Full Frontal Feminism_ A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters - Jessica Valenti [40]
A 2006 report says that 71.8% of yale women (who supposedly wanted to opt-out?) would take less than one year off work after their children are born.
You have to admit she has a point. But don’t get your panties in a bunch; Hirshman is being deliberately controversial in order to get the conversation started. Because I have to agree that once we start talking about how wonderful it is that smart gals with PhDs are cleaning up poopie all day, something is a little off.
To Kid or Not to Kid
So let’s say you want to go the mommy route. Considering all the social and political forces telling you that all women are good for is popping out babies, you would think that those same forces would make taking care of those kids easier. Guess again. Not only is the United States one of only two industrialized nations that doesn’t provide paid leave for new parents, Americans are sometimes paying up to 50 percent of their salary for childcare.20 That is some ridiculous shit.
According to childcare advocacy project The Family Initiative, 63 percent of all kids under six years old in the United States receive some kind of childcare or education from someone other than their parent.21 The group did a study on the average yearly cost to provide a one-year-old with childcare: It ranged from more than $12,000 in Boston to more than $3,000 in Knoxville. That’s a lot of money for anyone, but for families and parents who are lower income, that’s an incredible burden. The study also found that 60 percent of low-income families (who earn less than $1,200 a month) pay out 37 percent of their income toward childcare. 22 Nuts.
The kicker? The same politicians who are voting against legislation to ease childcare costs for poor parents are scamming money for their own kids! A Washington Post editorial pointed out that some members of Congress are using campaign funds to pay for their childcare. Republican Representative John T. Doolittle from California, for example, who received the lowest possible score from the Children’s Defense Fund for his votes on funding for childcare, Head Start, and after-school programs, had his campaign reelection committee and his leadership political action committee pay more than $5,000 in childcare costs for his daughter.23 And you can bet he’s not the only one.
All I’m saying is that for a government that seems to want us to have babies, they’re sure unhelpful once the kids are outside the uterus. Where are our government-funded preschools? Other countries have them. Shit, if they want us to be moms so badly, the least they could do is give us a little incentive.
So seriously, when we think about issues like reproductive rights, we should be thinking childcare, too! It’s easy to get caught up in fights like violence against women and repro rights because they’re so in your face. But something like childcare has a huge and lasting effect on women’s lives; it’s just not as evident.
I’m all for having babies, but just keep this in mind: Research shows that for every year a woman in her twenties waits to have children, her lifetime earnings increase by 10 percent. Just saying.
Money
FEMINIZATION OF POVERTY
It’s pretty messed up, but women are more likely to be poor in a trend some feminists call the “feminization of poverty.” Basically, this means women are more likely to have jobs that pay less, like in the service industry (think waitress, teacher, secretary). The question a lot of feminists ask is: Are these jobs low-paying because they’re jobs associated with women? Like, if droves of men wanted to be teachers, would teaching all of a sudden become a high-paying profession? Just something to think about.
IN THE POOR HOUSE? GET A MAN.
This seeming obsession with women being happy little wifeys goes beyond the media and pop culture. It’s actually keeping women poor. The powers that be would actually rather that women were poor than unmarried.