NYT: professional moms who opted out of work after kids are now opting back in

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So the lesson learned here is: If you're unemployed for a long time, it is harder to get back into the paid work force. It may take much longer to get a job. You may have to start from a lower rung in the hierarchy. You may not get paid as much as before you left the work force.

And the only reason this is news is because it is about middle-class and upper-middle-class women making this shocking discovery.

Ok, I'm going to go back to looking at pictures of cats on the internet now.

Unless you happen to be a perfect mom living in Bethesda who can serve as "Chairwoman" of your child's "prestigious preschool," and can use your connections among "high-powered Washingtonians" to leverage an amazing job. What did we learn from that anectode? That the wealthy and elite manage to end up on top. Is this a revelation? Again, blech.

[Anonymous]

Yikes! These bitches are ugly!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the lesson learned here is: If you're unemployed for a long time, it is harder to get back into the paid work force. It may take much longer to get a job. You may have to start from a lower rung in the hierarchy. You may not get paid as much as before you left the work force.

And the only reason this is news is because it is about middle-class and upper-middle-class women making this shocking discovery.

Ok, I'm going to go back to looking at pictures of cats on the internet now.

Unless you happen to be a perfect mom living in Bethesda who can serve as "Chairwoman" of your child's "prestigious preschool," and can use your connections among "high-powered Washingtonians" to leverage an amazing job. What did we learn from that anectode? That the wealthy and elite manage to end up on top. Is this a revelation? Again, blech.

+1- Not sure what the author wanted us to learn from this. . .

[Anonymous]

LOL at the woman who made "merely a fifth" of her previous high salary.

...which turned out to be $500,000. So she made $100,000 on reentry to the workforce.

Cry me a fuckin' river, bitch.

[Anonymous]

I'm really not sure why they profiled a woman making $500K, 10 years ago. I mean, come on. I'm well educated and realize I have more options than many, but can't relate to that all.

I get that the point is that even the elite have a hard time making choices, but...not really considering they end up finding wealthy investors to start companies.

That said, what I did find really interesting was the message that marriage is hard whether you stay home, work, or go back to work. Seems like it's just tough to balance having anyone work (meaning even if the husband just works) plus all the things we feel like we have to do as parents and make time for each other, our marriage etc.

[Anonymous]

to me the money paragraphs were the one about how these women were fine with the child care, but drew the line at having to do the housework too, even though that was clearly part of the job description of stay-at-home spouse. so, they were fine doing one kind of menial labor but not another. like they expected their husbands to come home from their day and help them pick up their workspace (i.e. the house)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:to me the money paragraphs were the one about how these women were fine with the child care, but drew the line at having to do the housework too, even though that was clearly part of the job description of stay-at-home spouse. so, they were fine doing one kind of menial labor but not another. like they expected their husbands to come home from their day and help them pick up their workspace (i.e. the house)

I don't really like the idea of equating child care with housework, and then calling both "menial labor". One task is scrubbing toilets, the other task is taking care of people. And furthermore, people who are the joint responsibility of both the husband and the wife. Also the house is not merely the women's "workspace" but also the men's living quarters.

But! I haven't read this article -- only a billion other similar ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the main reasons I didn't stop working is that I worried about this with my husband:

" Many of the women I spoke with were troubled by the gender-role traditionalism that crept into their marriages once they gave up work, transforming them from being their husbands’ intellectual equals into the one member of their partnership uniquely endowed with gifts for laundry or cooking and cleaning; a junior member of the household, who sometimes had to “negotiate” with her husband to get money for child care.

The husbands hadn’t turned into ogres. Their intent was not to make their wives feel lesser. But when traditional gender arrangements were put into place, there was a subtle slide into inequality. “The dynamic changes,” said Hope Adler, a former manager at the professional-services firm..."

Completely agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The first paragraph is beyond obnoxious. They imply that living in a townhouse in Chevy chase md is like living in the slums. It's near a Safeway?? Gasp.

I know, right?

It's hard to have sympathy for many of these women, who probably had gift wrapping rooms in their 6 bedroom houses. They were the generation that started the whole "parenting is a job" that you must do perfectly--the whole Martha Stewart pretty as a picture perfectionism that drives me nuts.

Always said it was Martha Stewart's fault. She created the need for a perfect lifestyle and suburban household excess. And she has made a fortune doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:to me the money paragraphs were the one about how these women were fine with the child care, but drew the line at having to do the housework too, even though that was clearly part of the job description of stay-at-home spouse. so, they were fine doing one kind of menial labor but not another. like they expected their husbands to come home from their day and help them pick up their workspace (i.e. the house)

I don't really like the idea of equating child care with housework, and then calling both "menial labor". One task is scrubbing toilets, the other task is taking care of people. And furthermore, people who are the joint responsibility of both the husband and the wife. Also the house is not merely the women's "workspace" but also the men's living quarters.

But! I haven't read this article -- only a billion other similar ones.

Well, you're part of the problem. You can rationalize it all you want, but these are both forms of "menial labor." Child care is about as menial a labor as there is.

I refer to the house as the woman's "workspace" because I'm referring to messes that accumulate during the work day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:to me the money paragraphs were the one about how these women were fine with the child care, but drew the line at having to do the housework too, even though that was clearly part of the job description of stay-at-home spouse. so, they were fine doing one kind of menial labor but not another. like they expected their husbands to come home from their day and help them pick up their workspace (i.e. the house)

I don't really like the idea of equating child care with housework, and then calling both "menial labor". One task is scrubbing toilets, the other task is taking care of people. And furthermore, people who are the joint responsibility of both the husband and the wife. Also the house is not merely the women's "workspace" but also the men's living quarters.

But! I haven't read this article -- only a billion other similar ones.

Well, you're part of the problem. You can rationalize it all you want, but these are both forms of "menial labor." Child care is about as menial a labor as there is.

I refer to the house as the woman's "workspace" because I'm referring to messes that accumulate during the work day.

I'm a woman and agree with this--a lot of childcare is menial, meaning that you don't need a lot of skill to do it. (The education these women have was not to prepare them to be good mothers, and very very few parents have education and training in childhood development or early childhood ed.)

Regarding housekeeping--not many people enjoy vacuuming or scrubbing toilets. If both parents work, you can justify/afford to outsource the parts you don't want to do, or at least have a legitimate basis for dividing them up (e.g., we're both tired). If one person is home all day....very easy to see how the other person would expect them to pick up that slack. If I worked and my husband stayed home, I would be really annoyed if the house wasn't clean, laundry wasn't done, etc., and even more annoyed if he'd spent the day decorating or baking or volunteering--doing fun things he enjoys, but not the hard work, which he would expect to share with me (after I'd been working hard all day). I'd prefer more stress and more mess (and, to be fair, more money) to a situation where we resent each other rather than feel "we're in this together."

[Anonymous]

I find it hard to believe that people of this social class did not just have house cleaners come on a regular basis.

Besides that, this article made me really grateful for my feminist husband who is capable of respecting me and having an equal relationship through 20 years of various permutations of jobs and income. The problem for most of these women was the marriage, not the work (at home or otherwise).

[Anonymous]

Martha Stewart's husband cheated on her then divorced her.

A perfect world does not exist.

[Anonymous]

Two things wrong in marriages today, power and control. One wants it all the other refuses to give any of it up.

Compromise has become a dirty word.

[Anonymous]

So what you're all saying is that I don't need to waste one of the five free Times articles per month on this one? Sweet.