Some thoughts on marriage, stay-at-home mothers and homeschooling as a radical feminist act
I have been meaning to write this one for a while now, but it's not just my blogADD that has kept me away from this discussion. I just so get emotionally pissed off about this subject that it becomes unbearable to try to write everything that comes shooting by my brain. Yet Nance here point to a post by Amanda Marcotte that has pissed me off so royally that I have to respond to it.
In the comments Amanda insists that she allegedly has no problems with either stay at home mothers or homeschoolers; yet in her writing she betrays herself. When she opens up her post with and I quote, "This interview in Newsweek with Laura Derrick, the president of the National Home Educator’s Network, was even fluffier than I expected it would be when I opened the link", you know that her expectation was to see a piece excoriating the "different path" of homeschooling.
It goes downhill from there because she conflates her contempt for xian fundamentalists with homeschooling:
I didn’t expect the interviewer to hammer at Derrick about the issue of whether or not it’s wise for people to homeschool their kids if they are doing so with the intention of teaching them that Noah had a pet dinosaur or that Jesus founded America (and therefore feed them into upper echelon jobs in the Justice Department), but I figured it would at least come up. No luck, though.
In the next paragraph her cluelessness about homeschooling shows with flying color when she claims to know that homeschooling is gaining steam in the left. Ahh ... hmmm ... see ... no!
Homeschooling has never been an either/or proposition for people in the left or right. It has been always a proposition for radicals; especially radicals who have a strong libertarian political background. There's conservative libertarians, Christian libertarians and then people like me, who Chris Nolan has most famously described as Social/Progressive Libertarians.
The problem is that christian fundamentalist homeschoolers in this country have had a well funded public relations machine. That's it. That's all.
The HSDLA was the pet project of Michael Farris, one of the signers of the Manifesto for a Christian Church; which really should be read as a manifesto for a extremist American theocracy.
But you already suspected as much.
Michael Farris has had an uncanny ability to raise millions of dollars for legal, education and lobby projects. This is what I wrote about him back in 2005:
HSLDA was founded by Michael Farris who, to put it succintly, is the Ralph Reed of the Christian Reconstructionist/Dominionis education movement. Although Michael Farris claims he is but just a Baptist minister, he has signed the 1986 document that launched the dominionist movement, "A MANIFESTO : For The Christian Church". The document is a 'declaration and a convenant' in which the signators "believe America can be turned around and once again function as a Christian nation as it did in its earlier years" and outline why and how they're putting in place their call to action with wisdome such as article #13:
13. The Need for Confrontation: We affirm that in a life where there exists "the world, the flesh and the devil," there is need for living confrontation over matters of falsehood and unrighteousness in the Church and in the world. It is impossible for any group of people to live truly biblically obedient lives without applying to each other regular confrontation, exhortation, rebuke and church discipline. Church discipline must be an on-going part of any congregation that chooses truly to live according to the Bible.
This idea of confronting unrighteousness is fundamental to the dominionists' agenda for educating the next wave of christian leaders. Michael Farris left HSLDA to found Patrick Henry College to raise the Joshua generation and prepare them to take over the land.
Read the whole goddamn thing, because I outline how the HSDLA has spent millions across the country trying to write themselves into education and homeschooling legislation. They have the lawyers and lobyyists and the millions devoted to this single task.
Who do we have in the left?
{{ crickets }}}
{{ crickets }}}
Yeah.
I thought so.
What I find outrageouly frustrating with a lot of feminists who defend schooling is how they gloss over the fact that schools are the ultimate conditioning tools of the patriarchy. How can't some feminists see that?
Socialization, that most hated word by homeschoolers of all stripes, is a bio-power machine that is meant to condition children to subserviency. Christian Fundamentalists totally get it. In their belief system, schools are all about conditioning children into a life of liberal values that is meant to strip them of all subserviency to god. They get that schooling a bio-power machine of oppression.
Radicals on the left understand this too. Many people who decide to homeschool also decide to homebirth or at least have midwife assisted births. I know many homeschoolers who are atheists, who are ecological activists, anti-corporationists and feminists. Most are college educated but I know a growing number of uncollege parents. These people are highly educated individuals who have opted out of the economically oppressive college machine to educated themselves, start their own businesses or even take the apprenticeship route into the professions.
Sure you supposedly can't become a neurosurgeon this way; but I have known of more than one or another homeschooling child or parent's whose individual research has earned them a job at a lab that has then put them into a different path to medical school.
What about the myopic liberals of the left? Not so much.
Well, unfortunately, too many feminists have become so conditioned to believe Academia is the path to some sort of revolutionary change that they don't seem to get that the very structure of schooling (from childhood to adulthood) can also lead to a path to conformity with the patriarchal status quo.
And that the irony is that many women in these academic or intellectually powerful positions are in subservient positions to the patriarchy, even more so than a lot of their homeschooling feminist counterparts.
Let me explain.
Many marriages within homeschooling families function as enterprises where the husband is the main investor. If the family is patriarchy-centric, the man is presented as the boss or CEO of the family with the mother being the Administrative Executive Assistant. Yet, in many progressive families, the wealth brought in by the husband is seen as part of a partnership. An actual business partnership, not just an emotional one. Moreover, in a lot of these marriages the mother has a small business or a part-time job on the side. Especially in places like New York where the cost of living is so high it is almost impossible to live on one income.
This is an important distinction to make because there is a huge misconception about stay-at-home motherhood. The marriages that work understand that the woman, when she stays at home, produces a path to wealth and opportunity that is not immediately translated into cash. So these couples work out a salary for the wife, savings and a retirement plan as well. If the husband's income is not enough, then the income from the part-time job is used to cover these costs.
Make no bones about it, marriage within these terms is a business proposition. I know some people who worked it out as part of their pre-nuptial agreement. Others have come into it as everybody else, out of the realization that the "non cash" half of the partnership needs to have money allocated.
This partnership approach to marriage is anything but mainstream. On the contrary, the idea of many people is that domesticity is free of labor and hence there is no cost and/or value related to it. Yet, it's in the high profile divorce cases of CEOs like Jack Welch and Sumner Redstone, and especially Gary Wendt, where millions or even billions are at stake in the divorce settlement, that we can see the real capital and wealth generating value of a stay-at-home- mother and wife.
Lorna Wendt proved with her divorce settlement that most marriages are a 50/50 partnership even if the other 50% labor's is not directly bringing in cash. These high profile cases prove there is an indirect wealth that stay-at-home mothers and wives.
If more working stiffs on the lower end of the earning spectrum got into our little heads the enormity of this value, we'd be knocking down the doors of Capitol Hill and immediately demanding a Universal Health Care program, a Paid Leave Family Act and, especially, a complete toss-away of compulsory full-time schooling in favor of more mixed independent learning.
But no.
Americans have been so conditioned to think of our lives as completely devoid of any wealth that the concept of actually having the ability to create independent paths to wealth, to education, to political power, scares shitless a lot of people including many people in the so-called left.
I consider homeschooling a radical feminist act.
It's empowering to see your children as whole human beings who are on the path of self-awareness as opposed to unformed human blobs waiting to be given knowledge by people who see them as just a path to a paycheck.
In my perfect world, I would be able to send my kids only a few days to school. In my perfect world, I would be able to help them pick and choose what they wanted to do at school and ensure his teachers respect their choices on how they wanted to achieve their own educational goals.
But I don't live in a perfect world, nor in a perfect marriage. This year my kids are in school. To me this is a total abdication of what I believe a marriage should be but I am the feminist, the patriarchy at home is not and so I live with the political inconsistencies of my marital dysfunction.
Yet, I also have to live with the choices of my children. The little one likes it. The oldest not so. I kind of suspected this but I wasn't prepared for the outright hatred of my first born.
In homeschooling --or as I called it here, unschooling-- kids choose the path to their learning experiences outside of a curricula, school-centric framework. Everyday is a learning opportunity and every moment of your life is not a part of homework but a pebble on the path to one's life's work.
So this next year I may find myself being a schooling/unschooling mother; with one part of my heart inside the beast and the other half without.
We'll see.
I actually already have an idea of what I am going to give my kids to read. My 7 year-old and my 10 year old will be reading with me all summer on the Teenage Liberation Handbook.
I haven't thrown the towel yet.
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Homeschooling | Labor | Marriage | Parenting | Politics | radical feminism | Universal Health Care
LOL!
Submitted by liza on 5 June 2007 - 10:04pm.
And I am not done yet, but it's a good start. It just really irritates me to no end that we need to was time and energy in defending our choices.
No wonder 'choice' has become so easy a target when even our own feminists are so eager to shoot a woman's right to breed and choose how to raise her spawn!
Liza is the founder and publisher of http://culturekitchen.com. You can find her personal rants and raves over at http://lizasabater.com
Dearest Liza
Submitted by NanceConfer on 5 June 2007 - 8:53pm.
Thank you for writing so eloquently about all the complicated realities so many of us deal with.
Yes, I'm a SAHM. Yes, I'm an unschooler. Yes, I'm a feminist. Yes, I am in a wonderful partnership with my DH, supporting each other through all the same trials that every other family experiences. Yes, I have been the sole support of our household. Yes, it makes more sense to do it this way now. Yes, it is our choice for personal as well as financial reasons.
The same people who want to point at our tiny homeschooling/unschooling fraction of the world and blame so much on us -- either the downfall of the public school system (as if we are the cause of all the problems that system is being crushed by) or the demise of feminism -- are the very ones I would expect to have a clue about individual and family-planning choices, respecting privacy and individual needs, the ones who I would hope would be able to have some sort of long-term vision beyond the next election, the ones who could look at a person's life and see that she may wear any and all hats at various times and not wearing them all at once does not make her a less valuable member of the left.
I have been disappointed with my Democrats in Congress lately and I am repeatedly disappointed by women and men who conflate feminism with a narrow lifestyle.
I am heartened by you, though! You may renew my faith in the left after all. 
Nance
Disappointed is putting it mildly
Submitted by liza on 5 June 2007 - 10:08pm.
I am completely disgusted. If feminists can't get the kind of value and wealth stay-at-home mothers create, then who will?!?!
Something to Consider, Though
Submitted by Echidne (not verified) on 5 June 2007 - 10:30pm.
There is nothing wrong with choosing to stay-at-home and choosing to homeschool as an option. Where I would get worried over this as a feminist would be in a situation where most mothers would be expected to do that. Because it would mean pretty much that mothers with school-aged children would drop out of the labor force and over time there would be very few women seeking degrees in medicine or law because they'd never get the investment in tuition back, given the shorter working lives and the fact that knowledge gets outdated pretty fast if it is not used. And firms would expect women to drop out for like ten years so wouldn't promote many women. Even fewer than today.
Over time the scenario I paint would mean that there would be very few women in decision-making roles in general. Of course if fathers were equally likely to be the homeschooler this would not happen to the detriment of women. But I suspect the vast majority of homeschool teachers are women. So it is really about the division of labor within the families, as usually.
Expected
Submitted by NanceConfer on 5 June 2007 - 11:06pm.
That's part of the problem.
Others foisting their expectations onto my life.
Whether in the scenario you worry about or any other, other peoples' expectations about how I should live my life don't count.
I don't "expect" my son or my daughter to marry and have children and homeschool or none of the above.
I hope they will make these personal, private choices unburdened by my "expectations."
And if that has a lot of impact on corporate America -- or not -- so be it.
Life is too long and complicated and changeable to have such unreasonable constraints on each other.
Nance
I think you mistook my point
Submitted by Echidne (not verified) on 6 June 2007 - 12:20am.
I meant "expected" in the sense of statistical discrimination: firms not hiring or promoting women because, on average, women are more likely to leave the labor force. One of the main reasons why women earn less than men, on average, is the fact that women take more time out of labor force for the sake of children. Homeschooling prolongs the length of this time which would make the wage gap larger and the retirement benefits of women, on average, lower.
But I think I got this whole thread wrong. My original point, to talk to Liza, was to map out some of the possible negatives that are attached to homeschooling for women. These negatives don't mean that women shouldn't do that, just as the possible negatives of public schools don't necessarily mean that women shouldn't send their children to them. I wasn't addressing the question of the value of homeschooling at all.
So I will now withdraw myself.
Yet, Echidne, here's the point you're missing
Submitted by liza on 6 June 2007 - 12:29am.
It is not the taking out the time that devalues wages. It's the socio-economic devaluation of motherhood/parenting that devalues wages.
The point I tried to make out of pointing to the CEO divorces is exactly about that. About how these women who took these millionaires to the cleaners did so because they proved how their domestic work was not devoid of value.
By emptying domestic labor of value you hence can devalue women's work out of the home ---because their single most 'natural' job is already worthless and everything else women do henceforth is a bad copy of all what men can achieve.
Serioulsy, I am trying to crudely apply the concept of alienated labor as it would pertain to domestic labor. When I threw Marx into the mix it is for a reason.
The semantics of alienation are too ingrained in this discussion of the value of women's work. What we here are trying to convey is that not until "women's work" aka, domestic work, is seen as valuable and worthy of health insurance, tax breaks, social security and full retirement benefits, all of women's labor will always be devalued.
here's another way to see it
Submitted by liza on 6 June 2007 - 12:37am.
How much to homecare workers get paid? What about baby sitters and nannies?
And here's the clincher ... how much do you think you have to pay to get a more than good but competent and trustworthy homecare worker, baby sitter or nanny?
THAT'S the difference in labor-value we are talking about here when we talk about women being paid less because blahdeeblah.
I hope not
Submitted by NanceConfer on 6 June 2007 - 7:51am.
I hope you don't withdraw yourself. It is important that we understand each other, imo.
I think our two "expecteds" are linked.
Liza says it one way, let me try another.
If the only way we define "success" is participation in the corporate world or political world at higher and higher levels of the various ladders, then we have defined a world that is alien to the way most people live and that automatically relegates most of what most of us do to the trashbin.
If we define "success" as getting the 12 years of schooling, then getting the degree, then getting the white-collar job, then getting the promotion, then getting the large house and the large car and then getting our kids into the better school for their 12 years of schooling. . . if that's all there is, why bother?
If the system is set up to bribe everyone every step of the way, and I mean that literally, if ultimately your incentive to do good is swamped by your incentive to stay in office once you "succeed" in playing the game well enough to get elected, if you end up so beholden to lobbyists and donors that you cannot make a simple vote to help your constituents. . . why struggle to reach the top of the political heap?
We need to look more closely at what we think "success" is and live our lives able to move in that direction.
If a better world with a different focus is what we define as "success," then we place less value how corporate America rewards women. We don't necessarily use that as our barometer of how we value ourselves. We choose the paths, and change as we like, that let us be in the world the way we want to be.
I think of an unschooling friend and her daughter. Her daughter has just started her career as some sort of forest ranger/fitness person (JJ, what is the name of Pam's daughter's job?). This girl will never get rich doing any of this. But she is the picture of success!
And being a stay-at-home Mom and homeschooling Mom can be a success story too.
I don't have the sort of income where a divorce is about settlements. I am not headed for a divorce. I don't have savings beyond the house, which we hope to have paid off soon. This is typical for our working class neighborhood. There are no set-asides for the stay-at-home wife. We are happy to pay the mortgage.
And I think we are succeeding. As a family and as individuals. We are attempting to allow our children the freedom to grow up to be proud of themselves even if they don't have the biggest bank account or the most political clout. These may be the standard measures for "success" but we reject much of what is standard including that narrow view.
I hope this is clearer. Probably not. . . but now I have to go walk with another unschooling Mom . . . we are attempting to be a bit more fit. Not to fit into size 2 anything or weigh a certain amount. Just to feel a bit better physically.
Nance
There is no such thing as a homeschooling teacher
Submitted by liza on 5 June 2007 - 11:23pm.
If you are going to school at home, you either hire a tutor or do a cyberschool. But 100% of homeschooling parents would never parse out thir work as parenting/teaching. Even to the most extreme in their religious teachings, educating their kids is part of their mission as god-fearing parents.
So right there and there you need to be aware of how you are using language that shows a misunderstanding of the legal term homeschooling that is used to describe a larger and more complex social phenomena.
Now, on to this quote : Where I would get worried over this as a feminist would be in a situation where most mothers would be expected to do that.
See, I don't know if you and I live in the same country, but in the one I live, breeding is the social cue for staying at home. We live in a society that no matter how much money a woman makes she is expected to breed and tend the homefires. Since I am a reality-based blogger 
I just don't expect less from most people.
I mean, LOOK AT THE EFFING NARRATIVE AROUND OPRAH!
- Since she doesn't want children
- and won't get married,
- SHE MUST BE A LESBIAN!
Oh puhleeeeeaze.
My rant has nothing to do with what the invisible "they" expects. This has all to do with the way feminists speak about stay-at-home mothers and WORST OF ALL homeschooling mothers.
Hasn't it occurred to anybody that these women and men who choose to educate their children are highly competent people that know a thing or two about education? Hasn't it occurred to anybody that these women and men understand what is best for their children and are willing to go the extra mile to make sure their kids have it?
But more importantly, what if we did have in this country universal health care? You know what, MILLIONS OF WORKING MOTHERS WOULD LEAVE THE WORK FORCE.
There are waaaaay too many unhappy women in shitty, menial and unfulfilling jobs that have to be in them because if not their families wouldn't have any medical benefits. And it's these women, the same women who are the first ones to be let go from the orgiastic restructuring of jobs in this country. And these are the same women who we kick in the teeth when they choose not to return to the job market when the cost of working in a shitty job becomes HIGHER than the cost of not working in a shitty job at all.
But more damning is how most people speak of parenting, education and domestic work as things outside of them that are so menial, so beneath them, they have no value at all.
This emptying of value to a labor that should be part of a mother's (or parents') life work is what allows for the patriarchy to take over in the guise of a anti-woman medical establishment that says we The Doctor knows more about your body that yourself. This is the same emptying of value and meaning that allows for The School to take over your children's bodies and minds and 'fill them' with the knowledge that a no-value nobody like you, the parent, could never ever possibly fulfill. This is the same emptying of value and meaning that allows The Law to say they know better than you when to have a child, how to have it and why to have it. And notice that that emptying is so complete that the child becomes an "It".
Marx spoke of this emptying of value as alienation, and I think it's time for some feminists in the blogosphere to give the old Bertell Ollman book a twirl : Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society.
Makes no sense
Submitted by JJ Ross on 5 June 2007 - 11:43pm.
to say in the same breath that women are so valuable and well-educated that they can't squander it all at home AND that these powerhouses couldn't possibly know enough important stuff to teach children, preparing them for a similar life someday.
Liza, the health insurance projection is stunning to me. It just never occurred to me to think it until you said it, but of COURSE that's what would happen.
We're either valuable or we aren't
Submitted by liza on 5 June 2007 - 11:53pm.
because that's what a lot of people are saying, right?
Yet, given that extremes are just the same thing from opposite ends, I believe that unconsciouly what most mean is that women (as in those lowly breeding women) should indeed stay in shitty, menial and unfulfilling jobs so they (as in the leaders, the chosen ones, the higher ups of 'the movement') can assert control of the next generation once they "overthrow" the patriarchy.
Same shit, different turd.
plus also
Submitted by LynnS on 6 June 2007 - 12:16am.
If those women don't stay in shitty, menial and unfulfilling jobs...who will raise the children of the high-powered upper class women trying to make partner?
LynnS * The New Homemaker * Liza's Fairy Blogmother
When I hear women complaining about wages I always have to ask
Submitted by liza on 6 June 2007 - 12:39pm.
compared to whom? Do black and latino men get paid more than white women?
excellent!
Submitted by Thinking Girl (not verified) on 5 June 2007 - 10:34pm.
Hi Liza,
great post, thanks very much for this.
I am a single woman, child-free, and no plans to change either. However, I do believe that if I were to become a mother, I would do everything in my power to home-school my child/ren. Well, not necessarily ME personally, I would likely want to hire a private unschooling tutor to come into my home and accomplish this task, because I don't think I would be my best self if I was not working outside the home (not that there's any judgment whatever for SAHM, just some knowledge I have about myself). I tend to agree that public school is all about disciplinary power and creating docile bodies and minds (love the bio-power reference to Foucault by the way, my fave frenchy) loyal to the status quo hegemony.
Just wanted to pick a tiny little bone with this:
"I consider homeschooling a radical feminist act."
Addendum: homeschooling CAN BE a radical feminist act IF taken from the proper standpoint. So for you - and many many others - homeschooling is a radical feminist act, but for just as many others, it is most certainly not, as Amanda does like to point out with the Xian right's HS movement.
That's all for now! Thanks again!
Oh, and if you haven't been to visit yet: >a href="http://darkdaughta.blogspot.com">One Tenacious Babymama
a private unschooling tutor
Submitted by NanceConfer on 5 June 2007 - 11:10pm.
No such animal, that I know of.
Tutor, yes. Unschooling tutor? I'm trying to picture what that would look like.
Maybe it would look like Grandparents?
Nance
Wait a minute
Submitted by petisita (not verified) on 25 June 2007 - 11:13am.
I arrived to Liza's blog googling for "Derrida and parenting". I am not a mother yet, but I soon will start trying. The idea of an unschooling tutor is a great one, because there are out there other humans (not animals) that might be willing to partner with parents in educating their children based on common grounds and similar beliefs. I would do it for sure!!! that could have been the dream job for me 3 year ago.
Why?
Submitted by NanceConfer on 26 June 2007 - 2:29pm.
What was going on 3 years ago? Are we talking about the same thing? Are you an unschooler? Homeschooler?
Nance
3 years ago...
Submitted by Petisita (not verified) on 26 June 2007 - 10:41pm.
I was looking for a job. Now I am thinking about having chuldren of my own and maybe homeschooling. Everybody here is talking about the same thing.
That's great!
Submitted by NanceConfer on 27 June 2007 - 8:15am.
It is so encouraging to see new Moms (or future Moms ) considering hsing. My DS had to suffer through my learning curve, but your kids will be spared that as you can figure things out ahead of time.
(And then change all that thinking as the kids change! )
One good source, if you are not already familiar with all the different approaches to hsing, is www.NHEN.org. See the New Homeschoolers page.
Unschooling is one of many choices that falls under the homeschooling umbrella. It is not really a good fit with a formal "tutor" label. Other approaches would be.
But you may be talking about something more akin to the support groups that homeschoolers have. There are all flavors of support groups. You can see some listed under Support at the site above.
Best of luck as you consider homeschooling!
Nance
ANYTHING can be a feminist act...
Submitted by LynnS on 5 June 2007 - 11:22pm.
...when you approach your life with a feminist mindset. It's the meaning of "The Personal Is Political." Every choice we make has significance, which is why mindful living is important.
I don't have any wish to tell a child-free woman she has to have children, or a schooling mother she has to homeschool, or a working woman she has to go home. So why is everyone on the left so invested in telling *me* what to do? Why am *I* the traitor to the gender? That's about as illiberal as it gets.
LynnS * The New Homemaker * Liza's Fairy Blogmother
Darkdaughta is so fierce, she really puts a lot of us to shame
Submitted by liza on 5 June 2007 - 11:38pm.
And she posts here, btw.
When Amanda writes a blog post about homeschooling being a radical feminist act, I'll eat my hat. In the meantime, she can maybe point to other women bloggers like me, Nance, Lynn, JJ, Dru Blood, Julie Leung, who happen to be women, feminists and yes (most of the time) homeschoolers.
BTW : Doc Searls, one of the co-writers of The ClueTrain Manifesto --a manifesto that influenced heavily the Dean campaign and made possible the whole phenomenon of the blogosphere and the 'netroots'-- homeschooled his kids.
Just saying.
As to you're choices ... here's a little secret : Almost all homeschoolers hire tutors or teachers. I mean, I could never teach my kids math using architecture, but that's what his Math In Architecture workshop teacher did. You know what I mean?
Homeschooling is not about you being alone in the dark all by yourself with your kid. If anything, it pushes you to pursue other people and become re-socialized in the intricacies of networking --something that most people with steady jobs and kids in school rarely need to do.
Don't Forget Feminist HS Dads
Submitted by JJ Ross on 5 June 2007 - 11:51pm.
who blog and support women who choose to home educate whether or not (and how) they also choose to ply their trade or pursue their career -- there are a LOT.
One of my new favorites is Sam, a dad who regularly waxes rhapsodic about his wife's roller derby team.
He also did a great mood piece on moonshine, and something very thoughtful about meeting the Klan with high school marching bands when they come to intimidate his town . . .
Two Conversations
Submitted by JJ Ross on 5 June 2007 - 10:53pm.
Does Amanda have older children? I ask because I think this may be one of those very complex life issues that needs different conversations -- one for those of us who know what we are taking about from personal experience and have been on a whole journey with it, versus those who don't, and haven't, yet at least.
Just like mole (or otter, sorry can't recall at the moment) wrote about the other kind of feminist choice.
I am exhausted from fighting the wackos on the right. I simply can't fight young women on the left who still believe "school" and "career" teach the lessons that count most in life, at the same time. I don't have the heart for it and frankly, the stomach either.
My experiences are different from Liza's and Lynn's and Nance's in so many ways but in this I KNOW we are all the same. We know we thought and said and cared about some things before we were moms, that we laugh at now. It is a sort of fond chuckle (as long as you don't push us too far.) But the only ones I have much fondness for, given recent blindsides, are those feminists who learned what I learned the way I learned it: by learning how little I really knew before that. . .
You hit it over the head
Submitted by liza on 6 June 2007 - 12:08am.
Her discussion stems from proposition #2.
My reaction would be totally different if she did had kids, but I am not going to bring that one up --although my knee-jerk reaction is to say STFU. I just didn't think it was necessary
I am tempted to say what my mother would tell me : I wish children like you onto you 
Even though I have the nicest kids that ego ... argh! Let's say my ego got seriously whacked. The arrogance pummeled. The righteousness bitch slapped to oblivion.
Parenting is so much about surrendering that people who are scared shitless of surrendering to their kids conflate it with the idea of submission.
Those two are completely different.
My children saved my life
Submitted by LynnS on 6 June 2007 - 1:50am.
This applies to me, not to all women--to me:
My children woke me up to the greater world outside my head. Yeah, I *thought* I knew what was what, but I didn't. I really didn't. Ask anyone who knew me before I had kids: I am a different, better person now, in the sense that I am more authentically myself. I didn't have kids as a personal growth project (it was a deep biological imperative, forgive me Second Wave, but that's what it was), and I don't recommend it for personal growth. But it was an interesting side effect.
My kids gave me increased humility, perspective, patience. Or maybe they just brought that out in me. I don't know. All I know is, when I gave birth to my kids I gave birth to myself.
LynnS * The New Homemaker * Liza's Fairy Blogmother
The Other Essay
Submitted by JJ Ross on 6 June 2007 - 1:00pm.
I remembered was indeed by Otter, can be read here:
"Dear SCOTUS: If you haven't had one, then you need to STFU."
It is tempting
Submitted by NanceConfer on 6 June 2007 - 3:20pm.
And that's one point we touched on at the walk this morning.
That's the walk where there are two unschooling Moms trying to feel a bit more fit -- even if we don't meet any other woman's idea of what we should look like or how we should be exercising.
We got around to the notion/guess that perhaps Amanda was childless or young or both. And hadn't been knocked around by life's changing events quite enough to realize how absolutes don't really work in the real world.
But that sounded so "ist" -- you know, age-ist or whatever other thing you might find objectionable.
We have thought about these things though. Since before we had children. Since before had lived with our husbands for years. We didn't just stumble into homeschooling by accident. We didn't all start off hsing -- we discovered it and grew into our own ways.
My walking buddy even pointed me to another unschooler's blog and poetry that meant one thing to her when she studied it in college and another now -- http://radicalunschooling.blogspot.com/ -- see the post called "The Moon is Always Female."
So, yes, we dare to suggest that perhaps being a parent is part of being able to appreciate how radical a notion it is to homeschool and how, if you started off a feminist, that is not stripped from you by homeschooling.
Nance
Trouble Is
Submitted by JJ Ross on 6 June 2007 - 4:59pm.
that it's not homeschooling trying to strip it from us.
Write what you know? That's what I was taught in school and what my unschooled daughter does so well, but this new breed of show-me-the-money feminist blogger? -- not.
We knew that teacher union liberals turned expert like Michael Apple hated homeschooling, because they see it as economic undermining of their clout for ever-higher government checks. But I hadn't expected feminist liberals (other than unionized schoolteachers of course) to reduce the feminine to masculine terms like economics and labor, studies and gender dynamics, in that lofty, absurdly inhumane academic tone.
That's what worked so well in Milgram's shock experiments, remember? "It is necessary that the experiment continue" the white-coated official would intone, and so the merry shocking in the name of "teaching" would begin.
You'd think such well-educated feminists would naturally care to learn something of our nouvelle cuisine before they just toss the old paternalistic crap together with their pert secret zero-sum-game dressing, like a fresh green salad for their no-doubt-well-compensated corporate lunch to be called feminist progress.
And if we don't go along, then we are part of the problem and need to be lectured about feminism and worse, education and worst of all HOME education, about which they haven't the first clue! Except what HSLDA has been jamming down all our throats for years. Yeah, I am all worked up without anyone even paying me to rant now . . .is that anti-feminist too?
I just have to say
Submitted by LynnS on 6 June 2007 - 3:51pm.
...that this is the coolest conversation I've had in eons.
LynnS * The New Homemaker * Liza's Fairy Blogmother
The Good News
Submitted by JJ Ross on 6 June 2007 - 6:34pm.
is that at least it's free, Lynn!
Although I suppose that would be bad news if it means we're all being exploited into having it? :wink:
UPDATE -from the comments at Amanda's, a poster named Malachi has more good news (more good news than bad anyway!)
I definitely agree with Amanda that homeschooling is a burden that shouldn’t be forced on women.
It is, however, a choice that several explicitly feminist women I know have chosen, and is an excellent way to raise gendersmart kids, IME.
Being homeschooled myself, I have a horse in the race. For my part, I agree that homeschoolng is a major commitment, butI think that in an ideal world, the government could help make it an easier burden to bear. Rather than sapping the strength of public school, I’d like ot see homeschooling rejuvenate it — I’d like to see blurred boundaries between in-school and out-of-school, and an end to strict age segregation. Let people take some classes at their school, or let the school give them resources to work with at home.
Anyway, I think from a policy perspective, it will neve rbe for everyone, but it can definitely be put within reach of more people with the right reforms.
I can buy all that. But it can't ever be simple; there are political implications behind every line drawn and re-definition rendered, make no mistake. Sure, it's just a new political frame but we're still the ones being framed.
The folks trying to define homeschool moms as unpaid labor due a paycheck from the government may not buy it, and whoo-boy, won't it make the folks trying to define us into or out of their agenda from the conservative extreme crazy, LOL -- all that about blurring lines between in-school and out-of-school!
This political campaign's concept is so simple -- simpleminded really -- that it makes a fine wedge issue: homeschooling is not public schooling, and public schooling is not homeschooling.
Duh!
I went to school myself, even I get that. Next?Ah, but wait. One can't just acknowledge this politely and move on, as if someone proclaimed marriage isn't divorce and divorce isn't marriage. Not so simple -- if you accept this, the next steps follow inexorably. There must be political implications and binding definitions in law for all to live by, to "protect" the separation of these concepts.
It's like any other wedge issue, and the worst place to be is in the middle, where the sharp edge of the wedge pounds into you and the bottom starts to bind and then split.
What IS homeschooling then, and what is public schooling? All they all about the money, or lack thereof? Defined only by law and rule, or lack thereof? Are these definitions immutable and universal, or made by parents and citizens, just like every other aspect of government and occasionally in need OF change to REFLECT change?Are they mutually exclusive, "separate but equal"?
Is either one of them in any part meant to be defined by protecting kids' hearts and minds, so they can grow up to be smarter, more progressive and enterprising citizens than we are?
What part of each is just pandering to grownups and their groaning?
Should we define these two labels by law alone, or also by what they mean to the folks who choose them, what they want and need from their family's education experiences, how they live while living those choices?
And why is there confusion and concern and endless angst over this, if it's all so simple and clear?
Cocking My Snook at Public School as Feminism
Submitted by JJ Ross on 7 June 2007 - 10:45am.
. . .not only in Amanda's direction but in annoyed response to something else purporting that liberals need to "fix" all us oppressed and exploited homeschool families, a legal paper a la Rob Reich, apparently by another young woman who already knows everything!:
Home Education is a "Public Function" Monopoly, Who Knew?
If public education is the best way to build liberal community and further democratic values (like personal liberty from government?) then why doesn’t society enjoy gender equity and autonomy by now, for all women and children? Compulsory schooling as engine of “liberal†social democracy has had more than 50 years to make it so. How much more money and time must generations of taxpayers invest to finally get these fabulous benefits?
I once bought into public education as progressive and children as FTEs (when I was young and childless and vested in the public schools) but I’ve learned a lot since then. I never stopped thinking and exploring and analyzing, or being a feminist and raising my son and daughter to be, for that matter. But I see no willingness to even acknowledge that question among young feminism.
Well, hello all you wonderful women!
Submitted by Margaret Bassett on 28 June 2007 - 12:08am.
Let me introduce myself by the decades I've encountered. At Coming of Age time, I knew I wanted to experience the world. I could ride horses, milk cows, sew my clothes, and cook for thrashers, but I hadn't gone to a play, traveled to a big city or seen a president. Like the song says, "Is that all there is?"
Then came college where I experienced some book learning and a little enlightenment from peers. I found some of the "girls" were only there to get a husband. The "boys" were likely to tell you that you were frustrated if you didn't do what they suggested. That is, until they were drafted to "protect" me.
Then came early satisfying work, buta few misinformed persons hinted I was going to be an old maid. Believe me, it was a joy to escape that crisis by going to Denmark for a year where Barbie-doll mentality was not evident in my group.
Was I free? Of course not. If I went to a doctor because my stomach hurt, he was likely to tell me that perhaps I had the cramps with "the curse" which happened until I was married. Later, after marriage, another doctor said it would be okay once I had a baby.
During marriage, I muddle through plenty of pain until finally a doctor declares me old enough to have a hysterectomy. Stopped that problem. Just about the same time as they invented the pill. Stepdaughter wanted to know all about it and I didn't know what to tell her. She got herself educated after she was married.
So came the cultural revolution, and young women were burning their bras and saying they wouldn't sleep with a man who had a draft card in his pocket. "Hell no, we won't go" was unisex (a word I first remarked on).
When NOW came we had brown bag lunch meetings and wondered what would happen when it was time for Social Security. We worked, had fairly good income and had a guaranteed stake. But how about the poor women who worked and still did not make enough to draw their own Social Security and only got half of what their husband's drew. Two pay FICA, but together they do not draw enough benefits to stop working. What about women in low-paying jobs? And there was the question of abortion. We toyed with that because we did not want to discourage Catholic women from having their consciousnesses raised. And how could we encourage black women to join in, without their being wary of overshadowing the newfound liberty their husbands earned? NARAL was formed to take care of the abortion question. As for women of color, I see special programs now where they discuss the role of sexes in the African American community.
Then in widowhood I had time to help a little neighbor girl whose mother was in a nursing home. My advise to her: A woman has a right to her own body. Alright for a preteen, but what would I do when she met the high school menagerie? Her family attended a mediumly strict Baptist church. I heard the preacher give a sermon with his modern version of original sin. He said that what was wrong was that Adam didn't heed what was happening to Eve and should have cautioneed her. When the girl was old enough for sex I knew she wanted birth control. With no parental rights, I was worried to override what her father might think. Fortunately, she had the kind help of her future mother-in-law, who surely had a vested interest in the matter.
What does this have to do with homeschooling? My take is that each family has a decision to make. Parents teaching their offspring is how the human race has got to where it is. And it will be furthered by parents making decisions as best they can. There's no one way.
And that reminds me of the first life lesson I learned from my mother. In Wyoming women had the vote before the nation did--a necessity to have enough voters to declare statehood. However, she told me that we still couldn't sit on juries. It seemed so curious to me. She smiled as she said that they thought we were too emotional. Of course, when it came to book learning we children had a headstart, since she was a former teacher. By the time we were old enough to meet the one room schoolhouse, we were all able to read.
you've been holding out on me
You were telling me to write this when all the time you had it in your head yourself! You said it way better than I could have. Brava.
LynnS * The New Homemaker * Liza's Fairy Blogmother