I was struck, and by no means for the first time, by a certain thought when I read the piece by Rosa Brooks on our op-ed page today.
If you’ll recall, she fretted about what a headache it is for kids to have summer vacations from school because,
Today, the overwhelming majority of parents work full time outside the home. That includes most mothers: Women with children are just about as likely to be in the labor force as women without children.
What occurred to me was not my usual defense of summer as a time sacred to children and essential to their ability to learn to be human beings. Nor did I feel compelled to quibble with Ms. Brooks’ advocacy for the kinds of labor laws and benefits that have helped push the French and German economies into sufficient distress as to threaten those countries’ leaders’ political futures.
In fact, I don’t wish to quibble with her at all. I just want to share an idle thought. It’s a small thought, and certainly not an original one, and there’s never really been enough to it to develop into a column (or so I thought, but I do seem to be dragging things out rather well at the moment). And yet it is an observation that goes to root causes of why my generation has lived the sort of adulthood it has lived.
It is this: Is it not passing strange that our generation — the largest, most congested mass of humanity in our nation’s history — chose the very moment that we were all entering the workforce to decide that henceforth, it would be de rigueur that women work outside the home? I’m no economist, but I did get far enough in school to cover the concept of supply and demand. And I just have to ask, how smart was it — when the competition for jobs already would be fiercer than anything our fathers knew, just because there were so many of us — that we decided to initiate a fundamental change in society’s structure that would have the effect of doubling the already huge number of young people clawing for a finite number of jobs?
Did this buyer’s market for labor not empower those very same wicked large corporations that Ms. Brooks frets about to pay all of us less than they would otherwise have to do? And did this not in turn force both moms and dads to work if they wanted to achieve middle-class financial security, thereby turning what had been a liberation for women into a form of wage slavery?
Maybe not. Maybe the huge source of labor led to a sufficient expansion of the economy that we all became actually wealthier than our parents. And maybe pigs have wings. My life hasn’t felt like that, and when I look around at all the other people treading hard to keep their heads above water, or at least maintain their lifestyles, I don’t think their lives have felt like that, either.
This isn’t an anti-feminist screed. When I write one of those, I’ll tell you so. And I’m not trying to take issue with any fellow S.C. bloggers.
Personally, I firmly believe the workplaces I have known have been more pleasant and humane places thanks to the presence of women — as peers, as subordinates and as bosses. And except for when I was seeking my first job out of college in 1975 and had one prospective employer tell me he couldn’t consider me because he was under orders to hire a woman (which may have been a bunch of bull anyway), I am unaware of any time that competition from women has held back my career.
Still, this has always struck me as really ironic, and quite a trick that a generation has played on itself.
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chose the very moment that we were all entering the workforce to decide that henceforth, it would be de rigueur that women work outside the home?
Is that right? We all decided it was “de rigueur” for women to work outside the home and so off to work they went? I guess it’s impossible that women could have worked outside the home because they, you know, wanted to work.
Re the timing: Maybe you’re older than you look. Because here I thought women entered the workforce in large numbers in WWII. Because there weren’t enough men to do the work.
My mother worked, as did her mother, as did HER mother. Curse those selfish women! Probably taking jobs away from menfolk. Maybe, for example, some man would have JUMPED at the chance to be a medical office receptionist, like my grandmother.
“This isn’t an anti-feminist screed.”
No, it’s just dismissive and demeaning. Suddenly it was decided that it was “de rigueur” for women to work. Yeah, that’s what happened.
I think that like much of human events, the move of women into the workforce wasn’t planned or decided on high, but happened from the bottom up, the result of the confluence of a variety of factors. However much one may wish to credit or castigate the feminist movement, it was the parents of the boomers who worked hard and created a robust economy that in turn created demands for an educated workforce; these same folks had the nerve and the means to send their daughters as well as their sons to college.
Looking back, the 1950s were an incredible time for America. Women had met the challenge of WWII – working in factories to support the war effort, and then returned home to find that after almost twenty years of tough economic times, things were looking up. The population was growing, the economy was expanding, many folks could afford not only a new car, but even get a second, usually use, one. The old wringer washers were replaced by washers and dryers, saving time and labor. Greedy developers all over the country built subdivisions outside of the cities so folks could have a real home with a bit of land as a real retreat. Convenience food operations had their origins in the 1950s too, with Ray Kroc setting up shop and Chinese, pizza, and fried chicken outlets making their appearances, offering food to go for the masses that now had cars.
When Sputnik scared us, we beefed up the curriculum at all levels benefiting both sexes. But the real technological and social innovation came with The Pill in the mid 1960s, allowing women, whether single or married, to regulate their fertility. It was the time to assert civil rights across the land, and that included women, especially those going to college who now had freedoms that their moms could never have envisioned.
Today, asking if both spouses need to work almost invites ideological arguments, given the home-schooling movement, the issues of poverty and class immobility in the US (overstated in my view given the continuing success of immigrants), and our concept of individual freedom. Acknowledging that anecdotal evidence is weak, I insist on adding the facts that for thirty years my mom’s mom fried fish every Friday night at Ernie’s Bar in Maywood, Illinois; my mom quit working as a secretary when she married my dad, but started up again as soon as the last of her nine children started school in 1969; and that my wife and I married when we were both 29 – she continued to teach until we had had kids and reentered the workforce only after our second (and last) started school. It was not solely economic factors that drove them to their decisions to work, but rather the desire to find meaning outside of the home.
Have you noticed that some of the women (primarily) who don’t “work” have full time avocations with charities, church groups, and other organizations on an unpaid (or minimally paid) basis? Americans enjoy less leisure time than the folks in Old Europe do, but a lot of us find value in working outside the home, no matter how much or how little we may make in such endeavors.
“…the desire to find meaning outside of the home.”
I know I’m about to take us off topic here, but as a man at the age of 40 what I most want is to find meaning outside of work.
I’d like to echo what kc said, as she said it quite well enough for me. (And yes, my mother and her mother worked too.)
Interesting how this subject arouses the passions. You can’t even point something out — without making any value judgments about it — without setting off automatic, furious defensiveness. KC got so worked up as to miss what I said. (“My mother worked, as did her mother, as did HER mother. Curse those selfish women! Probably taking jobs away from menfolk.” Say what? What is that reacting to? My grandmother ran the cafeteria at Bennettsville High School and had a catering business on the side. And what’s with bringing up the historical anomaly of Rosy the Riveter? Does any of that have ANYTHING to do with the fact that a massive, permanent shift in employment patterns occurred in our society in the early 1970s, and that ever since then, we have NEEDED two incomes whether we wanted to work outside the home or not, which just happens to be what I was commenting on?)
And thank you, Tim, for taking us off-topic. Amen to finding meaning outside work. I think men or women who really WANT to work outside the home while their kids grow up without them are nuts. And as soon as someone shows me how to go back to the land with my whole family without us all starving to death along the way, I’m there.
I suppose the desire to find meaning outside work is one of the impulses that creates bloggers. Or at least, it’s what makes Tim and others blog. With me, it IS part of the job, and yet it is not — I do it on top of the 60-plus hours I work without ever touching the blog. So with me, it’s probably a personality disorder.
Oh, and I AM older than I look. Or at least I was, until I lost 20 pounds or so recently, and saw the wrinkles that had been hidden there all along…
The topic doesn’t arouse passion in me so much as wonderment. I’ve always had this silly notion that in the 70s we finally started to get things right. Women no longer attended college simply to find a mate; they were seriously – ok, MOST were seriously – looking for careers.
To be able to take care of themselves, maybe?
I always knew I wanted a career. Graduated university and entered the workforce. Married, had baby, divorced, remarried, widowed. Gotta tell ya, mighty glad I can support myself, because I sure do have to now. (Plus I’m putting the now-20-year-old baby through college.)
I don’t know. This concept of women being self-sufficient seems pretty simple to me. I just wonder how it comes up so complicated so often.
PS – congrats on the weight loss Brad. If it really made you look older I think that’s just become my newest excuse for not losing any…
Interesting how this subject arouses the passions. You can’t even point something out — without making any value judgments about it — without setting off automatic, furious defensiveness
You know, maybe it’s not us. Maybe it’s you.
“Without making value judgments?” Are you kidding? Did you read what you wrote? You don’t think that this is expressing a judgment: Is it not passing strange that our generation — the largest, most congested mass of humanity in our nation’s history — chose the very moment that we were all entering the workforce to decide that henceforth, it would be de rigueur that women work outside the home?
Sounds like a “value judgment” to me. Since communication is your business, I’m gonna assume you knew exactly what you were implying.
“Welcome to my Weblog, … Enjoy. And react.”
Don’t ever assume, kc. I can’t imagine what you imagine I was implying. It seems like about as straightforward a statement as you can find. It seems ironic — “passing strange” — that an entire generation should choose that particular moment of labor oversupply to decide that both genders working outside the home would become the new standard for society. As for “de rigueur,” the peer pressure to go along with this was huge. Or did you miss the “Mommy Wars?”
My statement is sort of like saying, “We went to war in Iraq,” as opposed to expressing any sort of opinion about it — beyond pointing out the irony, which was my openly expressed (not implied) point all along.
It’s a matter of arithmetic. The labor supply was going to be huge already, and so we decided to double it just as we were entering the workforce. This is odd timing.
What does that imply?
It implies to me you believe all the women of my generation got together and said, “Let’s wreak havoc on our nation’s economy by flooding the workforce.”
No. What many, many individual women said was, “I deserve the chance to make a living as much as anyone, and I intend to be treated fairly.”
The generation didn’t decide. Individual women did. In the ERA era the atmosphere was ripe for females to move forward in the workplace. We were opportunists, jumping in while the timing was right.
What scenario might you imagine today if women HADN’T taken advantage of their chances then? I’m curious.
Hmmm. What, precisely, is the difference between a consensus of individuals of a certain age deciding something all at once and a “generation” deciding that same thing?
Do you actually think I was suggesting there was some sort of meeting, and a formal vote?
And remember, it wasn’t just women. Men’s expectations changed at the same time, by and large. They started EXPECTING their wives to work (which incidentally put further pressure on those women who might have chosen to buck the trend). Not that men ever decided to do their fair share of the work around the house or anything… They just went for the aspects of the movement that favored their interests.
As for “de rigueur,” the peer pressure to go along with this was huge. Or did you miss the “Mommy Wars?”
I thought the so-called “mommy wars” was a a fairly recent development and was a rather unhelpful term coined by the media to describe tension (mostly media-generated and promoted) between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers over how best to rear children. But it sounds like you’re saying some earlier “Mommy Wars” actually caused housewives to go to work outside the home.
[envisions armies of power-suited women frog-marching apron-clad housewives off to work in giant rooms full of cubicles]
. . . yeah, I guess I missed those “Mommy Wars.”
Let me see if I understand your overall point: “Our generation” suddenly “decided” that it was “de rigueur” for women to work, resulting in “Mommy Wars” which caused “peer pressure” that induced large numbers of women to go to work, women who apparently would have otherwise stayed home mopping the floors and fixing PB&J sandwiches. And this influx of women into the workforce caused a labor glut, which ultimately resulted in everyone suffering. And this is “ironic.” Isn’t that pretty much it?
I’m sure you have access to data that support your thesis . . .
My statement is sort of like saying, “We went to war in Iraq,” as opposed to expressing any sort of opinion about it
Right. Sure. “Generational train wreck” – how could anyone read disapproval into such a value-neutral phrase?
I’ve been thinking about this piece since it was published last week and have talked about it with several folks. I’ve even drafted a couple of unfinished responses, each of which has since become obsolete, relying on points thorougly hackneyed by the string of comments above. So, instead, I’ll just throw out a few points that haven’t been made yet. (Disclaimer: Like Mr. Warthen, I have only taken introductory level micro and macroeconomics, so I’ll be the first to concede that the points pertaining to economics may–and probably do–have holes.)
1. The number of jobs (supply) is not fixed. “Finite,” presumably, but not measurably so and not fixed. (Think about the number of jobs that emerged during the dot-com boom, many of which later disappeared as quickly as Glenda the Good Witch of the North.) Thus, this oversimplified supply and demand analysis as applied to jobs doesn’t quite gel.
2. The analysis doesn’t account for vast improvements in technology and in labor productivity, both of which bear greatly on the number of jobs.
3. In such an analysis, one might also consider the drastic change in standard of living over the past 50 years. Regardless of what induced women to enter the workforce, I’d venture to say that many of them stayed there in part because families enjoy driving two cars, etc. (Obviously this does not apply in all situations, but many/most Americans enjoy a much more luxurious standard of living than that sustained by their grandparents.)
4. What’s with the title of this post, “A Generational Trainwreck”? I do believe that the purpose of Mr. Warthen’s post was to spark an exchange on the subject and not to propound the notion that the workplace would be better off without women in it. However, there aren’t too many ways to interpret “trainwreck.” The post’s title sets an unintended negative tone for the piece.