IN THIS previous entry, a female corporate executive stated that working mothers are good for business. Despite high levels of unemployment, especially among young men seeking entry-level positions and men in their 50s and 60s, she said she cannot find adequate workers unless she offers a good parental leave package. Here is her response to my comments along with further remarks of my own.

Maggie Fox writes:

I had mentioned following up on the issue of the separation of mothers from their children at an early age. I think the separation of family members during the work day is a product of industrial capitalism, rather than feminism. Gone are the days when extended families worked together in agrarian villages or tribes of hunter-gatherers. I am not advocating that we turn back the clock, as I am quite fond of supermarkets, flush toilets, and the like. Rather, I think we need to accept that industrialization (far more than feminism) has wrought inevitable changes to human relations, including the creation of the isolated nuclear family and a more anonymous, overwhelming society that easily leads to a sense of alienation among all too many people.

No, I do not think it is ideal for a mother and baby to separate at 12 weeks, but I also don’t think it is ideal for either mother or baby to be wholly dependent on the father for support. Such an arrangement gives the father too much power, and we all know that power corrupts. As I consider the possibility of becoming a parent myself, I know that I would choose the trade-off of going back to work in 12 weeks because I am convinced that in the long-run an egalitarian marriage would be better for both me and baby.

In response to Laura, I can, in fact, think of a society in which children were routinely separated from their mothers – centuries of British/European aristocracy. In the Middle Ages, aristocratic boys were often separated from their mothers at age 7 to learn the art of knighthood in another man’s castle. In more recent times, nannies and boarding schools took over at shockingly young ages. Yet, this was a successful and powerful (although perhaps not particularly happy) group that, at its peak, virtually ran the world. William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill recounts a childhood in which the boy had very limited contact with his mother. Let me be clear that I do not advocate this kind of chilly child rearing! I note that the middle-class American model of two-working parents tends to provide much more warmth and parental contact than that of the thriving and once much admired British aristocracy in its heyday.

Laura writes:

There seems to be some widespread confusion about industrialization and technology. Your statement is an example of it. Here is an important point to keep in mind. At no point did the Industrial Revolution or any subsequent technological changes transform human beings into machines. It didn’t happen. It is a myth. Human nature stayed essentially the same. Society became more technological, but human beings did not become tools. Industrialization did not eradicate the psyche or alter the  basic human body. It did absolutely nothing to the inborn and universal  nature of childhood. It did not change the essential dynamics of everyday living. In other words, it did not make people stop wanting or benefiting from healthy food, clean clothes, rest and care when they are sick. It did not eliminate the essential differences between men and women.

This point is very important. Technology did not abolish man.

You say industrialization revolutionized society so much that it created “a sense of alienation among all too many people.” And yet you state this was worth it for supermarkets and flush toilets. Those are very costly toilets. Also, you have no proof that industrialization created or necessitated these changes. How do you know? You also have no proof that a saner way of life would entail primitive plumbing. This is conjecture.

You mention the “power” of the male provider. The family is not a business and this notion of power is crude and disturbing in a discussion about relations founded on love. Someone who gives all his labor and money to the family could be said to be in a position of service, not power. But even if power is the right term, isn’t power something one would want to give to the man one vows to love for life? I’d be curious to know where you acquired this view of marriage as adversarial. Families run on interdependence and a certain amount of non-monetary currency and labor. It’s not just family that runs this way, but all human relations. Your statement implies that all the men who have supported their families are corrupt. That would be a sickening idea, a radical statement of disdain, if it weren’t so outright ditzy. If power corrupts, I assume you have been ruined by the authority you hold as a manager.  Everything you say must be tinged with this negative influence .

You say, “in the long run an egalitarian marriage would be better for both me and baby.” I strongly urge you to forego marriage as long as you hold this deadening and selfish view. Marriage is a bond of love between a man and a woman, not a scale on which each is weighed.

The lives of British aristocratic women revolved around home and social affairs. Some were remarkably detached from their children, but most were a constant presence in the home and they directly supervised nannies and governesses. They were not tied to the inflexible routine of paid work and their role in life was not subject to commercial values. This is key. Once a woman’s traditional worth is submitted to commercial values, she can no longer defend the indefinable, non-remunerative things she offers to husband, children and community.

While boys were sent to boarding schools or trained as knights, girls were not. Again, wives and mothers spent much of their time maintaining the social networks in which the familiy flourished and they formed connections that would ultimately lead to suitable marriages for their offspring. Similarly Roman women had slaves to look after their children, but the role of women in the home was still central until the later years of the empire when aristocratic women became relatively uninterested in maternity. The subsequent drop in the birthrate (long before the pill)  is often listed as a cause of Rome’s decline.

Most middle class American women do not have nannies and governesses, but impersonal day care centers or home workers who come and go. Unlike British nannies who were acculturated to a certain maternal pride in their charges, many of today’s nannies are not interested in training and guiding children, and are little more than playmates and guards. Even if you are able to afford the best, you are supporting a model that leaves little hope for those who can’t. Childrearing involves more than “warmth and parental contact.” I stated this before, but I think you have no idea what I mean. It’s interesting that you are so confident about what marriage and childrearing entail when you have experienced neither from the inside. Your admiration for the egalitarian marriage overlooks maternal desire and love and even the slightest conception of masculinity. It denies that there are significant differences between men and women and that we all have duties and obligations to future generations, including the duty to produce and rear adequate numbers of people.

James P. writes:

“I also don’t think it is ideal for either mother or baby to be wholly dependent on the father for support. Such an arrangement gives the father too much power, and we all know that power corrupts.”

So we are to believe that an ancient and proven division of labor is somehow corrupt and bad for all concerned? Color me skeptical.

I know a number of men who are the sole provider for the household. Not a single one of them is lording it over his wife like an Old Testament patriarch, and certainly they don’t feel “too powerful” at home. Indeed, they don’t have power anywhere, because as the sole provider they have to bust their asses at the office and cannot cavalierly switch jobs or quit if their current position is unsatisfactory. They have all the power of an ox plodding in circles in a mill, yaaay! Frankly their wives don’t look all beaten down and subjugated to me, either. They look like women who are happily raising their children! I know a number of women who work who wish they could be SAHMs but the family can’t get by just on the father’s salary.

There is no evidence whatsoever that it is “bad” for the baby to have a mother at home and a father at work. Contentions to this effect usually emanate from working moms with guilty consciences. They have reason to feel guilty, because there is abundant evidence that having two parents who work is problematic for children. Most mothers who go back to work at 12 weeks think it is really, really hard to do so, and rather than smugly congratulating themselves on their “egalitarian marriage”, they rightly have serious doubts about the wisdom of their decision (and it is all about them, not about what’s good for the baby).

Since we’re on the subject of power corrupting, I am sure Maggie Fox is against the corrupting amount of power that current divorce and custody laws give to women. The vast majority of divorces are initiated by women, and this is not unrelated to the fact that in the vast majority of cases, the woman gets custody of the kids, gets the house, and takes the man to the cleaners financially. The system we have is clearly unjust, is clearly corrupting women, is clearly responsible for the high divorce rate, and will clearly, over the long term, deter men from getting married at all.

Laura writes:

I remember seeing my father, who supported seven children, kneeling by his bed at night in prayer. He did not look powerful but in submission. He also looked tired. I know he viewed the sacrifice as part of his very being. He was extremely powerful, but it was the power that comes from responsibility and the burden of control over others.

Karen I. writes:

Maggie writes “as I consider the possibility of becoming a parent myself…”. She is not a mother yet, but she already states she thinks she could make the “trade off” of going back to work when her infant is 12 weeks old. She does not know if she can conceive, if the pregnancy will be difficult or if the child will have special needs that require her to be home. She does not know if she will just take one look at her new baby and change her mind about going back to work on the spot. Many have, including me. She does not make it clear if there is a man in the picture to father the child she is considering. She just knows she would be willing to separate from the baby at 12 weeks. I find it interesting that is the one of the few things of which she is certain. 

I really dislike the use of the term “trade off” in the context of discussing a mother leaving an infant in care to return to work. How is that a trade off? The mother gets to put on a nice outfit and return to the adult world for compensation while the baby languishes in a less than ideal situation, missing it’s mother. Using “trade off” to describe the situation makes it seem as though mother and baby sat down and reached some sort of compromise.[Laura writes: Ha!] It sugar-coats the reality. There seems to be a number of terms used by working mothers to detach themselves from the reality of what they are doing. Terms like “separation anxiety” and the “balancing act” come to mind. Doesn’t “my child has separation anxiety” sound so much better than “I just left a baby screaming for me in daycare”? Doesn’t “balancing act” sound so much nicer than “shortchanging my family every day”? 

I think it is mothers who choose to work who use this lingo. Those who have to have a far different way to describe it. One told me recently that “it sucks.” That is something we can all understand and my heart goes out to mothers in that situation.

Lydia Sherman writes:

As far as I can see, the supermarket or flushing toilets did not wait for industrialization or feminism to come into being.

The supermarket has its roots in the historical market place, when vendors came together to attract shoppers. Paintings of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries all reveal an enthusiasm for marketing. The flushing toilet, an improvement on the water closet, first patented in 1775, was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper, who lived from 1836-1910. The original water closet, which flushed waste, was actually invented in the 16th century for Queen Elizabeth 1.

One of the greatest myths going around among moderns is the idea that without industrialization or feminism, we would be without sanitation or education or shopping centers. These things have always existed in one form or another, and without industrialization or feminism, people would invent the things they needed. There is some good evidence that running water systems existed in the ancient castles of Germany, dating back to the 1400’s.

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