Not All Jobs Are Careers

It doesn’t take a genius to understand the point that Hilary Rosen was making when she made her comments about Ann Romney not working a day in her life. The issue was jobs and women and the thought that Ann Romney could relate to women forced to have a job to survive is laughable. She might have worked at one time in her life, but she hasn’t had to worry about a job for a very long time.

But in typical fashion, the Republican strategists at FOX along with, no doubt, Mitt’s handlers decided to manufacture a controversy to divert the attention of idiots (hey every vote counts) from the main point by portraying Ann as a victim. It’s been done before. Every time the issue of women and the work place crops up a faux battle is created between working women and (at-one-time) housewives (what we’d now call Stay at Home Moms or SAHMS). Decades ago it was implied that women who worked looked down upon SAHMS so the stay at homes began to insist that, what was essentially their choice, be respected as a career (this is back when women with careers were fighting not to be vilified for choosing to have a career. Now most women need jobs and most would hardly call them dream careers).

So Ann Romney has become a tool in the battle to make the average person believe that the elitist Democrats are against God, motherhood and family. You know; everything wholesome in America. And of course professional big mouth and preternatural idiot Sarah Palin (who by the way had children, and one on the way, when she was running for VP) got on the band wagon, martialling her cadre of “momma grizzlies” or as I like to call them, “the fools who can’t see past her bs” and conducting interviews where she implied things that were never meant or for that matter said by Hilary Rosen. But then this is almost as natural as breathing for Sarah Palin.

The apologies were quickly forthcoming. Rozen apologized. Michelle Obama piped up with an apology. The president apologized (calling motherhood the hardest job in the world, which is probably news to those picking fruit in the fields, cleaning hotel rooms or on their feet waitressing all day). Basically, as usual, the Democrats let the Republicans drive the narrative. To be fair, the Republicans have been honing their skills at message manipulation and reality distortion for decades. Reagan was a savant at it. And now Republicans have a number of media outlets, the big one being FOX, to help spread the lies. But it seems to me rather than apologize for something that didn’t warrant an apology, the better course would be to grab back the narrative and control the direction.

For example, where’s my apology. As a working woman who has to get up every morning and face a day constrained by the dictates of a job and a boss, I would like both Ann and Mitt Romney to apologize to me for thinking that Ann could possibly relate to my circumstances and the circumstances of other working women (including my mom who, to help support her family, had to work the third shift packing staples so that she could be available during the day should it be necessary for the kids. She lost out on a lot of sleep, but perhaps Ann might think it was worth it for my mom to pursue her dream in all night factory staple packaging). Do you think Ann, or for that matter any SAHM could relate to that?

There are really two issues here. That a SAHM’s choice could compare to a woman needing a job and that Ann Romney could relate to either of them.

Perhaps though a defining of the terms would help.

Parenthood is a choice. Procreation, while it can lead to the continuation of the species, has no bearing on the survival of an individual (and in fact there are some individuals out there who shouldn’t procreate at all). That’s not to say that it’s devoid of effort. Raising any life form successfully involves varying degrees of effort and sacrifice. But this effort is none the less a consequence of what essentially is a choice. For example, if someone chooses to own a horse, she is going to have to clean the stable (or if you’re Ann Romney with a  dressage horse, you pay someone else to clean the stable). No one forced her to own a horse so she can’t really whine about the consequence of that choice. I might wish to own a horse too, but not being in the position to deal with the consequence, I choose not to own the horse. And if I did own a horse, I certainly wouldn’t expect laurels for my caring of the horse.

Or to put it another way, Ann Romney and other SAHMs chose to stay at home and raise their kids (a choice many mothers can’t make now). This is their dream. I would love to stay at home and write. That’s my dream. I would work very hard and be very proud of what I produced. Unfortunately, I haven’t married into a situation where someone can support me financially to pursue my dream so I have to have a job to survive. Nor do I get tax breaks or credits for producing what I yearn to produce. One reason this post is so late after Rosen and Romney’s comments came out is because finding time to do anything but the jobs I hold working the hours I do is very difficult. Even posting on a blog. And it might be tough for Ann to understand the survival part since she seems to think that every job a woman has is actually a career they can choose to do. That isn’t the case, and if she was as in touch with women’s issues as her husband and his pals think, then she’d get that. And she’d understand what Rosen was driving at when she made her comments.

So perhaps she and the other mama grizzlies out there can’t comprehend that for many women there is no choice (and there really is no career). A woman with a job is faced with certain realities not faced by SAHMs who are, essentially, their own bosses, difficult at times as the work may be. A woman with a job has to be somewhere in the morning, stay there for eight, nine, 12 hours a day depending on the schedule pulling a cart for someone else. They are at the mercy of that job. Then she comes home and has to deal with all the household and life duties a SAHM can deal with during the day because…well she stays at home and has the freedom of movement to do so (that’s why I don’t agree with ‘homemaker” being stated as a job either. We are all homemakers. The success in our homemaking depends on the time we have to do it; time that is in short supply if one has to work outside the house).

While a stay at home mom might have to juggle her schedule somewhat around the school schedule of the children to do a task outside the house (renew her license, car repairs, shopping) it doesn't require her taking time off from work (and losing pay) to do so.

If a SAHM is sick, (and yes, I know mothers will scoff at this) the house is able to function for a short time without her while she rests up a little.

A person who works (i.e. has an outside job), provided they get paid sick time, has to risk the wrath of her boss’ displeasure and the sick day being recorded on her record if she chooses to stay home and rest. This can influence future reviews, raises and even her keeping the job when corporate beheading is done to save money (Like the beheadings that went on after Mitt and Bain Capital bought out companies).

If the person doesn't get sick time, then she has to figure out how she's going to afford losing a day's pay to care for the illness that could get worse if she doesn't get some rest. That person, you think is so selfish because she came to work with a cold--it could be that she can't afford not to. This also goes back to accomplishing tasks that can only be done during the day while the person is working. How many working women actually use their vacations to do things they can’t normally do because they’re working eight or more hours a day? Plus working moms often have to adjust their schedules to account for days off school for their children.

Then there’s the stress that most working women and men have that they may not have a job for much longer. A cloud they live under now thanks in large part to what Mitt Romney and his party has done to this country the past decade or so.

SAHMs are very rarely fired from their careers. They are generally assured them for life (which can be a good or a bad thing depending on the situation). Sometimes a divorce occurs and then the SAHM may have to go out and find a job and realize how different an animal that situation is from what she had as a SAHM.

That is what is necessary to remember in all this. For women, motherhood is a choice. Survival isn’t. And many who might want to choose to devote all their time to their children (or whatever passion they might have) are unable to because of the climate we’re living in now. A climate that has been made more difficult thanks in large part to Ann’s husband and the folks he’s shilling for.