Maggie's Farm

Not quite sure what your point (or that of the linked article) is on falling wages being attributable to the entry of women into the workplace?

Are you arguing, as many have done, that when women enter a profession or occupation, its status diminishes, and those in it get paid less, etc? This is the conventional argument for the low status of physicians in the former USSR, where their profession's luster diminished as a higher percentage of women joined it. Of course, the political use made of medicine by the Soviets just MIGHT possibly have had something to do with this, but easier to blame the women.

Or what? My observation is that women are often more desperate, and are more willing to take jobs that are “beneath” them. Since they are usually looking after kids who must eat, mom will go out to work for whatever she can get if husband is out of work or there is no man in the picture.

Fewer women than men derive their chief personal identity from their paid work. Except for the intense educational and young professional years, when women can work as hard as any man, most women gradually accrete a variety of other roles and responsibilities as they get older that somewhat limit their willingness and ability to put paid employment first.

Most women, except a tiny percentage of the female workforce who are in the professions and who either don’t have children or pay others to raise them, find that the care of children is immeasurably more pleasurable and a greater opportunity to serve others than they can find in any paid employment.

Paid work is over-rated as a source of anything except the money for the bare necessities of life. As this blog reminded us this week, we get paid to do work that others do not want to do, but need doing. By contrast, childrearing is the most rewarding of all vocations, and most of us who have spent any time at home have found it our happiest and most meaningful work ever. Also, women across cultures generally have responsibility for the care and/or supervision of elderly relatives. Many women work at lower level jobs because more demanding work could not be combined with caregiving.

Just one link, interesting, on the status of Russian immigrant women in Israel. A hardy, admirable bunch, not a bunch of bleached blonde American suburbanites whining at all! http://pcerii.metropolis.net/ViennaConference/remennick.pdf

Not every man in the country is a cool Maggie's Farm editor or a footloose and fancy free single. When I was a freshman in college, my dad was fired from his job as #2 guy at a huge multinational, because he had had surgery and a long recuperation. He went on to found his own business with branches in 12 different countries, but he was one of the lucky ones.

Many married American daddies lost decent jobs in the last twenty years, and even if some of them have settled for Home Depot or Walmart or some other low paying hourly wage part time job with no benefits after exhausting their savings trying to be a "consultant", you can't raise a family on it. The only silver lining in this is that many of the daddies in this generation who have been brought lower professionally, have been able to spend more time with their kids, and can claim a considerable portion of the credit for the accomplishments of this rising generation of Baby Boomers’ brats.

As far as women bringing wages down, it is almost always easier for women to get low level clerical jobs, sometimes with benefits, than for men. Nobody feels uncomfortable hiring a mother with graduate degrees to do data entry and to file, but to hire an equally over-qualified male makes supervisors queasy ("there but for the grace of God go I!"), makes them fear for their own job. Historically, Americans have preferred to blame victims of unemployment for having bad characters or being losers than to face the real possibility that they themselves could be out of work tomorrow if their employer outsourced or moved or reorganized. They know they can count on the mommy, who will work for 20 cents on the dollar, grateful to pay for Junior's doctor bills and feed the family.

I would say that most of the female entry into the workforce in the last twenty years has been from the ranks of women who would in the past have been traditional, frugal devoted full time mothers and homemakers but who have to keep the family afloat financially as American corporations have slashed the ranks of over 40 year old middle managers who are men. Not every American male is an entrepreneur, or able to retread themself. I admire those who do, but know many admirable middle aged men who retreat to their basement and read Marcus Aurelius and attempt to be good daddies despite feeling useless economically.

Most of the women I know, like myself,renounced their professions to be full time mothers. Gladly looking after beloved children 24/7. We did not have our hair highlighted, go on fancy vacations, hire nannies or maids or gardeners, or live extravagantly. When the economy chewed up and spit out our middle aged husbands, we found that we couldn't go back to our old professions, so we took mommy jobs to support the family. Grownups do what is necessary.

We have tried to sympathize with ever more isolated and depressed non-productive spouses whose role seems more and more like that of African males sitting in the door of the hut drinking beer with their friends while wife and kiddies hoe the fields, and grind the grain... The only difference is that at least the African guys have buddies and some comfort. American unemployed males aren’t counted in the unemployment statistics once their benefits run out, and they cease to exist. Most skulk at home. Their women are not as bitchy as we seem on the surface. We are anxious and afraid for the future, but we know that the fragile male ego must be protected, and we sympathize with the loss of their whole role and social existence with no work to go to...

Most people who have spent a lot of time around kids realize that they, and not material success, are what matters. So we work for less than we are worth but our kids do better than those more ruthless types who better maneuvered the pyramid of American corporate and financial life.

I was at an awards ceremony at our local high school recently (one of the few that wasn't for sports or politically correct nonsense, but actually for academics) and observed that virtually all the parents, were there in the middle of the day, somewhat shabbily dressed relative to others in our community, but all still married to their first spouse (not typical), most (I have seen them over the last 18 years as our kids grow up) having survived horrendous downward mobility careers wise, and all having produced wonderful, smart, creative kids. Who blow the doors off the rich private school kids in our community (most of whom were raised by the help and grossly neglected by their parents)

As I repeat boringly, life isn't fair, and life in America has always been ruthless. Spectacular downward as well as upward mobility. But one discovers there are many benefits to joining the nouveau poor, and even to working for a low wage. And they are not those (at least for the women) of indolence and sloth. They are time for family, church, community, and the yeoman pleasures of walking one’s dog, taking care of one;s own garden, cooking, and looking after the frail elderly lady up the street.

I hope you do not dismiss this as bitter or whiney. I am a cranky New Englander, and far too opinionated and irascible. But if you met my kids, you would forgive my obnoxious comments! A great improvement on their parents….So, yes, I have little ambition to make money, and perhaps I contribute to falling wages? I am certainly not much of a consumer, except for my beloved Ford truck.

Buddy, you are too kind to an overly opinionated and verbose old mommy! If I could ever write anything worth publishing, I'd send you a copy.

Everyone in our family writes, but we are realistic about the lack of a market for what we have to say. So we only write friends and each other.. The kids write amazing fiction and poetry, which you will eventually see in print, i imagine.

I would love someday to write about the lifestories of real people i have encountered. real heroes and villains and characters interest me more than ones I make up. NB: Sophocles on wonders are many, but none so wondrous as man.

Like the elephant's child. I am most 'satiably curious about what does the crocodile have for dinner?
...
For fun i read psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, history and natural history. like to browse biology textbooks and poetry. i like some fiction [mark helprin is cool also walker percy], but reality fascinates me. especially the stories people tell about themselves, tall or otherwise...

Laurence, you might like this book "Return to Sodom and Gomorrah" by Charles Pellegrino. http://www.amazon.com/Return-Sodom-Gomorrah-Charles-Pellegrino/dp/0380726335/ref=sr_1_7/002-4253869-2280044?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180132051&sr=8-7

BL, home exhausted feeling more like a jack of all trades and master of none...Just finished an exhausting week at work, then led the Friday afternoon Bible study for the teen girls. We were discussing the rich young ruler today, and lolling on the grass in the park with our humonguous floppy thick NIVs w gazillions of footnotes. You can always tell an evangelical by their floppy and well thumbed bible that opens to their favorite passages....

Hope for the future to hear the girls reading several verses apiece then passing them on to the next and discussing with animation and relating it to their lives. My daughter gave a parody of the typical fat cat minister's sermon reassuring the rich on this passage and the girls hooted with laughter and heckled her. We talked about how Jesus loved the young man. We speculated about what happened to him after the story ends, and to other people in the NT whom Jesus briefly encounters. We discussed the ways in which Christian groups are often competitive and show off with things other than money (ie" religious devotion, holy relics, spiritual disciplines, scholarship, church property). We discussed how our stuff defines us, and ways that certain things get in the way of our seeing things. We joked about giving up Ipods to "hear the world around us....hear people talking to us...hear bird song..." They related his questions to myths of the hero and literary images of the quest, and various traditions of teacher and student...

One talked about wanting to join the Peace Corps, another wants to join the services, another wants to be a schoolteacher, others undecided.

50 feet away, a pack of teens the same age lolled on a bench and next to it, smoking, swearing loudly, and swaggering at each other. Around us, the nannies walked their charges. One kid's mother phoned on her cell to see where she was "I told you, mom, I'm at Bible study. No, we're still talking. She'll drive me home in a bit..." I am most definitely not a trendy mom. THink they just wanted me because I am friendly and plump and non-threatening and very enthusiastic about the BIble.

Home now, and completely repelled by the collection of the latest things on autism I got out of the library this week. Rereading a good book by David Malan on "Individual psychotherapy and the science of psychodynamics" (great patient vignettes).

Time to go plant four rather mangy looking rhodendrons a coworker gave up to me for adoption "I thought you would give them a good home". It is 96 degrees and the root balls are tiny, and I don't have much hope for them, but will try. Lost causes are this family's specialty!

I agree, LS, that What are you reading feature would be cool.

Time to make supper.

Nice quotes, BL! Thanks. I rather like one by Horace (for these years of teenager care and feeding): "Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant." Or Billy Graham's "Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has."
Then there is always this (on nights when dinner is lentil stew and home made bread) "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."


Lots of laughter tonight over the aggressive ginger kitten mugging the aging retriever for his new green breath freshening dog chews. She sidles up, smacks his mouth, he drops it in surprise, she runs away with huge bone, starts to gnaw on it, he follows looking aggrieved, eventually snatches it back, and the whole cycle begins all over again. Not a growl to be heard (they are very fond of each other) but there must be something very yummy in that bone....

Trying to get the last kid to bed or he will stay up half the night playing computer games until his eyeballs feel like pickled onions.

Tomorrow will be digging four hundred dollar holes for those four orphan rhododendrons. Kind of like adopting a crack baby, one pities but has little hopes that they will ever recover...then planting out the few remaining vegetables: celery, savoy cabbage (I know, late, but couldn't find it til now) and some rosette white impatiens and more basil, you can never have enough basil.