Women's Work
After my last bragging post, I've been thinking about the issue of changing the world a lot with courage.
I'd like to point out that Rosa Parks, having prepared herself and being a part of a community seeking to change the law, took advantage of a quotidian moment to resist a blatant and pervasive injustice in such a way that the sympathy of all the world was swung to her cause. She was prepared, and she had friends.
But more relevant than that, I have to say women's work is not respected in this society. For millenia, women themselves were disrespected as part and parcel of the disrespect for women's work. In this country at this time, forty years into the current wave of feminism, we have the possibility for women to be respected but only as long as they don't perform women's work.
And yet, as it has been for millenia, women's work is in fact important, and worth doing. Leaving aside, as I must, the most miraculous bearing of children, I say that the careful rearing of children and of tending to the hearth is the core of our civilization. And yet the women's movement continually is forced by the patriarchal structures to accept a dilemma between careers and children. It takes time to notice that this choice is only a choice for women alone if one accepts sexism. When we assume that the care of children is of importance to all persons, and persons of all genders, then many of the dilemmas of the mommy track and the mommy wars are seen as false dilemmas, merely examples of sexism in its current phase. I've lost track of how many NPR call in shows I've heard where people talk about the trade offs between having kids first and then having careers or establishing a career first, then pausing a bit, and having kids, and then trying to resume their careers. It is rare to hear a call for fathers to demand more flexibility and time from their workplaces. I know that not everyone even has that choice, but even in my very well educated, rich and powerful neighborhood, it's not common to hear child-care treated as the joint and mutual responsibility of the responsible adults. On the radio, I haven't heard people pointing out that when men lawyers demand time off for their kids, the women will have an easier time making partner (or whatever the specific translation is). And this is true despite the rise of stay at home dads as a conscious subgroup of parents, and despite the fathers around me being vastly more active and involved than I recall from my suburban youth in the 70s.
So those of us laboring in the trenches of diapers, tantrums, the teaching and learning of language, of negotiation, of the world's causes and effects, and of the utility of calmness and kindness, are in an unusual situation. Things are undoubtedly changing. Every one certainly gives lip service to the importance of kids. But at the time, we are raising kids and are not respected as workers. People say, "oh, that must be nice" and then five minutes later "what do you do with all your time?" People constantly say of a person spending their time and attention on child-rearing ("child-care" as the phrase goes) that they are not working. Fie on that.
So, after congratulating myself for being a man and rearing these fascinating but unruly kids up, I realized that I need to beg congratulations for all my fellow workers in the fields, playgrounds, and grocery stores. Anyone who is working hard to raise kids well is stating the importance of women's work; and as that work is valued more, the genders will become more equal in the wider world of paid work, and our society will become more peaceful and more able to care for all life.
Change a diaper and change the world. It'll be particularly useful for men as a group to embody this truth, but everyone currently rearing children is shaping a better future for our entire society, and they benefit from societal recognition of the utmost importance of their labor.
Thanks everyone, for populating my future and my children's future with kind and intelligent people instead of dumb mean people.