Tte--tte

COMMENT

Should women stay at home?

the family, and also their husbands. The elderly are often put as far away as possible, in the care of nurses, whilst children are left on their own, to nannies, videogames, the media and drugs. No wonder one sees stories of kids doing drugs at ever-younger ages. And it is no wonder either that psychological disorders are on the rise among children: they tend to be generated by the lack of emotional and aective support at home, which builds their self esteem. These social disorders are infrequent in cultures where it is customary for mothers to stay at home. Families are stronger there, because the wife ensures that there is intergenerational trust and aection: between children, parents and grandparents and often other relatives too. In these societies, welfare and wellbeing are produced within the family, in the form of understanding and aection, not a monthly cheque from the government. All in all, I think women should consider staying at home if they have a family. They are inherently better than men at overseeing and promoting the health and happiness of a family, including children, the elderly and relatives. Women could of course work a n d do as well as men in t h e labour market. But nature stipulated that men can only do worse t h a n women if they are the ones staying at home. For the sake of our species stability and wellbeing we should not wage such futile confrontation against the indomitability of biological dierence. Anonymous

Biological dierence and inherent emotional suitability remain salient in the twenty-rst century.
Anonymous

The perseverance of outdated social norms continues to disadvantage all women.

ne of the biggest misconceptions in Western idiosyncrasy is that men and women are equal in every respect. To me, it is self-evident that women and men ought to be equal before the law, and that they should be regarded equally as intelligent. However, such aspects of gender equality tend to be extrapolated to all areas of human life, thus arriving to the conclusion that we should strive for a gender-blind society -one where the only dierence is that the woman gives birth to babies; all other tasks being indierent of gender. That is nonsense. Women and men are in fact very dierent on a biological level, and these dierences have profound implications that determine the division of labour and the roles of the members of a family. Hence, it makes sense for a woman with a family to stay at home rather than go to work at least until the point is reached where the long-term wellbeing of the family is no longer compromised by the mother not being at home. Generally, women should stay at home with their families because they are much better at looking after them than their husbands. In preindustrial times, women were better o staying at home because they could not earn as much as men, if they went out to work in the elds a signicant percentage of available work. That was for purely physical reasons: men have a higher muscle mass. Nevertheless, in industrial and services-based societies most jobs do not require intensive physical work and as a result, women can do the same jobs as men. Therefore, the more salient reason for women staying at home is that they have more emotional and verbal intelligence than men and therefore are better equipped to help children develop properly, both cognitively and emotionally. Women are also more sensitive and perceptive: they can look into people more thoroughly than men. They are more empathic and therefore can better guess what goes on with their children and elderly parents, which in turn allows them to keep good care of them. These qualities are inherent to their gender: women are naturally more understanding, just as men naturally excel at spatial tasks. In consequence, within a family the best way to maximize welfare is for the woman to stay at home and the man to work. If we inverse the roles, in the best case the woman would earn the same wage as the man does, but the children would be worse o. Going beyond theory, let us look at societies where both the parents work and compare them with societies where women tend to stay at home. In the West, a stay at home mum is oftentimes seen as an anachronistic, oppressed product of chauvinism. Latent individualism leads many women to think that it would be a waste of time to stay at home. They put themselves ahead of

he Womens studies department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimates that in the US, the average female college graduate who has a child will be $1million worse o at the end of their lives than if they had remained childless. This economic loss is created through potentially taking a career break, the decreased likelihood that women with children will be promoted to senior management positions, and the compounded eect of these factors on womens future earnings and pensions. It should be noted that men do not suer from any of these factors. The assumption that women will be the primary carer for children disadvantages all women, not just those who decide to have children. The mere fact that women have the potential to have children is enough to create discrimination in the hiring practices of companies, and contributes to creating the glass ceiling that many women suer from. If men were equally as likely to share the burden of childcare, discrimination on this scale would not exist. While I concede that men are unable to breastfeed or physically give birth, there is no reason that they cannot be involved in caring for their child once it is a few weeks old. With the technology around that enables women to express their breast milk, the physical presence of the woman is no longer required in order to feed the child breast milk if it is so

As part of the Boar's Anonymous Tte--tte series, writers remain uncredited. If you have an opinion on this week's issue then please send your le ers to c.j.browne@ warwick.ac.uk

desired. The only reason that the onus falls on women tocare for the child is the outdated social myth that women are innately more caring and nurturing than men. I know a lot of men who are very caring and wonderful with children, and a lot of women who entirely lack the maternal drive and nurturing personality which they are supposedly endowed with. The notion that women should be staying at home to care for children is not only based upon a social myth, but upon ideals of a heterosexual, two parent nuclear family which is rapidly becoming less prevalent in our modern society. Not only that, but for the majority of people, the days of being able to comfortably survive on one persons wage are long gone. With the rise in single parent families, many women need to be working to provide even this one wage. Women should be able to leave their children in childcare in order to provide for the nancial needs of their family, without being judged for allegedly damaging their childrens emotional health. I believe that women who continue to work while having a family are tremendous role models for the children they have. Their female children have an ever present example of what they can achieve outside the traditional female gender role, and this can motivate them to achieve better educationally. Their male children learn respect for female independence and are less likely to expect their future partners to full the role of unpaid nanny and cleaner. This is not to say that women who do stay at home and care for their children arent doing a good job. The feminist ideas about the importance of a womans right to work have had the secondary aect that they have undermined the respect that traditionally existed for the mother/housewife role, which some women nd tremendously fullling. My point is that women should be free to choose whether to stay at home and care for their children or not, and not be judged for using other modes of childcare if they wish to continue with their careers after childbirth. It is obviously incredibly important that someone takes good care of our future generations of children. Using women as unpaid workers is no longer acceptable. I would advocate increased state spending to provide good subsidised childcare in order to support those women who wish to remain in the work force. In addition, men and women should have equal rights to maternity/paternity leave in order to remove barriers to men being the primary carer for their children. There are many smart, well educated, capable and ambitious women out there who are far better suited to running a corporation than changing nappies. We need future generations of children, and its important that these women arent disadvantaged by producing them.