I’m not paying attention to the Mommy Wars
I have to admit, I haven’t really been following the new Mommy Wars all that much. Franky, it just seems like a way to get women mad at each other and shift their focus off of more important issues like, say, policies and laws politicians are trying to pass to take away our rights.
Like this one, for example. New Fed restrictions say that people now need to use their individual income, rather than their household income, to apply for a credit card. Which means stay-at-home parents who are not bringing in an income cannot get a credit card. Like the article says, this has far greater-reaching repercussions than just not allowing people with no income to get credit:
“A homemaker may make most of the household’s financial decisions, from paying the bills to buying groceries. But she — and by a 30 to 1 margin, it’s a she — is barred from taking out a line of credit based on income that, it cannot be doubted, she had a hand in earning,” Sekar said.
Approximately 98 percent of abusive relationships involve financial abuse, or withholding money or keeping a partner from earning it, Sekar said. The Fed’s rules on credit cards could magnify that problem.
This plays into the Mommy Wars directly, I should think. Now, not only do stay-at-home moms not make an income (which they should), but they cannot apply for lines of credit (which they should be able to).
Doesn’t this say something about how we, as an entire society – not as a few politicians or politicians’ wives or political commentators – view motherhood, caregiving, and homemaking? It’s no secret that the typically female-dominated “caregiving” jobs (think teacher, nurse, daycare worker, etc.) are already some of the lowest paid professions because they are seen as second income jobs. Even with one of those jobs, though, I can get a line of credit. Being a stay-at-home mom, though, is the lowest paying (monetarily so – this is not to say anything about being paid in the reward of raising a child) job in the world. And now, they can’t even get credit cards. Seems ridiculously unfair to me, and something we should definitely be focusing on.
But, what do I know? I’m not a mom.
Great point, Ashley. The new restriction harkens back to the not so distant past (less than a decade before I was born) when women needed a male co-signer to open a credit card. I’m guessing that it is assumed that couples will open a household account, but having access to individual finances is necessary.
As for the mommy wars? There a lot of things I might not agree with or choose to do when it comes to parenting and pregnancy, but I’m not going to publicly lambast people for doing them if they are not detrimental to their or their children’s health. Especially since half the things I swore I would never do I have totally done and the kid isn’t even a year old.