More on Stepford Wives and the missed point
Paul Stancil emails in response to my earlier post about The Stepford Wives:

Based upon my personal experience as a father of two young children and husband of a law professor wife, I think Suzanne is one full cycle behind. In my experience, the stay-at-home moms are currently attacking working mothers, not the other way around. Whether this is a Battle of the Bulge-like counteroffensive or a preemptive strike, I'm not sure. But limiting myself to the "upper middle class, don't HAVE to work but WANT to work" set, the reality is far more complex than Suzanne makes it out to be.

After many years in Texas (my great grandfather planted numerous Methodist churches throughout the state), we recently moved to Milwaukee, and have ptiched our tent in a suburb plucked straight from Norman Rockwell. Because it's decidedly upper middle class but also decidedly traditional, there is a good bit of tension between the stay-at-homes (my wife calls them The Ladies Who Lunch) and the career women (who knows what they call my wife). The current front line seems to be the local PTA, which is utterly controlled by TLWL. Our daughter just finished kindergarten, and there were literally dozens of "special events" and "helper opportunities" every month. Two art helpers per week. Two gym helpers per week. At least one classroom event every month, more during the holidays (and every day's a holiday of some sort, it seems). We're talking an order of magnitude more stuff than when I was in grade school 25 years ago. My daughter was made to feel somehow substandard on the (very rare) occasions when one of us could not make an event. There are many more examples, but that's not really the point of this email.

Instead, I want to focus on two things ¯ the complexity of the stay-at-home/working mom equilibrium and the persistent myth of the "traditional" family.

On the former, it seems to me that a truly free society will inevitably produce this sort of tension, and that the tension CLEARLY goes both directions. On balance, I'm willing to accept it as a consequence of our liberty, but no amount of moralizing or scientific explanation is going to get rid of it. Within the upper-middle class socioeconomic stratum, I think it would be a rare woman who felt no internal conflict when making the "to work or not to work" decision. Those on either side who deny internal conflict are either lying, or are religious zealots for their particular position, in my experience. My wife wrestled with it for months before our first child was born, for months afterward, and then again periodically until, oh, probably last night sometime. Other friends who have made the opposite decision (many of my former female colleagues in law practice) have struggled with the decision as well.

On balance, it is a fantastic thing that our society increasingly tells women they can do anything, and accomplish anything they set their minds to. We are a freer, more productive society than any other in recorded history (at least since the Garden), and our rough gender equality is a big part of the explanation. But when smart, talented women run into their own God-given biology, they are going to have a hard time reconciling the two. This is in some ways a consequence of our modern society (more on that below). Regardles, it's the rare stay-at-home mom who doesn't feel even the slightest twinge that she should be doing something "more" with her talents and abilities, and it's similarly unusual for a working mom to have no qualms about being away from her children during working hours.

At root, the ongoing "war" is caused by insecurity on BOTH sides. As a father observing this somewhat objectively, it's really pretty obvious. Although there is a grain of true commitment to the stereotypical arguments ("women who stay at home are rejecting the rightful place of women in society;" "women who work are rejecting the best interests of their children"), there's also an awful lot of rationalization going on. Workers feel inferior because they worry that they really are being selfish at their children's expense. Stay-at-homes envy the perceived "freedom," power and influence of the workers, and wonder what they got that Harvard degree for in the first place. At the end of the day, there's plenty of blame to go around, and I see no way to solve the problem without radically redefining women's rights in a way that most thinking people would find disgusting.

Finally, a few words on the myth of the traditional American family. I'm not saying that the tradtional nuclear family isn't best. It is. And I'm not saying that the "dad works, mom stays home" model is without benefits. I think a reasonable argument exists that the 1950s stereotype is a very good way to raise a family. But it's pretty darned mypoic for folks to invoke Tradition in defense of this arrangement when it's been "traditional" for well less than a century of the thousands of years of recorded human history. [Note: I don't think you do this]. I'm not saying there hasn't been some consistent division of labor between the sexes throughout history. But the historical continuity of the "women's sphere/men's sphere" model is less impressive than many suggest. Of course, only relatively modern, non-subsistence economies allow for the development of the "traditional" model, and the traditional model itself probably exists at least in part to compensate for the unnatural (and underdiscussed) impact of the absence of the father who spends his days away at the office. I'm sure there is some counterargument based on men with spears going on multiday hunting trips, but I'd be willing to bet that fathers in antiquity saw their children more during the course of an ordinary week than high-powered execudads do today.

Food for thought, anyway.