School doesn’t prepare girls for the power they already have
Women went to work outside the home to create a more equitable society. But the more equitable a society is the more clearly women want labor divided by gender. Where are we today?
In a study in 2022 women in a very selective college assumed that when they marry they will be responsible for the children and household chores. They expect their spouses to “help with chores”, but not have large responsibility.
But we still put girls through systems that assume men and women will have similar careers. We don’t tell girls they are most likely won’t want to work outside the home.
Our schools are built for a less equitable society than we have now. When men worked in factories and women had no money of their own, it made sense to educate girls so they could grow up and get money of their own. But we have an equitable society today where women have the right to half the family’s money no matter who earned it. Women have decision making power regardless of whether they work outside the home. We don’t have perfect equity, but it’s vastly different than we had when the schools were established, so it makes sense that the structure of our schooling is no longer helpful to women.
We need to start talking realistically to women about the real data. And real feelings women have about personal fulfillment in equitable societies. The way we talk with girls today is as invalidating as the way we talked with them in 1950: we disregard their hopes and dreams and what we know about what women have been telling us they want for the last 30 years.
Here are posts I’ve written that have the data. But I want to tell you: the data about what women want today is not what’s holding us back. It’s been there, consistently for decades. What’s holding us back is cognitive dissonance. We’re scared to tell girls they will probably grow up and take care of children and that’s a great choice for smart, educated people to make.
What if girls aren’t oppressed
The crazy lengths companies will go to hire and retain high level women
Gender fluidity and autism open the gates of power for women
It feels scary and wrong to say this. I have part time jobs. I broke up with my eldest child’s Dad when she was two. Others are good at making their home anywhere. I found it hard and I think I was low on B12/ depressed possibly. I didn’t know anyone in the UK.He went to work and soccer matches at the weekends. I had some savings in Ireland so was glad I had it to come back to. It bothers me that I’m worse than the average woman.I feel other moms are more capable and practical. I find it hard to know where to start. My daughter wants a career not jobs like I have.
I am currently making the choice to be a stay at home mom to my 3.5 year old daughter. I have a BA from a liberal arts college and then had an unsexy but secure and fairly rewarding civil service job. Being a stay at home mom is deeply rewarding at times but also very difficult, isolating, boring, monotonous, etc. some days it takes all my willpower not to yell at my daughter. My husband comes home and I have nothing interesting to talk about and I feel too depleted to really do much at night after she goes to bed besides browse the internet and watch TV. I feel like it’s very easy for you to push being a stay at home parent on other women Penelope because you’ve always been working while you’ve been with your kids. To actually fully devote your life to your kid(s) and running the “household” makes for a rather small life at times for me (and for my mom friends, none of whom had big careers or even particularly good jobs before kids but still share the feeling of isolation and boredom).
From the department of grass is always greener: I always think about how if I were married to someone who made money, whenever my kids didn’t need me I would just read the Internet.
From the department of everyone who reads this blog has autism: Isolation and boredom is something autistic women feel in adult life when they’re not part of a knowledge-sharing project. The isolation and boredom of family life is not a thing neurotypical women feel because friends and family is not isolating to neurotypical women. And isolation = boredom. They are not really separate. You can have boredom without isolation, but you can’t have isolation without boredom. Isolation without boredom is peace and quiet.
Penelope
Non-autistic women can absolutely feel bored by family life!
The way most of us live now is inherently isolating. We live farther from our families and hardly anyone has casual friendships anymore because we’ve all been tricked by the internet and frictionless consumerism into thinking that we don’t need other people. This leads to burnout in the areas of life we never get a break from (kids, domestic tasks) and starvation in the areas of life that get neglected once we have kids (our creative and intellectual fulfillment, our desire for feedback on a job well done / our need to feel we’re contributing something important to society).
Even if you have a balanced life—friends, hobbies to get you out of the house sometimes, a grandma to leave the kids with one morning a week—I don’t think you have to be autistic to crave a more complex role. Not all ambitious or creative or introverted women are on the spectrum, after all (even if many women on the spectrum do possess those qualities). To act as if all non-autistic women are effortlessly pleased with SAHM life dismisses the more interesting, relevant facts that 1) you don’t have to be autistic to find modern motherhood lonely and draining, and 2) you don’t have to be autistic to crave an additional source of meaning / fulfillment.
(PS I adore your blog!)
To add: That being said, I am hoping my husband will agree to baby #2 and should I be lucky enough to have a second child I plan to do it all over again. I wouldn’t do it differently and I feel lucky that we have made it work, but I think people should be more honest about how difficult and lonely the role of stay at home mom can be. My life does not look like home baked cookies, Pinterest crafts , a tidy home and a home cooked meal for dinner but more like praying for my daughter to leave me alone while I poop, mom bun and yoga pants every day, guessing what foods she suddenly won’t eat today, cleaning up the same stuff over and over. Groundhog Day: sahm edition
So what should I say to my daughter, who is possibly Autistic? She has a job but talks about only having it because it’s social convention. It’s her Uncle’s business so she has leeway if she needs time off for training. Yet I see she won’t go on her phone or leave things for other to do. The rest will when it’s quite and walk out when their time is up. I think it’s good for her to experience it.
This post isn’t actually addressing that situation. In your daughter’s case, I am sure she’s autistic because you are. You can get her help to understand herself by showing her that you’re doing it. The best thing she can do to transition to the next stage of life is have someone destigmatize autism for her and guide her toward self-discovery. You have written about so many problems that could have been avoided if someone had done that for you when you were her age.
Penelope
Thank you. I’m probably only seeing what I want to see in this post. I’m a cautionary tale for her.
Supposedly the ideal environment for raising children is in small, multi generational groups. Most of us don’t have that now or if we do have help we have to organise it etc. It can be overwhelming for neurotypical people too. I admire your planning.
That is so true that the idea environment is multigenerational. We have completely undermined ourselves by relocating for jobs that don’t bring us more happiness than living near family would bring us. Also we decide our family is too messed up and then deny our kids the chance to form their own relationships, which of course could be different than ours.
I think Gen Z will mock international travel and multi-state living. Once we forge an identity beyond running away from where we grew up, we will be back to multi-generational living. There’s a great article in the Atlantic this month about what we lose when we lose cousins — which we have basically lose since cousins don’t live near each other any more.
Penelope
To the stay at home moms who are lonely and bored, I was in your shoes not long ago. It was really good for me to join organizations for mothers of young children like MOMS Club and MOPS, and I quickly transitioned into leadership positions, which was really healthy for me. I relished monthly board meetings and sending out newsletters and calendars, partly because it gave mothers who had just moved to my area a ready-made community, but also to work with other people to build something good, outside of the work my husband I were doing for our young family. Now I’m a homeschooling mother and teach piano and violin two afternoons a week. It still feels good to have a little (income & hours) job when it’s teaching something I’m passionate about. Childcare for toddlers is expensive and complicated, look for something volunteering that involves them, it will help you feel more like yourself and also help you build your community.
Just echoing what Elizabeth said about moms groups. It’s really important as we transition into being a mom to connect with other moms. We can’t make the transition with our old friends. We need to have people who are transitioning with us. It’s a very tiny window in our lives — take advantage of the time to do this.
I didn’t. I thought it was stupid. I thought everything was stupid. But really I thought what was hard was stupid.
Penelope