RantSome: A Personal Soapbox Site

First let me state that I grew up in the 70s. I've known the song I am Woman for almost as long as I can consciously remember. I recall the great bra burnings and the controversy over the courtesy title of Ms. I grew up completely entwined in the whole women's liberation movement, and I knew that we'd come a long way, baby.

And as it happens, I am saved (now, anyway) from the particular injustice I'm about to write about. You see, while I do choose to stay home specifically to care for my family, I own my own business and work from home, so that makes me okay. I'm an internet technologist (woohoo) and web professional (double woohoo). I'm not just one of those icky "stay at home" women who don't seem to understand that they, too, could be a rat in the rat race, if they'd only set their mind to it.

To be perfectly honest, if I wasn't a web designer or some other work-at-home professional, I still wouldn't go out and get a job. I believe with my whole heart that raising children into decent human beings is vitally important, not only to the child, but to society at large (which is not to say I'm knocking working parents; this is my personal take on it, that's all).

Readers might be surprised at the amount of disrespect the job of raising one's own children gets. Tell someone you're a professional nanny and that's probably okay, but tell them you care for your own children and don't leave home every day to work in some office somewhere and suddenly you're mentally feeble, socially inferior, and some sort of reactionary throwback to the bad old days when women weren't allowed out of the house even if they wanted to go out and get a job.

Well, you know what? "Liberation" means "freedom". It means that women should have a choice, a real choice, as to what they want to do with their own lives. If a woman wants to work, she shouldn't be prevented from doing that by society or her friends or her husband. If she wants to stay home with her children, the same thing ought to apply. It's all about choice, about deciding what to do with your own life.

I remember all too well the 70s SuperWoman™, who could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you're a man. What a complete load of utter crap. No one could pay me enough to run myself ragged trying to be Ms. Businesswoman all day, Ms. Homemaker all evening, and Ms. Sexpot all night. Not only is it an unrealistic goal, it'll drive you crazy pretty quickly if you try it. Pressuring women who choose not to try to balance family with career into doing both for the sake of some weird idea that if you're "liberated" you'll want to stress yourself to death is just narrow-minded and idealized.

Lest you think I have a problem with career women, nope. I don't. I don't have a problem with working women who have children. I don't have a problem with hiring quality child care services if you want and/or need them (face it, not all women have the choice of not working).

What I have a problem with is that small and vocal minority of people out there who will immediately assume that a stay-at-home mother is some sort of ignorant, repressed, uneducated, or unliberated woman who just can't hack it in the real world.

Liberation is about freedom. Radical feminists like to rant on about freedom to choose and so on, and then when a woman chooses something they don't personally agree with or which they wouldn't choose for themselves, suddenly she's an object of scorn.

Hah. I have come a long way, baby. I've come far enough to know that I don't have to work outside my home in order to be free. In fact, I don't have to do anything just because of other people's expectations.

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Women and Expectations