Feminine Mistake

May 9, 2007

It seems like every Mother’s Day, there’s a new book that preys on the mother lode of fear.
Last year it was Caitlin Flanagan’s “To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife.” In this book, she opines how sad it is that affluent women are too busy working to “care deeply and principally” about making their home a home.
I agree that a house can feel like a truck stop when both parents are working long hours, but Flanagan lost all credibility when she described in her book how she leaned in the doorway while she watched her nanny deal with her puking son. Oh wait—she did make funny faces from afar to cheer him up. It told me everything about her.
And let’s not forget Linda Hirshman’s Get to work, with her message that to find a job is the only way to find fulfillment. In fact, a woman owes it to society and all the other students she bumped out to get her slot in med school.
It’s no different with this year’s top buzz-getter, The Feminine Mistake. Leslie Bennetts warns stay-at-home moms that they might face financial ruin if they abandon the workplace. A husband’s career might go south, he might die, or the marriage might go bust.

FEAR NUGGETS
I often wonder why publishing companies so often drop these little fear nuggets into Mother’s Day season. They’re thought-provoking, but not really cheery. It’s no surprise they don’t sell very well. Who wants to give the gift of a guilt trip?
But as a mom who has worked and not worked (for a few short years), I have to
admit Feminine Mistake makes for an interesting read.
There are two sets of statistics, when put side by side, that should raise an alarm, said Bennetts.
First, more women are staying home with their children, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. About 5.6 million moms stayed home with their children in 2005, abut 1.2 million more than a decade earlier. There are troubling surveys that show the majority of Harvard Business School grads aren’t working full-time, and that more women are looking at the gender roles of the 1950s as an attractive lifestyle. Heels and a vacuum, anyone?
Contrast that to the reality of what really happens after marriage, Bennetts argues.
In January 2007, the New York Times reported that “for the first time, more
American women are living without a husband than with one.” The newspaper’s analysis showed that 51 percent of women are living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950.
She writes that the “new normal” has become women without partners. “But all too many are still acting as if the promise is more real than the reality.”

RISKY BUSINESS
Taking this reality to a local level, bankruptcy attorney Paul Bare said Bennetts’ advice applies just as much to men as to women. There’s a risk to one spouse staying home while the other works and earns significantly more money.
“The fact that your former spouse makes a lot more than you doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be a generous supporter if you get a divorce. People that come into my office, post divorce, very often don’t have spousal support that’s nearly enough to live on. You’ll get something, but only for two or three years.”
Most people use the spousal support (formerly called alimony) to retrain for a higher paying job, he said.
“That’s okay, but if you don’t find a profession pretty quickly you’re going to be hurting. Once that spousal support runs out, and you’re not finding a good job, it can be pretty tough. You also have people who are middle age, and this northwest Michigan area is notorious for age discrimination—one of the worst. I have client after client complaining about trying to get a job, and they can’t because of their gray hair.”
The most wrenching case: a parent who can’t work in her profession because she has to stay home to care for an autistic child or one with a serious disability.
“In these cases, you have no choice—you have an autistic child. One parent has to stay home, and it’s so darn stressful that marriages often do break up. And there’s nothing anyone can do about the fact.”

TO WORK OR NOT TO WORK
Most women I know don’t actually have any choice of whether to work or not. Their checkbook is empty as a pocket. Some work even two or three jobs.
When my first son was born 15 years ago, I heard new moms boasting that they had a choice to work like it was a status symbol. “Oh,” one of my old college buddies sniffed. “You have to work.” It used to bug me, but it doesn’t anymore. I like working.
As the years rolled by, I noticed that many women who opted for the stay-at-home track did so because their job sucked at the time or it paid horribly or it was intensely stressful. Some didn’t feel they were very good at work. One too many days with a snarky boss and to their infant’s welcoming arms they went.
The women in Bennetts’ book are almost universally remorseful that they didn’t work because they took such a financial beating post-divorce. But the Traverse area women I talked to don’t hold that black and white viewpoint, even though they struggled mightily to stay afloat while they re-invented themselves.
Jacquie Auch, 42, is one of them. She married an airline pilot in her mid-20s and moved to the Netherlands. She traveled, attended nice parties, and dabbled with her artwork. Four years later, her son, Julian, was born and he became her focus.
Auch said that at time, she had no real passion or career direction. She studied fine and applied arts in college, but lacked the confidence to promote her paintings.
She continued to paint, selling her pieces in school fundraisers, and she designed party invitations and brochures for free. Still—if she left herself think about it—she felt vulnerable, knowing it would be tough to jump back into the job market.

THE SPLIT
She split up from her husband three years ago with $200 in her pocket. Auch admits she was “terrified” during those early months. She pieced her life back together with the help of her parents and a lump-sum spousal support payment.
Lacking computer skills, she used the support money to earn an associate’s degree in visual arts at Northwestern Michigan College. Auch will finish her degree this month, and also an internship with Tandem Design, a graphic design agency. Once she finds a full-time job, she’ll finally be able to relax, she said.
Auch, who remarried this year, doesn’t regret the time she spent at home.
“I absolutely wouldn’t trade one minute of the time I spent with Julian—especially in light of the fact that I only have him half-time now.”
But she loves the respect and confidence she gets from working—something she never really realized that she missed.
That’s the consensus I get from women who go back to work. It’s as if they reawakened a part of their brain or skill set that they didn’t use at home. And their colleagues treat them differently than either their husband or children do.
“Good-bye,” I sometimes tell my kids. “I’m now going to work where people think I’m smart, believe what I say, and give me money for the work I do.”

A NEW LIFE
Feeling smart. That’s one of the biggest rewards a friend of mine feels after miraculously finding a job as a nurse in a doctor’s office after 20 years staying at home.
That and a sense of healing after her
split-up.
Until last fall, she was married to a wealthy professional and lived in a multi-million dollar home on Old Mission Peninsula.
She, too, doesn’t have a bit of remorse over her decision. She home-schooled her three children for many of those years, traveled to other countries to do missionary work (and kept up her license as a registered nurse), and volunteered as the mom everyone relied on at school for field trips, costumes, and snacks.
In retrospect, she wishes she would have worked one to two days a week throughout her marriage, but she’s grateful that she kept taking classes throughout her marriage to retain her nursing license—something she thought she’d never really need.
Deb Fragel, with three school-age children, said it’s been hard to work again and give up the time she used to have with her three daughters since her divorce. “I still want the same quality of time I had—being the room mom, brownie leader—it’s not easy to let go of. So I keep filling up my plate with even more.”

“UP TO MY EYEBALLS”
On the other side, there’s Traverse City stay-at-home mom Janet Fleshman, who formerly sold high-end typesetting equipment to publishers in three different states. When her daughter, Elizabeth, was born 13 years ago, she realized the job was too stressful to hold with kids.
“I had had it up to my eyeballs, running around three states, living on a quota. It was pretty high stress. One night, I was trying to write a proposal, the phone was ringing, the oven timer for dinner was going off, and (my husband) John is lying on the couch. It was just too physically demanding to travel, have a child, and bring work home. Two demanding jobs with a child just don’t mix.”
She and her husband, John Snodgrass, made a deal. They would live below their means—in a small house—and drive old cars, so they could bank a lot of money. Fleshman drove a Taurus for 13 years—her last company car that she bought for $9,000.
“We always lived low on the hog. Imagine the stress that’s not given us,” she said. “If I’d been working, I’d be pissing away money hand over fist on eating dinners out and trying to compensate for all the stress we’re suffering.”
But Fleshman doesn’t spend her spare time at the country club. She volunteers... a lot. She is now working to transition the Interlochen Pathfinder School into a new independent school. She’s flexing her old business muscles, writing up promotional materials, picking out mailing lists, and calling prospects.
“I was working in the office, calling up people to tell them about our new school, and one of the other parents turned around—‘Boy, you’re good at this!” she said.

BENEFITS OF WORK
Fleshman sent me an email after the interview with a few more comments: “I have to say that in spite of the path I am on, I do see the benefits of continuing to work. I have definitely lost considerable earning power, and I hope our family view of an economic partnership works for the long haul.
“One disturbing fact—it is impossible to get disability insurance for a housewife. We looked into it when I quit work. Also, I would not get Social Security disability benefits because my work credits are over 10 years old. People can say what they want about family values and all that hooey, but the fact is that our government does not value the worth of mothers in the home. It’s true that if I were not doing what I do, my family would spend a ton of money making up for it.”
Some people assume that just because a woman isn’t working for money, she’s not working. Untrue. Stay-at-home moms and retirees are the backbone behind any number of community causes.
As a mom of three kids, ages 3 to 15, I know too well that there is nothing worse than feeling lectured to, disrespected, inferior, or guilty.
But I do think that it’s important to give a heads-up to those moms who are new to the landscape. I’m glad the message of “don’t make your man your plan” is tempering the chorus of, “Stay at home and make life smooth for your family.”
It seems that most everyone can agree on this: keep your foot in the professional door in some way. It’s a wise thing to do for your brain, sense of self-worth, and down-the-road working years… even if you don’t really believe it now.