Opting Out Moms in the News

Abstract

Abstract Since October 2003, US news media have circulated a story about professional and executive women leaving their well-paying, high-status occupations to raise their children at home. This essay argues that these print and television narratives about the “opt out revolution” both re-invoke and perpetuate pre-feminist notions about mothering and family care. The stories mask a dangerous and socially conservative bent using the language of postfeminism and neoliberalism to encourage capitulation to neoliberal postfeminism—a fusion of ideologies that, in these cases, functions to quell a brewing national crisis around family care. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Steve Jahn, Matt McAllister, Fran Vavrus, and the journal's anonymous reviewers for their comments on various iterations of this article. Notes 1. According to the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of mothers with children under the age of 18 in the wage labor force increased from 47 to 73 percent between 1975 and 2000. However, a decrease of two percentage points occurred between 2000 and 2004, from 73 to 71 percent of the wage labor force (Bureau Of Labor Statistics Citation2005, p. 1), the figure that inspired the trope of opting out. For interpretations of these statistics that differ from the “opting out” frame, see Coontz (Citation2006), Merrill-Sands, Kickul, and Ingols (Citation2005), and Pollitt (Citation2003). 2. This piece reported that about 60 percent of female students surveyed about their predictions for life post-graduation expected to either leave the wage labor force altogether or to work part-time once they had children. See Pollitt (Citation2005) for a refutation of this story. 3. All but one of the sixteen stories appeared in the mainstream press between October 2003 and October 2004; a related story appeared in September 2005. 4. Some of the costs that Crittenden enumerates include the “mommy tax” and the costs associated with divorce that women suffer much more than men. The mommy tax is the amount of money a stay-at-home mother would earn if she were earning a wage. Women who make high salaries, such as opting out mothers do before leaving the workforce, pay a much higher mommy tax than women who are less well paid. The costs of divorce to mothers are also high, particularly because mothers' salaries are seldom as high as fathers'; due to this and other factors, their household incomes drop much more than fathers' do after a divorce (see also Hochschild Citation1989, for a discussion of divorce's differentially negative effects on mothers). 5. Two recent high-profile cases at Wal-Mart and American Express Financial Services prove that sexism is alive and well in corporations, from the boardroom to the custodian's closet. See also Burk (Citation2005) for an extensive discussion of numerous other corporations plagued by sex discrimination lawsuits. 6. An expectation of such voluntary compliance is the centerpiece of President George W. Bush's approach to environmental law, for example. To justify eradicating many of the provisions of the Clean Air and Water Act, the Bush administration urges corporations to voluntarily comply with clean air and water standards near their sites (e.g. Stoner Citation2002). 7. These stories also do not question assumptions underpinning opting out or try to interpret these mothers' actions in a different fashion, despite the presence of alternatives to draw from, such as those in family research literature, alternative press journalism, and organizational behavior literature. For example, one study that refutes Belkin's concludes that: The issue of mothers “opting out” of the workplace has been over played in the media. Women responding to our surveys indicate clearly that they are committed to workplace leadership and to exercising power constructively. In contrast to the assertions of the “Opt Out Revolution” that women with children are turning away from leadership and power to become full-time parents, we found no significant differences between women with children and those without in terms of their attitudes toward leadership and power. Indeed, our data tell a contrasting story. A significantly smaller percentage of women with children (24%) compared to women with no children (31%) reported that they “often think about quitting their job.” Moreover, women with children reported higher levels of satisfaction with their opportunities to advance in their organizations. (Deborah Merrill-Sands, Jill Kickul & Cynthia Ingols Citation2005, p. 3; emphasis in original) 8. As Douglas and Michaels (Citation2004) demonstrate in their analysis of coverage of non-elite mothers, mothers of color are treated the worst. Because they do not fit the media's ideal of a stay-at-home mother, poor women and women of color are represented as lazy, free riders if they wish to stay home with their children.