Stiles/Market: Meltdown

Another note in a series on Is the American Dream Killing You? by Paul Stiles.

The next chapter is really got up Your Humble Bloggers nose. It’s called “Meltdown”, and just give you a clue, Gentle Reader, it begins with side-by-side pictures of the Brady Bunch and the Osbournes. Yes, the American Family has melted down, and not only is The Market to blame, but the specific villain is ... market feminism! Hurrah! We have a winner!

Look, I understand that neither the suffragettes nor 70s libbers envisioned a society where all the adults worked for pay. I understand that my mother’s path—my path—is a harder option than it used to be. But Mr. Stiles falls in with the whiners who complain that sure, feminism opened up a lot of choices for women who wanted them, but not all of those choices are wonderful. Waaaah! And worse, none of the choices are perfect! Waaaaah! This all does two main things. First, it exaggerates what we lost by ignoring those people for whom the old system meant being chattel, or meant being responsible for a fa�ade of femininity whilst scrubbing floors and toilets, or meant putting up with abuse of sixteen kinds because there was no legal or financial way out. Yes, women today are pressured to join the workforce, and pressured not to, and are responsible for the housework even if they are working 45-hour weeks, and are generally getting the shit deal that he describes and far worse, but as bad as it is now, a lot of women had it a lot worse—a lot worse—in the fifties, and the thirties, and the 1880s.

The second thing is that Mr. Stiles makes it impossible to say whether the costs outweigh the benefits. That is, by focusing so fiercely on the (exaggerated) costs of market feminism, he doesn’t allow us to examine the benefits, and say whether things really are going to hell. Because (as at all times) a lot of things are getting better as a lot of things get worse. Women can, after all, become Secretary of State, become Governor, become CEO, become Principal, become firefighters, become law enforcement officers, become jet pilots, become epidemiologists. Tell those women that the cost was too high. Tell the men whose lives have been saved by those firefighters and those doctors, tell the men who have jobs because of those CEOs, tell the men who have been mentored and taught and served and defended and challenged and acquitted by women that it would have been better in the old days. Because Mr. Stiles can’t even see those men, much less the women. So of course when he tots up the balance sheet, he sees a meltdown. What else could he see?

You know, in the old days, women were stuck in marriages, in part because their market value was so tiny that they had no resource. By shoving women into the workforce, market feminism gave them the ability to leave their husbands. Of course, men always had the ability to walk out on their wives and families, and did with some frequency, despite Mr. Stiles and his cohorts assuming that the legal divorce rate accurately reflects the rate of dissolution of marriage. But I digress. What I’m trying to say is that women have a zillion choices open to them, professional and vocational choices as well as marital choices, and all of those choices involve compromise, just as all men’s choices do. We give up something, and we gain something.

Here, let me make this specific, if awkward. Your Humble Blogger has the old-fashioned women’s-lib idea that it should be the couple’s choice whether one partner works or both, and if one works, which one. In my household, my Best Reader brings home the proverbial. I don’t. I think I win that one, partially because I don’t much like working (being indolent beyond belief), and partially because I am (we think) a trifle better suited to being full-time parent. On the other hand, I am aware that every year I have no income my earning potential plummets. Now, less than two years after leaving full-time employment, I already have to overcome a good deal of suspicion on the part of potential employers. If I take, say, another five years, until both my Perfect Non-Reader and her punitive sibling are in full-day school, and then try to get back to work, well, it’ll be interesting, that’s all. But what if my Best Reader leaves me? Or worse, what if I want to leave her? Understand, here, that I am not really talking about us, as we are rather ludicrously happy, but arguing, delicately, from the specific to the general. If my Best Reader started, oh, sleeping with her secretaries, neglecting me and her children, drinking, embezzling and embarrassing me in public, and I started thinking about getting out, I would have to face the fact that I can’t afford it. In my case, in my specific case, that’s OK, because, you know, my Best Reader isn’t going to do all that. I am in one of those good marriages you don’t hear about, and thank the Lord for it. My mother, too, was in one of those good ones, and thank the Lord for that. But I have enough of an imagination to know that somebody in my position could really get stuck, and somebody in my mother’s position could have got stuck much worse.

So how can I tell people not to have an independent source of income? How can I say to you, the young couple, to emulate my parents and my own marriage, and pick a parent to stay home and take care of the house? How can I pretend that the market feminism that not only allows my doctor to take good care of me (and her receptionist to make my appointment) but allows my Best Reader to choose—to really choose, every day—to stay with me is anything but a wonder and a marvel? Yes, we gave up a lot to get it, although of course not as much as Mr. Stiles pretends. We pay for everything. We pay for the good things. What we pay for it, what we gave up to get it, doesn’t make the thing good or bad. We balance. There are very expensive bargains in the world, and frankly, feminism is one of the better ones.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.