Can you be a feminist & a stay at home mum?

In 1981 Barbara Smith wrote, 'Feminism is the political theory & practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism'. Hear, hear to this. Perhaps we need to add stay at home mothers to her list. We are an increasingly marginalised group, penalised & discriminated against in the tax & benefit system, derided as old fashioned in the media, erased from the political agenda & simply defined by our usual location.

Have stay at home mothers been included in feminist debate? Not always. And do stay at home mothers need feminism? Absolutely! A recent Mumsnet survey found that 88% of women with young children who work full-time would prefer to either work part-time or be full-time carers for their children. Yet fewer & fewer women are able to afford to stay at home with their children due to low wages, the rising cost of housing & other expenses. Millions of women are finding themselves unable to give their children the kind of care that they feel they need. This surely is a feminist issue, yet the difficulties facing women who want to look after their children at home have been overlooked by some feminists in favour of a focus on getting more women into the workplace & the provision of child care to facilitate this. In our neoliberal society we often see women’s worth equated with our earning capacity. Women’s ability to earn the same as men & have the same kind of careers as men is seen as a simple indicator of equality. Equivalence of role has been confused with equality of value. In other words, women must carry out the same role as men to be considered equal. Of course these are important issues & need campaigning for but sadly this focus has sometimes led stay at home mothers to feel excluded from feminism & has created the impression that feminism & being a stay at home mother are somehow incompatible. This is simply not true.

Feminism is about fighting for equality & an end to discrimination. Stay at Home Mothers experience significant inequality in the tax & benefit system but this issue has yet to be given the same attention in the feminist movement as workplace inequalities. This needs to be addressed. Feminism is also about acknowledging, valuing & celebrating the things that make us women. Crucially, women have babies: we carry them in our bodies, give birth to them, breastfeed them & are overwhelmingly the people who care for them in infancy & beyond. Motherhood is a significant, valuable & enriching experience in many women’s lives. It’s not an inconvenience to be managed & child care shouldn’t be seen as a ‘problem’ as it is so often framed by our Politicians.

You are not a slave to your biology if you feel a desperate longing to be with your child & raise him or her yourself. You are not letting down the sisterhood if you find more fulfilment in caring for your children than in paid employment. Irish Journalist, David Quinn recently wrote, ‘It is amazing to see how the old adage, “a woman’s place is in the home” has completely transformed into ‘a woman’s place is at work & a child’s place is in day care”. The old attitude was authoritarian & the new attitude is equally so’.

It is important to remember that although some feminists have criticised women who choose to stay at home with their children there have always been feminists who have acknowledged & championed the huge amount of unpaid care work that women do in the home & who have supported stay at home mothers in their choice. Here are just a few examples:

Feminist Economist, Marilyn Waring has challenged the use of GDP as a measure of a country’s production as it takes no account of the vast amount of unpaid care work done mostly by women. She argues that this unpaid women’s work is the largest sector in any country’s economy, it makes all other work possible & that the market would collapse without it. [An Office for National Statistics survey in 2010 calculated unpaid care as worth £343bn, or 23% of GDP ed.]

Global Women’s Strike is an international feminist organisation co-ordinated by Selma James. GWS is asking for all care work, including raising children in the home to be paid.

All Mothers Work is a blog and feminist campaign group set up by Esther Parry to promote maternal feminism & support stay at home mothers.

Feminist academic, Andrea O’Reilly set up the Motherhood Initiative for Research & Community Involvement. She writes, 'Motherhood is the unfinished business of the feminist movement. That's why I started MIRCI, largely because of the invisibility & marginality of mothers' work'.

Yes, some feminists have been hostile towards stay at home mothers but many others have campaigned for recognition of the huge amount of unpaid work that we do. Stay at home mothers must acknowledge & challenge the hostility we have experienced from some feminists but this doesn’t mean that we should reject feminism, rather we should embrace it & claim it as our own. 

So can you be a feminist & a stay at home mother? Absolutely, you can! In fact I would argue that my decision to stay at home to raise my daughter was informed by my feminism & my identification as a feminist has been deepened by my experience of being a stay at home mother. I am happy to call myself a maternal feminist but I am also happy to call myself a feminist without any further qualification. I refuse to let the term ‘feminism’ be misappropriated by people who want to judge & exclude certain groups of women. Feminism is for everybody & this, of course, includes stay at home mothers.

(This article was first published in the Mothers at Home Matter Spring 2015 newsletter)