Mommy Wars = Halachic Feminism?

The industrial and post-industrial division of labor goes like this: Heterosexual marriage, husband is breadwinner, wife is mother and housekeeper. Men earn money to take care of women- the more money they earn, the closer they get to the ideal of masculinity. The more time and energy a woman spends on her kids and her house, the closer they get to the ideal of femininity.

As I started pondering more closely the psychology behind the phenomenon of highly-educated women choosing to opt out of the workforce, I realized that so much of the presumed hostility on both sides comes from the fact that women perceive other women as being “allowed” to forgo breadwinning responsibilities.

Disclaimer: This is not true in all cases by any means. The vast majority of women work precisely because a second income is necessary to sustain their families. Whether these women feel like they shouldn’t have to work or would rather not work is a totally moot point.

Nevertheless, the gendered public-private schema has a powerful hold on us to this day. The level of frustration and resentment that I read on both sides of the “mommy wars” regarding whether women should work, under what circumstances, etc, sounded somewhat reminiscent of the conflicts in Conservative Jewish communities about women adopting halachic practices (traditions define by Jewish law, which are binding on Jewish men).

“If a woman wants to read from the Torah, she has to cover her head.” “If a woman wants to put on tefillin (ritual leather straps worn during prayer) she has to do it every day.” “If a woman wants to become a rabbi, she has to undertake all of the mitzvot (commandments) that men are obligated to follow.”

The intent of this philosophy is not punitive, but it is one that demonstrates an underlying fear that women always have the option of not doing what is required of men, and could thus destabilize the standard divisions and classifications of what makes a Jew/rabbi/citizen. I think the anxieties are different for women speaking to other women about family/work choices. The concern is that women who opt out of work -- whether because they have kids already or anticipate having kids or simply are content to live on their husbands’ earning power -- maintain the normative assumption that working is not for women, that our jobs won’t necessarily make or break family finances and are somehow waivable, and therefore make it that much easier for sexist assumptions about women’s commitment to work when, say, it comes time for deciding promotions, to fester. Consequently, it becomes that much more typical for women to lower their professional ambitions or not take their future careers seriously.

On the other hand, maybe in the pro-career (NOT anti-family) feminists there’s a whiff of a more visceral jealousy: “I had to play by the rules, which favor men who don’t have household responsibilities – so why do you get to live as though the rules of hard work can be so easily discarded?”