Bitter or Better Off?

On Wednesday, the New York Times ran a confused editorial by Judith Warner titled "The Parent Trap" arguing (at least as best as I can tell) that because women still tend to do the bulk of household chores in any given family, feminism has failed to reach one of its most basic objectives. As she writes here:

The fact is, no matter how time- or sleep-deprived they are, working women today do upwards of 70 percent of household chores for their families. The gender caste system is still alive and well in most of our households. After all, no one really wants to do the scrubbing and folding and chauffeuring and mopping and shopping and dry-cleaner runs. (I'm leaving child-minding out of this; in a happily balanced life, it doesn't feel like a chore.) Once the money for outsourcing runs dry, it's the lower-status member of the household who does these things. It is the lower-status member of the household who is called a "nag" when she repeatedly tries to get other members of the household to share in doing them.

This is just one indication that the feminist "revolution" that was supposed to profoundly reshape women's lives remains incomplete. Another is the fact that there are no meaningful national policies to make satisfying work and satisfying family life anything but mutually exclusive for most men and women.

The interesting part about this article is that Warner says at the outset that she works out of the home part-time and stays at home part-time. Assuming she approaches her household duties as part-time work, to some extent or another, doesn't it just make sense that she would do proportionately more laundry than her husband who works full-time outside the home? I get that she is trying to make a universal plea here on behalf of all mothers everywhere who have to work all day and then mop (oh the horror!) but for some reason, I have a hard time believing her work-at-my-leisure and stay-at-home lifestyle is the picture of female oppression.

One of Warners big "beefs" is that our cultural and social institutions haven't changed sufficiently to support women in this new era of "work/life balance" so, of course, I had to smile when I found this great article, "Employers Step Up Efforts to LureStay-at-Home Mothers Back to Work" in the WSJ just one day later explaining how America's companies are stepping up efforts to create opportunities for women to more easily work and mother at the same time:

A growing number of employers are taking major steps to help women with an age-old problem: Returning to the work force after taking time off to raise kids.

Booz Allen Hamilton, Lehman Brothers, Deloitte & Touche and Merrill Lynch, among others, are working to lower the barriers with targeted recruitment, special retraining, mentoring, and new kinds of employment relationships designed to keep ex-employees tied to the firms. While such programs amounted to a trickle in the past, they've now grown to a stream, and a few employers are beginning to reap results.

I think I would be willing to march on Washington with Warner if she could convince me that feminism is in fact all-powerful enough to one day prove my mother wrong and make the chores do themselves, but in the mean time I think I'll keep enduring the great feminist burden of cleaning up after myself.