On Oct 24, 2006, at 6:00 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
I don't have any children and I don't intend to have any, so the
policy proposed by the President of Iran doesn't appeal to me. But
not all women feel the way I do, and therein lies the difficulty for
the Left.
Some women prefer wage labor to their own children, and they prefer to
work more than spend more time with children (even when their
financial situation allows the latter option), for work confers not
only wages but also social recognition, new circles of friendship,
adult conversations, new sexual opportunities, etc.; other women
prefer children to work, for most workers, male or female, are stuck
with difficult or boring jobs (some times difficult and boring at the
same time), far less interesting than interacting with their own
children and helping them grow (some men feel the same way, except
that they are not encouraged to express that preference). A certain
kind of maternalist welfare and work policy, which is different from
equal-rights feminist policy, appeals to and gets support from the
latter kind of women.
Given a choice, I think mothers of young children would like to work
at least part-time - after a time, most would really like to get out
of the house - and some would like to make more. Choice aside, most
families have a hard time getting by these days without two
paychecks. It's hardly a stretch to imagine even Americans accepting
some kind of publicly funded childcare system. But that has nothing
to do with Ahmadinejad's policy, which is explicitly natalist, not
"maternalist."
Doug
