Note: This piece was fueled by exasperation and inspired by two excellent blogs posts — by Grace Hwang Lynch and Pamela Kripke — that urge those who “got privilege” to name it.
I used to have Ann Romney’s life. The first time around I married into a family that was rich. Romney Rich. So when I became a mom I didn’t have to work-at-a-job-that-paid-money-which-is-what-Hilary-Rosen-meant-for-Chrissake.
I got divorced nine years ago. I then spent four years as a not-rich single mom. I am now a not-rich remarried mom. And you know what? My years spent as a rich married lady were easier!!
Not because being a SAHM is easier than having an office job. And certainly not because being a SAHM of five boys is easier than having an office job.
But because having plenty of money, and plenty of choice, is easier than not having enough. And I don’t understand why more people aren’t acknowledging this.
Ann Romney isn’t less than because she chose to stay at home, or because she’s rich. But she shouldn’t be treated as a victimized saint. And Hilary Rosen shouldn’t be demonized.
The glaring omission of Privilege in this tiresome Mommy Wars debate denies the experience of mothers who ARE hindered by race and social class and marital status. Omitting Privilege from the conversation doesn’t acknowledge their reality and lack of choices.
Ann Romney says she did most of the grunt work of raising five boys. If that’s the case, that’s admirable. Frankly, I’d take an office job any day over personally wrangling five sons. But at any point if Mrs. Romney had wanted a nap, or lunch with the gals, or an impromptu tennis match, she could have had it in a snap.
I know, because I was once privvy to those choices. Here’s what my life looked like when I had Privilege:
- I had a maid, a gardener, a pool man and a full-time nanny.
- When we moved, a Staff person unpacked all the boxes, hung pictures, and organized the kitchen.
- When I was found to have a rare autoimmune condition during my first pregnancy, I didn’t have to worry how I was going to pay for the $40,000 that insurance wouldn’t cover.
- When I ended up on bed rest the last trimesters of both my pregnancies, I had a live-in cook/assistant.
- I had a baby nurse for three months after both children were born.
- If I wanted to take a nap in the afternoon I could.
- If I wanted to take a 10 a.m. yoga class I could.
- If I wanted to buy the new Spring line at Baby Gap, I could.
- I flew first class and on a private jet.
- When my son was two my former in-laws planned a week-long family yacht trip. They wanted me to leave my then-toddler with the nanny. I said no. My mother-in-law baby-proofed the yacht.
- When we traveled to visit my former in-laws in one of their five homes, a staff person would call ahead of time and ask what we needed so our rooms would be prepared.
- Staff traveled on all family vacations so we had round-the-clock help and childcare.
- When my ex-husband and I went over budget, my former in-laws gave us six-figure sums to get us through the “lean times” because “all parents help out their kids.”
- Each grown child and spouse received annual five-figure gifts to be spent on “extras.”
- When my second child was born and my office became her bedroom, my mother-in-law offered to build a new wing on our house.
- When one of the smaller family vacation homes got too crowded with grandchildren, my mother-in-law built a new house up the hill, with adjoining steps, a 9-hole putting green, and a jacuzzi that fit 25 people.
Because I had grown up middle-class and my mother had to have a full-time job, I never forgot that I had Privilege.
But Ann Romney came from money and married money. She has never known what it’s like not to have money, which may be why she could say, without a glimmer of irony, that she doesn’t consider herself rich.
Some women with her background work tirelessly to level the playing field. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Kennedy women come to mind.
But Ann Romney does not.
I am aware that she and her husband donate a lot of money to charity. However, I have yet to hear anything from either of them to make me trust that the Romney camp will create policies to help those with less privileges.
In fact, when I hear Romney contemplating policies that would strip welfare women of benefits in order to give them “the dignity of work,” I feel deeply afraid for women unlike his wife, who apparently doesn’t need the dignity of work. Because if this man becomes our next President, the average woman is charred toast.
For a gander at some of the anti-woman policies Romney has supported thus far, read here. For some thoughts on pro-women policies Ann could suggest her husband support, read here.
I’ll be honest: I often miss my former life. I don’t miss the guilt I had, having so much when others had so little, but I do miss the absence of stress.
The kind of stress that comes from lack of choice.
And that is what Hilary Rosen was talking about. When you don’t have to worry about money ever, and you can afford to buy your way out of most problems, being a SAHM, even to five boys, is easier than being a mom who does have to worry about making ends meet, and who can’t buy her way out of most problems, whether or not she stays at home.
Or in Ann Romney’s case, stays at homes.
I appeal to all women who don’t have to have a job, and especially those women who can afford help, those women who have enormous financial cushions to buffer them from job loss or foreclosure or bankruptcy due to health problems, to admit what they do have.
Privilege.
Best thing I’ve read on this subject so far.
THANK YOU!!!!
Nicely said. I think it’s great Ann Romney could be a SAHM, but she’s never had to budget or scrape by or do any of those things the vast majority of SAHMs do. (And I recently learned that the vast majority of SAHMs are poverty level, which is kind of astounding. And as someone else said, a Puerto Rican SAHM just getting by would be vilified for unwise choices.)
I think your essay was on point. It’s not that she doesn’t “work outside the home.” It’s that she doesn’t know what reality for most people is like. (She also was busted saying she loved the controversy, which is interesting.)
Of all the things you had, the one I most envied was the person to unpack after moving and hang pictures! (as I look around my house with no pictures hung).
I now hang my own picture, but crookedly.
Thank you. I debated writing this piece for a long time because I thought the Romney-Rosen thing had been done to death. Then I got mired in a blog comment thread with a SAHM who wanted to start a business in her home to be a job creator because “when was the last time a poor person offered you a job?” and I knew I could no longer be silent!
I relate to all of this. I too was once the SAHM with a wealthy spouse (although your ex sounds way wealthier than mine). I too am now remarried and not particularly wealthy, although I would still say that we’re doing just fine and we’re lucky. Ann Romney is lucky, too, and I just wish she’d admit that fact instead of making naive statements. Raising five boys is definitely work, but it’s a hell of a lot easier when your spouse makes 20 million a year instead of $20,000 a year. Ann Romney doesn’t even have the money concerns of the upper middle class couples I know, who stress about school tuitions and actually carry plenty of debt (unavoidable debt, say, from underwater mortgages).
Yes, her life is a bit surreal. And I don’t begrudge her that, I just wish she’d be honest.
I particularly love this paragraph:
“But because having plenty of money, and plenty of choice, is easier than not having enough. And I don’t understand why more people aren’t acknowledging this.”
That is the crux of the issue and I agree that it’s unfortunate the conversation was hijacked and driven in a completely different direction.
Wow. Looks like you lived an “ideal” life albiet you “paid for it” in more ways than us outsiders can imagine. I am a swum of 3. My husband works his tail off for me to be able to do so. However sacrifice is the lesson I have learner. Do the husband and I enjoy a weekend away when it costs a month worth of groceries? Do I buy the shoes I really want or sign my kid up for another round of swim lessons? We think like this every day. We are rich in spool many ways. We have 3 healthy kids. We have a quaint home. We always have food to feed an army. And most of all we laugh together. Ill pass up the vacations for a while as long as we have those basic needs.
Sorry about the typos. I have fat fingers!!!
Glad you chimed in. Many SAHMs make those sacrifices, and I don’t mean to imply that the average SAHM doesn’t have to scrimp or worry about money.
Oh I know. Just like privledged families also have their own demons, struggles etc. Ive met families with triple the income and assets that we have with the sames “issues.” They may just have had one thing that made things go from bad to worse. Loss of job. A child that needs special services that equates to a monthly mortgage payment. It I read a quote that designates well with this topic last week on pinterest. “We are all playing the same game just different levels, in the same hell just different devils.”
The other choice was to be able to financially support 5 kids. We have two wonderful children. I would have liked to have 5. Sometimes it take a village to raise kids; but it always takes money to raise a village.
All I can say is WOW!! You have completely nailed it. I am sincerely blown away. I work full time and am a single mother to 2 girls whose father is involved, but it still comes down to me most of the time. I would give anything to work part-time, but I don’t have a choice. And that is exactly the difference – choice vs. no choice. Beautifully written!
Thank you, Amy! I truly know how difficult what you’re doing is. Have you heard about Cynthia Rowling’s work with Gingerbread? It’s a charity in the UK that hleps support single parents. She needs to start one here.
I meant JK Rowling. Harry Potter lady. The billionaire who is now “only” a millionaire because she’s donated so much to charity. Awesome.
I love, love, love this post. You are absolutely right on. My family is not of privilege. We work really hard and the only reason I yearn to be wealthy is simply to have freedom and choice. You are absolutely right in that while she didn’t work in an office, and perhaps she did the grunt work of raising her boys, she always had absolute freedom in every way, because money makes that possible.
Yes — money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy a lot of other stuff that is helpful!
The problem is that by Hilary Rosen saying that Ann Romney never worked a day in her life, she implicity said that ALL stay at home moms were women of privilege and leisure. And that’s not so. There are plenty who choose to stay at home with their kids even when it means squeaking by at times.
The best I can say for Ms Rosen is she was really sloppy, and instead of stirring up privilege and class discussions, she turned it into the great parenting war. Nice job, lady. Way to distract from the conversation.
I agree that Rosen could have chosen her word more carefully. However, I don’t think Rosen deserves all the credit for this mishigas that followed. it was the Republicans who jumped on her comment as a diversionary tactic, the Democrats who jumped on it to distance Obama from what they feared would be a backlash from potential voters, and the media muckraking it.
I agree that Rosen could have chosen her word more carefully. However, I don’t think Rosen deserves all the credit for this mishigas that followed. it was the Republicans who jumped on her comment as a diversionary tactic, the Democrats who jumped on it to distance Obama from what they feared would be a backlash from potential voters, and the media muckraking it.
Yep. You nailed this, Pauline. Thanks!
I’ve been well off (but no vacation homes), and I’ve been poor (thank you damn recession) and you are right. When I had money, I never once had trouble sleeping, never worried about college tuition for three children or wondered how I was going to stretch the last paycheck. I was insulted when Ann Romney said, “I don’t feel rich.” Dammit, be grateful and acknowledge your good fortune. As the middle class slowly disappears and we become a nation of “haves” and “have nots,” I wonder what kind of life my children will eventually have. When college tuition costs $20k per year (local, state college), and you desire a teaching job that pays 60k a year, where is the balance? Sorry. I don’t mean to get started. But Romney doesn’t get it. Nor does her husband.
No need to apologize, Julie! Those are all very legitimate reactions. I don’t worry about my kids’ futures in a practical sense because they’ll have every opportunity money can buy, but I DO worry about the consequences of that kind of privilege. Living on Fantasy Island your whole life can cripple you.
This is my first time reading anything here but I have to say that you have said it better than anything I’ve read on the subject. I don’t know what it is so difficult for people to acknowledge the crux of the issue. Thank so much for the well written and thoughtful post.
Thank you so much! The reactions on BlogHer, where this piece was syndicated today, have been a bit more spirited!
Thank you for this thoughtful exploration of a flap that has frankly mystified me as well. I think you excavate the heart of the issue extremely well and remind us all that there’s a subtext to these Mommy Wars that is as utterly ignored as it is critically central.
This is such a beautifully written post. You’ll nailed the heart of the issue dead on without being judgmental or preachy. Well done!
Thanks, Lindsey! I’m glad the piece resonated with you.
So glad you think so — thank you!
Good column and both you and the comments make a lot of sense. The one thing I’m curious about, and have been for a while, is the amount of “charity” the Romney’s give. From what I’ve heard, most of it – and really most – was given to the Mormon Church in form of the tithe. If so, I really don’t consider that “charity”. I’d love to know to what real charities the Romneys donate.
Great point! I’d like to know too. Maybe that will be revealed at some point.
A-freakin’-men!! It is endlessly frustrating to me how the Rosen debacle has been spun into this “mommy wars” stay at home v. working mom thing, when what her comments really went to were Mrs. Romney’s vast wealth and privilege.
Yep. My mom raised five sons and three daughters while working a full time job as a nurse (often swing shift or overnight). My dad was an intermittently employed construction worker who subscribed to the convenient idea that housework was for women, which meant that she leaned hard on me to deal with the cleaning. I married into a nice upper class family — the kind where the kids get music lessons and ski vacations and take it for granted that their way through college will be fully subsidized.
I can’t even describe the sense of having someone at your back . . . the difference between being in the world and knowing that if you fall or fail, it’s on you all the way vs. knowing that someone will be there with whatever it takes. I think of it sometimes like watching two versions of the same play. In one version there’s always a stark cliff behind the characters, and in the other they move and breathe and think with a comfortable, welcoming room behind every scene. Same characters, but everything takes on a completely different feel and meaning, depending on their life context.
It’s obscene for any one family to be worth half a billion dollars. I’m sorry, but it really is. There’s such a thing as enough.
Yes, there is nothing like the feeling of someone having your back. You don’t say whether or not you have children, but you have a great set of perspectives to give them.
I do have children — a pair of grown daughters. One of them is married to an Iraq vet; she volunteers every Saturday at the local Humane Society, where her job is to pet the cats and keep them sane while they wait to be adopted. The other one just found out that her first job post college will be living in “intentional poverty” while she works at a longterm housing facility for homeless and abused women & their kids.
Yeah, I’m bragging, but not on my behalf — on theirs. Whatever I did right was mostly good guessing and luck.
I do think at least 50% of it is the kids’ innate temperament…regardless, congratulations on launching two great kids! My daughter (10) wants to volunteer at an animal shelter, you’ve reminded me to look for cat-petting opportunities!
Thank you for this. I am a stay at home mother to a three-month old baby. It is hard work-and we make many sacrifices to make it work. We live in a one-bedroom apartment, drive a van that is 13 years old, and budget like mad. Even will all the lovely social assistance programs provided in Canada (parental leave, monthly child tax benefits) things are still tight. I have no idea how the average American family does it, to be honest…and if the Romneys cannot recognize that they are a rare privileged few, then I feel things are about to get even more difficult for American women and American families.
It IS going to get more difficult, Mary. Not sure what will turn things around, as the US is virtually ungovernable. In my fantasy, Jon Stewart would be president and Elizabeth Warren one of his cabinet members!
That may have been what Hilary Rosen meant, but it’s not what she said. “…never worked a day in her life.” I’ve worked outside the home full time, worked outside the home part time and stayed at home with my daughter at various times throughout my life. Anyone who says refers to a SAHM as never having worked a day in her life is an idiot.
As a single mother of one typical child and one with profound disabilities, I receive no child support and work and stress endlessly to keep my head above water and my children’s heads above water. It is incredibly difficult.
I can not tell you how much I appreciate reading your words, especially, “The glaring omission of Privilege in this tiresome Mommy Wars debate denies the experience of mothers who ARE hindered by race and social class and marital status. Omitting Privilege from the conversation doesn’t acknowledge their reality and lack of choices.”
Sometimes, I think friends and acquaintances (who have so much more than I do) try to make me feel better by acting as if my life is just as charmed as theirs. They feel like they are being kind by not acknowledging the disparity. I appreciate, though, that you wrote the truth for me and many others.
Hopefully, acknowleding the disparity is the first step for many to help make the change.
Lora, I think you’re right — I think your friends are trying to make you feel better and just have no idea what it feels like on a daily basis to deal with the challenges that you do. I’m glad what I wrote spoke to you.
Amen! You nailed it.
Wow. What you describe is privilege I could never, ever imagine. But one doesn’t have to have it anywhere near that good to have privilege: I work part-time (privilege). We have two cars (privilege). We have the kind of health insurance that means never having to bring money into the equation when making medical decisions (privilege). Our kids attend a (non-ritzy) private school (privilege). But we live in a neighborhood where we could have sent them to the public school without a second thought (privilege). I can buy local and organic food. I can even buy the expensive cheese every once in a while as a treat. That’s all privilege. And “privilege” sure looks funny if you type it enough.
This is an excellent description of the different levels of privilege. Yesterday I packed my kids into my Prius (leased, but still a status symbol) and drove them to the outdoor mall to see a movie (over $30), paid $6 in parking, bought lunch and coffee (over $20). That’s privilege. We all need to own what we’ve got.
korillion, until there was a change to go after a Democrat, Mitt Romney didn’t think raising children counted as work either:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/mitt-romney-flashback-stay-at-home-moms-need-to-learn-dignity-of-work/2012/04/15/gIQAhmbZJT_blog.html
I just read that link — awesome post.
Neither the author nor the commenters piling on have any moral claim to the extraction of wealth from others and the transfer of same to themselves.
I don’t think that’s what anyone is saying. We’re talking about civic duty and moral imperative, two character traits that used to be embodied by affluent politicians with character and now seem to have all but disappeared.
I’m a member of the servant class. The ones who give up our lives for those “around the clock” helpers so rich women can drift from yoga to Starbucks & then slum it at Target. We take your pilled cast-offs to the “charity shop.” We scrub your toilets despite an injured & aching back.
We are polite to these women because we have to be, but make no mistake: we detest you.