The popular media love to talk about “cat fights” but the fact is, most women respect and accept one another’s differences.
Some things never get old, they just get recycled, recast with a new vocabulary and fresh imagery. So it is with the latest installment of the often-proclaimed “war between women,” which seems to take place primarily in the media, social as well as legacy. Specifically, the alleged war is between women who work and women who choose to stay home, with both disrespecting the other side.
I’ve been in the workforce since 1968, and over the years I’ve talked with thousands of women. Much of that time has been spent interviewing and writing about women, and, since 1990, delivering women’s leadership programs around the world. This has given me the opportunity to listen to countless stories from women who work. Many of them made the choice to stay home when their children were young, if they could afford it. Others preferred not to, or did not have a choice because family finances did not permit it.
I’ve also known and interviewed many women who continued to stay at home as their kids grew older, or after they left home for college or careers. Some of these women simply fell in love with the timeless rhythms of domestic life. Others preferred full-time volunteering, being a resource for their neighbors, or caring for extended family.
Yet I have rarely, over these many decades, heard women dis those who made different choices. They may at times be defensive: “I wish I’d had the luxury of staying home!” Or, “We sacrificed money but I think our kids are happier.” But this kind of self-justification hardly constitutes a war.
I am making this obvious point because we now find ourselves in yet another media storm about the unbridgeable divide and simmering resentment between women who work and women who don’t. The fact that the line between them has been hopelessly blurred by so much paid work now being from home hasn’t put brakes on the story.
What’s new is the language: we now have the “trad wife” instead of the “total woman.” The imagery too is different: beautifully made-up Instagram moms in short dresses baking labor-intensive birthday cakes for their kids instead of earnest women in conservative skirts sharing tips on how to please their husband and make him feel like a man. Even if it requires wearing Saran Wrap to greet him at the door when he arrives home from work. (Yes, that was a thing. Look it up.)
What’s old is the media insistence that stay-at-home mothers are part of a major trend that may cause working women to question their choices and will inevitably supplant an outmoded and dreary feminist project. And that this vanguard of stay-at-home women resent working mothers, who in turn resent them.
The truth is far simpler and less conflicted. Different women are making different choices at different times in their lives. This is fundamentally what the women’s movement has been about from its inception: women having the power to choose their own path through life, and to change it when it no longer reflects what they aspire to contribute to the world, or believe is best for them and those they love.
It’s hard to remember how revolutionary this concept was back in the day. But it was. It seems shocking that in my lifetime, women in the United States couldn’t own property or have their own bank accounts.
Now that those barriers have fallen, the goals of feminism have been redefined. It was never about a one-size fits all model for women, but rather about having the power to choose. Despite the exceptions that the media tirelessly highlight, the vast majority women support each other’s different choices and realities.
Female solidarity may run counter to the media’s preferred narrative, but it just happens to be the norm.
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