Where Are the Moms and Kids?

I originally wrote this article on April 1, 2015.

I need to research post-World-War-II and women’s liberation.  It’s a huge topic, so it might take me some time.

So here is my naive mind at work.  Please correct me where I’m wrong:

World War II sent away most of the young and middle-aged men, leaving women and children behind.  Someone had to help with the war effort back in the United States.  So women went into the work force.

The men came back from World War II and women assumed their housewife and full-time mom roles again.  But things were stirred up.

Back in those days, being a full-time homemaker and stay-at-home mom also meant being an ‘assistant and servant to husband.’  So not only did the mom run-the-show at home, 24-7, but she also made sure the spouse was greeted at the door with a smile, the kids were clean and quiet by the time he got home, and his warm dinner was served.  After, he kicked his feet up and the wife continued to tend to his needs.

Also, back then, most kids had a parent home to greet them after school.  And the neighborhoods were full of kids playing pick-up games in the street, running from yard-to-yard, hanging out at their friends’ homes (which had adults present).  There wasn’t the push for long school days or to bring school home (homework) until bedtime.  Kids played.  Families hung out.

Additionally, neighborhoods were communities of support.  If one of the women had to run an errand, there was a back-up community to watch her kids.  The social life of the women was just out of their front doors.  There wasn’t much need for formalized daycare, organized play-dates, organized little-kid sports, and penciling in coffee for months down the road.  Things flowed naturally and spontaneously.  Direct parental involvement (being a cab driver, being forced to do kid activities and be in kid-centered groups so their kids could have a social life) was minimal–all the while, the adults were present and available.

Additionally, when people are actually living in their space, using the trails, sitting by the bodies of water, walking through the neighborhoods, hanging out in their yards, they are more likely to care about those spaces: their space becomes an investment; they might even advocate for and create positive changes to meet their and their surrounding neighbors’ needs. If the neighbors are home, and aware of their surroundings, it feels safer–people tend to watch out for each other even if they don’t hang out together.

The women’s liberation movement kicked in about 1.5 decades later. One of its big messages was that women could go to work just like the men and also have a family if they wanted to.

So women worked their way into the work force.  They indeed have showed everyone that women can ‘have it all’ to some extent:  having a career and making babies.

It’s my theory that two-income families, which started with the women’s liberation movement, played a huge part in upping the housing prices.  And of course, it increased the demand for more than one car per family.

Having more money tends to equal more demand.  More demand equals raised prices.   So two-income families basically swallowed themselves up and painted themselves in a corner.

Instead of kids being with their moms until they start school, kids are put in daycare shortly after birth.  Instead of kids having a parent home after school, they are in after-school programs.  Instead of street-games, parents are shuffling kids to organized sports–adding even more to their already jam-packed schedules.  Parents want kids in school longer so the parents can work longer hours.  And then families, instead of playing and enjoying family time, play school-patrol forcing kids to do even more school work to appease the school bureaucrats.  And then it’s early bed-time so they can do it all over again.

Houses are vacant most of the time. Playgrounds are mostly empty until the weekends, if at all.  People, young and older, are just plain beat.  And crabby.

Sure, it’s parents’ rights to raise their family how they want.  If both parents want to work, it’s their right to do so.  It’s parents’ rights to have their kids booked from morning-to-night.

And I think it’s fantastic that women have the opportunity to work, if they choose to, in jobs besides fetching coffee for males.

But what I would like to propose is a revamping of women’s liberation–for women to feel empowered as stay-at-home moms.

Where the pre-women’s-liberation (after the start of industrialization) times went totally and completely wrong was the limiting and dis-empowering belief that homemakers needed to take care of another adult (the husband/partner) in addition to the children.

Of course, for many of us women, a paid job outside of the home seems a heck of a lot better than having a spouse who comes home wanting to be taken care of–especially in addition to our caring for the children.

Those of us who choose to stay home with our kids don’t have the supportive neighborhood communities.  Our kids don’t have the pick-up games.  There’s a lot that’s missing from the days of old.  Too bad we can’t take the good stuff from being an at-home parent in the pre-1960s, and ditch the husband’s servant thing.

I wonder if more women would want to be stay-at-home moms then.

Warmly,