The New
Feminist
AgeNdA
Dfi nx Rvfr W, Wrk, d Fy
maDeleine m. Kunin
ChapteR 2
Bac to t Family, Aftr All
It may seem a retrograde step to suggest that eminists like me, who stroveto liberate ourselves rom the limited roles o wie and mother, have comeull circle to ocus, once again, on the amily. At the start o the eministrevolution, we did not dwell on the question o who would take care o the children. We assumed things would all into place. Child care centerswould spring up like fowers and workplaces would be magically trans-ormed to meet our needs. The catch phrase became “we can have it all.”Not everyone agreed. Critics like Phyllis Schlafy, leader o the conservativeEagle Forum, pronounced that i women would stay home and ulll their proper housewie role o serving their husbands, all would be right with theworld. Despite the nascent debate between stay-at-home moms and work-ing moms, not many women heeded Schlafy’s advice. The “daddy goes towork and mommy stays home” portrait o the American amily is as quaintas a Norman Rockwell
Saturday Evening Post
cover. Just 20 percent o young amilies t that model. Hal the workorce is comprised o women.The 1970s exodus o millions o American housewives rom their split-level ranch homes was blamed on the seductive powers o eminism, therevolution that destroyed the amily. Today, the culprit is no longer eminism;it is economics. Women are streaming into the workplace because their income is essential; 40 percent are either single working mothers or marriedmothers who earn as much as or more than their spouse.
1
Feminism canstill take some o the credit or blame. Without access to education, withouta cultural shit in the role o women in society, women today would not bequalied or these jobs.Feminism shares another responsibility or our present dilemma: oncewe got out o the house, unlike our European sisters, we ailed to makedemands o our government or paid amily leave laws, workplace fexibility,
BACk TO The FAMILY, AFTeR ALL
•
7
and quality child care. American eminist groups claim that child care was ontheir agenda rom the start. Others disagree.In
The Second Stage
, Betty Friedan tried to move eminists to ocus onissues that are most important to amilies, and the balance between work and amily was one o them. That message, recall some eminist leaders, didnot go over well. “People killed her,” remembers Ellen Galinsky, coounder o the Families and Work Institute, who says she, too, encountered scornwhen she raised the issue o child care at eminist conerences.Some eminists argued that the movement’s ocus needed to remainnarrow or it to succeed. Others simply thought the issue was boring. Says Janet Gornick, who has written widely on amily/work questions, “Childcare and amily leave was ho hum. I heard this said on a thousand occasions,that maternity leave was a middle-class issue, while they were ghting or reproductive reedom and to be ree o domestic violence.” The irony o this, she points out, is that the lack o child care is what stalled progress inthe ensuing years or poor women—especially those removed rom publicassistance—by preventing them rom being integrated into the labor market.Muriel Fox, a coounder o the National Organization or Women(NOW), disagrees that the movement deemphasized amily issues. “NOWwas a leading orce in Congress to get a child care bill passed,” says Fox,reerring to the comprehensive child care bill passed by Congress in 1971 andvetoed by President Richard Nixon. “Don’t listen to anyone who perpetuatesthe myth.”Indeed, NOW’s statement o purpose, which Fox calls “one o the greatdocuments o the twentieth century,” seems enlightened on this ront: “Wereject the current assumptions that a man must carry the sole burden o supporting himsel, his wie, and amily, and that a woman is automaticallyentitled to lielong support by a man upon her marriage. . . . We believethat a true partnership between the sexes demands a dierent concept o marriage, an equitable sharing o the responsibilities o home and childrenand o the economic burdens o their support. We believe that proper recog-nition should be given to the economic and social value o homemaking andchild-care.” A dierent perspective comes rom Eleanor Smeal, a ormer president o NOW, who today is head o the Feminist Majority. The eminist agenda has
Back to the Family After All - An Excerpt from The New Feminist Agenda
Feminists opened up thousands of doors in the 1960s and 1970s, but decades later, are U.S. women where they thought they'd be? The answer, it turns out, is a resounding no. Looking back over five decades…
(More)
1.2K
Reads
3
Readcasts
340
Embed Views
More From This User
Notes
Load more
