I thought this point was crystal clear in your piece, LLB, and that you gave very lucid examples to illustrate the difference between “active” and “passive” actions on the part of heroines. There was nothing in your piece, IMO, that spoke poorly of either SAHMs or WOHMs or working women without children or stay at home wives without children. In fact, I think you went out of your way to explain that the source of your “ire” was most definitely the “passivity” of the heroine, NOT the choice she ultimately made. And really, since so many women do work out of the home, and many of us have careers we love, with or without children (me included), if we’re reading Romance, we’re reading about a lot of heroines who don’t have high powered careers or live in the big city or even want to work or whatever. Many of us are even reading about those heroines and respecting their choices even though they’re not the choices we might make in our own lives. At some level, what you’re responding angrily to, IMO, is a matter of craftmanship, of shallow character development rather than the thoughtful development of the heroine’s feelings and thoughts and choices. At another level, you’re talking about ideology, and about feminism as the ability of women to make active choices regardless of the choice made. I’m assuming from your argument that if you reversed this heroine’s circumstances, and she blindly immersed herself in a professional career because her man told her to, you’d be looking for an equally hard wall against which to throw the book.

To Jennifer L. — I admire your restraint and did not find anything offensive to SAHMs in your posts or anyone else’s.

As for the stay-at-home versus work, I think everyone has to make the decision that works for them and their families. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and I mistrust people who say there is. If I look at my own kids, for example, the middle one would have happily stayed home till pushed out the door to attend college, while the youngest is extremely social. Being home with us or with his beloved nanny worked for the middle one, but the youngest wasn’t happy until he went to nursery school. Having seen such variety within my own family, I certainly can’t tell anyone else that they must do things a specific way because I know that what works for one family and one child doesn’t necessarily work for anyone else. All I can say is I’ve been happy, frustrated, exhausted, challenged, and fulfilled playing numerous roles in my life, but it’s my life and mileage may certainly vary for others.

In my neighborhood, there are a dozen women with similar educational and career backgrounds who gave up their careers to stay at home or work part-time. And all of us are headed toward our 5 and 10 year anniversaries without a single divorce in the group. Four of my career friends are already divorced and more are headed that way. Just like our mothers.

We thank the feminists of our mother’s generation for giving us that choice, but they need to remember that career freedom is a choice we can choose not to exercise.

(And my cousin just lost her husband and is now massively financially screwed because he wanted to take care of her, so this is kind of a sensitive topic right now for me.)

If you have a job where you can get paid and still stay at home, that’s great. That doesn’t worry me. But I just do not have that level of trust in anyone or fate to be all warm and comfy at the idea of someone staying home with the kids for years without having anything other than “domestic engineer” to claim for that time. It just makes me nervous.

I read that as well. IMHO it fits in w/the Chick Lit lifestyles of a segment of young women these days. When I read the piece all I could think of was The Devil Wears Prada.

TTFN, LLB