Julia Roberts, former actress
| By Jenny Odegard - Nov 5th, 2007 at 3:49 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Julia Roberts, composting mother. CNN review’s Roberts’ decision to stop acting and start cooking:
"My dream is to be a highly fulfilled and productive stay-at-home mom and wife," the Oscar-winning actress tells Vanity Fair magazine. "The highest high would be growing our food that I then make, and then composting and growing more -- that kind of circle."
Roberts, 40, says that life would involve having "my own creative outlet, even if it's silly needlework and stuff like that."
I love stay-at-home moms, they’re amazing and I think that they’re a crucial and often marginalized group in this career-focused landscape. However, Roberts’ presents her decision like she’s ready to jump in to her buggy and take her family to a more simple time, when women could serve their natural duty and provide nurturing care to the family. What happened to sharing the work and allowing both partners to raise their children while still spending some time outside of the home? Oh wait, we haven’t gotten there yet. But paternity leave could catch on any minute.
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Paternity leave (if the suggestion was serious) is nowhere NEAR catching on in the United States. Such policies exist in countries like France, Sweden, and the Netherlands -- social democracies to boot. So if we want to advocate for paternity leave, we should also hold men accountable for their portion of the childcare. That's the really difficult portion of personal politics. It's easy to say that men should do more, but when it takes sacrifice for them to do it, the tune changes.
What's more, although I hate it, movie stars are big role models for our preteen and teenaged peers. When Julia Roberts says she wants to stay at home, it's too bad that these young women will think that staying at home is something to work toward. As anyone who's read (and agrees with) Betty Friedan or Linda Hirshman knows, quite the opposite is the case.
As far as I'm concerned, Roberts and her husband can divide labor however they want. Yes, it's political, and yes, she's a role model--but how is asking Roberts to keep working any less restrictive than traditionally encouraging women to stay home?
It's her life--celeb or otherwise.
I'm not advocating for women's natural roles as mothers, I'm just leaving room for anyone who feels thats what they want. I have male friends who feel their place in the world is as a homemaker.
And of course its a luxury and I wish that Julia Roberts could acknowledge in any way that the only reason she will have the time to grow her own food is because she's one of the highest paid actresses in history. To those who look up to her, it may be a disappointing realization that in their lives joblessness is a bad thing, not a reward.
It's an investment in the kid's future.
People who don't have the economic ability to significantly invest in their kid's future...
...probably shouldn't have kids, at least not at this point in their lives?
Both my parents have worked my whole life--out of economic necessity--and as a result I was able to come out of college without student loans AND I had the benefit of seeing a strong, working partnership in my home.
Investing in your child's future isn't just about the number of hours you spend with them--it's about how you spend the hours you have.
Both my parents have worked my whole life--out of economic necessity--and as a result I was able to come out of college without student loans AND I had the benefit of seeing a strong, working partnership in my home.""
Glad to hear it worked out well for you.
You're misunderstanding the basic nature of odds.
Think of a game of poker -- if you're holding four cards of a flush, sometimes you'll hit it on the river, and sometimes you won't.
But the fact that you happened to hit the proverbial runner-runner-flush doesn't mean that anyone else should take the same bet.
Not all kids raised by single teenage mothers end up with awful lives, too! But if you're a single teenager, it's probably a great idea to NOT HAVE KIDS.
Ironically, you're adopting an argument from the pro-lifers. Surely you've heard the shtick about how, since Hitler was born to an ideal family life, and Beethoven's sucked, today we'd abort Beethoven but not Hitler, and therefore boo abortion?
The core flaw in their argument is the same as the flaw in yours -- the idea that statistical distributions don't matter.
""Investing in your child's future isn't just about the number of hours you spend with them--it's about how you spend the hours you have.""
True, but ceteris paribus, having more hours to spend with them still helps.
Regardless, the point is that there is more than one privileged way to raise kids--yeah, you can stay home with them, but that's NOT the only way to raise children well.
And "crowing"? Really?
Criticizing the movie star for being a bad role model is just going after the symptom, rather than the disease.
If it makes Julia Roberts happy to stay at home, newsflash - she doesn't owe you shit. Her life does not exist to serve our politics.
Staying home can be *really, really rewarding*. My father retired when I was born to raise me while my mother worked. One day I'd like to do the same (assuming my future spouse has the income to allow us to handle it).
And if I couldn't afford to stay home and raise a kid, for economic reasons?
I WOULDN'T HAVE THE DAMN KID.
It's the height of deluded selfishness to assume that you can raise a kid as well with both parents working as you can with one parent at home full-time.
If you're that attached to your career and want a kid, do yourself a favor -- *ask your husband to be the one to retire*, but for god's sake don't bring one more latchkey kid into the world. Any given one might turn out alright, just as a kid from a poor family can turn out alright, but you're putting the odds against them from the start.
Also, don't give me pre-prepared bullshit about how retrograde men all "want to be the provider" and are thus unwilling to be stay-at-home dads. Men, in general, are incredibly comfortable with the idea of being house-husbands if it's financially sound. The key is to marry a guy who's making *less money than you*. Statistically speaking, however, few women are willing to do that. Studies have shown that no matter how much a woman is making, even in the far upper percentiles, women are generally unwilling to date a man making less than they are. But since the relative incomes of men and women are the primary factor determining who stays home when a kid comes along, that skews the numbers re: housewives vs househusbands.
Either way, after reading these posts, I have a really hard time accepting either you or Kay as a feminist -- look at the condescending hyper-scrutiny of a woman's life choices. Neither of you would give a man nearly this much crap for retiring to raise his kids.
Latchkey kids might turn out alright, but you're putting them at a disadvantage from the start. You wouldn't plan to smoke or drink during pregnancy, so why plan to put them at a disadvantage this way?
For example: Kindergarten. You go to kindergarten, you learn some simple math and some finger-painting, blah blah blah. Afterwards, you go to some mindless daycare if you're a latchkey kid, or you go home if one of your parents retired to raise you.
Daycare: You play with some blocks, there's some Oregon Trail maybe, a couple of attendants shepherding a dozen kids? They get paid no matter how much you learn.
Home: You have a parent who can teach you as much as they want to. In Kindergarten, I was learning about photosynthesis and two variables, two-unknowns Algebra. My father spent hours with me, every day afterschool, reading anything under the sun with me - engineering, geography, science, math, etc. End result? By the end of first grade, I tested at the reading level of a high school senior.
And that's not starting from scratch; that's building from years of being in my father's tow, constantly asking questions, constantly learning.
You simply CANNOT reach the same potential with a disinterested stranger shepherding your kid after-school as you can with a parent who cares.
Almost every day, I remember running home from school and sitting on the couch with my dad for at least a couple of hours, asking question after question - "Why this?", "Why that?", ad infinitum. You think a perfect stranger is going to put up with that, even if they're paid to watch you in day-care? You think the kind of people who are spending their life working in a day-care center are going to have the kind of background knowledge to explain why the grass is green or why the sky changes color?
Phyllis Schafly believes it should be a woman staying home. That's utter bullshit. It can be the father or the mother, and two daddies or two mommies works just as well.
But pretending it doesn't work better, on average, than entrusting your kids to total strangers for a big chunk of the day is deluded selfishness.
Oh come on! I can't believe you people fell for this. This is the most typical sort of Hollywood PR fluff-- the kind of stuff studio publicity writers have been handing their stars to feed to media outlets since at least the 1920's. Anyone who thinks Julia Roberts is on the verge of heading for the compost pile anytime soon is incredibly naive.
Such thinking is not amenable to a society based on cooperation and interdependence among its people.