Strawfeminists And Other Voodoo Dolls

Update: Jill at Feministe and Echidne also written about this same issue.

Another point I forgot to make. "The Daughter Track", as the NY Times called it, is not a new trend. It's been going on for many, many years. The NY Times makes it sound as if it's discovered a new trend of selfish career women being forced to give up their careers when they are forced to care for elderly parents, as if that's some kind of punishment. Shame on those self-centered women! Nope, women of all classes have been caring for elderly parents for generations. There doesn't seem to be much mention of expecting adult sons to care for elderly parents, although more adult sons are doing it now. Just because the NY Times has found yet another way to bash women doesn't make elder care by daughters a new trend.

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Amanda has up a great post about how the New York Times is embarking on a "Stick The Pin In The Strawfeminist" series of articles as well as how the NY Times looks down upon the adult daughters (and daughters tend to do this, not sons) who care for elderly parents. I really should be working on my novel, but I'm procrastinating, so I'm going to blog for awhile instead.

I've noticed for a long time that the NY Times loves to pull out its Strawfeminist Voodoo Doll and stick pins in it on a regular basis. Remember the cover article with the picture of Ally McBeal that declared feminism dead? Well, now it is no longer dead, but fit to be reviled. Amanda brought up the Strawfeminist, which is the stereotype of feminism that the NY Times loves to attack, because to actually track down real feminists like the ones in the blogosophere would prove all those stereotypes wrong. Amanda described the Strawfeminist. I'm sure you've run across this chimera before.

Lurking in the background of all these stories is the presence of the Strawfeminist, a useful tool for backlash article writers and other sundry anti-feminists, because real feminists don't make real good targets, seeing as how we refuse behave and fit into the stereotypes appointed to us so we can be hated in lieu of actually coming out against women's equality. Unlike real feminists, Strawfeminists are all wealthy and white and "choose" to work instead of work because they have to. (We real feminists mostly need that paycheck.) Strawfeminists both hate men and have too much sex with them. Strawfeminists are selfish and hate their children and parents and husbands. Strawfeminists have no sense of humor and are ugly. Strawfeminists are selfish.

Amanda described the real flesh-and-blood feminists that populate the blogosphere:

One thing I really think, at least hope, that blogging is doing for feminism is that it makes it harder for feminism's opponents to keep believing so strongly in the Strawfeminist when faced with the prospect of real feminists to have to deal with. Feminist bloggers I read come from all socioeconomic backgrounds and all races. Feminist bloggers are younger and older, male and female, gay and straight and bisexual and other sundry things, married and unmarried, religious and non-religious, career-having and job-having and even staying at home, and most of us have a pretty good sense of humor, though some of us are rowdier than others. (*ahem*) The gap between the Strawfeminist that the haters like to pick at and the real feminists out gets more and more comical every day.

These are real, 3-dimensional women with husbands, boyfriends, children, jobs, hobbies, families, and lives. They don't fit well into the Strawfeminist fallacy, but that doesn't stop the trolls from trying to pigeonhole them in that category. My trolls are especially amusing. Despite talking about The Count (my husband) and The Royal Spawn (my son), and making it clear that I am very happily married, the trolls still try to shove me into that Strawfeminist mold. I must hate men. I must hate fathers. They feel sorry for my son. It's downright comical. I don't fit in their Strawfeminist mold, and they don't like it. What's even more amusing is that I am married to a non-custodial father. I am a Subsequent Wife. That fact doesn't stop the trolls from trying to paint me with the Strawfeminist brush. They look very pathetic when they do that.

Amanda's commentary about adult daughters taking care of elderly parents caught my attention because I've seen a few cases of this happening in my lifetime. Back in the '80s, the mother of a middle-aged, comfortably middle/upper middle class white man I knew had to move into his home. His wife did most of the eldercare work while he did his community hobby stuff at night and worked during the day. She also worked, but she had a second shift at home of taking care of his mother.

The irony of the Second Shift, as described by Arlie Hochschild, is that mothers don't see their Second Shift end the moment the kids are out of the house. Once the kids leave, the parents move in and they need tending to. Guess who does it most often, and it's not the husband. Sometimes the parents move in before the kids have moved out, so that means the the wife ends up with a Triple Shift. Eldercare is still seen as women's work, even if the woman is caring for her husband's elderly parents.

My ex's grandmother lived with his aunt and uncle for years. She was his aunt's mother. These people are also white and very comfortably middle class. They lived in a huge Victorian home, and Grandma had two rooms on the first floor. She was unusual in that she cooked the meals, and for the most part was able to take care of herself until she died. I liked her a lot. She used to call me "the gypsy" because I refused to wear shoes. I always walked around the house either in my bare feet or wearing socks. I hate shoes. My ex's aunt certainly didn't "choose" to quit her job and take care of her elderly mother. She runs her own company, and is running it to this day. So much for the stereotype promoted by the NY Times.

When I was in college, my father and his siblings spent a good year fighting over whether to put their elderly, infirm mother in a nursing home or to have her live with someone. The siblings who lived near her (they lived in Captain Kirk's home state - Iowa) did not want to put her in a home, whereas my father thought that was the best place for her. They got all over his case about this because he lived in Maryland, and wouldn't have to directly deal with who was going to take care of their mother. It didn't help that my grandmother did not want to live in a nursing home. She wanted to stay in her own home, but she was getting so infirm that that wouldn't have been possible without having a nurse living with her around the clock. Plus, although the siblings were fighting about where to put her if she wasn't going to be in a nursing home, I couldn't figure out if any of them actually wanted to take her in. In the end, she was sent to a nursing home. It was mainly a matter of what the family could afford, and who would be able to take care of her. These were all working class people, not upper class, wealthy, white women as described in the NY Times article who can "choose" to work rather than work because they have to. These are people with real lives and hard choices to make who aren't likely to be covered by the NY Times because their lives won't give the NY Times an opportunity to bash feminists.

My mother, the eldest of (I think - I lose track) six children, was the one who ended up taking care of my grandmother until she died. My grandmother could not walk up and down the steps, so she stayed on the pull-out couch on the first floor. My mother took on all the eldercare herself, although she had five other siblings who were perfectly capable of pitching in. Everyone lived near each other. One of my aunts would give my mother a break every once in awhile and take in my grandmother for a few days. Once again, the adult daughters were the ones who did the eldercare. Apparently, her other siblings either didn't have room in their homes for Grandma, or they had too many kids, or they smoked. A lot of them smoked, and my mother didn't want her mother in a house full of cigarette smoke. She rarely asked for help. That's just her way of doing things. These were working class people as well, and all of them worked. They couldn't "choose" to work because they were selfish, wealthy, white, upper class women as described in the NY Times article. They worked because they needed the paycheck. The NY Times wouldn't cover a family like that, either, because they're too real. The NY Times article is a slap in the face to women like my mother because it treats all women as if they are selfish, and then are later punished for their selfishness by having to care for their elderly parents.

What doesn't get mentioned in the NY Times article is that the women who traditionally take on the elder care often are still raising their own children at the same time. Sometimes they are also raising their grandchildren. These women are called the "Sandwich Generation" because they are caring for both elderly parents (either their own or their husband's parents) and their own children. Carol Abaya, an expert on the "Sandwich Generation", came up with these various definitions of the types of categories that exist:

* Traditional: those sandwiched between aging parents who need care and/or help and their own children.

* Club Sandwich: those in their 50s or 60s, sandwiched between aging parents, adult children and grandchildren. OR Those in their 30s and 40s, with young children, aging parents and grandparents.
(Term coined by Carol Abaya)

* Open Faced: anyone else involved in elder care.

My parents live in Maryland, and I live in Massachusetts. My younger sister lives in Maryland a few blocks away from my mother. She'll be the one who will take our mother in if that time ever comes. It hasn't been talked about, but the assumption is there that she is going to do it mainly because she lives a few blocks away. The Count and I are thinking about moving to Hawaii after The Royal Spawn is in college, so I won't even be on the east coast anymore by the time either of my parents will need elder care. It's too cold here in Massachusetts, and there isn't much to do in Tinytown By The Sea. The Count grew up in Hawaii, and he has been itching to move back there. I look forward to summer year round.

I agree with Amanda that these Strawfeminist articles are just backlash against the women who are not only doing the bulk of the work raising their children, they are also doing the bulk of the work caring for elderly parents. Real feminists work for the paycheck. Women who aren't feminist also work for the paycheck. Most of us aren't fortunate enough to be upper class and able to "choose" not to work. Rather than publish articles about, as Amanda put it, "'selfish' women getting their comeuppance by having to go home to take care of elderly parents", the NY Times should interview real women who have to care for elderly parents, often while caring for their own children at the same time. But the NY Times will never publish an article like that because such an article would describe the situation as it really is. Can't have that. And an article about The Way Things Are won't be as much fun as sticking pins in Strawfeminist Voodoo Dolls.