I don't know what feminism is anymore, or maybe I do and I hate it?

When I considered myself a feminist, I wanted things like free and universal child care, the right to control my own body, equal pay for equal work, and an end to all discrimination (unequal treatment under the law).

Now I want a four day work week. I want to spend 3 days with my daughter.

Some things did change for the better, I have a credit card, health care for women has improved somewhat, I have recourse legally in certain ways where none existed previously. I can wear pants to work, don't have to wear those awful hose and a little dress, but in return, I have to work just to pay the rent or mortgage every day of my life, and forever, and I had to leave my infant child in the care of strangers; children no longer have parents, they have babysitters, and we are going to pay for that, pay like hell.

Some things are much worse; as a single working mom, I would have made 2/3 what a man made; now with the two wage earner family, I make less than 1/2 what the man/wife make, but I have to compete with them for housing, child care, etc. -- all of which has made me and my daughter very, very poor.

Feminism has become a little club, rather like a soriority, of very wealthy women, whose program amounts to "don't have children", and who focus on insults and lack of opportunity in the bizillion dollar range, women who have turned rebellion into money...and yet they will not go enjoy their wealth and leave feminism to those who need it.

Amen. But it's worse. It also condemns your sons to sensitivity training at school, and one-way harassment (hint: if they harass, they'll get fired, if they complain about being harassed, they'll be ridiculed and passed for promotion) in the workplace. At least 50% of your brothers will have their children taken from them, and in the children's name that brother's hard-won bread will be given to a vindictive ex(x) to use as she pleases, so your nieces and nephews will grow up with a visitor instead of a dad, and child care provided by a stranger while the mother also works.

I wonder if this is a function of the much touted "breakdown of the family".

The continuous cycle of divorce and re-marriage always seems to leave two sets of parents supporting 2 1/2 families worth of kids.

The split up that affects not only kids relationships with their parents, but also siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.

I'd have loved to have had my mom or a family member watch my child when I had to work, but didn't live anywhere near them. But for many parents it's not just a matter of locale, but also if grandma just got re-married and is a bit too busy..what then.

I think that a certain form of feminism made sense when there were no other options but the "stable family" for women.

But take that stable family away, and what is feminism actually DOING?

It's hard to promote a woman's right to work as being the MOST important thing..when it isn't as if a woman has any other choice but to work, and do housework, and raise children.

It's hard to promote the idea that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, when these days more than one woman IS doing it all on her own, and is barely getting by. It may ideally take a village to successfully raise a child, but we've found out the hard way that minimally it takes TWO.

Candoxx. If what you want is to be taken care of, I suggest you find a nice, gullible OLDER MAN, preferably financially secure, on match.com or the like and GET MARRIED. You seem to want to set aside 40 years of progress, 40 years during which REAL femininsts (not fickle ones, as you appear to be)
have worked so damn hard to secure such a better life for you and ALL women in America.

How funny, and yet how tragic, your post is. I suggest you do some reading in post-70s modern American history & educate yourself as to the huge & amazing & wonderful & long overdue changes in the playing field that women like Hillary Clinton, Bella Azbug, Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, Pat Schroeder et al, worked their butts off so you could get an education & go out into the workplace and COMPETE.

Can you even see what a whiner you come across as? You seem to be almost totally fixated on your OWN personal situation. Why aren't you out there networking, joining BPW & other groups that work so hard to make things better for women? Pursue an advanced degree, if you've already complete college. Instead of comparing yourself to a two-income earner family, why not advertise for a roommate or move into a house-sharing situation with another young single mom? Here try this: www.craigslist.com

But the shut the hell up with the whining, get some gratitude for those hard-working trailblazing women who came before you & try to improve your OWN economic lot. It is possible.

But most of all, get married if you can't cut it on your own. Believe me, Hillary Clinton COULD cut it on her own and she'd be just as sharp, aggressive, ambitious & successful.

did do great things, and without them we could never have moved into the next phase of feminism. I don't suppose we think about them often enough, and what they did for all women.

It's kinda like Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine. Nobody gets polio anymore, so no one notices the abscence of it really.And no one really thinks about all the bad things that DON'T happen because of him, just like Gloria Steinem etc.

Perhaps that is one of the major issues facing wave X feminists, is that we just take for granted that this is the way life is, because for us, it was never any other way.

But just in general, Thank you, older feminists for making absolutely sure that none of us younger feminists had to fight our way out of that particular pit. You girls built one hell of a nice ramp! :)

So what do you suggest the goals of feminism should be?

You seem to be implying that feminism should start encouraging married women to stay home with their children, since by working they're making it harder for you as a single mother to get ahead... shades of the old, "We can't hire a woman because that takes away a job from a man, and he needs the money to support his family" argument.

In other places it looks like you're suggesting that somehow if it weren't for feminism you wouldn't "have to work just to pay the rent or mortgage every day of my life." How exactly does that work? Everyone has to work most days of their lives to keep their household going, including SAHMs, unless they're very wealthy.

It sounds like the brand of feminism you're asking for is the kind of feminism that tells women their proper place is marrying a man who will take care of them, having kids, and staying at home to take care of them. In other words, the sort of feminism that isn't femininsm. (And before anyone attacks me, one can certainly be a feminist SAHM. But one can't be a feminist while arguing that's what women *ought* to do by virtue of being women.)

Lastly, I want to add that I'm offended by your implication that kids in daycare have no parents and that society will "pay like hell" for letting mothers work instead of stay at home with their children. My mother had a professional career and I still had parents... mysteriously, the fact that my mother worked didn't mean I had no mother any more than the fact that my father worked meant I had no father. I didn't have babysitters INSTEAD of parents, I had babysitters AND parents, and frankly I think my life was richer for it. (My babysitter and her family are still very dear friends of both me and my parents, though I realize not everyone is that fortunate.) And I didn't turn out so badly that society will "pay like hell" for having people like me in it.

Well, I suppose that depends on your point of view. I did turn out to be a feminist, after all.

Which is good!

So what ARE the goals of feminism?

I'm going to go ahead and assume equal pay for equal work, and a woman's right to make decisions about her own body.

What else does feminism believe in or adhere to?

I'd seriously like to know. My mother was a SAHM and NOT a feminist so I guess I missed this part.

Thevail:

Which is good!

So what ARE the goals of feminism?

I'm going to go ahead and assume equal pay for equal work, and a woman's right to make decisions about her own body.

What else does feminism believe in or adhere to?

I'd seriously like to know. My mother was a SAHM and NOT a feminist so I guess I missed this part.

I don't know who you were addressing this to, but it's an interesting question. I don't know that it makes sense to talk about the goals of a single, unitary feminism, since despite what some may think there's no secret feminist cabal that determines a hidden agenda!

I can tell you what I, as a feminist, think are some important issues:

Universal health care: Having health insurance tied to a job in the US hits women especially hard. Women are more likely to leave work or engage in part-time or less demanding work (which may not have health insurance) once they have children then men are. Thus, they're more likely to find themselves suddenly without insurance for themselves or their children following a divorce than men are. In my mind that makes universal health care a feminist issue specifically (as well as being an important issue in general). As an aside, universal health care makes it much safer to be a SAHM -- or a SAHD -- since it would mean one-income families are no longer one downsizing away from being unable to get medical care for their sick children.

Maternity/ paternity leave: Materiality leave in the US frankly blows chunks. IIRC in the UK, full-time female employees are in general entitled to 39 weeks of paid maternity leave if they've been working for the employer long enough (and a full year of unpaid leave from day one). Compare that to the US -- 12 weeks unpaid leave, only for companies with 50 or more employees. Why do parents in the US take this laying down?

I consider this a feminist issue because I think lack of materiality leave is one of the things that puts women in a position of feeling they have to choose between their family and their career, a choice men are much less likely to be forced to make. I suspect less materiality leave means fewer women who go back to work after having their babies. I certainly know women who were on the fence about what to do after their babies were born who decided to quit just because they felt 6 weeks was too soon to leave their baby. The more women drop out of the workforce, the fewer women there are in higher levels of power, which is bad for all women -- regardless of whether they want children or whether they want careers. I have no problem with women being SAHMs if that's what they want to do, but we shouldn't put women in the position of not going back to work because it's just too damn hard to.

I think paternity leave is an issue as well. It puts men and women on a more equal playing field career-wise if men are able to take time off to look after newborns. It also encourages men and women both to think of raising the baby as Dad's job, too, not just Mom's.

Role of men in the family: As a society we still have not shaken off the notion that caring for the children and the house is the woman's job, with which the man may "help" but which is fundamentally her responsibility. This puts many women with full-time employment in the position of working 9 hours a day and coming home to spend more hours buying groceries, making dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the house, and supervising the kids. Meanwhile, her husband gets to work the same 9 hours and come home to Monday Night football. This is changing, of course, but not quickly enough. (Many men may protest that the "help" with the dishes or the laundry or whatever, which is great but still assumes that the primary responsibility is the woman's.) This sort of thing puts women at a disadvantage in the workplace (since they have more non-work responsibilities than their male colleagues do) and is of course completely unfair in their personal life as well.

Mind you, I could generate a lot more issues that I think feminists should be concerned about, including a lot of more traditional career-related issues: for example, the fact that men who negotiate are seen as assertive and women who negotiate are seen as b*tches, or the fact that the same CV is judged to be less impressive if there's a female name at the top than if there's a male name at the top. But those are three big ones off the top of my head.

The OP seems to see feminism as being all about not having children, which I see as totally opposite where the most important feminist concerns lie. I myself don't have kids and at the moment don't plan to. But most people DO want children. By virtue of both the the facts of biology and the idea that childrearing is primarily the mother's responsibility, women are being asked to choose between children and career in a way that men simply aren't. That's not fair and that holds women back... and that's bad for ALL women, including those who don't want children or who want to be SAHMs.

Single people who work are also entirely responsible for all personal matters and chores and not having someone to help or at least listen to your gripes is tiring, but that is not a feminist issue, that is the human condition.

Raising a child by yourself has to be overwhelming at times.

Increased economic pressure from the Global Economy and the rise of China and India is not going to go away and Feminism can't fix it. It is putting downward pressure on everyone's wages, buying power, health and other benefits. It is an economic issue that is hurting the middle, working and poor alike.

Feminist need to address issues of inequity and discrimination, but they need to avoid becoming so entrenched in identity politics that it is a divisive wedge that distracts from progress on the bigger issues that hurt us all.

Combine that with Congressional corruption and sell out to corporate interests for pennies on the billions and the future only looks worse.

Winning equal pay for poverty wages is a pretty hollow victory.

Thevail:

So what ARE the goals of feminism?

Depends on who you ask... there are lots of different answers. It's not a monolithic movement anymore, if it ever was. (I suppose the 19th amendment and equal pay for equal work are the closest to universal issues that you could get... ) Most of what I've encountered personally, that I'd like to see changed, has been people's attitudes - same for many of my friends. You can't legislate that. Public safety is also an issue; there are areas where women don't dare walk at night, or wait for a bus, while men routinely do so. At times, I've been in areas where I felt uncomfortable enough to carry a knife (1/8" less than the legal distinction between a tool such as a pocketknife and a weapon, but nice and sharp), and men I knew couldn't understand what the problem was until a few of us pointed out specific people and behaviors that were setting off alarms.

One woman who considered herself a feminist wanted the women who worked late to have the right to park in the really close parking area right by where the managers parked, for safety. Another woman felt that was not a feminist position, and wanted instead to have more police patrols. Another just said, "Give me a concealed weapons permit, and if you don't want it on my person at work, a safe to store it in while I'm in the building, and you can keep your stupid parking spots."

I was talking to you, but the more the merrier!

With this whole HRC vs BO thing there weren't too many feminists willing to talk to us BO supporters for a while :)

Universal health care

Sounds like a great idea..but how would you get it passed through congess? Wouldn't we need a lot more Ted Kennedy's, Hillary Clinton's and so on. I'm not saying it's completely undoable, but wouldn't we need to spend a lot of time electing people who are VERY liberal? Is there some group out there doing this?

Maternity/ paternity leave

I'm all for this, I'm one of the women who didn't have any when my daughter was born, and so my husband and I decided it was just easier for me to become a SAHM. Despite the fact that I was making quite a bit more in my career than he was back then. I've never regretted it for a minute, but we've had some financially rough times over it.

Role of men in the family

Isn't this one a sort of couple by couple issue. I agree that ideally it would never be an issue, but to be honest if you think I'm letting my husband anywhere near my cashmere, or my cookware you're nuts! Of course he's a construction worker who thinks instructions are for sissies, so he may be a special case.

By which I mean is this a feminist issue, or just a sort of societal/self-esteem issue?

Can we add reforming the crazy advertising culture of our country? Or is that into censorship issues?

I worry about this a lot, it breaks my heart watching some of my friends, but epecially my daughter, fighting body image issues that come not from reality, but straight off of the pages of Vogue or Seventeen Magazine in the form of a 6 foot tall 130 pound woman. And while, I don't dislike the models, I mean they're making a living right, it just seems like some sort of psychological cruelty.

It jseems to start women off in life forever failing, and makes them perpetually feel "not good enough".

Universal health care benefits everyone.

Men will be what they are until taught differently.

Kids will work to be skinny or obese and both are dangers and life breakers. Society, parents and healthcare will have to address this.

I'm one of the old timers and had my tubes tied when I was 22. Sorry, but I find I have no deep sympathy for the single working moms. Poor choices are not a gender issue.

I never felt I was a failure or 2nd class or un-equal. I've never tried for something I really wanted and failed to get it. I own my own business and make more than most men in my field, not that it matters - so long as I make enough for me.

My farm is green with corn and the calves will be veal cutlets soon. Feminism seems to have devolved into a myriad of childcare issues - societal technicalities.

Maybe 'feminism' is no longer a recognizable entity or even needed as a stand alone issue?

A just society seems a more useful goal.

I

all along.

I think that the inequity in society was much more pronounced decades ago, and so specific things had to be addressed in the name of feminism just so that a fair and just society could start to happen.

But maybe that's a part of the difference now. It isn't just about women pushing for a fair shake for women. It's about women, and everyone else, pushing for a fair shake for EVERYONE.

Black, white, hispanic, asian, native American, gays, straights, the elderly, children, college students, and the parents paying for that education, christians, muslims, jews and hindus..just everyone.

gracious acknowledgment. Yes, I do see the younger feminists, career women, professionals, et al, taking it for granted -- and while in some ways, that's heartening because it means we suceeded -- it's more disheartening because so many worked so darn hard to make it better, richer, easier to attain success and more fulfilling for those who would follow us. In a way, I have to fault their parents, specifically their mothers, for not making them (you, et al) more aware.

Actually, you have a good kernel for a very relevant Top Post on the XX Factor Fray with your post here -- would you consider top posting it, perhaps? Thanks again. Also, if I forget to mention legislators in the earlier post, I should mention them now -- so many state reps & senators, as well as US Cong. reps & senators, Fought that particular Good Fight. (And still are, where needed...) As did Mrs. Clinton, particularly from the family issues angle.

NOBama 08!

very well put-together, thanks. A big way to go to you, AND to your parents -- especially your mother. Not knowing when this all happened -- you being raised as you were -- it's hard to put it in modern-historical context but if it was late 60s, 70s or early 80s, around there, that was still not yet such an accepted way to go. And your mother does deserve a lot of credit. Please pass that on to her for me!

Your parents were very gutsy to make a go of it in that way, if that was the timeframe. As a single mother, it wasn't easy at all, let me tell you, but it can be done. And many of us turned out kids who grew up to be just great. As Mrs. Clinton wrote, "It take a village to raise a child..." and in our case, it took a neighborhood-wide group of dedicated young parents, both single/divorcing and remaining married to help each other out -- but we did it. All the kids in that group/neighborhood turned out well, all in their varying ways. Candoxx is quite off-base, as I posted to her above. It's hard to respect her also, since she hasn't shown up here to defend her post.
As well as for her need to get married, rather than pursue some alternatives as I suggested to her above. She cuttingly asks "Feminists, What's the program?" without realizing that "the program" is to have a wide choice of alternatives, paths & roles (programs) for ALL women. And men, especially those who (bless their hearts) want to be SAHDads.

Thanks again.