The American Family: Part 3
Taking a New Look at Myths and Realities
By Harriet Alger
(Continued)
Ellen Galinsky has done an extensive analysis of studies relating to the effects on children of working mothers and child care. She found that children of mothers who work outside the home do not differ greatly from children whose mothers are at home all day, that it is the daily experiences in a child's life that make a difference. The most important influences are the mother's and/or family's attitude about whether the mother should be working, how stressful the parents' jobs are, other stressful events that are family related and the quality of the child care arrangements.
Most working mothers have to work to maintain a basic standard of living for their families. Many are single heads of households. In many families with two parents, two incomes are necessary to survive. Some of these families still live at the poverty level or below even with two incomes. It is difficult even with two middle class incomes to buy a house or to save money for children's education.
Women are needed in the work force today. American businesses and industries are dependent upon the work of women. Some child care advocates have suggested that if all child care arrangements outside the home were shut down for a day, it would paralyze the nation more than any strike in history.
There are women who don't have to work but who want a career outside the home. Has feminism led to divorce and disruption of family life with self-fulfillment replacing commitment to family? Again the facts do not support popular beliefs. It was men rather than women who began the flight from commitment to marriage in the 50s and 60s. It was women's growing recognition of their vulnerability when they were dependent on husbands and fathers that fed the feminist movement. It was not young women on campuses in the 1960s who led the effort for women's equality and opportunity in the work force but their mothers, who found themselves divorced after years of homemaking and often in poverty because of lack of work experience that was valued by employers. Other mothers who were still married felt depressed with their life at home during the child bearing years with absent commuter fathers, or who felt abandoned after their children were grown, even if not divorced from their husbands. These women were determined that their daughters would have more opportunities for fulfillment outside marriage and child rearing.
There was also growing anger and resentment at the attitudes toward wives and mothers. Stephanie Coontz tells the story of her father who wanted his wife at home but aspired to have his daughters go to college because he considered them too smart to spend their lives darning socks and cooking dinner. It has never been enough for a man to be "just a father and husband." Most women now expect to more than "just a wife and mother."
So the need to be able to take care of themselves, to help support the family, and to have satisfying career opportunities have all been legitimate reasons for women to seek employment outside the home. Some of the positive effects have been less pressure on men to be the sole breadwinners for their families (maybe they won't continue to die so much younger than women), increased self-esteem and satisfaction for both parents as they found their talents and interests valued, and more opportunities for parents and children to expand their interaction with others, to enrich their experience, and to benefit from a wider support system. In the work place, they have found friends as well as colleagues. In child care, they have found "a new extended family" as Ellen Galinsky called child day care in the title of one of her books. To paraphrase a song made popular by Barbra Streisand: people who know they need people may be the luckiest people in the world.
The issue of whether it is harmful to children for mothers to work is an issue of individual and family circumstances and attitudes, especially the existence or lack of a support system. The need for that support system leads us to examine fathers' roles and equity issues of women.
Many fathers in families where both parents work are helping more with child rearing and house work than their fathers did. However, most working mothers still have the primary responsibility for children and the house. Mothers are doing less than their mothers and feeling guilty. Fathers are doing more than their fathers and feeling proud of themselves.
My son, Jiff, called me a few weeks after his first son was born and told me proudly about all that he was doing to help with Nicholas and to share the work around the house with his wife Cindi, who had gone back to work. "But, Mom," he said,"sometimes Cindi doesn't even say thank you." After I recovered from the shock of finding that I had not raised this young man as well as I had thought, I said, "Jiff, you keep track for the next two weeks of how much time you spend taking care of Nicholas and working around the house and how much time Cindi spends doing those things. If you find that you are doing 51% or more, maybe she should occasionally say thank you." A week later, Cindi called and said, "Thanks, Mom!"
Part of the problem is the public perception of child rearing and housework as feminine, still not really part of the masculine, macho image. This image has not only made it difficult for fathers to feel really comfortable taking a 50-50 share of responsibility for child care but had also made it difficult to recruit men as staff for early childhood programs.
A look at the issue of women's equity also helps to explain the difficulties of today's families. Despite the gains of women and the need for women to work, inequities in salary and opportunities still persist, largely because of the myths that we had been examining. This makes it extremely difficult for working mothers to afford good child care. Even for those who can afford it, good child care is often not available or easily accessible. When a woman succeeds in breaking through discriminatory barriers, she is often expected to behave like a man, to put work above family. Without a good partnership with her mate and a good child care support system, she faces extraordinary problems.
The lack of good family support systems in employment and in the community contributes to family stress. The lack of accessible, affordable quality child care for families that need it is a national disgrace. Whether parents are at home or working, our government and our communities do not provide sufficient support for families of very young children, either financially, physically or psychologically. We need to support and strengthen families in all of their diversity, to recognize that it takes villages and towns and states and countries to raise our children. There has never been a time in history when the majority of families lived in ideal circumstances. There has never even been any agreement from place to place, group to group, time to time, about what a family should be. Families have always been subject to social and economic conditions over which they had little or no control. They have often exhibited incredible strengths as they struggled to meet the challenges. We need to give help and to accept help as needed without blame or guilt. Our strength is in the combination of community support and individual initiative, not one without the other.
Stephanie Coontz tells of Jesuit missionaries from France who when they first encountered the Naskapi Indians of North America in the sixteenth century, were impressed by the lack of poverty, theft, greed, and violence but horrified by the permissive child rearing methods and the equal relations between husband and wife. They set out to try to teach them civilized family norms and met resistance.
"Thou hast no sense," said a Naskapi man, "you French love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe". That may be the best single childrearing tip Americans have ever been offered. Unless we learn to care "for all the children of the tribe" then no family, whatever its form, can be secure.
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