Woman, Without Her Man, Is Nothing? Or Woman! Without Her, Man Is Nothing?

The word “feminism” seems like it’s always had trouble defining itself. Proud, Helen Reddy types were ready to be Woman and sound their roars all through the late sixties and seventies (I know this because I did a 60’s show in my high school chorus and we had to sing “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” while throwing our bras into a coffin and burying them. I feel that this makes me an expert.), and the long, hard backlash against stay-at-home motherhood continued as the 80’s and 90’s boomed with more and more career women. Today, the trend of The Powerful Woman has continued and permeated our culture in a staggering amount of ways, from the massive volume of up-and-coming leading women in generally male-dominated movie and TV categories (Bridesmaids, Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, anything Angelina Jolie has ever done…) to the insanely popular female music scene (Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry) to the firm presence of women in politics (Pelosi, Clinton, Giffords…Palin *shudder*). The most solidly numerical evidence of this trend came out in a Times article a couple of months ago: only 48 percent of people with children in the US are married, and a huge number of those people are single mothers…by choice. Women are getting married later and later if they marry at all, but they also are no longer tied to the idea of marriage as a requisite for child rearing.

The backlash to this trend has, of course, been vicious. Religious interest groups and political parties have tried to push legislature condemning single motherhood as child abuse (I think this was in Wisconsin? I want to say Wisconsin. I’m gonna say Wisconsin. Look it up though). The deterioration of traditional family values is a huge topic for Tea Partiers, and the GOP is now obsessed with controlling strong, independent women who make their own decisions by limiting our access to contraception, abortions, and single parent care. It seems that to many, a woman has the right to make her own decisions and have a successful career, as long as it doesn’t interfere with her responsibility as a mother and wife, and that responsibility is to procreate like nobody’s business. The funny thing is, the “feminist” response as we’ve come to know seems so extreme on the other end that nobody is really making much sense. As a strong and independent woman getting ready to graduate from a top university, I’ve felt a lot of pressure to be a feminist. Men have limited women’s opportunities for so long that we feel the need to push back vehemently, hence the career pressure and dropping marriage rates.

But here’s the thing: I don’t really want that either. I definitely don’t think single motherhood is child abuse-my mother was one for a bit, and I wasn’t even planning on ever getting married but I definitely wanted to raise a kid-but I don’t think it’s ideal, either. For anybody. A kid can use more than one viewpoint on how to raise it to its advantage, and so can a parent. Nobody can do that massive job (and the requisite career that puts bread on the table) by themselves and not wish for a little help. Let’s face it: we complain a lot about the abhorrent conditions of a public school education in a lot of areas (I can speak firsthand about mine, it could have been better to be sure), but how many career parents who complain are checking their kids’ homework? Both my parents worked, but my dad bought me workbooks in addition to my schoolwork, assigned me literature, and checked me on my problems before I turned them into my teachers at school every night he could. I believe he’s an exception, and I believe he’s even rarer among the single parent set-they just don’t have the time or energy after working the way they must to support two people. And let’s talk for a minute about maternity leave…there are definitely other countries that not only offer several more months than we do, and the dad gets off work too for a bit. How radical is that? We bitch and moan about the deterioration of family values, but what if we were to rebuild them a little better? The idea that a woman is the only one who gets time off to recover and spend with her baby (and only a month or six weeks at that) reinforces a lot of what we hate about patriarchy. The ideal parenthood is a partnership, and as we see more and more successful gay parenting and marriage, we start to realize that the gender roles really aren’t the important part-the devotion and equal sharing of a responsibility are.

So what would I do if I were a textbook modern-day feminist? I used to think I would have an awesome career for ten years or so, then look into artificial insemination or adoption to have a kid, as I simply didn’t believe that I would ever want to be married or in a long-term relationship. I looked down at women who quit their jobs to raise their kids, respected women who balanced the two, and believed that men who quit their jobs and pitched in were nearly as common as the girl who looks good in a velour tracksuit. As in, not. I would raise my kid in community of awesome people like the kind I grew up in, and I would never really be alone, but I’d still have the space to do whatever I wanted.

Then Tom came along and fucked up my entire life’s plans forever. Falling in love with him turned my life goals inside out. All of a sudden I could envision myself having a traditional family-better yet, I wanted it. I wanted to be somebody’s partner at things. I started thinking more about the better way to be in a kid’s life and support him at what he needs. I started fantasizing about taking a few years off of working to raise him from infancy to preschool age, maybe writing from home or something to supplement family income. Sure, I’d prefer the idea of both parents getting time off to do that, but it sure as hell isn’t getting us any closer to that idea by neither parent taking that time to raise the child. I like the idea of not getting pigeonholed into working a job I don’t love because I have no flexibility in my life and income. I like the idea of mostly working from home/my boat (I really want a boat)/a theme park, wearing my Iron Man boxers and a t-shirt while I do it, and taking breaks to play with my kid whenever I want. I like the idea of having someone else around who I love, someone who is my best friend in the entire world, and is equally as invested in my happiness and the happiness of anyone else in our household. Obviously Tom and I aren’t tying any kinds of knots in the near future (though if I get a boat I need to learn a few), but the idea of a future makes me think about this stuff a lot more carefully than I used to.

I used to feel bad about changing my mind and hoping for a more traditional future. I felt like I was letting feminism down. Copping out. Becoming a Stepford Wife. Wasting my Yale education and the multitude of awesome qualities I could be using to get ahead. But here’s the deal: I’m not. Nobody is forcing me into feeling this way. I know I have a lot of options, and I know whatever I pick, I’m going to do really well and with everything I’ve got. And that’s what I think a real feminist would do-whatever the fuck she wants. I don’t want to be alone, but even if I am, I’ll still never be lonely. I don’t want to be someone whose life is her job, so I won’t. I don’t want to be somebody whose life is her relationship. So I won’t. I’m doing whatever the hell makes me happiest, and I’m doing it right. Being Woman and making everybody hear me Roar doesn’t mean I have to be the opposite of a traditional woman, it just means I have to be good at whatever kind of woman I want to be. Of course, I’d ultimately love to be a New York Times bestseller AND mother of the year, so that’s my goal for now, but I wouldn’t knock the simpler kinds of success either. Money and prestige rarely buy lasting happiness, but love (of any kind) has a way better track record.