The Shriver Report
I was watching Meet the Press a few weeks ago. Maria Shriver was discussing her book, The Shriver Report: A Women’s Nation Changes Everything. I think I have been living in a bubble. Every time I hear reports about how more women are in the workplace than ever before, I can only recall three friends who had moms that didn’t work. They were all friends from elementary school when we lived in California. Their moms were military wives.
I believe all of my friends from high school had working parents. Out of my close friends from high school and college, all of our moms worked all of our lives. Both of my grandmothers and great-grandmothers worked. My mother in-law worked. The women in the neighborhood worked. In addition to working outside of the home, they had full responsibility for their homes and care of the children. As a matter of fact, this became a topic of conversation in an interview with Pavo Magazine .
Disclaimer for those friends from the distant past: When my father was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, my mother hired a housekeeper who visited us twice a week. However, we had to have the house cleaned up before she got there so she didn’t think we were “nasty.”
The issue of equal pay for equal work is another story. My maternal grandmother left Tuskegee for Chicago because African American educators were paid a lot more in the Midwest. The options for women beyond, housekeeper, teacher, nurse were limited for the women in my circles. They wanted our generation to have more options.
I LOVE Maria Shriver. I am glad she is bringing this issue to light. I am not making a judgment, just an observation. I look forward to reading the book. However, I think the stats reflect a group of women that are not within my immediate world.
What do you think?
Lessons from an 80's Alumna 
You’re right as far as LA (Lower Alabama) is concerned, my mom, grandmother (a principal)and aunt were educators and my paternal grandmother worked almost every day of her life as a domestic and laundry-person so that her 12 children could not only survive, but pursue their dreams.
Hi Ro. Thanks for your comment.
My mom and grandmother worked all the time. They both were the principal bread winners in the home.
Bettina, I think Maria’s study was pretty much dealing with the experiences of white women. Historically, most black women worked and most of them worked out of necessity. MORE TO COME…
I really liked this report, but wanted to share a different experience.
My mom mostly did not work as I was growing up — she was a classic 1950s (white) mom. We had homemade cookies when we came home from school & I probably owe the origin of my love for cooking to this (and my foreign language classes). But it’s a bit more complex than that.
She helped put my dad through college & my dad always encouraged her & us (me & my sister) to work & pursue a profession — I think he wanted her to work more than she did. His parents both worked (at a spaghetti factory) throughout the depression & he has always believed that women should be able to support themselves. They had an outhouse till I was ~12 when the property was condemned after my grandfather’s death & shortly before my grandmother’s. And the only photo I’ve seen of my dad growing up is in torn-up jeans.
Class differences can be as intercultural as any other type of difference.
My mom had a very different upbringing (Ivy league educated NYC lawyer for a dad … how about Paul Newman for a neighbor?) & I don’t think she expected to “work” past a certain age (partly a product of her times/class). She did end up with a part-time job when I was in high school, teaching typing, which I refused to learn because I did not want to be a secretary.
I will digress to politics because it’s Maria Shriver, with all of the the obvious complexities. I have lived with polar opposites my entire life (Mom – diehard Democrat, Dad – diehard Republican). Maria has walked a tightrope very, very well. (She must have inherited that from her family … 😉
BTW, complete aside, it IS a rule that one must clean before someone comes to clean your place (why do I keep an open calendar every other Tuesday night?). This was my very first luxury after college. I will forgo many other things, including a vacation, but I detest cleaning.
We share so much in common. I have been following Maria Shriver since experiencing a career transition and transition to motherhood. She was basically fired when her husband was elected Governor of California. She speaks very openly about how shocked she was. It could have been a conflict of interest. They assumed that she wouldn’t want a career. For Gods sake, the woman worked even with four kids. Couldn’t she be the first lady of California and hold a job?
I believe the report is grounded in empirical evidence to support her claims. I also believe there were co-authors. On Meet the Press, there were members of the Obama administration that confirmed the stats. I just know any of the people that they are talking about.
I have had women say that their moms told them to have a career to fall back on. I was never told that growing up. There was never an expectation that I wouldn’t work. When I left my job to be closer to home, everyone in the family thought it was odd. I had a few great aunts that didn’t work, but most of them worked.
While I don’t want my comments to raise the flag of racial condemnation and respect the work of Maria Shiver, I also don’t want to continue to have closed door conversations about real life. I too have often wondered about to whom society is referring when speaking of more women in the workplace.
Obviously, they are not referring to the countless African American women who have ALWAYS worked and been part of the masses that have consistently contributed to the workforce that has driven the foundation of America. Equal rights, equal pay and anything of equal substance has never placated itself into the what is and should have been right in conversation nor action.
The role of women in the workplace and in leadership has also not been equally obtained, recognized or realized and thus, I also do not believe that much of the data we read about is an accurate representation of the marginalized populus. (But I have not read the report. This is based on have read thousands of reports and stories which are not reflective)
Only my father’s mother, who never received an education in the south beyond third grade remained home to care for the children of the nine children that she bore, but her work was still consistent. She cooked, cleaned, morally educated, prepared her family and served the community, which also contributed to the workforce, for I and my other families are atrributes of her labor.
To my knowledge none of my friends through my early educational years within the same institutition where everyone looked like me, had mothers who didn’t work. Only when I moved into the later years of schooling did I have friends whose mothers had the liberty of not being part of the outside workforce like my own mother. I do however believe that like my grandmother if they were actively tending to the needs in the manner she did, they too have made their own contribution.
I look forward to reading the Shriver report, and hope that my assessment is truly misguided and it becomes an opportunity to see how mainstream America has transcended in their views of what we really look like. However, if I am once again disappointed in the lack of acknowledgement of where we are and the missed opportunity to be transparent, I will atleast appreciate how far we’ve come and the opportunity to dialogue respectively.
Thanks Sunny. I have been discussing a potential forum with women from different colors to understand our differences but also find common ground.
My mother worked all my life, and she was the oldest of 8 children so she took care of the household as a child as well as an adult. It’s all I’ve seen, so I’ve been “conditioned” to think women should work… it’s what I expected my wife to want to do (I’ve never aspired to “take care” of a woman, as independent woman are the most exciting and attractive to me). It’s what I want for my daughters also. I want them to feel the sense of accomplishment from working and having a career. Most of all I don’t want them to have to depend on ANYONE, especially a man. I’ll say this… after speaking in depth with several male friends who believe that their women should stay at home, it was really awkward trying to grasp the concept of a house-wife.
Did these guys have moms who stayed at home? Did you learn to cook and take care of yourself?
Growing up I didn’t know of any women who didn’t work outside the home. There were 11 kids in my neighborhood and only two had a mother and father in the same household. The rest of us were raised by our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and fathers. Everyone worked outside the home; even the kids, once we became old enough to do so. We also had to put in our time working in the home (chores, grass cutting, etc.).
I too find it hard to grasp the concept of a house wife or house husband. After growing up in a situation where I saw a single person pull triple duty (working out and inside the home, raising the kids, and having their own personal life), I just don’t understand how a being a house wife or house husband comes close to engaging a person’s potential. That’s just my opinion.
I had major chores….cutting grass, vaccuming, washing dishes, ironing (my own) clothes…you name it. My mom took care of 7 siblings (3 were boys). She told me from jump I would be self sufficient.
I don’t think my mother ever expected not to work. She trained to work and did. She stopped when I was born, changed careers and returned to work as soon as my borther was pre-school age. She was a M.A. chemist, very rare for a woman in those days, and did well. When she returned to work it was as a first grade teacher. 🙂 She also did well at that, eventually became principal of the largest elementary school in Huntsville, guided it through the transition from all white to majority black. She’s been retired for over twenty years now but her teachers still convene once a year for a lunch around her birthday.
Her sister also trained to work but did not, at least not after she married. I think her husband expected a housewife and stay-at-home mom and probably she did, too. My maternal grandmother also trained to work but did not, probably because she immigrated from Germany to Alabama with no English skills. On my father’s side, I think it was assumeed that women would work until they married, but that this role was temporary and transitional: that marriage and the stay-at-home wife were the “natural state” for women of their generation. That imperative has become more muted in my generation, but the period between being a stay-at-home daughter to being a stay-at-home wife has been extended. Most, however, marry during or shortly after college. Among the families of my peers, white collar or low-level professional, very few wives worked, and most probably geew up never expecting to. This was white middle class Alabama in the fifties and early sixties. This changed abruptly in the late sixties. Many women expected to work and WANTED to.
I think I’m generally attracted to women who expect and want to work. They don’t need a man in their life to make them whole, and they don’t necessarily go from being a dutiful daughter to being a dutiful wife. They might even be unruly and individual. I admire their motivation and their independence. I find them exciting and engaging, and I like their expectation that they can and should be treated as equals. These are not women who are fighting to be eqThere’s still an common and unfortunate expectation that women can and should “have it all,” that they should be the ideal housewife and mother as well as an independent and self-content working woman. It’s a crippling burden. I think it’s true that it takes a village to raise a child, but we haven’t fully worked out how the village does that. In the meanwhile, we need a village that honors women and makes in possible for them to make life choices that are individual and independent. .
WordPress has apparently just eaten my comments, and redoing them would be daunting. Sorry.
Yes, my mother expected to and WANTED to work. Yes, I learned how to cook and wash my own clothes, though ironing is not my strong suit. Yes, I am attracted to motivated and independent women; I like to be challenged by and engaged by an equal. Mainly, I’m glad that there is now a generation of women for whom equality is assumed and expected and who think any inequality is a departure from what should be the norm.
Boo, hiss, WordPress. #8-p
NOW my comments show up, without giving me a chance to proofread.
Boo, hiss, WordPress!
I have not read the book, but now I am wanting to! If it says that women for the most part didn’t work 50 years ago, then I agree that it must be written with a white lens. Is this addressed in the book? That would be a fatal flaw if it isn’t.
I was just wondering the other day: 50-60 years ago most white women of middle and upper class in B’ham had cook/house keepers, right? Now I hardly know anyone who hires a house keeper and don’t know anyone with a cook (but eating out often is a new cultural trend). Do middle and upper class families still have house keepers? If so, does that means I m not middle class? Hummm….
Byrd-Jiles,
You are definitely on the money. MyPop AND Mom are retired educators and they now travel the world with other couples that are retired from the workforce. I NEVER met a stay at home mom. Nice comparison of one world to another. So close yet so far away.
I didn’t know you read my blog Ed. How are you? I was definitely thinking of our peer group and couldn’t come up with a stay at home mom.
I am struggling to remember a woman from my childhood who did not work. Most in my grandmother’s generation worked because they had to and not because they “loved their career” or needed “fulfillment” outside the home. What is there to love about being ordered around all day and humiliated while cleaning other people’s houses and raising their children only to be treated as a second class citizen or as a non-person? The idea of a stay-at-home mom was so not my reality. I suspect Maria is speaking about a different kind of woman than those I knew.