From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxa!mhb5c!mhb5b!smb Newsgroups: net.women Title: Re: What is wrong with a woman staying at home? Article-I.D.: mhb5b.126 Posted: Fri Feb 11 22:40:44 1983 Received: Sun Feb 13 02:13:07 1983 References: <141@sultan.UUCP> The real issue is not whether women (or men) stay home and take care of the children; the issue is why a particular choice is made. That is, raising children well is *extremely* important, and extremely difficult, and a person who regards this task as having higher priority than, say, working outside the house (don't tell me that "housewives" don't work; they're merely not paid) is not to be scorned or denigrated. The real issue behind the woman's movement is freedom of choice. Such a decision should be made because of an individual person's (or couple's) aptitudes, desires, and needs, and not on genotype. Even if there is a biological preference for roles -- and I have yet to see any evidence that's even mildly convincing of that -- it is certainly no more than a statistical preference; individual variability is far greater than that. (I should add one caveat when I speak of "aptitudes". Because many of us -- most of us? -- were raised in a more traditional atmosphere, our skills are often those "appropriate" for our sex: my wife sews quite well, and I'm a pretty good electrician, for example. But we both cook, and when I do any wiring, I show her what I'm doing and why.) There was a showing of "Rosie the Riveter" today at BTL Murray Hill, a film about the experiences of the women who were drafted into the work force during World War II. At the beginning of the war, government propaganda films were aimed at convincing women to join the work force ("the same hands that can cut out patterns can cut out steel plates for ships") -- quite reasonable under the circumstances, of course, except that the women were paid far less than men doing comparable work, even allowing for experience. But when the war ended, women were told that they *wanted* to go back to their kitchens, and that it was harmful to their health, and to their husbands, and to their children, for them to continue to work. Even the women who wanted to work (it can't be denied, of course, that many of them wanted "normalcy" again) weren't able to use their new skills; instead, they were shunted back into "women's work". Nor was it simply a case of veteran's priorities; women were the first group laid off to make room for returning solidiers, then black men, and only then white men. (The film also paid a great deal of attention to the racial issues at the time, incidentally.)