Linda Hirshman's 'Get to Work' distorts Blogging Baby readers, writers
Categories: Just for moms, Money & work, Media, Education
I keenly remember December 2005. It was the first Christmas for my second son, Truman. I got a new lens for my camera. And I spent the entire month with boiling blood thanks to Linda Hirshman's article telling me -- us -- that women who stayed home with their children, who had more than one child, were perverting the goals of feminism. Her thesis: if you get educated, and then fail to have a job that matters (and to Hirshman, only well-paying professional jobs, or positions in academia, matter -- working for non-profits is almost as much of a waste of an Ivy League BA as is changing diapers), you're killing feminism, you're destroying everything for which those 50s and 60s-era leaders worked.
You all, your blood boiled, too. You wrote in comment after comment, over 50 of you. Many of you responded to my survey with long, honest, heart-wrenching, eloquent pieces. You made me cry. You made me laugh. And you may have even raised my blood temperature to, like, 214 degrees. I was hot.
Thank you, Linda, for bringing back December 2005 to me with startling heat. You published your book, and ABC (damn you ABC!) published an excerpt. You must have known, ABC, that I was reading. You must have known that quoting Blogging Baby interviews would make me link to you. Scourge of the earth.
And I have to. I must defend your honor, our honor. I must defend the feminist "elite," I must refute Linda's assertions. She says (horrors) that our stories prove the correctness of her thesis. That made me so mad, I had to bold it.
We don't prove her thesis, no, not at all. Interestingly Linda didn't quote from my story, nor Larissa's. She didn't quote from L.'s story. The problem: we don't fit her analysis. We're women who've had babies (some of us more than one! shocking!) and are happily following our dreams, enjoying rewarding and important careers.
She picks and chooses quotations from our stories, taking portions out of context and misinterpreting others. While each mother who wrote in answer to my survey expressed often angry disagreement with Hirshman, she happily skips those portions and follows up her cherry-picked snippets with emails from moms "like" us who wrote her fanmail (hon, your fans are nothing "like" us!).
One mother who was misquoted in Hirshman's book told me she was "infuriated," and the scuttlebutt amongst Blogging Baby's writer mamas was unprintable. Really, I'm not even angry that Hirshman called Blogging Baby "a Web site that advertises baby care, baby products, maternity clothes, etc." (which is like calling Newsweek "a magazine that advertises perfume and minivans") because it's so transparently a tool for belittling those who would disagree with her.
I'm pleased that Hirshman is reading her critics. I just wish she wouldn't present Blogging Baby readers as evidence that her thesis is correct. All of her analysis is so light on the science and heavy on the anecdote, like every other book or article in its class. There is no sea change in America. There is no revolution in which mothers are staying home in increasing numbers.
What revolution then? What's the truth? Here's what I see: More and more of you are finding wonderfully creative careers that allow you to embrace your motherly self, while at the same time furthering your development and supporting the goals of feminism. If you stay at home, you're writing, or volunteering, or going back to school, or simply putting a really fascinating career on hold. If you have more than one child, that doesn't seem to either decrease your importance in the world or increase your dependence on the men in your life. (And even if it does: oh please, Linda, we're not in the 50s any more, where women were afraid to leave their husbands for fear they'd be shunned from the country club. Geez.)
I am continually amazed at the rich variety of brilliant and accomplished women who read this site, who contribute to the debate, who remind me that Hirshman and her cronies are wrong.
Please support me in not buying Linda's book, in not giving mainstream media more reason to claim that our choices are perverting feminism, or that our "wars" are petty and mean. I don't work with those women. I don't meet those women at my knitting groups or non-profit events. I don't get emails from them.
And we? We won't buy your book. Not if I have anything to do with it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
L. 6-23-2006 @ 8:19PM
I don`t think Hirshman read all of the BB profiles -- she cited seven, and I counted eleven, including mine.
Hirshman`s manifesto obviously fills a void -- we need a voice to stand up for unapologetic career women. I was one for many years, and would still be one if my husband hadn`t been transferred, and I plan to be one again. I felt no guilt when the baby called the babysitter "Mama," and when we ate meals of convenience food in front of the TV. I worked by choice and I loved my work. I didn`t love my family any less because I wasn`t home baking bread -- and now that I AM home baking bread, I can honestly say, I don`t love them any more than I did before.
I already wrote all about all this at length on my own blog, but in brief: my mother is an "old style" feminist, who tells me my baby break is "wasting my education." She is retired, and about the same age as Hirshman, and it occurred to me, this is a generation gap issue more than it`s a feminist issue.
Hirshman decries "choice feminists," who think that all choices are valid and deserve support -- and I think, wow, I`m a classic "choice feminist," and so are all my peers. Personal satisfaction really matters to my generation, both men and women alike. We understand our responsibilities and our goals, but we want to enjoy the journey there as much as we can, too. We want to do what makes us happiest, because life is short and babies grow up so quickly. This is entirely personal, and therefore selfish by definition. No wonder Hirshman thinks we`re failures to her cause. I, for one, never joined it.
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Jen 6-23-2006 @ 8:32PM
It seems to me that there is nothing more feminist than powerfully choosing the life you want to live.
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Anna V. 6-23-2006 @ 8:33PM
I just have to say that reading that excerpt made me sick to my stomach. She doesn't have a clue about real women.
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Kristin 6-23-2006 @ 8:38PM
Bravo, Sarah.
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Kellie 6-23-2006 @ 8:55PM
I think she knowns and is afraid of the fact that she might regret her decisions down the road.
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karrie 6-23-2006 @ 9:01PM
Can I give an alternate book props here? Miriam Peskowitz has written a very thoughtful and intelligent book on the subject, "The Truth Behind The Mommy Wars: Who Decides What Makes A Good Mother:
Peskowitz also blogs at http://www.playgroundrevolution.com
Oh, and if you need another reason to read Peskowitz's book? Hirshman is not a fan. ;)
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Mamacita 6-23-2006 @ 9:09PM
She is very much mistaken. True feminism is NOT 'celebrating the woman who has a degree and works outside the home for the big bucks.' True feminism is having the right of 'choice.' And if a woman is free to choose to work outside of the home, then a woman must also be free to choose to work AT home.
And anyone, male or female, who thinks being a SAHM ISN"T really 'work' is talking out of their ass, because it's the hardest job imaginable.
Wasting a college degree? Oh, Linda, NO education is ever wasted. Your own education was lacking if that's what you really think.
Honestly, I think if we women are going to change the way the world treats us, we'd better start changing the way we treat each other.
And I probably should have said "women AND men" up there, because all of my statements apply to both sexes.
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Marcia 6-23-2006 @ 9:20PM
I agree Anna! While I was reading that I was thinking 'oh please gag me with a spoon!' I'm not a mom yet, come September I will be and I would absolutely LOVE to stay home and raise my child according to my beliefs and standards rather than pay some stranger. Hopefully we can get our work schedules to where when I come home he goes to work so we don't have to worry about child care. Besides, there is NOTHING wrong with being a stay-at-home mom. Household chores seem to never get done as it is with both of us working and it would be nice to be able to just stay at home and get them done but personally, I will be returning to work after a brief maternity leave because we can't afford for me to not work. I make the majority of the income and I will get better raises faster so if ANYTHING in this house we'd have a stay-at-home daddy and still there is nothing wrong with that either. Who wouldn't want to be there everyday of the first couple years of their child's life? It's no one's business outside of our own families if we decide to work at an official job or work at home keeping things in order.
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Jenny 6-23-2006 @ 9:49PM
No, I won't buy her book. I like my blood pressure where it is.
I've said this before, but my biggest problems are with her measures of "success" and with her attitude that raising children is unimportant and easy (and equivalent to housekeeping). I just came across Daddy Chip's excellent discussion of her as a "masculinist" here: http://daddychip2.blogspot.com/2006/06/hirshmans-feminism-as-masculinist.html
It is good to get a Daddy view on it, particularly since at-home dads probably have to face these sorts of patronizing attitudes towards child-rearing more often.
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ann adams 6-23-2006 @ 10:12PM
Once again. I'm possibly the only one of your commenters who was around during the 60's and 70's working for those rights Ms. Hirshman is now trashing.
It was always about choices. At that time the pink ceiling was firmly in place and our choices were extremely limited. We were nurses and teachers. We worked in retail sales and at low paying clerical/secretarial jobs. Some of us worked in factories where so called safety restrictions kept us out of the higher paying jobs. Or we stayed home with the kids. Very few of us were physicians or lawyers and even fewer held even low level executive positions (although we often trained the men were hired for the jobs that should have been ours).
For college educated women (not me incidentally), much has changed. Formerly all male colleges have admitted women for years. Women can use their education to advance professionally and most professions are now open to them.
This is where choice comes in. Now that women can choose instead of accepting home and hearth by default, many are choosing to remain at home. They often home school their children, they provide the cultural education that is sadly lacking in schools today, they work harder at home than I ever did in an office. Of course many have found creative ways to earn money at home as well. The Blogging Baby writers are a part of that creative solution.
To say that the women who choose a different path from the one we may have envisioned back then are wrong takes us right back to no choice at all.
If anyone is destroying feminism, it's Ms. Hirshman; not the stay at home mothers.
I'm becoming very weary of this woman and more than weary of the debate.
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meg 6-23-2006 @ 10:12PM
This was my email to ABC:
I am horrified by the Linda Hirshman's excerpts on your website. To promote her trash is reprehensible. To allow her to belittle mothers who make choices in a widely respected forum is outrageous. How did she get on your website? The trash and inflammatory arguments she uses to gain notoriety belong on the Ricki Lake show, or Maury Povich.
I for one, have no further interest in supporting ABC or your advertisers until you regain the respect you once so proudly held.
Shame, shame on you.
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Jessica 6-23-2006 @ 10:23PM
Oh my god. I'm just floored by that excerpt. Suggesting that all women who stay home with their children are "dependent" on their husbands? That leaving the corporate world is some sort of acknowledgement of defeat? I was struggling to get ahead in a series of administrative jobs while going to school when I got pregnant; now my husband and I are starting our own design firm. We would never have been in the position to realize our dreams before we had the baby; I would never have quit my job, we wouldn't have re-evaluated what we wanted to be doing with our lives, and I wouldn't be in a position to work at home and go to school at the same time. I hardly think my situation is unique. Many of the moms I know who have left the corporate world are freelancing. I wonder where we fit in Hirschman's "study"?
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Sheena 6-23-2006 @ 11:48PM
I am not familiar with Linda or what she's written...
But I recall seeing her name somewhere in this blog, as well as this weekend - I saw an article she wrote in response to all the angry mamas out there in the Sunday Post. I've found the corresponding internet article for those interested: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/16/AR2006061601766.html
And even though I didn't really read but a few sentences... I sorta feel she may have been misunderstood and some people may have just been overly sensitive. Watch the hormones, ladies! j/k...
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Nina 6-24-2006 @ 1:50AM
I think the sad thing is that this woman gets on our nerves so much. I like what L. said...she's from a different generation, she lived her life for certain ideals and she's going to die defending them. We (our generation) are an affront to everything she's fought to "give" to us.
I'm trying to think of her like how I think of my MIL when she's pissing me off for some sentiment that she holds so dearly but that I think is totally ridiculous. Like (ironically) that she thinks that a wife should do the dishes everyday, immediately after every meal, no matter what. I just think...she's from a different generation, a different culture, she lived her life (and valued herself) by those types of standards, but that doesn't mean that her way is the only way or that it is the right way and it certainly doesn't have to be my way.
Hirschman is like my MIL - she values herself and others by the contribution that she gives to society and she's too small-minded to see beyond her own experience, her own ideals, her own values to realize that things have changed and that that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Poor her. And poor us if we try to live up to her standards. Whenever I try to live up to MIL's standards, I start hating her and myself. When I accept that she and I live in different worlds, I feel a whole lot better about both of us. That's how I'm going to approach Hirschman.
I am interested in knowing however how the idea of the SAHD plays into her theories. Actually, I'm not really. Because again, that would entail trying to fit today's generation and reality into her narrow worldview and she and her theories are entirely too tiresome for that.
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margalit 6-24-2006 @ 3:12AM
But you're doing exactly what you accuse Hirschman of doing. You're lumping all the BB readers into people who agree with your point of view. You assume because a certain number of people responded to your survey that everyone was in synch. Sorry, but I disagree with you. Perhaps it is because I'm so much older than many of your readers, actually a contemporary of Hirschman's that makes me understand what she's saying and agreeing with much of it. I DO think that too many women waste money on expensive educations these days, throwing them down the drain to remain home with their children because they married well. I also believe that so many of these women are going to be very sorry when they hit their early 50's and are left by husbands for trophy wives (and yes, it does happen and will happen to some of you, even as many as half of you). Where is that degree gonna get you after 15 or 18 years of not working?
I also believe that work is essential to keeping your brain fresh and alive. I've worked, I've stayed home, and now I'm working at home. When I stayed home my brain atrophed. There is just no other way to say it, but when you aren't around intellectual discussions for months and years at a time, you tend to start to think like a child.
Lastly, I think that it sucks that so many women go to college and grad school knowing that they're going to SAH as soon as their first baby arrives. There are so many people who really want and need a college education that aren't getting them because the placements are filled with upper middle-class women (more women than men attend college these days) who actually have little intention of using their educations. Plus, if they do work, then leave employers high and dry by not being honest about not returning after their pregnancy leave, it only makes it harder for the next women to keep a job, or ever get hired. Employers that are burned don't forget.
I believe that women are intrinsically destined to be a part of the work force. If a woman chooses to stay at home, then I think she should continue to either study or do volunteer work to keep her foot in the door. Just in case isn't a bad thing. And it keeps the mind fresh and does good for other people. What I'd like to know is, how many of the young, SAHM's do anything outside of their homes and schools? Who works as a volunteer at the food pantry several times a week? Who reads to blind people? Who volunteers to teach ESL? Who works in the library restacking shelves and recovering books? Who works as a volunteer visiting shut-ins and bringing food to the elderly? Anyone?
And that, at least to me, is Hirschman's real point. That the GenX parents, of which most of your readers are agewise, are self-insulated and do little else to help anyone outside of their families. That is the major difference between my generation of boomers and this younger SAHM generation that things they are entitled to just sit around and praise their babies and buy expensive baby crap and blog about how adorable baby poop is, instead of getting out in the community and doing something for someone else.
But that's just MY interpretation.
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Wallaby 6-24-2006 @ 5:20AM
by margalit: "Lastly, I think that it sucks that so many women go to college and grad school knowing that they're going to SAH as soon as their first baby arrives. There are so many people who really want and need a college education that aren't getting them because the placements are filled with upper middle-class women (more women than men attend college these days) who actually have little intention of using their educations."
I think that's a load of rubbish. If you can pay you get an education these days. If you are really worried about people getting a college education then stem the ridiculously rising prices at universities and stop the government from taking away aid to colleges and students as they have been lately.
I think it is sad how little Mrs Hishman (and society) value parenting. I personally think a lot of the problems we see in society today are caused by lack of parenting becuase we have moved to a society where people need two salaries to survive.
Saying that, I totally support women having a choice in the matter - and I realise that no one choice is right for everyone. I just wish that it was easier for women to decide to stay home if they want to. I think a lot of women out there leaving their kids with someone else and going off to work don't have a choice about it at all anymore. :(
Oh, and Margalit not that it is really your business - but I do volunteer outside my home and also use my mind plenty (My husband and I have a business, I do some with it, but have stepped back a lot now for now to care for the kids. I have been grateful not to miss these early years with them.). I volunteer less now (doing about 1/4 the hours I used to, which were considerable) as I have a brestfeeding baby and toddler, but that is a phase of life I am in. When my kids are older I will volunteer more again.
(On a side note I think the little maternity leave women get in the US is disgusting and means many women who would like to continue breastfeeding can not. But I guess Hirshman says just shove a bottle in their mouth for the "cause" [insert roll eyes here]. I'm surprised Mrs Hirshman thinks we should have any babies at all, there are enough babies born in other countries to propagate the species, why don't we all just get sterilised for the "cause".)
Oh, and A lot of my friends do volunteer work too, a heck of a lot more of them then My MIL's generation anyway from what I have seen.
I do have a college education (which I paid for myself) and I do not feel that I wasted it. I have a business I am part of and I am sure that being educated also makes me a better mother. If the only people we had raising babies were uneducated people surely that would not be the best for society as a whole. Surely we should be encouraging education for everyone.
I'm sorry, but this must be generational. I'm starting to think this is a lot about some people becoming "Grumpy Old Women".
Oh, and btw, I think Generation X is slightly older than me. I am in my mid-late twenties.
I have said since I was a little girl, that as long as women have the babies they will sadly never be seen as "equal" in the work place. I personally think instead of villifying those who decide to stay home with their kids (which I think can only be good for society) that we need to make changes to the work place. Instead of trying to force women back to work quickly so they won't fall off the corporate ladder we need to have longer (paid) maternity leave, and let women take "career breaks" for a few years like they allow here in Europe.
Maybe if we put more energy into making careers more family friendly (yes FAMILY friendly not e=woman friendly) we'd see a lot more happiness on all sides.
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thordora 6-24-2006 @ 8:36AM
I'm more than interested to know why a "degree" is only valued when it is accompanied by a related field of work. I for one believe in knowledge for it's own sake, and believe as others have said, that being educated makes you a better mother.
I am heartily sick and tired of certain women trying to make those who did not make similar choices feel poorly for theirs. While I know from experience that there is a need for a voice for the childless working woman, there is NOT a need for a voice that polarizes both sides.
This is one of the many reasons that I stay FAR away from the Woman's Studies section at the book store. These arguments are rarely, if ever, presented fairly or rationally.
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Ginny 6-24-2006 @ 8:43AM
Is a college education REALLY only about a career? Isn't the education valuable whether you stay home and teach your children or go to work?
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Ginny 6-24-2006 @ 8:47AM
I swear I hadn't read Thordora's comments when I posted mine. GMTA
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Jen 6-24-2006 @ 9:24AM
Ms. Hirshman's comments continually irk me, and I can't exactly put my finger on it. No wait, yes I can. First of all, it's the concept that there is a right and wrong choice one has to make in order to be a proper feminist.
Second, it's the notion that raising children to be open-minded, well-rounded individuals full time is somehow less important to feminism than earning a paycheck. I'd rather stay home with my daughter and help her learn about space and bugs and sports and whatever else she may be interested in.
Third, I simply expect more from women in terms of accepting that other people make choices different from yours and that does not make them inherently evil or traitorous or whatever.
Perhaps I've been miseducated about feminism and what it means. I always thought that a big part of it was not having someone tell you what you should and should not do on the basis of your gender.
Finally, to answer Margalit--I should be volunteering but I do not. I do read heavily, have attended a continuing education course, and follow my husband's courses as well (astrophysics and Renaissance.) My brain is not atrophying as yet, but some women's do when they are home. That's why I think these choices are so important to us. No woman should be stuck home when she'd rather work, and no woman should trudge off to a job when she'd rather be home doing creative things.
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