"Homeward Bound"

See: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=10659

I recently came across a truly appalling article entitled “Homeward Bound.” The woman who wrote this article is Linda Hirshman, a “feminist philosopher.” She undertook a study of upper-class married women to look at how feminism had impacted their lives. She looked at all of the brides who had announced their weddings in Sunday Styles over the course of three weekends in the mid-nineties. She tracked about 80% of them down and discovered that, of thse 80%, 90% had babies, 85% of those with babies were not working full time. A good half of the women she tracked down were not working at all, but caring for their children.* The women she interviewed, she notes, were happy. Yet despite their happiness and apparent fulfillment, Hirshman claims that what they were doing, that is, staying home with their children, “is bad for them, is certainly bad for society and is widely imitated.” Wow.

So let me break down Ms. Hirshman’s claims really quickly.
1. Feminism has failed because women are choosing to stay at home with their children.
2. Having a “good job” is a fundamental part of human flourishing.
3. The marker of a good job is how well it pays.

1. Hirshman’s conception of feminism may very well have failed. And there also may be a very good reason for this failure: it was wrong.**

2. “Here's the feminist moral analysis that choice avoided: The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government.” If “the family” means vacuuming, running the dishes and doing the laundry, then perhaps Hirshman is right. But raising children – especially lots of them – is anything but repetitious. The family is not only a necessary part of life, but the fundamental part of life. Without the family, public spheres like the market or the government would not even be able to function as they do. It is in the family that children learn the fundamentals of life and how to interact in society. It is their experience in the family that is one of the most important predictors of how successful they will be later in life. Further, activities like cooking and caring for children are valuable and enjoyable in their own right, not merely as means to another end. We do not just have children because we are obliged to keep society going; we have them because we want to share a life with them and experience the joy that only family can bring. Family life, far from being something separate from human flourishing, is actually the most basic element of human flourishing.

Hirshman also seems to think that it is only in a traditionally male career that women can wield “real social power.” Yet from time immemorial powerful men have been most influenced by women, usually their wives or their mothers. Women who raise their children are the most important influence on those children, and the values that they teach their children will shape them for life. It is a wonderful thing that today we have female voices in the business world and in the political world, but if gaining a greater voice in those spheres comes only at the expense of having an impact where it is actually most important, in the family, it isn’t worth it.

3. “The best way to treat work seriously is to find the money. Money is the marker of success in a market economy,” Hirshman claims. At first blush, her statement doesn’t seem entirely off-base. There is a lot of truth to it. Yet Hirshman goes on to blame women for choosing jobs that are more kind-hearted and less money-driven. “Yet somewhere along the way the women made decisions in the direction of less money. Part of the problem was idealism; idealism on the career trail usually leads to volunteer work, or indentured servitude in social-service jobs, which is nice but doesn't get you to money.” Since when did we start deriding people for choosing noble jobs that they personally find fulfilling? Since when did the amount of money one makes determine one’s value as a person? Hirshman’s argument is so twisted I hardly know where to begin to untangle it.

Hirshman seems to be arguing against tradition simply for the sake of overthrowing tradition. There seems to be an assumption, though Hirshman offers no evidence to back it up, that tradition is inherently bad. “But elite women aren't resisting tradition. None of the stay-at-home brides I interviewed saw the second shift as unjust; they agree that the household is women's work.” So, what is the problem here? Hirshman doesn’t consider that there may be a good basis for the tradition that women stay home and care for their children. After all, they have no choice but to intimately care for their children for the first nine months of the child’s life, and, after that, they should breastfeed their children.*** Children have distinct relationships with each of their parents and these relationships are not interchangeable. Children bond differently with their mothers than with their fathers. This is easy to see during pregnancy and breastfeeding, but remains true throughout the child’s life.

Some of Hirshman’s more choice pieces of advice include telling women not to clean the house, because even if their house is dirty, at least they won’t be cleaning it (as some one who prefers order to filth and even enjoys cleaning from time to time, I’m baffled) and “Have a baby. Just don’t have two.” I want at least six children and don’t really understand how not having children (that I want) so that I can work more would be good for my well-being and, assuming my future husband also wants a lot of children, for his. Or maybe Hirshman doesn’t want wives to consider their husbands’ well-being and wishes at all…because that would make for a GREAT relationship. Another great piece of advice is that women should “marry down,” or marry a man with far less money than they have. So that they can march off to work leaving their infant with a bottle of formula and a poor, starving artist of a father. Wow.

She also derides one woman for making apple pie with her children and another for taking her daughter to museums and dance lessons. These should, however, be commended. Taking the time to provide small children with productive activities and interacting with them, instead of leaving them to watch TV with a baby sitter, is actually incredibly beneficial for the children.

If Linda Hirshman had her way, women would be just like men – they would have the same jobs, make the same amount of money, etc. They would also live in filthy, unkempt houses, leave their children with babysitters instead of spending time with them, and generally be bad wives and mothers all around. Let’s hope that women retain their capacity for independent thought and follow what makes them happy, even if that means having 13 children, instead of taking Hirshman’s destructive advice.


*This statement, of course, is not entirely true. Being a mother is, of course, a LOT of work. My father once retorted to somebody who asked him, incredulously, if his mother really never worked in her life, “Like hell she didn’t work. She raised nine children! She worked harder than anyone else I’ve known.”

** See my last post on why (Hirshman’s type of) feminism is based on a mistaken idea of equality for explanation.

*** I don’t want to tackle the task of proving the merits of breastfeeding. Suffice it to say, there are incredible benefits, both physical and psychological, that a baby incurs from breastfeeding.