The Stay-at-Home Mom Feminist—Wait, What?

So, now it is time for the next confession: I am a feminist mother. I know, not exactly the model feminist I imagined while in college, nor the one depicted at the receiving end of FOX TV News rants. An at-home mom, volunteer everywhere, Girl Scout leader, great baker, crafty person, scrapbooker, carpooler for all, keeper of the stuff, and collective mind of the household (where did I put the...), this is so not the image I had of feminism when I was young, idealistic, and plotting to change the world. 

Growing up in the South, feminism was a dirty word. After years of denial in high school and most of college, I capitulated to being defined first as an “equalist” (no real idea what it meant apart from not being a feminist), then later, I decided I was a feminist. Probably the only person surprised by this realization was me, but it was a hard decision. Being defined as a feminist is often a polarizing label and it certainly caused much angst over the years.

 And yet, feminism is a simple notion. Women are people. They should enjoy the opportunity to be whatever they are capable of and want to be, no barriers. Not a radical idea, until you put it into practice. When it translates into accommodations, i.e., sick leave for sick children, paid maternity leave, job-sharing, equal pay for equal work, it becomes a bad word. Forget that accommodation might be necessary to ensure a second generation of workers in existence for future employment, if it hurts the short-term bottom line, it’s bad. We live in a disposable society, with short-term crises and short-term solutions and a fundamental unwillingness to look beyond tomorrow, to focus on long-term solutions for the greater, to even acknowledge there might be a greater good, for ourselves and society.

But back to feminism—which means what exactly? The definition I prefer is from Rebecca West:

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” 

Feminism offered even more reasons not to become a mother (the second shift, lack of parity in pay, discrimination, the mommy myth), but somehow I ended up married and having a family with my husband.

With three daughters, I put feminism on a back burner and got on with the business of raising them. After a while, usually when I had enjoyed sufficient sleep for more than one night, I started wondering where all the feminists had gone, myself included. I was swimming in the mommy sea, overwhelmed and over my head, with no time for anything not directly linked to survival and meeting children’s needs.  Guilt would sometimes rear its head, as I doubted myself for not having time and energy to devote to “feminist” issues.

I finally realized that I was a feminist in action, paving the way for change in the minds of my three daughters, my Girl Scout troops, the little people my daughters are friends with, family members. And I was in the business of building them up as females in a way I had not been built up, paving the road a little more thoroughly to support them to accomplish what they are capable of. And, hopefully, someone else, some radical feminist with time and energy on her hands, was out there changing the world at large so that when my daughters enter it as fully fledged adults, that freedom to accomplish exists. I don’t know if it really makes a difference, but I try and hope it does. 

I look at how radically my world differs from that of my mother, my step-mother and grandmother. I have always voted, I have never asked my husband who I should vote for, I can drive a car, I own a car, I have property and credit in my name, I have my own checkbook with my own money, I went to college, I have a career, I have a spouse who shares the family workload, I have a life outside of family and church, I handle my business, I work outside the home, I am a respected community member. I can be president of an organization that is not solely a women’s organization, I can have the freedom to do so much, such a different reality than in my grandmother’s times.  I only hope my daughters have more freedom ahead of them.  No violence against women, parity in pay for equal work, no promotion discrimination for being a woman and mother, affordable quality childcare for those who work, an end to the battle between working and at-home mothers.  How about you?