TO Piers Morgan and Ann Romney: Wake up, For Most Women Today, it’s NOT a “Choice”
Tonight, Piers, whom I adore for being a shy outspoken reserved iconoclastic darling curly haired boyish mensch… cozied up to the Ann Romney statement (via Ann’s son coming on his show to defend his mother), refuting Miss Hilary Rosen’s remark inferring that Mrs Romney’s no expert on the lives of women, not having to work a day in her life.
Just this Piers: Ann said over and over and over (in film clips today shown also on CNN) ‘Women CHOOSE”… “Some women CHOOSE to stay home” Other women “CHOOSE” to work.
Jay-zee on a crutch!!! What citadel do you AND Ann live on breathing rarified air?
Many many women HAVE TO work. Have you gone daft? HAVE TO. When we have children, for millions of us, there is NO CHOICE.
You and others want to make this about stay at home moms and how ‘holy’ they are.– have missed the point of what Ann said.
She said CHOOSE/ CHOICE/CHOICES.
She lives in fairyland if she thinks it’s a CHOICE for MILLIONS of WOMEN. And a journo should at the very least, make comment on that. MILLIONS OF WOMEN HAVE NO CHOICE.
I love you Piers, but tonight, it’s the doghouse.
And regarding Mrs Romney, I was willing to give benefit of doubt, until her later remarks about CHOICE… by my sights, this is proof positive that Ann Romney has no idea how other women, not of her own socioeconomic class live. None.
And further, making this about whether someone should have twittered about this or that about Ann Romney is trite, including Bay Buchanan carrying tonight re how “despicable” she thinks this all is, how ‘the liberals’ are all against the GOP, etc etc etc. It is all SO trivial, and EXACTLY the kind of dim talk that creates LACK of real dialogue in our nation.
It’s bizarre to see the Bays and Anns and others of the world come out so strong on such trivial issues, but not about issues that are life and death for OTHER people’s children, where the the powerful Anns and Bays and others of their class, could actual make a difference in loud and sustained and consistent protestations about the lacks and disadvantages for OTHER people’s children who are truly threatened in nutrition, safety, health care.
Not protecting the truly vulnerable amongst us, and yet stampeding out to ‘protect’ the ultra wealthy wife, Ann Romney, whose life is in no way threatened by someone saying she’s not much of an advisor on women to a POTUS contender, is just pathetic.
Worse, is that the coven cannot see the difference between rushing to ‘protect’ one who needs NO protection, and not protecting those who actually do. Elections are LOST for being out of touch with the reality of the masses. Ask GHWB.
If I chewed chad, I’d spit now.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Estes is a is a best selling author whose books have often dealt with women’s issues.
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Hi Dr E — Comments still not showing up, still telling me they’re duplicate when I try to re-enter them.
From the number of posts and comments on Hillary Rosen’s remarks on stay-at-home-Mom Ann Romney, it seems that just about everything that can be said has been said about it.
While it is almost impossible to put the toothpaste back into the tube, from having watched Hillary Rosen explain her remarks ad nauseam and apologize ad nauseam, she seems very sincere and remorseful to me that her comments provoked such a firestorm.
She now has gone one step farther in trying to smooth the waters and has turned down the opportunity to participate in the Roundtable.
Here are her words:
“I thank David and the folks at MTP for offering me the chance to participate in the Roundtable. It will be an important political discussion, as it always is on Meet the Press. But I have said enough and while I have unfortunately made the Producer’s job tougher today, I don’t have anything more to say. I apologized to Mrs. Romney and work-in-home moms for mistakenly giving the impression that I do not think their work is valuable. Of course it is. I will instead spend the weekend trying to explain to my kids the value of admitting a mistake and moving on.”
Earlier, Rosen had tweeted:
I deeply apologize again to work-in-home moms, Mrs. Romney & the POTUS. Not going on #MTP this weekend. I’m going to be a mom who stays home.
Perhaps we should give this lady a break now?
Just saying.
dear Roro, see now if you are showing up in comments. For some reason the SPAM software keeps liking your screen name. I put anti-roro spray on it, let us see if that works now. Pls let me know
thanks
archangel/ dr.e
Dr. E,
I’m happy to move on. I accept that her apology was sincere. And I said before that I didn’t agree with conservative partisans who try to spin this against Obama and Democrats in general. But these posts keep showing up defending what she said, even after she apologized, or worse: further criticizing Ann Romney for defending herself. Claims are being made about how “most women” don’t have a choice, or about how only rich women have that choice. These claims are demonstrably untrue and yet keep getting repeated. This causes me to question my original assumption. Maybe Democrats, or at least the liberal base, really do sympathize with what Rosen said. They might have used different words, but they agree with the message. As we can see from the data, and most of us can see from personal experience, the message is disconnected from reality and the ideology that gives rise to such misguided ideas deserves further scrutiny.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m ready to move on. I have no interest in piling on Rosen. But it’s the liberal base, as represented by a few authors and commenters here, that seems to have more to say.
dear Adeline’s Dad, from the group of women I come from, immigrants, refugees, people who were unable to finish school because of the Depression, under-educated generations forward, abandoned by husbands, betrayed by whomsoever, and more factors, I know literally thousands myself, who had no choice about work outside. And that’s only me, one person. The children would have starved or been taken. There was no choice. Ann lives in a different world, as do many who are different than we are, they had choices according to them. We didnt. Neither did our mothers or grandmothers. Grandmothers not only ran restaurants out of their homes, took care of the old man, their own parents, their children , raised the fruits, vegetables and livestock, they also took in borders and cooked and laundered by hand… for a small army. Ann knows nothing of this kind of life of a ‘stay at home mom.’ Or the mothers who must work to hold children and hearth together. Have to. When there are children and too little or no income from elsewhere, a woman must work.
I don’t dispute that Ann Romney’s life is very different from the life of poor and most middle-class women. If that was the extent of the criticism, it would be a valid point. But Rosen chose to frame it as a SAHM vs. working mom issue, and her defenders are still framing it that way or they are pretending that it was never framed that way.
Nor do I dispute that for some mothers, working is not a choice.
However, it has been repeatedly said that it is not a choice for most women, and/or that only rich women have this choice. This is not true and it is offensive since many women who make the choice despite great financial sacrifice.
I don’t mean to disrespect your personal experience, but the data shows that the poor, and immigrants, are actually more likely to be SAHMs than others groups. If there is any correlation at all, there appears to be a negative correlation between wealth and moms staying at home. This is what I mean by the argument being disconnected from reality. If liberals view SAHMs as mostly rich, white, privileged folks, they are woefully wrong, even if Ann Romney is all of those.
I also want to say that in Rosen’s apology she said that she believed that raising children is work and is valuable. But the feeling I got from her original tweet was that since Ann didn’t work out side the home she wasn’t really competent to understand those that do. Does the reverse also hold true? While valuable does she still feel that about Ann?
“I don’t mean to disrespect your personal experience, but the data shows that the poor, and immigrants, are actually more likely to be SAHMs than others groups.”
Not even close to true. Better give links if you want to hold to that, I think. I’m in the midst of immigrant city where so many people live in ways you yourself would never agree to live. But you have far more soft and hard resources than they, likely. The biggest barriers to work for women and men are… as they have always been for the immigrant and refugee. I know you know what those are. Again, witness.
He has linked in previous comments.
Dr E.
This is the link I posted before, listing SAHMs per income group: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2007/tabFG2-all.xls
With regards to immigrants, I think I posted this on a previous thread but I neglected to post it here:
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-ff07.html
Scroll to the section on stay-at-home moms.
@CStanley – Ellen Bravo wrote a very good piece IMO on what policies that support women in either choice would look like:
http://familyvaluesatwork.org/media-center/stop-the-war-on-mothers
Also – she is scheduled to be on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris Perry program ths morning – I think that’s on at 10am but not 100% sure.
Bravo btw started 9to5 and has been a huge champion of women for decades. I have enormous respect for her even when I don’t agree with her which has happened on occasion.
Another woman who champions moms and moms who work a job in addition to parenting is Morra Aarons Mele. She has a post up on HuffPo about all this. She’s a big mentor of mine.
Jill, talk about tone deaf. Honestly I’m astounded that you don’t recognize that partisanship and ideology are a barrier to having women from all over the spectrum come together to talk about the issues that affect us all in different ways.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about:
1. Try to pretend you are conservative and click over to your link and read the opening paragraph or imagine that I pointed you to a link that said the same things about liberals- how put off would you be before even getting to the point of the article?
2. I asked about examples of feminists supporting women who choose motherhood as a vocation and your linking to people who at best are not expressing hostility to that, but nowhere so far do I see any real support for it. If anything, by placing all emphasis on policies to support career women, the implication is to pile more social pressure on women to choose employment.
Oh for goodness sakes – the bulk and import of her piece is about the policies that would help. Yes – I ignore the partisan stuff and I do that for either side. It’s why I have no problem with Simpson Bowles.
Yeesh.
I mean it seems like you think I need to be convinced that women who make the choice for career +.motherhood really do value the motherhood part of the equation. I’ve never doubted that though. What I do doubt is that they can relate to a decision to do mothering full time, as a choice that is equally valid, and important enough to support with rhetoric and engaging on the issues of most concern to us.
That link is in response to your request about what policies – I’m done with the request re : feminist bla bla bla – I responded to that before. Talk about getting in some gotcha mode – I’m here in good faith – what’s your deal?
Yeah indeed, Jill. If a Simpson Bowles oped started out with a partisan smack down, I’d make the same critical observation about that.
Wow Jill, you view that as a policy piece. It makes a bunch of assertions without data some of which are frankly ridiculous as in “the workers who care for our young children earn less than those who take care of our pets or our cars…”
Logical argument like that isn’t going to convince anyone.
There are a lot of complex issues in this debate but simplistic argumentation complemented by inventing facts or thinking they don’t matter isn’t going to bridge the gap.
Sigh – you very specifically asked about policies – I was running out yesterday and mentioned dads – I read Bravo last night added that as another exAmple of focusing on policies – which is pretty much what Bravo does outside of whatever ideological dispo she comes from. Take them or leave them.
And I’ll give you another – Momsrising –
http://t.co/6jKpAVTG
But these response of yours to my good faith responses to what I thought were legit questions from you seem to be showing up your questions as rhetoric, suggesting that you just don’t think policy suggestions event exist.
Honestly – who is hopelessly wedded to being close-minded here, trying to really “show me” for whatever you think I am?
Wow. Nice way to deflate a whole lot of good intent to respond to your questions. My bad for not realizing you didn’t really think answers exist.
Jill,
I’d be interested in you showing us the partisan name calling in the Simpson-Bowles report that you ignored.
- is no one reading to the end?
Here is more:
http://t.co/6jKpAVTG
You all sound far more interested in just wanting to say nothing exists so spare me the gotcha junk. Really makes it seem like navel gazing on your parts.
Omg – this really is about gotcha isn’t it? How deflating
And FYI – I’ve written multiple responses and they seem to be gobbled up – I have some parenting and work to blend for pay and unpaid so I have to stop now – let me know when you are out of gotcha mode and willing to look at substantive debate again
Alright Jill I do concede that I’d lost track of the thread of our conversation as it wove in and output of other conversations. I see now that you weren’t presenting this as evidence that liberal feminists want to show common ground with conservative SAHM or even SAHM in general.
Still you reap what you sow…when you point favorably to someone who is engaging in partisan sniping, to someone who is the object of that sniping, expect that that reader is going to be affected exactly the way the author intended. I am capable of rising above it, but it’s annoying that I should have to.
Actually Jill, Steve brought up the substance of the article itself so why won’t you discuss that?
It’s called media literacy – its what enables us to read what anyone has to say and get something out of it – it’s why I linked all over the place to what conservative Matt Lewis has been saying about this and even Erick Erickson. Please – what I thought you possessed as good faith engagement is seriously eroding here.
And let’s see if I can finally get the Momsrising piece to stick re: policy:
http://t.co/6jKpAVTG
Really weird the Momsrising link won’t stick in a comment check on twitter @momsrising or in my @jillmz feed for the link – they are nonpartisan pro-moms including mom wage-earners outside the home
Substance of Ellen’s piece? Her brevity of not linking etc can be questioned – whatever – I know her and I know her work – she will be on Melissa Harris Perry this morning at 10am and she has books out with all the back up you would want – she is an expert in this field and I don’t question her for a minute – don’t mind that you do and want links – understand the question. But no as I stand here with clothes in my arms, food in the oven and a need to catch up on work for which I get paid, I will have to live with just referring you to looking up her annals of work on the topic of women in the workplace. Sue me.
I’m not replying anymore until I’m on my laptop because about five or more comments have not shown up and I’m on my iPad and for this working mom every minute doing this on a Saturday morning is time away from chores I didn’t get to while having the flu last week,
Ellen Bravo has books substantiating her policy suggestions – she will be on MSNBC this morning. If you are simply attacking her failure to include a link – so noted, if you think it can’t possibly be true, google it. If you want to discredit her for yourself because of how she wrote what she wrote, so be that as well. Just be sure you do that for all the politifact-check-worthy things every candidate for office says.
I believe TMV commenters – esp. the regulars to be above snittiness but this thread really has me thinking otherwise. I’m disappointed. But maybe I just need more coffee.
Jill, fair enough about the time constraints and difficulty posting stuff here at times.
I do feel though that you are awfully quick to drop your assumption that I am discussing things in good faith. People here from both sides frequently point out inflammatory tone in linked articles and sites (in fact many of the liberal commenters- though not you specifically) will often refuse to even read anything from a conservative blog.) if you made a similar complaint about something I linked to, I would take that in good faith. I don’t see that as a gotcha- in fact I welcome the chance to better understand other people’s perspectives and examine why bipartisan discussions so often break down before they can get started.
Don’t worry CS, you’re a regular. I’m sure you’re arguing in good faith. I was the one who was “snitty” enough to ask for substantiation or the linkage between the partisan attacks in the linked article and Bowles-Simpson which, at least as I read it, was pretty scrupulously non-partisan.
Yeah, well she did direct a comment about that to me earlier so I presume she meant both of us….but I think she and I both just weren’t feeling particularly charitable when we commented. I know Jill has mentioned having a bad cold and I’m similarly afflicted by horrendous allergies, and this whole topic is rather depressing I think to both of us. I also, as already acknowledged, mistook the point of her link and I apologize for responding in an overly harsh manner due to that mistake on my part.
Hopefully we can come back to the discussion at a later time.
thanks e/ellis and adeline’s dad. Have to work today and tonight but will look at what you offered there. In the meantime, to all, I hope if you havent recently here in the US, come down into the communities a ways from where you live that are way beneath 10k income per pretty large family per year and see what you see re choices. As you know for more than one child, child care/income axis is abysmal and makes ‘no choice’ often. But better to go see with your own eyes. Might need a translator if you dont speak other langauges than English. People who are poor are often very gracious about translating, and it might be good to go with people who are well trusted in the community, so as to avoid community people telling what they think you want to hear because they fear you and what you will do with the info. Just my .02
Word, dr e.
At my last city council meeting, our city engineer mentioned that we would be going after a CDBG funding opportunity and I said, you as kidding me, right? Because my city has like the ninth highest per capita income out of more than 1000 cities in the entire state. It is beyond affluent. The reason he said we qualify to apply for CDBG is because 1) we have small parcels of undeveloped/uninhabited property that falls into an included category and 2) we have more than 2x the number of people over 60 than the general region. But guess what – those folks over 60? We are talking already retired executives of BP, Eaton, Keybank – in other words some of the wealthiest folks that age you will ever find.
Sigh – so I was really struggling with whether to vote to support going after the grant. This is money intended for places that have 80% blight. And all but one or two of my colleagues were completely clueless as to why I was struggling with this and what, really, I was talking about. They didn’t get the translation – at all.
In the end, I voted to support the application – why? Because I represent the taxpayers of my city, the CDBG money all these years is derived from all of our taxes and if the program includes criteria that doesn’t screen out my city, is it really right of me to put my personal sense of how that money should be used ahead of what is in the best interests of my city (which is to get work done that otherwise would go undone and will go undone but is by no means of critical urgency)?
But again to your point about checking out how others live – the distance between constituencies within our country may be what finally undoes us.
Ok @CStanley & @SteveinCH – I hope this comment comes thru:
So – concern about partisan language in and around policy suggestions: don’t know about you but: given that we can all find more partisan rhetoric about what the topic of the week is in pretty much every source of news and info out there (to wit, the many ways even fact checking outfits are characterized), I believe we all must work to ignore the rhetoric on the surface or embedded and go to what we’re interested in – like policy suggestions or implications. If you have a chance to read today’s WSJ editorial, that would be another good example – I hate their partisan rhetoric but they also nod to policy implications – too vague a nod but a nod nonetheless, basically saying if Romney was smart, he’d figure that out and make it public.
I’ve been in the space so long, I hold myself responsible if I bite the partisan link air rhetoric.
NOW that doesn’t mean that what I believe won’t align with one identifiable political party – or even a different one (esp. If people only read what I wrote about casinos, for example – I’m notoriously against them and spent hundreds of blog posts fighting them in Ohio), but that alignment doesn’t make me a partisan hack and when a commenter automatically goes to that attempt at disparaging or knocking down an opinion, that’s the quickest way to see that someone hasn’t been reading or simply doesn’t care to engage in any meaningful way online, as if it just takes too much.
And when we’re talking about individual voices, that’s even more the case – it’s a different story if you are talking about someone with the daily caller or HuffPo or one of the Bigs etc or media matters.
But again it’s all media literacy.
As for this issue of debating policy implications that reflect the value everyone is claiming they place on moms who are at home and moms who have that work as well as non-child-centered work and earn a wage for that, debate away – point to what Romney is or isn’t doing, point to what Obama is or isn’t doing, point to what we wish would be done (which is what I’ve chosen to do).
But all the attacks on me? Personally? Meh. I’ve been blogging too long to engage on that level and that’s where I read a number of these latter comments going – in minutiae and ad nauseum.
IMHO
Thanks Dr E but to be honest that’s where I live now. I live in the Cloverleaf area on the edge of Houston. This is on the east side, the industrial area, of Houston and has a very high population of 1 gen immigrants and older retied whites. I live in the poor section with a pop of about 80% Hispanic. Believe me I’m not the rich conservative living on the hill making pronouncements on things I’ve never seen.
Dr E,
I spent six months in Nicaragua, a year in Las Vegas, and six months in a agricultural town in Nevada as a Spanish-speaking missionary. It was indeed an eye-opening experience. It caused me significant emotional trauma to see such extreme poverty in person, and I was shocked to realize that it exists just a short plane ride away from the US. I met and had close relationships with many hispanic families in Las Vegas who were also very well below the poverty line some of whom had quite recently crossed the border and recounted horrifying stories of being deceived by coyotes. I think learning Spanish was a very valuable experience. The most important thing I learned: People speaking Spanish talk about the same things people speaking English talk about. Their families, their jobs, their friends, their God, their worries and hopes. It’s obvious, in retrospect, but to actually experience it goes a long way to bridging the cultural divide. I found Hispanic people were generally extremely hospitable, even to us “gringos” who dressed funny, very generous despite very limited resources, hard working, and very family-oriented and spiritual.
I don’t take offense, but I do wonder why it is that you would assume that I might have been sheltered from this aspect of human experience. Because I’m defending a conservative point of view here? Again, no offense taken.
But that’s tangential to my point. No one disputes that poor people have a more difficult road to walk than rich people. The question here is whether being a stay at home mom is something that is associated with privilege. It most certainly is not. It is something that many women from various socioeconomic backgrounds do, for various reasons. To say that stay at home moms are fortunate to have that option is offensive to the many stay at home moms who are middle class or below who sacrifice a lot to do what they do because they believe it is the most important thing for them to be doing.
adeline’s dad….I think you may have missed my segue which was not to anyone specific
this is what I said…” in the meantime, to all, I hope if you havent recently here in the US…”
on another note, I care that you care, and thank you. Also, just a tiny aside. We US Latinos dont care to be called Hispanics because of this reason: That is the government name for us made up for taking census. It has never been our name, and most of us have no relationship to Hispanola or any other Hispan-anything. If on US census we mark the only choice for us as Hispanic, we are then counted as ‘white.’ Most of us are not ‘white.’ We are mestizo, native American and Spanish …or some part Greek or Italian or any of the other euro bloodlines of the mercenary sailors /conquistadores sailing for Ferd/Isa long, long ago. Some US Latinos prefer to be called by their national heritage: Santo Domingan, Mexican, El Salvadorian, but then that leaves out the US American part, of which many of us are proud. Some dont like to be called Latinos either, some prefer Chicano, which is an ideological appelation. Some prefer to be called Aztlans. It varies, but usually we dont call ourselves Hispanics. Like my father used to say, call me what you want, just call me for dinner. lol. That’s probably the ticket right there.
THanks.
Dr. E,
Thanks. Maybe it has been too long, after all.
I’m interested to know if my links persuade you at all, or if you are able to reconcile them with your view.
One of my best friends is an American born from cuban-born parents. He and his family does not like to be called hispanic…they prefer Latino.
I call him “Mexican”, because that is what friends do. (no offense to Mexicans)
jill, i think the reason i pointed it out was directly related to the topic or at least my perspective on it…which is that women of different demographics and ideologies are being played off each other. And i think we unwittingly often play along because the underlying issurpes really do matter to us and we’re unwilling to call people out for the way they say something when we agree with the underlying message.
AD, i looked at two of your links.Im at work and dont have a lot of time, but one was an app that downloaded to my desktop and it unopenable and screwed up my computer, so I had to run disk warrior, it’s ok now. The other link was to a site calling itself US Census, but there was something odd about the data there, referencing really trivial matters the US census doesnt cover, and referencing 2009 and 2007 supposed numbers of this and that. Except census’ are only done every ten years, so I dont know where they were drawing their references from. Then as I went to the ‘about’ of that website/link I realized, it is NOT the official US Census site, but a private site that uses that name. That’s as far as I got, and thanks for trying. I gots to get back to work. And just speaking for myself, I’m going to be wary of links that do not go directly to a page, but rather try to open an app on people’s personal desktops. [sorry it didnt work out, I tried-]
Dr. E,
Both links are to census.gov, which I’m as sure as I can be is the official website of the US census (it says it in multiple places, and searching for the US Census Bureau brings it up). I don’t see the “about” you are referring to that claims otherwise. There is an “about us” link that talks about the Bureau in the first person (We, our, etc.). The first link is to an xls file (Microsoft Excel). If you don’t have Windows or Microsoft Excel, I’m not sure how your computer would handle that. It is not a malicious link, but I’d guess your computer was trying to interpret a file it didn’t understand and apparently didn’t handle it well. Sorry about that, but I guess that’s the format the US Census Bureau uses for it tables.
Well, I guess if you don’t trust the links/data I’m giving you, there’s not much else I can say other than that it looks as legit as it can be to me.
Oh, and regarding the numbers being from 2007, my understanding is that although censuses are taken every 10 years, the Census Bureau does other reporting on a constant basis. I didn’t look into it though. I assumed the Census Bureau would not be a controversial source.