Feminists make better MILs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Feminism is about supporting women’s agency in making choices for their own lives, whatever they may be. If an MIL is a real feminist, she’ll embrace her DIL the way she is and become her supporter. I can’t think of a better gift than unconditional acceptance from any parent, no matter how they met their new child, by giving birth, by adoption or by law.

this is a relatively new concept in the women’s movement. My mother fought for women to be able to stay in the workplace after marriage and children as she was forced out of her job after becoming pregnant with me in 1964. In the 70’s women were finally able to get credit cards in their name. In the 1960’s women could get the pill IF they had permission of their husband. Unmarried women could not get it. These are the things she and others fought for. Many have trouble when a daughter or DIL chooses to sah because if feels like a betrayal to them for all the hard work it took to be able to be in the workplace. My mother had a really hard time when I quit to SAH - and my children have SN -something DCUM tends to forgive if someone SAH when children are in school. She understood it intellectually- but emotionally it was difficult for her.I think of her as a real feminist even if you do not.

My generation had a hard time with SAH because we were supposed to be the Enjoli generation, (bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never let you forget your a man….’ We were told we could have it all and we could do it all. We had the hatchback babies - my son was born at noon on Monday and we were released at 9am Tuesday and no parental leave (paid or unpaid). I still have my $.59 pin - I think women are now over $.75 to men’s $1 now. That is progress.

My hope for the next wave is toward more equitable and affordable childcare options. I like that this generation has more options for parental leave for everyone.

I’m sorry but no, you can’t have it all. The truth is your relationships with your children will just not be as close if you aren’t around. That’s the hard fact. Are you really going to wish you’d spent more time at work being a corporate monkey or some other such thing? I know I won’t. I won’t ever regret investing time into the relationship with my children.

+1000. “Having it all” is yet another lie of the left.

Literally sitting next to my mom right now, who is one of my best friends. Guess I better tell her we aren’t as close as we think, because she worked outside of the home. And she didn’t even have to, she chose to! Bad mom, bad. (Yes, she’s a liberal).

For the record, I am a liberal SAHM. It was just the right choice for our family. If I could have worked in formal work force, and given my children the level of care and advocacy they need, I would have preferred that. I know many adults have close relationships with mothers who worked in the formal work force. I actually feel guilty for not working outside the home in terms of being a role model.

I don’t judge other women for doing whatever they need to do for themselves and for their families. I hate the cultural mommy wars.

This “being a role model” thing is such bs. As a SAHM, I am also a role model for dedication, loyalty, caring, compassion, and working hard just like the rest of you. You don’t have to work outside the home to be a role model.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can attest that the inverse is true: Misogynists are horrible MILs.

Mine is an uber-conservative, pro-life Catholic and all of the misogyny that goes along with that.

That's my mil. A hateful, narcissistic misogynist. Her daughters are the same. She is so controlling, she believes she gets to pick her children's spouses. Only 1 out of 5 is married and 2 are in their 50s and have never had a relationship with a mate. We have no relationship with them.

Here we go with the catholic bashing. Didn’t that go out of style along with hating Jews and blacks and all that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feminism is about supporting women’s agency in making choices for their own lives, whatever they may be. If an MIL is a real feminist, she’ll embrace her DIL the way she is and become her supporter. I can’t think of a better gift than unconditional acceptance from any parent, no matter how they met their new child, by giving birth, by adoption or by law.

this is a relatively new concept in the women’s movement. My mother fought for women to be able to stay in the workplace after marriage and children as she was forced out of her job after becoming pregnant with me in 1964. In the 70’s women were finally able to get credit cards in their name. In the 1960’s women could get the pill IF they had permission of their husband. Unmarried women could not get it. These are the things she and others fought for. Many have trouble when a daughter or DIL chooses to sah because if feels like a betrayal to them for all the hard work it took to be able to be in the workplace. My mother had a really hard time when I quit to SAH - and my children have SN -something DCUM tends to forgive if someone SAH when children are in school. She understood it intellectually- but emotionally it was difficult for her.I think of her as a real feminist even if you do not.

My generation had a hard time with SAH because we were supposed to be the Enjoli generation, (bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never let you forget your a man….’ We were told we could have it all and we could do it all. We had the hatchback babies - my son was born at noon on Monday and we were released at 9am Tuesday and no parental leave (paid or unpaid). I still have my $.59 pin - I think women are now over $.75 to men’s $1 now. That is progress.

My hope for the next wave is toward more equitable and affordable childcare options. I like that this generation has more options for parental leave for everyone.

I’m sorry but no, you can’t have it all. The truth is your relationships with your children will just not be as close if you aren’t around. That’s the hard fact. Are you really going to wish you’d spent more time at work being a corporate monkey or some other such thing? I know I won’t. I won’t ever regret investing time into the relationship with my children.

+1000. “Having it all” is yet another lie of the left.

Literally sitting next to my mom right now, who is one of my best friends. Guess I better tell her we aren’t as close as we think, because she worked outside of the home. And she didn’t even have to, she chose to! Bad mom, bad. (Yes, she’s a liberal).

For the record, I am a liberal SAHM. It was just the right choice for our family. If I could have worked in formal work force, and given my children the level of care and advocacy they need, I would have preferred that. I know many adults have close relationships with mothers who worked in the formal work force. I actually feel guilty for not working outside the home in terms of being a role model.

I don’t judge other women for doing whatever they need to do for themselves and for their families. I hate the cultural mommy wars.

This “being a role model” thing is such bs. As a SAHM, I am also a role model for dedication, loyalty, caring, compassion, and working hard just like the rest of you. You don’t have to work outside the home to be a role model.

I work for a federal agency, and I can see a subset of people in my office spending half their time goofing off online. I also have hard charging colleagues who get things done. This notion that everyone at a job is doing something noble is a load of bs. As is the idea that every SAHM is also busting her ass.

Folks, it’s a mixed bag for everyone. Lazy people can be found in both places. Maybe it’s the mom who surfs the internet at the office because she can’t stand the idea of being at home all day. Maybe it’s the SAHM who plops her kids in front of a screen half the day while she has some “me” time. But let’s stop this nonsense of WOH/SAHM is the ultimate good v. evil.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure if my MIL would describe herself as a feminist; however, she was the primary breadwinner working outside of the home while my FIL retired early and cared for the kids. She is a great MIL and DH does more than his share around the house and caring for our children.

Same. Mine rarely cooks- lived to work (and still does- contracted back as a retiree) and was very A type and created an independent streak and strong work ethic in her kids. My DH cooks and cleans like his dad and also is the main caregiver now that my work has so much travel. I have a wonderful, capable DH (who also works full time) because of her and FIL.

The only down side- she would be horrified if I decided to quit, do nothing and take care of the kids at home- she never did it so would not understand/support that- but I think I'd feel the same as a MIL.

Feminism is all about the freedom to choose what you want- but we have a friend who just did this (quit job to take care of 2 toddlers) and now they are having to move in with her inlaws to pick up the dime because they can no longer afford their home/cars/etc because she decided to quit. Didn't sound too cool to us but it's not our marriage. I made a joke about doing the same and moving in with her to take care of us and we had a belly laugh.

This is similar to my family dynamic. Both my parents worked, mom has a PhD and had a job as important and lucrative as my dads in the 1970s. I told her I was considering staying home with my DC1 when he was an infant with bad colic and she was horrified. She actually came and helped us enormously so I can continue my career. My brother cooks and cleans and woke up during the night to feed his son. My SIL has an important career too and she loves my mom and we're all very close. My MIL stayed at home and my SIL and my husband are a disaster about housework. My H got much much better over the years and he can actually cook a little, still not great at cleaning but we have weekly cleaning service.

It’s weird how you keep trumpeting someone’s career as important. As in those women are justified in working because they had IMPORTANT careers. What careers are important? You, mom, and SIL sound insufferable.

Your implied judgments that adult children with SAHM seem to be less competent is interesting. It’s seems you learned a lot about looking down at other people who make different choices. Just like mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feminism is about supporting women’s agency in making choices for their own lives, whatever they may be. If an MIL is a real feminist, she’ll embrace her DIL the way she is and become her supporter. I can’t think of a better gift than unconditional acceptance from any parent, no matter how they met their new child, by giving birth, by adoption or by law.

this is a relatively new concept in the women’s movement. My mother fought for women to be able to stay in the workplace after marriage and children as she was forced out of her job after becoming pregnant with me in 1964. In the 70’s women were finally able to get credit cards in their name. In the 1960’s women could get the pill IF they had permission of their husband. Unmarried women could not get it. These are the things she and others fought for. Many have trouble when a daughter or DIL chooses to sah because if feels like a betrayal to them for all the hard work it took to be able to be in the workplace. My mother had a really hard time when I quit to SAH - and my children have SN -something DCUM tends to forgive if someone SAH when children are in school. She understood it intellectually- but emotionally it was difficult for her.I think of her as a real feminist even if you do not.

My generation had a hard time with SAH because we were supposed to be the Enjoli generation, (bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never let you forget your a man….’ We were told we could have it all and we could do it all. We had the hatchback babies - my son was born at noon on Monday and we were released at 9am Tuesday and no parental leave (paid or unpaid). I still have my $.59 pin - I think women are now over $.75 to men’s $1 now. That is progress.

My hope for the next wave is toward more equitable and affordable childcare options. I like that this generation has more options for parental leave for everyone.

I’m sorry but no, you can’t have it all. The truth is your relationships with your children will just not be as close if you aren’t around. That’s the hard fact. Are you really going to wish you’d spent more time at work being a corporate monkey or some other such thing? I know I won’t. I won’t ever regret investing time into the relationship with my children.

+1000. “Having it all” is yet another lie of the left.

No, it the lie of the right, because many of them do and believe that means everyone can, and if they don't, it's their own fault. The left knows most of us have far, far less than "it all" and working to help make life easier with parental leave, healthcare, child tax credits, universal preK, etc.

But I thought the most educated and rich among us were mostly liberals these days? A lot of conservatives are actually working class families like you are describing the left to be. It’s flip flopped.

This was the central premise of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" a buzzy political book 15 years ago or so. The Republican party is a marriage of two wings: economic conservatives and social conservatives. Economic conservatives want deregulation and lower taxes; social conservatives care about things like abortion, gay marriage, and teaching that America is (or was) great. It paid off wonderfully for economic conservatives and the big business interests that they represent, while social conservatives mostly got hosed. Of course, that may change now that they have captured the Supreme Court.

But the quick upshot is that most of the red states in middle America care less about getting screwed than they do about feeling bad about any of their actions. I think the last Republican legislative idea other than tax cuts actually aimed (without any judgment on whether it would be successful) at helping middle class families might have been Bush's plan to privatize social security, which died a pretty quick death. For all the Republican votes to repeal Obamacare, they had no plan at all for what to do without it.

Of course, it's a new age for the Republican party. Mitt Romney was a Presidential nominee and now he's a pariah. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz beg forgiveness whenever there is any semblance that they have offended the Trump or his supporters. Maybe once they ban abortion they'll get around to addressing the economic concerns of the working class that keeps electing them.

It's telling that the working and middle classes are increasingly leaning Republican. I wonder what they'd think about your moralizing DC bubble screed. Maybe it's because they know the Democrats hate them, despise them, and couldn't care less about white working class people. They know the Democrats sold them down the river with open borders and liberal trade with China. A lot of wealth was generated from it - which went to rich Democrats.

I do agree that both political parties treated working Americans badly, overpromising and underdelivering and with an increasing inequity going primarily to affluent Democrats. For all their economic flaws, at least the Republicans don't also sneer at just being a white rural or suburban working / middle class and deliver hate-tinged speeches about being on the wrong side of history (aka Biden last week in Atlanta).

The Republicans were the party of unpleasant moralizers aka the evangelicals, 20 years ago. Today the ugly and divisive moralizers are the Democrats and their progressive ideologies.

I'm not sure what you think I wrote was "moralizing". Perhaps it was the comment about feeling bad about their actions. To that end, I should clarify that I mean only that so much of what Democrats is talking about problems and proposing solutions. And nobody really wants to hear they are the problem.

As for Republicans, I think you let them off too easy entirely. The "open borders" and trade with China were all backed by Republicans. NAFTA began in the Reagan administration and was largely negotiated under H.W. Bush. Clinton did little more than stamp it approved. Likewise, Clinton teed up China's WTO membership for W., who ignored China's flagrant abuses of that body's governing regulations in exchange for more support (or at least not opposition to) the War on Terror.

But you're right. Republicans don't sneer. They dutifully pat the white working class on the head and say "Who's a good boy? You are!" then sell their children in the newspaper for $300 apiece. Reagan granted amnesty, Bush drafted NAFTA, and his son launched two ill-fated foreign wars. And yet, there's extreme devotion the party.

I'm from Missouri, which not so long ago, was a swing state. It's Deep Red now and the Republican legislature regularly disregards ballot initiatives that obviously help the white working class like expanding Medicaid, which passed with 54% of the vote despite uniform opposition by elected Republicans. 75% of the people who would gain coverage in Missouri are White and given that the income cutoff is 133% of the federal poverty guidelines or about $35k for a family of four, it's safe to say they aren't wealthy. Though $35k goes much further in places like Sedalia and Joplin than it does in DC. At the federal level, the expansion and modification of the child tax credit has been an enormous boon to working class families. And is again uniformly opposed by the Republican party.

I'm not some yellow dog. I have voted Republican within the last ten years, not for President, but not for dog catcher either. I've done plenty of manual labor and know plenty about trying to support a family on a working class income and what it's like to live in America without health insurance. Republicans ought to expect more from their leaders in terms of actually addressing issues, but I expect that they will continue to vote reliably because some Democrat somewhere said someone didn't like (immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+, refugees, etc.) was having a hard time. And then like clockwork, suddenly they'll remember that they can't do anything for anyone until every single veteran is off the street or until the national debt is at zero. Meanwhile, they get no traction getting more fair farm subsidy program or right to repair legislation. No hint of a plan to address sky rocketing medical costs or college tuition. The former of which is eroding the stability of their current economic situation and the latter foreclosing the future advancement of their children. But hey, at least they'll deliver another big tax break for Wall Street.

[Anonymous]

It’s tiring how “working” and “non-working” women can’t accept each other’s right of choice. Which year is this? 1972? No. It’s 2022.

BTW, there is no such thing as a “feminist MIL”. A real feminist wouldn’t go for marriage’s constrains. Even if it did, wouldn’t stay in one for long to have children. Even if things somehow progressed to having marriage age adult children, a real feminist wouldn’t intervene in picking their spouses or having a relationship with their spouses where being a good or bad MIL matters. It would be a cordial colleague like relation where no judgement or meddling would get exercised.

If matter is a feminist being a good or bad MIL, feminist MIL is an oxymoron.

[Anonymous]

My mother in law who was a self described feminist resented my staying home to raise my children and said that I personally was setting the women’s movement back fifty years. Lovely women

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s tiring how “working” and “non-working” women can’t accept each other’s right of choice. Which year is this? 1972? No. It’s 2022.

BTW, there is no such thing as a “feminist MIL”. A real feminist wouldn’t go for marriage’s constrains. Even if it did, wouldn’t stay in one for long to have children. Even if things somehow progressed to having marriage age adult children, a real feminist wouldn’t intervene in picking their spouses or having a relationship with their spouses where being a good or bad MIL matters. It would be a cordial colleague like relation where no judgement or meddling would get exercised.

If matter is a feminist being a good or bad MIL, feminist MIL is an oxymoron.

I agree that the mommy wars are tiring and women need to respect each other’s choices.

However, that is an extreme position (feminist MIl is an oxymoron). I believe it is very possible to be both a feminist and MIL. Also one can be a MIL without being married.

[Anonymous]

May be one practicing diluted mainstream liberal feminism but not anyone who believes in radical feminism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:May be one practicing diluted mainstream liberal feminism but not anyone who believes in radical feminism.

Um, the thread is not about radical feminism. I doubt most WOHM fit that criteria either. The examples of extreme feminist MILs cited in thread have mentioned how miserable they were as MILs.

Ironically, you are an Anti feminist by disrespecting other women’s choices.

Speaking for myself feminists do make great MILs and FILs. My ILs have always appreciated my contributions and have worked to empower women in developing countries through medical and non profit organizations. MIL spent decades on such work after her own children had left home. Being a SAHM is usually temporary.

[Anonymous]

Aging feminists who worshipped the steely career woman and callously trashed stay-at-home moms aren’t going to be pro-choice but new generation is rethinking it all. Economy, lifestyle and fragility of marriage/family won’t allow them such choices but they believe in freedom of choice and respecting humans for who they are, not for their lineage or work identity.

[Anonymous]

It’s all about how much you earn and how stylishly you spend it, rest is just garnishing to make it look palatable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s all about how much you earn and how stylishly you spend it, rest is just garnishing to make it look palatable.

Ummm, no ….