Okay, I wasn’t that into Scrubs in the first place, and I stopped watching it at all once it switched networks. But, as Josh watches the show, in the interest of spending time together I sat through the episode called “My Full Moon”. I was mildly amused, and somewhat entertained, but then in the final moments I went to full on pissed off. The show ends with Elliot, a female doctor, saying that someday when she’s married, has children, and is financially independent, she will quit being a doctor. Call me crazy, but that bit about being “financially independent” seemed an afterthought by the lone woman in the writer’s room. The real idea was that this educated, experienced doctor, who in the course of the show demonstrates her strength as a good mentor and diagnostician, will give up her career once she’s married and has children.
The sentiment expressed in this show is exactly the opposite of what I want my daughter to see on television. It reinforces my idea that marriage and children have historically weakened the role of women in society. Someone tried to sell us the idea, several hundred or more years ago, that it was a good thing to stay home and raise kids while the men go out and work.
Update for those who like to live in reality. The men made this up. No, really. If you go back a thousand or more years, you’ll find that children were raised by the community, usually by the elderly or a few nurturing sorts, while both men and women went out to do work. The men usually did the hunting, because as much as I hate to admit it they usually can throw spears further than we can. The women did the gathering, because we have more patience, and being closer in to the children is a good idea when you ARE the food supply. Not to mention that whole thing about not being able to run very far, or very fast, when you’re enduring the inevitable and endless number of pregnancies that occurred in the absence of modern birth control. Anyway, this was fairly functional because there was a lot of work to be done, and everyone had to do what they could. The adults worked, and the children thrived because they were socialized into the community early on and learned the necessary social skills while being taught history and some basics of life by the elders. I like to think of this as the very first daycare system.
Somewhere around the industrial era it became apparent that machines were going to perform some of the jobs that used to require the brute force that men are able to supply. John Henry aside, the men were rendered useless and they went into a tizzy. Then it occurred to one of them that office work was actually a really good alternative to manual labor, but that women, being the less able to lift big stuff of the two sexes, had taken many of those jobs. That’s when the whole “angel in the house” thing got into full swing. A PR campaign got underway saying that the perfect woman was one who stayed home and suffered. Fabulous! Bring on some of that womanhood for me. There was an immediate backlash, thanks to Ibsen, but the majority of people kept on with that angel idea.
As to why woman would buy into such a ridiculous concept, my best guess is because it’s easier. Not the actual staying home. The staying home is hard. Those kids demand your every second, you don’t get time to yourself, and you’re left with the feeling that nothing you do is important or good enough, because you don’t earn money and there’s always more to do that you just can’t get done. So, the actual staying home is way hard. When I say that it’s easy, what I mean is that it’s devoid of risk. It’s akin to hiding. You can’t get reprimanded, fired or judged. There’s no evaluation. There’s no chance that someone will tear you down just because they can. When you have a bad day, if you cry, no one takes you out of the running for the promotion. There ARE no promotions, so you can’t get passed up for one.
There is one risk though, and most people never consider it. That’s the risk that suddenly, after taking no risks in life, the social structure you’ve bought into will get yanked out from underneath your slippered feet. One day you can come home and find that the husband is gone, but the kids and the mortgage are not. Then what? What resources do you have? What skills? What sense of self? What balls?
The way I’m raising my daughter is back to the REAL good old days. The ones when women and men alike contributed to society, while the young were raised with other children and cared for by those with the most nurturing personalities. My daughter is going to be brought up knowing that her mother took risks, tripped up sometimes, and foraged onward, and that is the role model I want her to have. If I ever have a son, I want him to see the same. I want children of mine, regardless of sex, to know that a real woman is one who can take care of herself. That their mother is the sort of person who doesn’t need anyone else to survive, and stays married by choice. That no matter how much money there is, the work isn’t about making money. It’s about being a woman.