A few weeks ago Lynn Harris had a thoughtful post on Salon.com about the recent trend towards “mommy-hating” in the media. Harris noted that articles around the recent Maclaren recall focused on supposed hysteria among mothers, painting caricatures of the “helicopter mom.” When Harris wrote an article for The New York Times about how people rarely gave her a seat on the subway when she was pregnant, it was greeted by invective of all kinds in the Times’ comments section. And in publications across the country, strollers have become the metaphor of choice for over-privileged parents and children who take up too much space on the sidewalk.
While I agree with many of Harris’ conclusions about the treatment of women and mothers in the media, and particularly on the web, I’ve had a slightly different reaction to the mommy media: where are the working mothers? Love them or hate them, the many articles, blog posts, and comments about “stroller mommies” focus on the stay-at-home mother community. For example, without coming out and stating it, we know that the women quoted in the Maclaren article are likely not mothers with 9-5 jobs — they are browsing in Barnes & Noble, shopping for groceries or picking up Starbucks on a weekday afternoon. The working contingent is largely invisible.
Along these lines, articles about the best neighborhoods for families — like this one from The New York Times — profile places where the mothers can sip coffee comfortably while nursing in the middle of the day. What these pieces generally don’t include is information about quality daycare options, convenient transportation, and local doctors with evening hours — services that greatly improve quality of life for working parents.
Our absence in mainstream “mommy” articles contributes to a pervasive feeling of isolation among working mothers. I belong to a working mother listserv. Recently a new mother posted that she planned to return to work after a 3-month maternity leave, but that she felt as though she were the only mother who planned to work full-time. Practically, it put her in a position of finding resources with little support; emotionally, it make her feel alone and insecure. Of course, she wasn’t by a long stretch the only one. There are thousands of mothers in her community who work full-time, but they are significantly less visible than those who can post on blogs and listservs, or meet at the playground during the day.
How could this be when a whopping 70% of women with children are in the laborforce? Even in the more rarified parts of our country, working women are the majority. And yet, with the exception of the very successful and celebrity, the lives of working mothers are rarely meaningfully covered. By contrast there seems to be an endless number of articles that publications like the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe can produce on mothers who stroll around upper class neighborhoods, sipping lattes at high-end cafes. (Not that there’s anything wrong with this; when I have a vacation day, that mother could be me. But is it news for most women?)
The Shriver Report includes a terrific piece on this phenomenon entitled “Where Have You Gone Roseanne Barr” written by Susan J. Douglas, co-author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women. Douglas argues that the media offers a profoundly distorted view of the lives of working women, presenting them in glamorous, high powered jobs that few actually achieve; hyping the opt-out non-trend; and generally denigrating feminism in ways that do working mothers a disservice.
If we want to keep the momentum on working mother issues moving forward, we need to find a voice and a presence in the mainstream media. As Douglas points out, we need the Roseanne Barrs — the women who work and face daily struggles — to be represented on fiction and non-fiction platforms. The media may find out that the market for real working women is greater than they think.
Related posts:
- Jezebel responds to Lynn Harris’ piece.
- From Cathy Arnst at Businessweek’s Working Parents blog: Media Versus the Facts on Working Mothers.
- Great post from The Feminist Agenda on how our cultural references affect the collection of data on working mothers.
- From The Mama Bee archives, another one of my pet media peeves: Get Rid of the Frazzled Working Mom.
I edit a regional parenting magazine. A couple of years ago I was at a conference for similar publications. I attended a session intended for publishers on marketing to mothers (yes, mothers, even though we edit parenting magazines). The presenter was generally doing a rotten job, but at some point someone asked him what percentage of mothers work. He didn’t know. No one did. A large room full of people who’s job is to communicate with parents. I raised my hand and said that, in my state, 72 percent of women who have given birth within the last 12 months are in the workforce, the highest in the nation, I believe, but only by a percentage point or two. There were gasps of general disbelief throughout the room. Surely that number was too high!
And this was a room — largely — full of working women, largely mothers.
We are invisible.
Hi MamaBee-
Of course the flip answer to this question is– we’re all really too busy working to give quotes to the media! But you are so right (once again). I want more stories about how women like me, and you, and the 70% of others, are experiencing life, working to make a difference in this world, not really getting wigged out by the apocryphal mommy wars, and loving our partners and children.
Here’s an idea– how about having a WorkingMom blog carnival? Pose a question to all of us working moms who read your blog, and the post all of our answers.
One of the readers of my momblog asked me for some recommendations– she wanted to find a place where she could post a problem or question and then get advice from other working moms (and women who arent’ moms too). I suggested a few blogs (like yours) but wondered if there weren’t some places I was missing…. Even though it is not the same as getting an article in Time or the WSJ about “The Real Working Moms of the U.S.A.”, it would be helpful to see more working moms online, sharing about being working moms.
Where should we be looking?
cvh
Great post. I find it fascinating – and frustrating – that mothers are invisible no matter what we do. Employed, we are invisible in our communities, to each other, to the media. Not employed, the work of caring for our family is invisible and devalued. I read somewhere once that “Invisibility is the most insidious form of discrimination.” Making the invisible visible about mothers’ lives – and fathers’ lives – is so important. Thanks!
Oh boy, I’m really glad I read this article. It’s good. I’ve been trying to raise the “visibility” on this issue…I’m writing on a news website that (it’s possible) nobody reads, about this issue – working moms. It makes me feel better to get these things out of my system. Someone asked where can they read about the moms who work? Here is a link to my articles…it’s not Pulitzer Prize winning material, but I’m trying to make the whole idea of working moms sounds normal. Average working moms, not the super glam accomplished moms portrayed in the media.
Link: http://www.examiner.com/x-25830-Detroit-Working-Moms-Examiner.
You can also access it through my website above. (That’s enough shameless self-promotion for one day.) Thanks.
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A belated thanks for this article and for giving the invisibility of working moms beyond the “Mommy Wars” a name. I riffed off this idea – giving you credit, of course – in a reaction to The New York Times’ piece on mommy bloggers last Sunday. You can see my post, “Honey, Where Are All The Working Moms? (with a nod to The New York Times) at http://www.currentmom.com/currentmom/2010/03/honeywherearealltheworkingmoms.html. (The link is long so you’ll need to post it into the browser).
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Yes, invisible. Too busy juggling to post. No time to chat (or network) in the playground. I’m just discovering these issues first hand. Thanks, this has been really interesting.