“The greatest trick of modern history has been to convince women that working eight hours a day for a complete stranger and leaving your own children in someone else’s care is freedom, while staying home with your children, and raising a family who loves you, is slavery.” Rendered in a pretty graphic, it’s making the rounds on social media.
One reads it and wonders, has this moralist ever seen a living mother? Has he ever seen a family budget? In reality, the vast majority of mothers would love to spend a lot more time with their children, but they simply can’t afford it. And it hasn’t been better in the past. That the husband supported the entire family on his income was the case for a tiny minority of society (despite how it comes across in the movies).
British sociologist Catherine Hakim (yes, the same one who wrote about erotic capital) analyzed these things and concluded that there are three groups of women whose size is very similar in all generations since the 19th century.
- Those who put family before career
- Those who prefer a professional career
- Those who change over the course of their lives. When they have young children, they would like to be with them, but before and after they would like a social life and their own earnings.
The third group is the largest, the other two are similar in size. It’s just that because a large proportion of career women today don’t have children, this leads to an overall figure of almost 90% of women (give or take, it comes out slightly differently in each survey) saying they would like to spend more time with family and less time working. If they could choose.