The Choice Myth

[The Straight Story]

The Choice Myth

Last week, The Washington Post ran a front-page story that said most stay-at-home moms aren’t S.U.V.-driving, daily yoga-doing, latte-drinking white, upper-middle-class women who choose to leave their high-powered careers to answer the call to motherhood. Instead, they are disproportionately low-income, non-college educated, young and Hispanic or foreign-born; in other words, they are women whose horizons are greatly limited and for whom the cost of child care, very often, makes work not a workable choice at all.

These findings, drawn from a new report by the Census Bureau, really ought to lead us to reframe our public conversations about who mothers are and why they do what they do. It should lead us away from all the moralistic bombast about mothers’ “choices” and “priorities.” It should get us thinking less about choice, in fact, and make us focus more on contingencies — the objective conditions that drive women’s lives. And they should propel us to think about the choices that we as a society must make to guarantee that the best possible opportunities are available for all families.

The basic finding of this latest report — that the more choices mothers have, the more likely they are to work — has been known, to anyone who’s taken the time to seriously look into the issue, for quite some time now. Ever since 2003, when Lisa Belkin’s article in The Times Magazine about highly privileged and ultra-high-achieving moms — “The Opt-Out Revolution” — was generalized by the news media to claim that mothers overall were choosing to leave the work force in droves, researchers have been revisiting the state of mothers’ employment and reaching very similar conclusions.

In 2005, the Motherhood Project at the Institute for American Values surveyed more than 2,000 women and published a report that said most mothers, given free choice in an ideal world, would choose to be employed — provided their employment didn’t impinge excessively on their time with their kids. Approximately two-thirds said they’d ideally work part-time or from home; only 16 percent said they’d prefer to work full-time. (Interestingly, the researchers said, it was the least-educated mothers who expressed the strongest preference for full-time work.)

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/the-opt-out-myth/

Choice - the one thing the fundies and far lw folks can agree on to be against. Cause choice leads to things that just don't fit with the lifestyle choices we think others should make (can't have folks sinning, might piss off god or the almighty dollar lovers).

[newtothegame]

1. Can we please leave race out of it? n/t

[vadawg]

2. you want to stay home and its manageable then do it, you want to work but dont need to then work

my wife made the decision to stay home with the kids and i dont think she has ever regretted doing so, but what are you advocating that if a women wants to work then there should be a job that meets her wants in regard to her children, or if she wants to stay home then the state should pick up the tab for the funds she loses by not working, im not sure exactly what is being advocated for here.

[ljm2002]

3. You say, "Choice - the one thing..."

"...the fundies and far lw folks can agree on to be against. Cause choice leads to things that just don't fit with the lifestyle choices we think others should make."

What on earth gave you that idea? I mean, really? I am sick to death of people ASSUMING that feminists / working women / liberals / leftists all think women need to work outside the home. NO. It is all about choices, for ALL of us. That includes men who would rather stay home, BTW. I am all for it. If that is what works for a family unit, then go for it! I would never presume to tell someone else that they SHOULD or SHOULD NOT work outside the home, nor do I look down on women who stay home with the kids. Wish I could have done so, but it was not possible for me.

This annoys me because I have had people assume that I held such an attitude, just because I was a working mom and I asked them what their wife did. Often it would be a defensive response, that I would have to say "Oh that's nice, I would have liked to do that!" -- that would usually break the tension. But dayum, why does everyone argue with shadows? Why not find out what people really think rather than projecting what you believe they must think, because that's the narrative that has somehow been embedded, even though for many of us it is SIMPLY NOT TRUE and never was.

[The Straight Story]

4. Ummmm

I was referring to things like being able to choose where you to take your body to eat/drink (or wearing seat belts, owning a gun in the home, etc).

How many people believe that adults cannot come together for a drink and a smoke because it is bad for them - and that no one has a choice where to work/drink/etc?

[ljm2002]

5. Leftists are against people choosing where they eat and drink?

News to me.

Seat belts -- well regardless of the laws of man, one thin is for sure: you can't repeal the laws of physics.

As to guns, there are plenty of leftists who support the right to bear arms. I am one of them. But I also support rules, and rules that cannot be easily circumvented through gun shows. If you are an absolutist on this issue, then I would have to presume you would be okay with your neighbors owning tanks, or flamethrowers, or nukes. Right?

[The Straight Story]

6. To Answer:

Leftists are against people choosing where they eat and drink?

-Yes. They don't want people to be able to go to bar/food joint that allows smoking. So they remove smoking under penalty of law.

Seat belts -- well regardless of the laws of man, one thin is for sure: you can't repeal the laws of physics
-*was not a question on your part but: If you want to endanger your own life in such ways, why should others stop you (especially given so many think we have too many people on earth anyway)?

As to guns, there are plenty of leftists who support the right to bear arms. I am one of them. But I also support rules, and rules that cannot be easily circumvented through gun shows. If you are an absolutist on this issue, then I would have to presume you would be okay with your neighbors owning tanks, or flamethrowers, or nukes. Right?

- I am with you actually, and support intelligent and non-emotional attempts by people to restrict the right to keep and bear arms.

And on the nukes thing - If we are going to extend the long arm of the law to keep people from owning them, does that also extend to other countries like Iran?

[ljm2002]

7. Okay not to prolong this too much...

...banning smoking in restaurants and bars is not actually the same thing as telling people where they can and cannot go to eat, drink and be merry. Still, I do see the arguments for allowing the proprietors to make their own choices on the matter, and letting patrons do likewise.

On seat belts, again, I do see the argument against making them mandatory by law. But on balance, I come down on the side of the seat belt laws. We have all sorts of things that make us less than 100% "free", whatever that means (leaving the philosophical discussion for another day :-) ); including for example mandatory automobile insurance.

Sounds like we're on the same page re: weapons. However, I think the Iran question is a non seqitur, since our laws on the right to keep and bear arms do not apply to other nations. But I will say this: our policies with respect to Iran owning nukes are hypocritical in the extreme, at the same time we fund and cover up for Israel's illegal nukes. Not to mention our own arsenal. I don't particularly want Iran to own nukes, but then I'd just as soon all nuclear arsenals were drawn down. Not sure how that happens though.