The most wanted "C"

Singaporeans have been pursuing "C"s for decades. Certificates, Career, Cash, Car, Condominium and Country Club....Not until recently, the most wanted "C", as far as for the government concerns, is "Children". Ironically, as much wanted as it might be, few Singaporeans share the same conviction with the government. children are simply not at the top "to do" list for many Singaporean.

Recently, MM Lee suggested whether the Sweden family policy should be implemented here. Today published an article by a mother of two, Ms Chrispina Robert, who is rather skeptical of effectiveness of such policy in Singapore, she argued that the culture perspective for perfection and social structure here make the child/or family pro policy rather ineffective. It would take at least 30 years of cultural rebuilding for family environment flourishing.

She shared that as a mother of two young children, it was impossible for her to serve two masters, she ended up to quit. While fathers' life is not least easier, the perpetual high demands and globalized intensive competition drive them working harder and harder, leaving less and less time and energy for home, it is just not healthy for family life.

I share her conviction on being a Full Time mother, but, I dare say that it is not that difficult to have more children than what she thinks.

To have children or not, is truly matter of choice and faith. If you have a will, there will be a way.

I know many couples who have more than four children and above living on one income. Their family life is certainly not extravagant but comfortable. Their children are capable to do many domestic chores, most important, they learn that to be happy and content with little they have and choose to forge the lasting relationship which money cannot buy.

Children are too investment, not only material, but spiritual.

One reaps what he sows. The collective cultural changes need inspired and determined individuals, persons like you and me. For the children's sake, Full Time Mothers say "We can."

The meaning of full time mothers

When I first started this blog, my intention was to encourage women who share the same conviction to be stay at home for the sake of children and family. In the course of studying on family and women history, however, I discovered that the notion of “full time mother” was associated with socially and cultural constructed ideology which painted with social inequality and class antagonism.

In North America society, the ideal type of nuclear family structure was promoted in 50s, where mothers were encourage being at home to raise children during their early or formative years, and fathers to be solo breadwinner. The employment for mothers outside home was seen less important or secondary to their domestic duties. Despite the ideological impetus to mother at home, over half of all women with children work for wages, and most of them are “under class”. The studies by many sociologists and historians showed that throughout history, women from unprivileged social groups were had little choice but work, no matter whether they had children or not.

On the other hands, except the minority upper privileged women (“TaiTai,” some are called, who have conspicuous leisure and don’t need to work), many women do have struggling in work and home.

There are two dominant theoretic models in explaining women choices to work:

1. Rational choice model, suggests that motherhood represents a prominent social force behind women’s job decision. Becker and Polachek, argue that women’s preference to mother is maximized in jobs that exact fewer penalties for interrupted employments, such as part-time, seasonal, or clerical work. According to this view, women’s pursuit of their rational self-interest reinforced their occupational segregation within low-paid jobs and underrepresentation in higher-paying, male-dominated jobs that typically required significant employer investments such as training. Employer may be reluctant to “invest” into women who could not guarantee commitment. This perspective views motherhood as a major impediment to employment and mobility. But it fails to consider that the organization of production has developed in ways that make motherhood an impediment.

2. Hegemonic power of patriarchy, some feminist scholars view this particular development of women’s choice between motherhood and employment as consistent with the hegemonic power of patriarchy. This view suggest that it was patriarchy, not personal preference, shapes the organization of production resulting in economic, political, and social subordinate of women to men. Many economists fail to consider the power of ideological constructs such as “family” and “motherhood” in shaping behavior among women, employees and the organization of production itself. Within feminist analyses, motherhood as an ideology obscures and legitimates women’s social subordination because it conceals particular interests within the rubric of a universal prerogative (reproduction). The social construction of motherhood serves the interest of capital by providing essential childbearing, child care, and housework at a minimal cost to the sates, and sustains women as a potential reservoir of labour force, or “reserve army of labour”. This view reviews the real dilemma that women continue to try to reconcile the competing urgencies of motherhood and employment despite the lack of supportive structures at work or within family.

Today, there are apparently “care deficit” among many working mothers family. Many working mothers in order to work outside home, they have to hire domestic workers from third world countries to take care of household duties and child-cares, many of these domestic workers themselves are mothers with young children. By doing so, they transfer “care deficit” into the third world countries. The say thing is, though the age of slavery seems forever gone, some of these domestic workers work in a slavery condition and without accessible legal protection.

What do we see from here? As least we could draw three conclusive remarks:

1. Not all “full time mothers” are “Tai tais”, they choose to be a full time mother with financial and material sacrifices, and they adapt the simple and frugal life style, resist the consumer culture and instant gratification.

2. Full time mothers support institutional and organization changes in supporting working mother, but do not agree by exploitation domestic workers from third world countries. If we do need them, provide them with decent living condition, legal protection.

3. Full time mothers urge the government to consider subsidies to women with children should be expanded in the recognition that full time mothering is work and should be properly rewarded. Mothers should be seen as civil servants and provided with pensions as compensation for their services in nurturing future citizens.

A speed up working family

For those who are interested in statistic, Hochschild provides a nice statistic picture on speed up working family:

"1952, 22% mothers of children 18 and under worked for pay;
1991, these number increased to 67%; half of the mothers of children age one year and younger.

Juliet Schor, the author of "The overworked American" estimated that within two decades, American workers have added an extra 164 hours to their year's work, that is an extra month of work a year;

Comparing to 20 years ago, workers take fewer unpaid leave, even fewer paid leave;

The number of families eating evening meals together has dropped by 10%
...."

The story behind these statistic figures tells one thing: we, modern post industrial family, have less and less time for our family. Worse news is for some, at least in American, work place is more like home and home is more like work.

There is emotional culture shifting between home and work.

Just ask yourself honestly, where do you wish to be?

One generation ago, father came back home with a loud "Honey, I am home", he would be surrounded by loving wife and kids; now, a mother comes to workplace with a loud "Hi, fellers, I am here." she soon is surrounded by loving boss and colleagues, what has been left at home?

unattended kids
unattended house
unattended garden
unattended emotional stress

who cares any way?

Is that what are we preparing for our nations and our family?

FULL TIME MOTHERS SAY NO!

Work and Life balance - a myth or workable solution?

http://www.ucmerced.edu/spotlightdetail.asp?spotlightid=32

This professor seeks to know how to balance work and life for a mother for her personal desire. The research she conducted shows that it is impossible for a mother to have both "career" and "motherhood" because the prime time for a woman to develop her career is also the prime time for childbearing. Further more, the fewer employers offer alternative work solution for a mother to advance her career.

Her research method is based on qualitative method.

On 3rd of March The International Women's Day, my husband and I attended "Power lunch" organized by SCWO(Singapore council for women organization). It was well attended by almost 300 women, with guest of honour including the first lady Mrs Nathan, Mrs Lee Bee Hua, Minister of State; Mrs Patricia L. Herbold, US ambassador to Singapore.

The keynote speaker Mrs Lee Bee Hua highlighted the improvement of women social status over years, and great participation in labor force, she nonetheless noticed that the difficulty in balance work and life for women, she calls for greater corporate support and institutional changes.

The panel discussion "the way to success" was also very interesting. The five high achieving ladies shared their experience in balancing life yet work toward success. Summarizing what they had said, the tips are:

• make your own choice and be comfortable about it


• Do whatever you are good at, others, outsourcing


• Don't be guilt, namely, for not be able to be a "mother" of you desire


• Find a good husband, this is critical to some, who is supportive

Some news sayings were also sounded loudly:

"Behind every successful woman, there is man."
"Some men are born to be leader, some leaders are born to be women."

It was a joyous event for women, however, I noticed that there were only two gentlemen presented, including my own husband. One of friends approached to my husband saying "You are brave man." Yes,among these "powerful women", he is brave.

The division of labour by sex

From “The two income family” by Lynda L Holmstrom 1972 pp 60

Sociologist has long attributed the stratification system based on sex as a form of social inequality by which he males are assigned the position of prestige, while the females the domestic ones. Very often, we witness that our society pays lip service to parenthood and domestic duties, but places a much higher value on occupational achievement. Under such social contracture, it has become a hegemony that males are assigned to the more prestigious activities- career and the women- less prestigious- home and family.

This statement says nothing about whether the activities are satisfying or enjoyable, but only refers to one way that they are ranked in our society.

William Goode has made analogies between women- the low –ranking sex- and people in other low-ranking categories. Looking at the division of labour in numerous societies, he notes that whatever the strictly male activities are, they are defined as being more honorific. This, he suggests, is similar to racial and caste restrictions. “The low-ranking race, caste, or sex is defined as not being able to do certain types of prestigious work, but it is also considered a violation of propriety if they do it. Obviously, if women really cannot do various kinds of male tasks, no moral or ethical prohibition would be necessary to keep them from it.”

The instrumental-expressive theory views that there is a difference between the roles of the sexes: Men have “instrumental (task-oriented) roles and women have “socio-emotional” ones. The shortcomings of his view become apparent when one compares it with the facts of everyday life. For example, a man even thought he may only shuffle paper in a humdrum, bureaucratic, office job, is still said to be performing an instrumental role. A housewife, even she may spend her day marketing, cleaning house, fulfilling civic responsibilities, is not given credit for performing an instrumental roles. These social theorists deprecate women’s work and fail to see the real differentiate roles of the sexes in our society.

A close look suggests the real difference is between higher-status vs. lower status tasks, or between more socially-value vs. less socially-valued activities.

The women movement towards paid labour force has been seen a social revolution challenging the social customs based on male fraternity and leaving a void, unsolved contest ground at home.


The coping strategies for the two income family:

1. Husband to help. In most of professional couples with children, husbands do give considerable helps with childcare
2. Modified work schedule, it is commonly for wives rather than husband at certain of time to make an official arrangement with their employers. It is incidentally childrearing far more than childbearing poses difficulties for the women’s careers.
Though the pregnancy and child bearing attest to a biological difference between the sexes, child rearing has been socially allocated to women and is thus more amenable to change. It is thus important to emphasize that the biological division of labour was much less of a career handicap for women than was the socially defined division of labour between the sexes.
3. The hired help, though the two income families are financially able to hire help in doing childrearing duties and other domestic tasks, it is not uncommon for professional women find difficult to have a “suitable” helper.

Intensive mothering ideology and childrearing ideology have become prevailing in contemporary societies.

Ann Oakley's Quote

Being a good mother does not call for the same qualities as being a good housewife; a dedication to keeping children clean and tidy may override an interest in their separate development as individuals.


Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman's natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.

The latest research on working women.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/536/working-women

"In the span of the past decade, full-time work outside the home has lost some of its appeal to mothers. This trend holds both for mothers who have such jobs and those who don't.

Among working mothers with minor children (ages 17 and under), just one-in-five (21%) say full-time work is the ideal situation for them, down from the 32% who said this back in 1997, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Fully six-in-ten (up from 48% in 1997) of today's working mothers say part-time work would be their ideal, and another one-in-five (19%) say she would prefer not working at all outside the home. ....

Meantime, even as mothers have grown less enamored with full-time work, a new division of opinion has opened up between working moms and at-home moms on the question of whether it's good or bad for society that more mothers are working outside the home.

A decade ago, nearly identical pluralities of both groups (38% among at-home moms; 39% among working moms) said this trend was bad for society. Since then, more working mothers have come to see this trend as good for society, while slightly more at-home moms have come to see it as bad.

There are also differences in the way working moms and at-home moms assess the job they're doing as parents. Mothers working full-time give themselves slightly lower ratings as parents, on average, than do at-home mothers or mothers employed part-time. ..."

" Working and at-home moms are divided in their judgments about the impact on society of working mothers.

A 44% plurality of at-home moms consider the increase in working mothers bad for society while about half as many (22%) say it is good for society and the remainder take a neutral position (31%). By contrast, working moms are split almost evenly between positive (34%), negative (34%), and neutral (31%) views of how this trend is affecting society. ..."

please read the full report for yourself.

The second shift

By Arlie Russell Hochschild

Hochschild, studied modern women mothers, observed the increasing mothers participating in economic world. In 1975, 47% of all American mothers with children under age eighteen worked for pay, and by 2000, the rate had risen to 73%. This upward trend applied to mothers of children age six and under as well: in 1990 49% of married mothers with children six and under were in the labour force, while in 2001 the percentage had risen to 63%, and for single mothers, it was from 49% to 70%; In 1975, 34% of mothers of children age three and under were doing paid work, and in 2000, this had risen to 61%. Mothers with children age one and under were in the labour force also rose from 31% in 1975 to 58% in 2000.

She did a research on how did these women and their family coping the increased challenge, especially when they have to look after both small children and elderly parents. She found out, by adding together the time it takes to do a paid work and to do housework and childcare, that women worked roughly fifteen hours longer each week than men. Over a year, they worked an extra month of 24 hours days.

Just like there is a wage gap between men and women in the work place, there is also a "leisure gap" between them at home. Most women work one shift at work and second shift at home.

She noticed that every marriage bears the footprints of economic and cultural trends which originate far outside marriage. A rise in inflation which erodes the earning power of the male wage, an expanding service sector which opens up jobs for women, that is new cultural trend presenting today.

Couples often adapt certain gender strategies in copying such social phenomenon. The gender strategy refers to both to one plan of action and to his emotional preparations for pursuing it.

According to Hochschild, there are three types of gender strategies in our modern society:

1. Traditional woman, wants to identify with her roles at home as mother, wife , she wants her husband to base his identity on work and wants less power than he, the traditional men wants the same


2. Transitional, is the variety of types of blending the traditional and egalitarian, which a transitional woman wants to identify with her role at work as well as at home. Unlike egalitarian, she believes her husband should base his identity more on work than she does. A typical transitional wants to identify both with the caring for the home and with helping her husband earn money, but wants her husband to focus on earning a living; A typical transitional man is all for his wife to work, but expects her to take the main responsibility at home.


3. Egalitarian woman, wants to identify with the same spheres her husband does, and to have an equal amount of power in the marriage, some want the couple to be jointly oriented to the home, others to their careers, or both of them jointly hold some balance between the two

Obviously, there are more transitional men and women nowadays.

What we are facing are: the women are no longer like her mothers,while the men are no much different from his father, the social expectations to them are more or less the same. Thus there is cultural stalled revolution in modern marriage.

The burdens however, lays on women's shoulder more than to men's. Hochschild, in detailed, described the problems, but she can offer no solution to such.

I remember one of mothers who decided left the rat race said, "the problem of rat race is at the end of race, even when you win, you are still a rat."

How true it is, mothers, if you can, why put yourself into such a difficult position? If you cannot, you need to check out your lifestyle. Do you sums, see how you can balance your balance sheet. There are prices for every working mother.

Book review on “Time Bind” – when work becomes home and home becomes work

By Arlie Russell Hochschild

Call No:HQ536 H685

After “second shift”, where Hochschild observed the working mother had her first shift at work, second shift at home, she conducted an intensive research on one of Fortune 500 companies, Amerco, a highly profitable, innovative company with reputation of “family friendly”, on its “work and life” balance programme.

The “work/life balance” polices the company offered are rather standard:

Flexible work hour arrangement

Flexible place

Part time

Share job

Maternity leave and Father’s maternity leave

Her research results were surprising. Though it was appeared that all the right policies were in place, top management also full hearted supported the scheme, there were not many people to make use of these polices. The program of work/life balance did not achieve its goal to balance work and life.

For various reasons:

1. One factor contributed the failure of program could be the company hierarchy: Top management, who had power and authority to engineer a new family-friendly work culture, may not have deep interest in doing so, in any way, it is not the chief interest of a company; the middle management who were advocated of family friendly polices, have strong interest but little power to implement; Even if the workers who could have benefited from such programs had demanded them, the resistance from their supervisors and head of department would still have stymied their efforts.
2. What about the working parents, did they fight for their “right?”

1) For men, there were only two father had ever applied and been granted to father’s maternity leave. The traditional mindset was rooted. One worker even complained that “why those are polices only open to working mothers, we, from traditional family, without additional income, will be prejudiced.”

2) For women, Part time job was the most utilized polices for minority mothers with young children.

3) For many women, however, they prefer work to home; “women’s uneasy love affair with capitalism; They fear losing their places at work, and having such a place has become a source of security, pride and a powerful sense of being valued

4) The intensified competition with globalization made people unsecured for their job. The benefits of these polices erode by the fear of demotion and loss of job.

3. These polices were not flexible to be applied, especially when child sick or other families related emergencies occurred.
   

The conclusion:

“People generally have the urge to spend more time on what they value most and on what they are most valued for. This tendency may help explain the historic decline in time devoted to private social relations, a decline that has taken on a distinctive cultural form at Amerco. The valued realm of work is registering its gains in part by incorporating the best aspects of home. The devalued realm, the home, is meanwhile taking on what were once considered the most alienating attributes of work. However one explains the failure of Amerco to create a good program of work-family balance, though, the fact is that in a cultural contest between work and home, working parents are voting with their feet, and the working place is winning.”

The consequences when “work becomes home and home becomes work”

1. Time bind, the evading of work to home, that leads to more families break down,
2. Children left alone, suffer from emotional asceticism. A study of nearly five thousand eighth-graders and their parents found that children who were home alone for eleven or more hours a week were three times more likely than other children to abuse alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. This was as true for upper-class as for working – class children[1]. Research on adults who had been left home alone as children suggested that they run a far high risk a “developing substantial fear responses- recurring nightmares, fear of noises, fear of dark, fear for personal safety.”

After reading her books, we can see, the corporate world, including global economic environment has become a powerful time sucking apparatus sucking every family, every parent’s time away from home, from their children and loved one.

Can work and life balance really exist? If the fundamental economic superstructure does not change, can any individual, any company, and any nation escape from this “time sucking apparatus”? I doubt so, the individual parent will say, I need money to give my children better living condition, better education; the company will say, we need making profit to stay competitive in order to survive, so that we can be countable to shareholders; the nation will say, we need extra economic active workforce to keep our nation GDP growing so that we can provide more benefits to the people.

The reality behind all these economic excuses is there is an unintended consequence of social cost which will be too great to pay. It is always to easier to prevent than to heal. The action needed is NOW by every conscious parents, every social responsible corporate and every long term vision the nation. If not, when these social disasters transfer into economic disasters, it will be too later.

---

[1] Jean Richardson, Kathleen Dwyer, Kimberly McGuigan etc. “Substance Use among Eighth-Grade Students who take care of themselves after school.” Pediatrics 84 (1989):556-66.

Also D.G.Vandell and M.A. Corsaniti. “The relations between Third Grades’ after school care and social, acadmic and emotional function.” Child Development 59 (1988):868-75

Modern Women’s New Struggle

We are in modern era, for better or worse, modernization has forever changed human society, especially the life of modern women.

We have seen the greater number of women in participating the economic workforce in past three decades, the more pertinent problem they are facing, is no longer gender discrimination, though it is not altogether disappearing, but rather how do these women copy with two demanding world, work and family. This is still a main women’s issue, according to Arlie Hochschild, just like there is gender gap in the work place, there is “leisure gap” at home. For women, over a year, (according her research based on 50 US couples) have to work extra month of twenty-four-hour days than men. That means that women have her first shift at work, then she get her second shift at home. However, to make matter worse, more modern women now view work place as home, and home as work. In her second powerful book “Time bind” Hochschild vividly painted this new dimension struggles “when work becomes home and home becomes work”. The struggles mainly belong to women, but not limit to women, modern men and fathers, also have their shares.

One thing is clear, when the boundary of home and work blurs, the duty and responsibility diminishes too. That seems lead us to the question that to whose responsibility or duty that family, home, children are? It is beyond the scope of today discussion. But clearly, children, family, and eventually, society will suffer from without due care and concrete time investment which is necessary for any meaningful relationship.

What we have witnessed are, children, being “abandoned” to long hours childcare centre; instead traditionally being taken care of by mothers, they now are being taken care by maids, childcare workers; home, is no longer “haven in the heartless world”, now modern women can “leave behind unwashed dishes, crying baby in cot; resentful teenager, unfinished arguments..” come to work place and say “hi, fellas, I am here.” No wonder, home, for women, is but another work place, while, the work place is more “home”.

It would be easier for women to adapt into this new modernization, if there were no biological urge of mothering duties, nor traditional expectation for housekeeping. Modern women suffer from guilty and regreting of owing the time and energy to their children, the relationship in family. That burden is detrimental not only to her physical, mental health, but more profoundly to her psychological and spiritual well being. Sylvia Hewlet, in her “The cost of neglecting our children”, observed the links between long parental work to a series of alarming trends in child development. Comparing the previous generation, she claims, young people today are more likely to underperform at school, commit suicide, need psychiatric help, suffer a severe eating disorder, bear a child out of wedlock, take drugs, be the victim of a violent crime”. The battle just starts. If there is indeed co-relation between women in work and all society problem, are we ready to challenge the fundamental validate of equality that supports women out of home to be “economically employed”?

After all, can we honestly admit women is not equal to men?

Working mother associates poorer cognitive and verbal development of her child.

The study done by Teacher College gives us more information how does mother's full time working affect her child:

"Full-time employment by mothers by the ninth month of their child's life is associated with poorer cognitive and verbal development for these children at age three, according to a study conducted by Professor Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of Columbia Teachers College and Jane Waldfogel and Wen-Jui Han, both professors at Columbia's School of Social Work. The findings are published in the July-August issue of "Child Development."

The researchers also found that the quality of child care, the home environment and maternal sensitivity are important contributors to verbal and cognitive development during the first three years of life. However, even after taking these factors into account, the researchers found lower cognitive development for the children of mothers who worked full time (30 or more hours per week) during the first nine months of life.

The researchers did not find significant negative effects on cognitive and verbal development among children whose mothers worked fewer than 30 hours per week in the first year or those whose mothers who began work one year after their birth.

"We're not saying working is negative -- we're saying working a lot of hours in the first year of a child's life is associated with poorer cognitive and verbal development," said Brooks-Gunn. "If it's in young children's interest to have mothers working fewer hours, then that must be reflected in our policies."

"Western European countries have much more generous family-leave policies, reflecting people's concerns about the well-being of children," she noted. "We can do better in this country by taking results such as ours and not using them to say women shouldn't be working and instead ask what can work best for families in America so that mothers can work fewer hours when their children are younger."

The study published in "Child Development" used data on 900 white children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care. The study included detailed data on maternal employment as well as data about the home environment, parental sensitivity and child-care quality and type over the first three years of life. Cognitive development was measured through the Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI) at 15 months, the revised Bayley MDI at 24 months and the Bracken School Readiness score at 36 months.

In other work, the authors have found that the negative effects of full-time maternal employment in the first year of life on children's cognitive development persist to age seven and eight. Following children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's Child Supplement, they found that children whose mothers worked more than 20 hours per week in the first year of life scored lower on math and reading tests at age five and six and again at age seven and eight. This study was published in "Demography" in May 2002.