SIVACRACY.NET

So that Hirshman article (see here and here) is back in blogosphere circulation thanks to NYT columnist David Brooks' column (read accounts at Echidne and Pandagon). I predicted that wingnuts like Brooks would be delighted to embrace Hirshman's piece as evidence that feminists are anti-family, and big surprise, it happened.

Of more interest to me is this NYT article, Paradise Lost (Domestic Division) by Terry Martin Hekker, in which Hekker, a woman who rabidly, publicly proselytized homemaking as a vocation admits that she made some bad life choices. The piece starts out:

"A while back, at a baby shower for a niece, I overheard the expectant mother being asked if she intended to return to work after the baby was born. The answer, which rocked me, was, "Yes, because I don't want to end up like Aunt Terry." That would be me."

In the 1970s Hekker had written "an Op-Ed article for The New York Times on the satisfaction of being a full-time housewife in the new age of the liberated woman," and ultimately wrote "a book titled "Ever Since Adam and Eve," followed by a national tour on which [she], however briefly, became the authority on homemaking as a viable choice for women." Then, after 40 years of marriage, her husband left her, apparently for another women. The divorce pushed her into poverty, and she recognizes now that she should have better prepared herself for this possibility. Hard personal experience seems to have transitioned her fairly dramatically from anti-feminist to almost-feminist, and I give her a lot of credit for discussing this openly, with a hilarious quip that if she wrote a sequel to "Ever Since Adam and Eve" she would title it "Disregard First Book." Ultimately, however, she still doesn't seem to understand that unexpected divorce is only one of a host of tragedies that can befall people, writing:

"I read about the young mothers of today - educated, employed, self-sufficient - who drop out of the work force when they have children, and I worry and wonder. Perhaps it is the right choice for them. Maybe they'll be fine. But the fragility of modern marriage suggests that at least half of them may not be.

"These young mothers are often torn between wanting to be home with their children and the statistical possibility of future calamity, aware that one of the most poverty-stricken groups in today's society are divorced older women. The feminine and sexual revolutions of the last few decades have had their shining victories, but have they, in the end, made things any easier for mothers?"

If by "feminine and sexual revolutions" she means feminism, then the answer is emphatically yes, and it saddens me that she doesn't recognize this. She mentions in passing that after the divorce, a series of fortuitous circumstances allowed her to serve six years as the first female mayor of Nyack, New York. Would this have been likely without feminism? I don't think so.

Hekker wrote: "Sitting around my kitchen with two friends who had also been dumped by their husbands, I figured out that among the three of us we'd been married 110 years. We'd been faithful wives, good mothers, cooks and housekeepers who'd married in the 50's, when "dress for success" meant a wedding gown and "wife" was a tenured position.... Like most loyal wives of our generation, we'd contemplated eventual widowhood but never thought we'd end up divorced."

I guess Hekker assumed if her husband died, there would be plenty of insurance money. Maybe she wishes he had! In my view, the best moral to draw from her experiences is that women need to prepare themselves to handle many negative possibilities: career reversals, illnesses and death, as well as divorce. Feminism has an important role to play in helping women accomplish this while balancing the demands and joys of their families, and I suppose I'm glad to have Hekker, if not on the team, then at least not affirmatively impeding us. But it would have been nice for her to give feminists a little more credit.