It’s been a big year for the girls. We’ve kicked goals (literally), got into Parliament, been to space and back, won Nobel Peace Prizes and for the first time, led the US Navy. But despite all that, statistically we’re miserable.
A recent survey found that women are increasingly unhappy. I heard this dissected in a TV segment by two men, which seemed odd in and of itself. They were quick to agree that it’s because women have made a rod for their backs. They are happy at home looking after their kids, so stop fighting against the grain.
Thanks men!
This is a comment I have actually heard a lot over recent years. Many times in direct conversations, and many times from women themselves.
Silly women! How did we get it all so wrong?!
They say this like it is our own fault. They say this like we shouldn’t have fought to be able to vote and work and be paid equally. Like if we wanted all those things, we’d have to suffer to get them. Essentially, we can have it all on their terms and suffer, or have half of it and continue being small.
Blaming women for “creating” the rod for their back is willfully ignoring that we largely have no choice or autonomy in these developments in the current climate.
Maybe it’s because the Productivity Commission tells us non-stop that the economy is on our shoulders. We desperately need women in the workplace and back at work after having kids.
Statistics on housing agree. Home ownership is only an affordable reality with two incredibly successful high-paid individuals in each household.
The Reserve Bank concurs. This cost of living crisis isn’t going anywhere in a hurry so we need all hands on deck in every household, making sure we can put food on the table.
Women’s advocacy groups agree with all of the above. Women over 55 are the fastest growing group of homeless, so we need women with their own cash so they are financially independent.
But wait! Hold your horses says the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We need population growth! Everyone must keep having babies! Lots of them.
For many of us, our biological make-up agrees with that and we are actually feeling a bit clucky now you mention it.
The economy has been created in such a way that it only functions with both parents working. Yet we still have to have children, and then pay out the nostril for someone other than ourselves to raise them. There seems very little agency in this entire set up.
There are many women I know who have young children who would love nothing more than to stay home and look after them, but they can’t afford to. Selling this back to us as our “choice” is fanciful.
Literally, what are our options?
Given this delicious set of circumstances, we’re naturally deciding to have children later (cash money for fertility clinics!) so we can establish a good career that will help with the financial load of the household. But having children later means our parents are aging and dying at the same time we’ve got toddlers, so we’re spread pretty thin.
We’re doing the math on whether we can afford daycare at all or whether it would be better to have one parent stay home and miss career progression, or have both in the workforce bleeding money. We’re getting sick more because our children are rushed to day care and riddled with germs so that we can get back to work.
Part-time mums often work full-time hours with half the pay, so that needs some attention. Work-from-home mums are getting a finger wag for not coming back to the office. The psychologists are telling us the babies just want mummy to stay home. The doctors are concerned about our biological clock.
I support every endeavour to make childcare cheaper and more accessible. But I also support any idea that supports a mother, or father, to stay home and take care of their kids. What we need is a choice.
It is entirely absurd that we are lumping this guilt, along with every other, on the shoulders of women. We did not ask for this rod. The world desperately needs women to reproduce to keep economies afloat, but then provide nothing to support them.
Who is winning here? Capitalism, baby. Certainly not women.