Watching 60 Minutes on "new stay-at-home moms" makes me want the TV brick

[iconoclastic cat]

EEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

"We long for the 1950's!"

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

*smashes television*

[acmavm]

1. Well then they better start working their asses off to get rid of the

imbecile in the White House 'cuz they're going to be checking the help wanted ads soon, the way he's got the economy tanking.

[Reverend_Smitty]

2. yes I long to overturn 50 years of civil rights

:puke:

[Jack_Dawson]

3. West Coast: We need more details

Go ahead and spoil it - for me anyways. Did it involve minivans?

[iconoclastic cat]

4. I...can't articulate...through...RAGE!

Apparently today's modern woman (represented solely by white women in this segment) is no longer interested in the rat race and would rather raise her kids at home.

Because they can all afford that due to their (present) husbands' fabulous incomes.

[Book Lover]

5. Oh please - kids grow up

And then what are you gonna do, sister? Complain on national tv about how unfair the workplace is when they don't welcome you back to your former position after a 20-year absence? You want the 50's? You're gonna get the 60's.

[Jack_Dawson]

6. So...you're jealous?

or just don't understand the desire to stay at home all day? For me it would be the latter.

[iconoclastic cat]

7. Watch the show. An "expert" claimed that 85% of female professionals

were LEAVING the workforce to raise their families (this done via a survey).

Well, yeah, I'd love it if we could live on one income. This report, however, painted a rosy freakin' picture of how well middle America is doing in this economy.

[tigereye]

17. holy shit

what a pile of crap. It is easier for one parent to work less when you have kids, but we aren't all foaming at the mouth to go back to the 50s.

:wtf: It's Santorum. He made em say it. ;)

[Lady President]

21. 85% of the upper echelon

Not 85% of the real world. IIRC she called couples who had put their wedding announcement in some paper which only the upper crust did. When she called them to see if the women were still in the work force 85% were at home raising the children.

I loved how the moms gathered at the church to discuss the burdens of staying at home. It looked like a meeting for a white supremacy group-- all white women discussing the trials of raising a family.

I had a stay at home mom, and it was wonderful. I'm certain that I'm more successful and happier because of it, but realistically, most families can't do that today.

It was just another story to make the average family feel inadequate.

[BlueJazz]

8. The whole segment is rather Ridiculous, in the sense that,....

..the amount of women that would be able to quit a $200,000.00 a year job PLUS have a Husband (or Partner) that could keep them both in their lifestyle is about 1,000 of One percent of the population..Geez...

[kedrys]

9. I had to keep the s.o. from doing just that

and lemme tell you, the line was forming to the right. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

My stepsister-in-law is one of those vain, spoiled little brats, who has daddy's gold card and whose husband was so whipped, he got himself fired from his job on purpose, knowing she'd leave him once she no longer had any use for him. No kids, fortunately.

[jmm]

10. McCarthyism, segregation, no Roe V Wade

:bounce: :woohoo: :bounce:

VH1 is long over due for a I love the 50's special!

[LeftyMom]

11. I hate those stories

because I know a lot of stay at home moms, and was one myself for the first two years, now I work from home. None of the women I know are living in McMansions or piling the kids in the Land Rover to head off to tennis lessons. We make sacrifices to spend time with our kids. Down here in my economic bracket, decent daycare simply isn't affordable.

[no name no slogan]

12. Oh, those poor rich white wimmen

Big hairy fscking deal, white middle- and upper-class women are staying home with their kids. Oh those poor dears. :eyes:

Every day, poor white, black and brown women STILL get up and do the jobs they've always done: making your clothes, cooking your food, scrubbing the piss stains off your toilet rims, answering your phone calls.

These kind of stories make me want to upchuck.

The REAL heroes of this world are the working women who not only raise their families, but hold down a job (or two, or three) and make it all look so easy.

[LeftyMom]

13. TIME did a story on this last year

I think I still have a copy (I keep it ro remind me not to buy thier rag again, the article was awful.) Again it was all about rich white professional women staying home with thier late in life trophy babies. The wierd thing is that nobody mentioned the best interests of the children involved even in passing,and little was said of the children's fathers. Seemed wierd to me, what's best for LeftyKid is such a huge part of why I work from home and why I stayed home before that. It was all about the "at home" women, who seemed less like at-home mothers than soem new sort of early retirees, as they didn't appear to be focusing on or spending time with thier children, they just weren't working.

It was bizarre and so foreign to my experience as a mother.

[AuntieM1957]

14. I work with a woman who is

a grandmother in her mid 50s.
Her daughter has 8 children, and her son has 4.
We tease her about being a dozens grandmother.
She works two jobs to help out her daughter who is a single parent.
But she feels guilty because she doesn't babysit - she's just too tired after working 14 hours/day to keep the kids on the weekends.

Suspect that we all know more women like her.

But why don't we ever see stories about THOSE WOMEN on the damn TV?

They're the real American heroes!

[SoCalDem]

15. There is a HUGE difference between now and then..

THEN:

most women had no reason to go to work..

The war had just ended and they were in childbirth mode and nesting was the NORM..

Husbands made ENOUGH MONEY TO SUPPORT THE WHOLE FAMILY, and still have some time in that suburban "nest".. work schedules were predictable, and schedulable..most jobs were UNION..there were` rules..pensions, benefits, vacations, raises..

There ere no malls, multi-theatres..Most towns were boring little places, and the "action" was right there in the suburban communities..

Most families had only ONE car

People bought what they NEEDED...not EVERYTHING they think they ought to have..

Only rich people had credit cards..except of local store credit and gasoline cards)


NOW....

IT TAKES BOTH parents working to support the family in a generally accepted way..

Some women LIKE to work, and resented being stuck at "home"..

"Home" is not all it was cracked up to be anyway..Most women start to think about working (even back then) once the kids are in school.


The "back to the house" movement is fine for women who can afford to do it, but to imply that women who don't are selfish or wrong, is just stupid..

rich people have always had "choices" that the rest of us do not.. Nothing will ever change that..

[MountainLaurel]

18. Remember tho SoCal

That those "most women had no reason to go to work" refers to a fairly small subset of the total population: white middle- and upper-class women. That's it.

Women of color and the poor have ALWAYS worked in addition to raising a family and keeping a house: cleaning churches, schools, and other people's houses, cooking and waitressing in diners and bars, raising other people's kids, spending 10 hours or more a day handling chores on the farm and taking goods to market, serving as sales clerks in shops, working in the typing pool.

[SoCalDem]

19. True, but whenever this issue is discussed on tv,

the "stay at homers' are always compared to the "stereotypical" Mom..not the real Mom..

But even the stereotypical models don't mesh anymore..

The working class people have always been working class, and even though some "escaped" to middle class, it was not forever..and perhaps this whole "back to home" movement, is just another way of getting the "wimmen-folk" ready for their backwards trek a-comin.. make them think it will be "fun" or even "right"..

It always boils down to money anyway.. Rich women who shoose to stay homw are not transformed into June Cleaver, anymore than Moms who have to work outside are transformed into Norma Rae..

Women should be able to choose whatever they want,,and not have to make excuses to anyone
:)

[MountainLaurel]

20. Absolutely

Just doing my part to make sure that reality gets interjected.

:toast:

[fairfaxvadem]

16. Good Grief, this could be one of my best friends...

She does live in a McMansion (8,000 sq ft, easily), she has her late in life baby, stays home, drives a massive Lexus SUV (not the entry level one), AND to top it all off, for the first 2 and a half years of her baby's life, she had full-time help 3 days a week. And a housecleaner. Now she has her nanny down to one day a week, since the kid will go to preschool in the fall for a few days a week.

I'm okay with the housecleaner, but staying at home to raise your kid with an all day nanny 3 days a week???

How in the world did my mom and dad raise 6 kids, with my mom also working as nurse, to boot, in the 50s and 60s, without all the help? I don't get it.