My mother stopped working the second my dad returned from a three-year military stint overseas during World War II. Men were supposed to be the breadwinners back in the day. My goodness, what a burden for them! Staying home with little kids isn’t exactly a picnic, but it was the dad—and the dad alone—who worried about earning enough to feed, clothe and educate them.
My, how women have changed! Let me share some fast facts on women and the economy from an analysis by the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress:
1. Women are co-breadwinners or primary breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. (from The New Breadwinners, by Heather Boushey and Ann O’Leary.)
2. In 2009, 34 percent of working mothers are their families’ sole breadwinner, either because their spouse was unemployed or out of the labor force or because they were heads of household.
3. Wives’ incomes comprised 36 percent of family income in 2008.
4. In the past quarter century, it has taken two earners to get ahead: between 1983 and 2008, married couples with a working wife experienced annual income growth of 1.12 percent, while married couples with a stay-at-home wife saw their average annual incomes decline by .22 percent per year.
I’m all for a woman staying home with her kids, if she and her husband agree that’s what they both want. I’m also a big fan of househusbands (my former husband, Douglas, was one of the first in the US in 1981.)
Whether or not we have children, each of us has an awesome amount of responsibility today, especially given the instability of our economy. It’s inspiring to see the role women are playing.
Smiling, but thinking about Anita?
I have no idea whether Anita Hill was lying when she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, right after he was nominated to the United States Supreme Court. I was all wrapped up in the story when it happened 19 years ago, but I’ve long since forgotten Anita Hill.
Apparently, Virginia Thomas, Clarence’s wife, can’t forget. She left a message last week on Anita’s phone asking her to publicly acknowledge that she wrongly accused her husband. Virginia claimed she was extending “an olive branch” to Anita, but the recorded message didn’t seem to back this up.
Judge for yourself: “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day,” Virginia is heard saying on the tape.
I think Virginia may be a little daft. If she’s not, and she’s spent all these years thinking about Anita, she’s a sad, sad woman.
Granted, sometimes I’ll think about some awful thing someone once said or did that I want to make them “pay” for, but it passes in and out of my mind in seconds. It’s a good chance none of these people is giving me a second thought, so why waste my valuable time thinking about them?
Virginia, surely you can find something more productive to do than leave wacky messages around town. Throw a dinner party for your husband’s colleagues. That would be fun.
V is about to become FOF and she’s going through a major upheaval in her life. She was terminated as a reporter over a year ago because the newspaper where she worked wasn’t doing well. Her husband, an engineer, lost his job in May. They have an nine-year-old daughter.
Women are on the line now
V’s job hunting has been fruitless. She’s called former associates, friends and friends of friends, but the employment situation remains bleak. She’s been looking for jobs in and outside the media industry. “Unemployment benefits don’t go far, and we’re about to deplete our resources,” V told me. “My mother has helped some, but she’s 84 and on a fixed income, so I can’t ask her for more.
“I wake up in the middle of the night with a pit in my stomach, asking myself, ‘What are we going to do?’ I had a child at 40 and have years until she’s on her own. Am I supposed to start all over again at this point in my life? I’ve even entertained the thought of moving to my mom’s four-bedroom home in the Midwest, but I know I could never do that,” she said.
Despite her stress, V trusts that this will all lead to something good. “I’ve gone through all these months with a good attitude so I’m not going to get down now.” Like I, she believes in fate. “I’m supposed to learn something from this,” she said, philosophically.
V vows that once she and her husband start working again and have some money saved, they are going to do something on their own. Like many FOF women, she is resourceful and pragmatic. She is starting to realize she doesn’t want her future to be in anyone’s hands but her own.
I have always been pro drugs. The medicinal kind, that is. Have the flu? Pop some antibiotics. Headache? Head for the Tylenol. Can’t sleep. Yay for Lunesta. Wisdom teeth removed? Vicodin, here I come. After I had major surgery years ago, Percocet was my best friend.
Now I’m not so sure. Every drug is packed with a laundry list of warnings. And we’re reading more and more about new studies uncovering the perils of this drug and that. The latest culprit is Prempro, the HRT drug that reportedly increases a woman’s risk of developing advanced breast cancer if she takes it after menopause. It’s the old double-edge sword. A miracle drug cures problem A but causes problem B and C, which are sometimes far more serious that the initial problem.
If you take biphosphonates for osteoporosis, beware of serious problems that could crop up with your jaw. If you take sleeping pills, you could have temporary memory loss. Take an anti-depressant and chance having suicidal thoughts (now that’s a oxymoron, if ever there was one.)