignoring any arguments that getting an MA in English has to have a practical application. A friend of mine who is 60ish is returning to school to complete her B.A.. At her age (and for some other reasons), she won’t get much practical use out of her degree. But people are generally supportive of her effort.
“those options will be available to you later in life.” This is important to me. The main reason I wanted to have a BA and an easily accessible career is that relationships aren’t permanent (in many cases) and I don’t want to actually be dependent.
As a working mom whose kids had lots of friends with moms in different situations, I am here to tell you that “Stay At Home Moms” are, in my experience, some of the most driven, self-directed, productive, community-oriented, values-driven, creative, organized, multi-skilled, and interesting people I have known.
One woman I knew had three kids, one of whom had Aspberger’s. Not only did she do a tremendous amount of work with him, including her own research on what was best for him and how best to support him, but she also grew many of her own organic fruits, veggies, and spices and taught her kids how to do so, made quilts, made costumes and clothes, spun her own yarn and used it to make clothes, consulted with other parents on how to work within the public school system to get help for their special-needs kids, staged drama productions, danced ballet, was her own general contractor on a major house remodel in which she personally redid all the plumbing and electrical wiring, worked extensively at her kids’ school, did speaking engagements on how to work with kids with learning disabilities, and more.
Another woman I knew who stayed home with her kids did a huge range of things including teaching Leave No Trace environmental responsibility programs, designing and implementing programs for making state parks and other outdoor resources accessible to people with physical disabilities, passing legislation supporting various aspects of home schooling, working with the city on developing recreational resources for kids in city parks, raising money to buy pristine land for a conservancy organization, building and running programs to bring inner city kids on backwoods camping trips, learning (and using) emergency medical certifications for the outdoors… again, the list goes on.
It takes an extraordinary person to design a life for herself and her family, from scratch, shooting for no external goal or reward whatsoever. Intelligence, creativity, vision, and deep involvement and ownership of one’s life and community are NEVER “wasted.” You *will* use your critical thinking skills, your creativity, your finely-honed communication and persuasion skills, your tenacity, your ability to achieve excellence through sustained effort and native ability, and your love of beauty in all its subtlety and blazing glory. You will create a beautiful life for yourself, your family, and your community using everything you know and everything you are. Not a drop of you will be wasted. You are well-prepared.
Ah crap you are making it sound hard to be a SAHM. 🙂
Yowza! That was not my main point, although, actually, it would be very hard for me. I am not good at creating my own structure, and I admire people who are.
SAHM’s rock. I think you will be awesome.
It isn’t hard to be a SAHM. It is hard to be a good SAHM.
I personally was very relieved when my daughter turned a year old and I went to work because I needed that time away from her each day to really be able to give her my sole attention and focus the rest of the time.
I was very relieved when my daughter said to me over Christmas that she always wants to be able to support herself and not be in a position of being dependent on someone else to take care of her. Whether or not you choose to support yourself and your kids, I think having the capacity to do so is important. No one knows what may happen in the future.
But the whole point of a woman’s right to chose, whether that be on issues such as abortion or the right to vote or employment, is that there does have to be a true choice in the matter. Anything less isn’t freedom, it’s just building a bigger/different box and callling it choice.
Doing what feels right and best for you and your family should never be perceived as a betrayal of someone else’s political or social ideology.
oh, I expect you to write the great American novel
For heaven’s sake. Husbands die or lose their jobs or go away. Kids grow up, or turn out to be too stressful or frustrating to stay home with full-time, or cost so much that a second income is needed.
Any woman who does not do what she needs to do to support herself and her children throughout her life — regardless of her short-term plans for childrearing (and I recognize they don’t seem short-term now, but believe me, they are) — is an idiot.
I do actually recognize that my plans are fairly short-term in the scale of my life. It was a major objective for me that I not have children until I knew for certain that I would never have to be dependent on anyone else and I would be fully able to be financially liable for my children. That just seems responsible to me.
On the one hand, fuck ’em.
On the other hand, when I meet up with the anti-SAHM, anti-porn, often anti-men feminists, I try to remember that first-wave feminism worked to a large degree *because* it was so militant. It took radical views and radical action to create the changes that mean that I don’t have to look for jobs in the “women wanted” section of the newspaper. It’s not so much of a surprise that that viewpoint persists and has trouble adjusting to the wider reality and greater freedom that defines third-wave feminism. Kindly explaining why I think they’re in error when someone says, for example, that the current crafts movement is “sewing the apron strings of their own subjugation”, is sort of my way of paying back my foremothers for their hard work.
On the third hand, fuck ’em. 🙂
You make good points. I especially like one and three. 🙂
Seriously: all revolutions have to start out extreme or they will be ignored. You are right. I think that part of my sense of outrage comes from the fact that I feel like I am so firmly third-wave feminist that I shouldn’t still have to fight the battles of earlier generations. This is probably my area of strongest entitlement. I understand why first and second wave feminism needed to say that women had to get the hell out of the kitchen. I just feel that by this point women can decide if they want to ever go into the kitchen or not.
I really identify with this, and wanted to comment to let you know that.
pshaw.
You’re finishing something that you have already invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into. It’s about YOU. To hell with people who don’t get it.
I miss you. It’s been a rockin’ good time up here lately. I crashed my computer (insert sorrow and pain) and not having a computer at home right now blows.
*thinking of you!*
We should do that “phone” thing. 🙂
Katherine went through much of the same thinking recently. She hasn’t quite quit her job, but she’s gone down to only a few hours per week. We talked about it a bunch, and decided that having her around to raise and teach Rebecca was a really important and worthwhile thing to do. She also thought she would find it much more personally fulfilling than her high-tech job. I think she still feels a little guilty sometimes about “not doing her part” for women working in technology, but she’s also said on quite a few occasions that it really *is* far more fulfilling than her job.
So anyways, who ever said you can’t use that degree to teach your kids? 😉
🙂 Yeah, I figured she had angsted a bit over the decision. Last I talked to her she really wasn’t sure about the SAHM thing. 🙂 Luckily, I don’t have the angst about “doing my part” for women in technology. I’m a freakin humanities person–we are a dime a dozen. It’s strangely comforting sometimes. Oh look! I fit into the stereotype! 🙂
I do plan to use my degree to teach my kids. Lemme tell you–I’ll be surprised if my kids don’t end up well read and good writers. I don’t know that they will win any prizes, but my kids won’t be like my dingbat students who can’t figure out a paragraph. 🙂
I think that those people criticizing you have no sense of what it actually means to be educated. Bravo for you.
Well… I think that they are people who have very different life goals. One of the people who has been doing it is a woman who was a SAHM through the 70’s and 80’s and then her husband divorced her and dumped her on the workforce. She has a very different perspective on what a higher level degree is for. I do get that, but at the same time I’m very loathe to adopt someone else’s life experiences when they don’t fit for me.
I’m finding that most of my familyl thinks it’s “cute” that I want to be a SAHM, and it seems most of my inlaws think it’s a good idea, but don’t think we can pull it off… I’ve found that most people who know me aren’t saying anything negative… just that they’re “surprised” I intend on going that route… that it seemed so unlike me…
Now, I’m the girl who’s had her kids names picked out since I was 15 (they have changed since I met Matt, but that’s healthy I think) and I’ve always known I wanted to be a mother. I was prepared to do whatever that took… but the fact that I found a wonderful man who is more than willing to try and have me stay at home with our children is awesome to me. Even if we can’t afford it, I feel the longer I can stay at home with my kids, the more involved in their day to day lives, the more stability and firm foundation I can give my new little famliy the better. If I have to go back to work for a couple of days a week, it isn’t because I want to abandon my children (as so many WAHMs have been guilty of implying on some of the boards I’ve* read) it’s because my husband and I either decide that my sanity is at risk if I don’t get some adult interaction, or we’ve decided that the bit extra it’ll bring in will be worth it.
And yes, I never really planned on being a stay at home mom until Matt and I discussed it briefly early in our relationship, and if need be I could go back to work and make a decent amount… but for the cost of childcare and how much I could make starting out (even as an insurance agent or CNA, both of which I’m certified to do I’d just have to take my Michigan state boards to transfer my certs over) I really wouldn’t be bringing in that much more.
If matt and I need $ that badly, I’ll babysit some kid from the neighborhood around our kids age (that’s what his mom did and it worked out just grand for her)
Anyway, I was just going to say that I don’t think you’re wasting anything by wanting to give your lizard the best you can, Power to you and anyone who has a problem with how you are planning on raising your kid can suck it..
Oh~ sorry for exploding on your comment page.
I don’t think there are many girls who *don’t* pick out kid names early in life. 🙂 Even the ones who don’t want kids often have names picked out.
Good luck on being able to stay home. It sounds like you are going to have a tougher road on that account than I will. I’m glad that no one is being a shit to you about it. 🙂
Feminism is about considering women equal to men and that women should have equal rights to men. That’s it. Everything else piled on about what you should and should not do to be a feminist is crap.
So many people are fond of lecturing others on how they are doing it wrong. They do it just to seem smart, I think. And feel superior.
Anyway, what I am fond of saying about Lacan is that it’s not that he’s difficult to read, on an intellectual level, It’s just that he’s not that good a writer. But also, it is really hard to translate the french style of writing theory into English style and keep it true to the format. Either that or make it actually readable in the English.
My problem with Lacan (at this point) is that he openly states that he tries to make his theories obscure and hard to follow. That pisses me off.
And translating French into English sucks. The languages just aren’t similar.
MA & SAHM: I see this as providing your children with a very well educated teacher. Not a waste in my book.
SAHM & feminism: I’m right up there with others who have said it’s about choice. When my kids were born, I didn’t have a choice – I had to work. Then, for most of their childhoods, I was a single Mom. Again, no choice. Being a “career woman” and not a SAHM wasn’t about anything other than survival. Later, when my kids were not-quite-high-school aged, I remarried and had the opportunity to stay at home — but found that I didn’t, really. I volunteered at the library, I coached my son’s Odyssey of the Mind team, I worked a day here and a day there as a substitute teacher — but I didn’t stay at home. That’s when I realized, for me, the career path was actually the right one. I was glad to have those few years to focus on my kids, especially since I believe I was able to be at home with them at a very important stage in their lives — but I had the opportunity to figure out which choice was the right one for me.
If this choice is the right one for you, then go for it. That’s all that’s really important, in the end.
And more states are passing laws saying you *have* to have a credential to be a homeschool parent. Awesome. So my decision to have a masters and a credential may turn out to be pretty mandatory to my chosen path anyway.
I hear you that everyone needs to follow their own path.
Tell them that you’re getting the degree for yourself, because you want it and are interested in the subject – not because you owe anything to society.
As for the SaHM thing – my mother stayed at home until I (the youngest) was in school full time and then she went back to teaching (at a different school) so she’d be home when we were home. She had been very very bored as a stay at home mom, though admittedly she didn’t yet quilt and never spun her own wool like some mom’s we’ve heard about :o) But that’s my background and I -liked- it and while, as a child I considered going to daycare a treat, the idea of letting a stranger raise my children leaves me absolutely cold. A close friend or relative, sure, but a stranger who is also responsible for more than a handful of children? Dear god, I hope not.
and that’s my $.02
Your mama was also in a slightly different position because she was sending her kids off to school. It would have been a bit more occupying if she was focusing on educating the three of you. Not a lot of time in that for boredom. 🙂
that’s true as far as it goes. She was -very- involved in our education. Before we started school and over the summers, she had us doing workbooks and projects and whatnot. There’s not a whole lot more that one could do with children that young. And mostly she was bored, not because her time wasn’t occupied, but because she missed interacting with other adults.
Hi there. You replied to my blog today and I thought I’d let you know I feel similarly.
I appreciate reading all the replies. Seems like good company you keep. 🙂
I wrote this on a blog post here:
http://raisingsmartgirls.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/why-being-happy-at-home-is-truly-rebellious/
“I didn’t get my drive to have a career from my mother having a job, but because I loved science and I was good at it and I wasn’t really planning on getting married and having kids (they kind of both just happened). I think it’s too stressful to add that burden on my shoulders. My girls will know (because I will tell them) that I worked for a time and loved it, and came home for a time to be with them and I loved that too. It was just a little complicated to do both for a while”.
I will return to work, someday, when the time is right. I have my B.S. and 12 years of experience. That ought to count for something.
Right now, the time isn’t right. I’ve got lots of teaching I’m doing my kids now.
I actually read that post when you wrote it. 🙂 It made me happy.