Of Elisabeth Badinter, Slavery, and The Choice to Work Full-time as a Wife and Mother …

Perhaps the eleven Secret Service Agents and nine military personnel who engaged in unbecoming behavior down in Cartagena, Colombia, that put themselves in danger, not to mention others under their care, felt exploited, and most unconsciously.
We’re often told of the great service these agents provide our Presidents.

We’re also led to believe that the tasks they carry out involve much bravado and that the work is exciting, nothing short of glamorous.
Their recent behaviors speak otherwise, actions I am certain other agents working to safeguard prior presidents have also committed, perhaps not to this extreme, and certainly without having gotten caught.

I once heard a university professor of US History say, “The [economic] institution of slavery sits at the very center of American Dream.”
Slavery forms the core of the formation, growth and evolution of our country. Acquiring wealth, certainly huge amounts of wealth demands that an individual engage workers at a wage that when closely examined forms a losing proposition for the worker.

Regarding the publishing industry, Scott Pratt describes it like this. “ … an outfit called New American Library, offered $50,000 for a two book deal. I took it. … then …  I began to learn how publishers operate … at the speed of snail … it took six weeks to (longer for the overseas publishers) …  to get contracts. When I looked at the contracts, I realized I was entering a world where I would be exploited. Royalties due to the author were fifteen percent for hardback, fifteen percent for digital, ten percent for trade paperback and eight percent for mass market paperback. I’d been told by my editor at NAL that they were planning on releasing my books in mass market paperback, which meant I was going to be in the eight percent royalty bracket. If they sold the books for $7.99 (which they eventually did) I’d receive a whopping 64 cents per book. Out of that 64 cents, my agent would take 10 cents, leaving me with 54 cents. Come the end of the year, the government would take another 16 cents, give or take a penny. So I would be netting around 38 cents per copy sold. That sucks. That’s exploitation.”
So again, why am I writing about this?

What’s my point?

As a wife and mother who works full-time in the home, I find myself continually intrigued by people like Elisabeth Badinter who asserts that women and mothers who choose to work as full-time wives and mothers actually worsen the state and quality of life for all women.

She states as her intent: “…  to defend women from the impossibility of being “the perfect mother,” and even from the pressure to be a mother at all … ”

I certainly believe that women need only enter motherhood by their choice.

Regarding the hefty weight of the perfect mother, a role Badinter, as do I, states as am impossible level to achieve, I would assert that working both outside the home and then returning to the job most mothers carry out in the home also reaches impossible levels to achieve.
And yet this constitutes the reality of most women who hold down jobs outside the home.

Badinter describes the choice to work as a full-time wife and mother, “ … Their increased responsibility for babies and young children has proved just as restrictive, if not more so, than sexism in the home or in the workplace. … We have agreed to this regression in the name of moral superiority, the love we bear our children, and some ideal notion of child-reading, all of which are proving far more effective than external constraints. As everyone knows, there is nothing quite like voluntary servitude. And men have not had to lift a finger to accomplish this fall. The best allies of men’s dominance have been, quite unwittingly, innocent infants.”

On this I disagree with Ms. Badinter.

The only servitude women voluntarily enter is that of not following their/our passion.

And that includes discounting the work we do with and for our families–husbands and children–and labeling it worthless of less important that a job or career one might establish outside the home.

If we long to care for our husband and/or children and this is our ambition then we must and have every right–we owe it to ourselves–to live out our dream.

Foregoing one’s dreams, hopes and wishes in the name of improving or lifting the status of anyone or group of people never accomplishes the intended outcome.

Rather it breeds bitterness and regret, both of which harm ourselves and anyone we might care for, or seek to assist in improving their quality of life.