The Case Against Women Raising Children

By Kathleen A. Ryan Carlsson

For information about the book go to www.GroenendaelPress.com.

Evolution and culture produce a body and mind to suit a creatures role in the world. Whether care of the young is provided by males, females or both, each species has evolved caregiver traits suited to that task. The result is caring- women and provider-men. In other words you are what you do.

However, with the honing of each trait, a creature pays a price. In the case of a woman who specialized her body and mind to childcare, the price was a failure to develop skill at financial self sufficiency and individual direction, which in turn made it more likely that such a woman will live in a subordinate relationship.

Women as primary parents perpetuated gender roles. Women internalized this definition of themselves, and they became somewhat comfortable with it. Even when they wanted more power over their lives, they found themselves trapped from within.

But, human beings have also evolved the trait of educability. We can learn. We can choose the direction in which we develop our abilities and traits.

The case against women raising children is the case for parents raising children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 8, 2002
• ISBN: 9781477179888

Kathleen A. Ryan Carlsson

Kathleen A. Ryan Carlsson is a New York lawyer who has practiced family and estate law for nearly 35 years. At one time she was an adjunct professor at C.W. Post College of Long Island University, where she taught a course in Women and the Law. She has written on the subject of women’s and children’s surnames, and in the early 1970s she handled employment sex discrimination cases before administrative agencies. In the earlier years as a Family Court lawyer, she also represented many women and children. Over the years of law practice she has focused especially on the situation of women clients and thought about the effect of the prevailing culture on their lives, their family roles, their financial situation and their need for legal and judicial intervention in their lives.

Book preview

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1:   THE CHILD CARE PROVIDER (animal or human) EVOLVES A BODY AND PERSONALITY SUITABLE TO THE TASK

Costs versus benefits

Care of young by both parents

Female care of young

Care of young solely by the father

How the human child-care role has evolved provider-men and caring-women

CHAPTER 2:   HOW THE CHILD CARE ROLE CHANGED FEMALE BRAINS:YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO

Are male and female brains different? or used differently?

Being subordinate leads to brain change

Are people hormonally primed for (or by) child care?

Experience with babies makes good parents

Infant cues appeal to parents

Can the experience of child care alter the brain?

CHAPTER 3:   WE HAVE EVOLVED THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE OUR DIRECTION

Don’t wait for evolution: use your brain

Our culture changes us, and we change our culture

CHAPTER 4:   THE CASE AGAINST FATHERS WORKING FULL TIME

The Mommy track begins

From the Industrial Revolution to the computer revolution mothers lost their breadwinner role

The mommy track as a trap

Child’s primary identification with the female induces gender stereotypes

Girls’ development

Boys’ development

Power and helplessness

Bibliography

Dedication

To my husband, Robert Carlen.

Acknowledgments:

I want to thank my husband for his encourgement and for his editing help. I am grateful to my late parents Carl Eric Carlsson and Florence Ryan Carlsson, for their example in avoiding gender roles. I have tried to analyze and put into words, issues that they dealt with.

Introduction

L et me tell you a little about my background and

what I bring to gender issues. My mother was

born in Brooklyn, New York in 1910. She grew up there and attended law school in New York City. When she entered the field of law in 1938, she faced almost impossible discrimination. But she was a singularly determined person. With strong support from her father, she was able to separate herself from the culture around her and to focus on her goals. She was very fortunate to be hired by a Manhattan attorney. In 1943, my mother decided that our family should move to Long Island. I was two years old when my parents and I moved, and soon thereafter my mother started to practice law on Long Island. I remember attending title closings with her when I was quite young, perhaps four or five years old, and I remember attending court sessions when I was a little older. Later on, she became the first female assistant district attorney in our county—Nassau. This is taken for granted today, but it was very unusual then. The early years of my mother’s career were never easy. There is no doubt that fifty or sixty years ago, discrimination against women was still so strong that only the most committed could succeed.

I was admitted to the bar in 1966 and immediately joined my mother’s law office. Since then, I have practiced elder, family, and estate law on Long Island, and this work has given me a glimpse into the lives of thousands of women. I have given a lot of thought to what I have seen, including their family relationships, their financial situations, their personalities, and the reasons why they needed the law or the courts to intervene in their lives.

I remember a case in the 1960s in which a friend of mine brought an administrative proceeding, under one of the new sex-discrimination laws, in an effort to stop the New York Times from printing separate Help Wanted listings for men and women. It seems so unbelievable today, but there was a time when the regular jobs were listed in newspapers in columns called Help Wanted Male, while a Help Wanted Female column advertised the lower-paying jobs that would appeal to women. And to some extent, many women accepted life that way. They derived other benefits from the system. It makes me wonder whether discrimination can exist without some cooperation from the discriminated.

At that time laws were enacted to give women remedies. A lot of sex discrimination-in-employment litigation took place. And change did occur. Was the change the result of the new laws, or of a new culture that was developing that demanded equality? Perhaps a spiral of culture and law brought about the change. I’m sure that culture and law must coincide to effect change. But I suspect that culture is crucial and the law helpful but not sufficient.

Of course, the culture is different today. It is also an established legal concept that discrimination is not acceptable. Today, in my law office, I see a much more self-reliant woman client than I did when I first began my practice. Almost all American women now earn a paycheck and contribute to the support of their children. In fact, at least half of married women bring in half or more of their family’s income.¹ My female clients’ financial situations are today somewhat less entangled with those of their men.

Nevertheless, some mothers are still more focused on the day-to-day concerns of children than are fathers. Even though studies show that mothers and fathers each contribute about half of the child care and chore time in the family, many mothers still suffer from conflict over their goals versus their parenting role. Some still try to do more than their share as though they don’t have a right to a more balanced and leisurely life. Fathers were not known to suffer such conflict in the past. Now fathers also see some conflict between working and parenting. But it is my impression that there are still more mothers than fathers who are stressed by the conflict.

Today, women are still not fully functioning in all areas of their careers, but I believe that the cause is different now; it lies within them and their attitudes towards their role in child care. An economics professor concluded that women’s economic failings are not due to discrimination but to women’s greater commitment to having and caring for children.² He is wrong about the first part; their economic failings are not due to having children. That is a fact of human existence. But clearly they are due to the commitment to caring for children. Now the vestiges of discrimination still exist, but they are in women’s minds and souls.

The thesis of THE CASE AGAINST WOMEN RAISING CHILDREN is that the child-rearing role that women have assumed has been at a price—namely, some of their other potential; that this role is maladaptive for women, and perpetuates women’s difficulties; and that only recently have women been emerging from this track. We are in a transition time. A few years from now, the issues I am discussing will have receded, and people will hardly recall the struggle that women have had. The change is happening so fast that sometimes I wonder if it is even worth my effort to write this. But then once in a while I hear or read something that reminds me that the full humanity of women is not totally assured yet. It will definitely come, but there are still remnants of the female burden of child care.

A college professor at the University of Pennsylvania wrote in 1993 that her students still assumed that mothers were destined to care for children.³ A 1999 article in The New York Times about the careers of women in medicine⁴ concluded that although there are no limits to how high a woman can rise in medicine, many are stuck at the bottom of the field because they believe that as mothers it is their duty to raise their children. Meanwhile, their husbands pursue their career goals.

The Times published a letter to the editor⁵ in reply to an article written by a female physician who had made such a compromise. Pathetically, the letter writer wrote: I made less money, but raising the children was more important. Consider her lack of logic. I have never heard anyone question that raising children is important. It is very, very important. It is the foundation of the next generation of human beings. But what does raising children have to do with women? It has gotten into women’s heads that they are the primary parents. How is child rearing their responsibility? The fact is that it is a woman’s responsibility only if she is willing to let it be. An economics professor reported back in 1983 that there was a disparity in earnings between