Zatera Ul

Someone else had about the same reaction to Linda Hirshman as I did:

A couple days ago I got an email from a reader named Sara (hi Sara!) who asked if I’d comment on what law professor Linda Hirshman recently said on “Good Morning America” about how it’s a mistake for educated women to stay at home with their kids. It’s not a new argument, and my first reaction is: she’s trying to sell something. I understand the basis of her argument, that by choosing to stay at home with our kids instead of using our education in a professional environment we are waving our middle fingers at the work feminists have been doing over the last century. But I don’t agree with it.

So I went and read some of her work online, and she’s always careful to point out that by claiming that we’re making a choice to stay at home we are only copping out, that somehow the choice to stay at home is invalid. Wow! As a mother I’ve never heard that before! My choices are wrong! She should write a book about how she knows which choice is the best one. Oh wait! SHE HAS!

My reaction then, I guess, is that here is my middle finger and here is me waving it at Linda Hirshman. This IS my choice. It is mine. I want to be at home with my child, not because my husband said I had to want it, or because my mom said that I had to want it, or because I am blinded by society’s bias toward women and their role in the family. I had the option of going to work outside the home or staying at home with my kid and I made a choice. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything more fundamentally feminist than exercising that choice.

More commentary here.

It’s pretty clear that Linda Hirshman hates babies and housework. Not all educated women do, though. I am, to put it modestly, one of the most highly educated women in the country, and vacuuming the house is going to be the highlight of my day today. I love having clean floors!

I recently bought Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, by Cheryl Mendelson. She makes a good case for why a good, clean, well-managed home is worth the effort. I had leafed through it before at the bookstore, and was turned off by too many occurences of the word “should”, but Cathy Seipp convinced me to buy it.