http://bitchmagazine.org/article/multiply-and-conquer
Of all the statements in this article that caught my eye, and believe me, there were many, the one that struck me the most was a quote by Stephanie Coontz.
"This movement gets attention today because we've altered gender roles more in the past 30 years than we did in the previous 3,000 years. As a result, the Quiverfull adherents' absolute certainty about what they're doing strikes a chord, even among people who would never consider living that way."
This quote caught my eye because it did strike a chord. In today's crazy hectic world, where any one can take on any role we can't help but ask "Where do I fit in?"
I find that the overload of opportunities and choices leaves many people staring at a blank page. Where do you even start?
During discussions with friends there have been two key observations that appear.
For Women (observed from women of my generation 18-34)
"What path do I take?"
Many of us were little girls in the 1980's. I find this to be the first decade where pop culture prominently displayed women in successful and powerful careers traditionally held by men. Our moms, many of whom were single, or divorced mom's, were raising a family during this transition. I'd call them the first "supermoms"
Feminism has opened many doors and windows for many women, but with that blessing comes a curse. Because the doors are open there is pressure to go through them and a culture has developed around the "Super Mom"
This women can (apparently) commute to a stressful, full time job, be successful at her job, raise 3 well adjusted kids, keep her husband sexually satisfied, and still have time to bake cookies.
Lets be serious here, we all know that woman doesn't exist. The truth is, many women have a choice to make, have a family or have a career. In my experience the respect for a stay at home Mom has not yet reached the same level of respect for a career woman. It seems as though the people still believe that being a mom isn't "real" work because it doesn't generate income and doesn't' contribute to the economy. Who decided that a paycheck proves that someone is working, or even more absurd, that it proves how hard someone worked?
My personal (and undoubtedly biased) point of view on this is pretty cut and dry. People who have more respect for the working woman than than the stay at home mom are the same people who can only process the world in terms of the tangible, the people who only perceive the world in terms of possessions, paychecks and product.
I call them the victims and the perpetrators of the "Culture of Conspicuous Consumption".
Gender roles may have been altered but the rest of the world hasn't had time to catch up. Thereare still few circumstances where having a career can co-exist harmoniously with raising a family.
So now the pressure comes from both sides. On one side we hear "the doors are open walk through, walk tall and take on the world " and on the other we here "be a mother, be proud to be a mother, take on the world".
It's a confusing message which leaves many women my age floundering for a balance.
I find the Quiverfull movement to be a natural (though very extreme) response. Times of transition leave most people grasping for certainty. A movement like Quiverfull offers unwavering certainty.
For Men (observed in men 18-34)
Nearly every conversation I've had with men on this topic ultimately leads to a single questions. I heard it mostly succinctly from a conversation with John Jack
"What's left [for me]?"
In a world country and culture where women can do anything men can do, what does it mean to be a man?
Response to this article by John Jack on the gender struggle for men to follow
1 comment:
John Jack's Response
Costs and Benefits, Identity and Power
I find the Quiverfull movement to be completely logical and a way of life to be full of the potential stability that people today generally only believe to be a dream of previous generations. If I were to see things from their point of view, it makes complete sense. I understand why someone could see this way of life as an optimal choice.
Its primary benefit is one of impressive stability. From my point of view, this stability is also its chief drawback.
There's no freedom there, at all.
'Ah yes, John,' you might say in response, 'But freedoms given up are still expressions of freedom itself.'
Sure, and the elephant that's been trained to believe the cotton ropes around its legs are chains is still in bondage.
The article aptly states, "The modern feminist conundrum of how to have it all is surely perplexing to the woman devoted to having babies for Jesus. She would laugh at the question of balancing career and family. Having babies is her work, and she takes it very seriously."
Personally, I find the derivatives of this part of the article to be this most interesting.
As a good little drone, I think in terms of that gloriously dismal science -- economics. Game theory and supply & demand are my bread and butter, and this reminds me of one of the earliest concepts that was taught to me in Economics 101: opportunity cost.
"What is the opportunity cost of an individual going to university?"
The answer is the benefits that could have been earned by getting a job and working.
What makes a choice better than any other is that the consequences are better than the alternatives according to some set of values. Economics only concerns itself with the measurable consequences -- money and time -- but the concept can be carried into the intangible with a bit of kit-bashing.
Growing up, we have to make some personally important and fundamentally determinate choices. I imagine that while it weighs heavy one everyone, I think the pressures of this day and age tend to fall on women something near an order of magnitude heavier.
Have a career.
Have a family.
Of course, this isn't necessarily a mutually-exclusive decision. With a lot of work, you can have both.
The trouble, of course, is that we are all affected by the judgments of others in our lives. Sometimes, we're even affected more directly by responses to our own decisions by people in power.
Often enough, the women who chose to hold off on having a family tend to be subject of such judgments and responses by other women who have not made that decision.
The best analogy to this that I can come up with is at a party where the people react negatively to someone who chooses not to drink. Even if that person has not a judgmental bone in her body, there will be someone there who takes offense because it will seem like she's judging them to be bad people for drinking.
Because some women do not join in the merry habit of having rafts of children, the others (who still believe themselves to be the moral ones) will feel threatened. By choosing an alternative to the mainstream, you have attacked them.
This isn't true at all, but that's the difficulty: it's not about what you intend, it's about what they infer.
This is an injustice we've all been privy to, but it tends to have real and tangible consequences for women.
I won't talk to the value judgments heaved on a career woman, we're all quite aware of them.
What I will talk about now is the effect of such decisions by men.
According to such people as Susan Faludi and Barbara Ehrenreich, the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s has left men in a bit of an identity crisis. Men's identities were wrapped up in the stability of the traditional roles. Now that women have collectively pulled the rug out from under that system, men find themselves for an identity that stands on its own.
From my own experience, I get the feeling that there aren't many traits left for men that are generally held as their own. Fair enough, most traits should be neutral, but from an identity standpoint, being a woman matters and being a man does not.
In a world where creativity, communication and intelligence are more important than physical strength, endurance and emotional stability -- what's left for men?
The only answer that I can come up with is that gender should no longer matter in both the overall and day-to-day lives of human beings. The trouble is that this is not the generally-accepted vision for our society. Right now, it's a mixture of competing ideas that all state that gender matters more than I'd like it to matter.
Until such a time that a person can be viewed for traits beyond their gender, I think I'll always be having trouble with how things work 'round here.
"Be a man!" someone would say to me from time to time.
To which I reply, "Why? What benefit is that to me?"
I have trouble coming up with an answer for them. My values are not theirs and vice-versa, and we both know it.
But am I the future?
I hope so.
Just a guy, not a man (damn it!),
- J.
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