Reddit reviews Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family
We found 3 Reddit comments about Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Random House Trade
The problem is not only that this affects men attempting to parent their kids, it affects the entire society's gender roles. Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote a great book on the topic Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family that discusses these issues. When the assumption is women are the natural caregivers, it has overwhelming effects on both women and men at work, at home, and in relationships.
Indeed an interesting article - a feminist starting to have doubts, condescending as they may be. Thanks for bringing it to our attention!
For those interested:
Slaughter's original complaint:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/
Gottlieb's Response:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-having-it-all-and-there-never-will-be/258928/
Gottlieb's Case for "Settling":
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/marry-him/306651/
Slaughter's Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Business-Women-Work-Family/dp/0812984978
Gottlieb's Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Marry-Him-Case-Settling-Enough/dp/045123216X
This is a perfectly reasonable response. I just think our reasoning is heavily differentiated when it comes to bodily autonomy. If a fetus can not survive outside the body of the mother, it is not viable as human life.
The violinist essay to me has put it best in terms of an ethical stance. I would not be in favor of abortion after a time which a fetus could be viable (5 months). Even before that begins to be a bit too far along for me personally. But, there are far too many cases and contexts for any one person to be the arbiter of what is right ethically in each of those cases.
The young woman I knew, I had to counsel through the process, healing, and trauma. If she’d had the child, she would have lost her job as a bartender (yes, I know this is supposedly illegal, but try living in the real world), had few skills to recommend additional employment as she only had an associate’s degree, and would have suffered even more emotionally as a result of having a child she had to give away rather than raise - as a motherless child herself.
In the case of my friend’s miscarriage, the fetus was technically still alive. It was no longer viable for my friend to carry the pregnancy due to the uterine tear, and the fetus was largely not viable / the pregnancy could not continue. So by your standard of care, it would have been an abortion.
I think as a society we tend to underrate women’s pain and autonomy, and we rely on women’s self-sacrifice for care work. I think this colors the lens through which people often view early pregnancy, and there is a systematic bias against women, assuming they should have to perform care / host labor in order to create new life. (Some interesting if tangential work written by Anne-Marie Slaughter and Soraya Chemaly in this regard!)
I simply don’t subscribe to these ethics that treat women as second class humans. And I was raised Catholic. (Read a few Elaine Pagels books and got a degree in religion to undo that).
My arguments are not to try to devalue life. I think most women who become pregnant and don’t wish to be struggle tremendously if they have to terminate. I know I would. But I also think society should look to the care of the woman, financially and emotionally, before the care of potential offspring. We are so quick in American culture to ask women to create children, and then we ask provide no assistance once the child is born. We assume a woman will provide care. That this is what they are for.
In many other cultures, even ones I find sexist in nature, women are given a great deal more care after the birth of the child. In Arab cultures, other women come over and take the child off the mother’s hands so she can rest - for days or weeks at a time. They cook, care for the baby, let the Mother sleep. This example starts to become tangential to my main argument, but I think it shows a real difference in how American culture approaches pregnancy and motherhood. You just have the child, we can’t help you after. It is sexist on its face.