The Lost Feminine Sphere

What would a female-friendly work culture look like? And is work-home balance even real?

Last week,

Amelia Buzzard

published a very smart, very thoughtful piece on how women work, how society works, how men work, and how these things don’t all work well together¹. My favorite line was “In other words, feminists haven’t demanded a woman-centric career path because they loathe their woman-ness and decide to try becoming pseudo-men. If you don’t respect your own femininity, you’ll never demand that respect from others.” I appreciated her stance that women shouldn’t have to ignore or manipulate their biology in order to fit into industry and rather that industry, if employing women of childbearing capacity, needs to manipulate itself in order to better fit the shape of female biology. At the end of the piece she asked the following questions (in bold), and they set my mind ablaze, so here my responses sit, smoldering:

“Is there a way to optimize our professional careers, our sexuality, and our families much like the current model optimizes those things for men?”

My personal answer is no. I almost said “unfortunately no”, but I am questioning if it is indeed unfortunate or merely inconvenient. I just truly think that optimization-aka best case scenario-for all of these realms simultaneously for the the woman is a catch-22. In order to optimize family and sexual life, we must be home most of the time, in order to optimize work we must be out of the home (whether physically or mentally) most of the time. Yes, there are careers that lend themselves better to this than others—but what about the others? That said, I do think a fraction of ourselves can be lent to work outside the home while still raising children and maintaining a marriage-it’s just that when children are small and/or gestating—they absolutely must be the priority and thus, should get the lion’s share of the time. My answer of “no” is a result of the fact that this optimization premise requires balance, and is balance in matters of heart and womb versus ambition and career even real?

Can we even dilute life’s worth into weighable mass? Can we put the value of a child’s childhood up against our own worldly creative and academic and professional potential? These are all so of us, I feel if I could put the accumulated weight of my respective children’s lives up on a scale against my own personal yearnings for knowledge, truth, creation, joy and the dedicated toiling that must accompany those things, an unsatisfying but appropriate “ERROR” code would appear.

A Mother with a Child at the Night Market by Petrus van Shendel

This, because we cannot weigh life against another. My life directly impacts each one of theirs so intimately—and vice versa. In not being able to make this measurement, I do feel we then cannot optimize anything. Men’s work lives and family lives can be optimized by the current set up because their physiology doesn’t require what ours does in the realm of procreation (and the years following it). I also do think some could argue that the current set up is actually not optimized to many male lives (it still is by and large compared to those of women’s-to give credit to Amelia—her point is absolutely valid).

So I suppose my answer is that optimization for all aspects of life in the childbearing years shouldn’t be the goal post. I think we have to come to terms with the fact that should we become mothers, much is asked of us. We have to understand that many of the requests of motherhood aren’t actually optional. When we make them optional, there are consequences, and no amount validation from those who also make requisite parts of motherhood optional can actually change those consequences.

I think optimization is really quite a masculine endeavor. Rather than seeking total efficiency and high performance and optimal outcomes with ultimate consistency (how I conceive of “optimization”), we could instead turn ourselves in the more feminine orientation of cultivation.

When we are cultivating, we are refining, we are learning, we are developing. The fertile female spirit can cultivate a home, a family and also skills that will lend themselves to a future or even current part time career (with potential to be more full time in the future). To cultivate requires a sense of contentment and competency in the home alongside the passion and endurance need to grow towards some future career if desired. In this time of raising up our children, we can simultaneously be gaining experiences and skills needed for our future iterations of self.

As for female sexuality, in my opinion, can and should flourish in the setting of mothering. After all, sexuality is an expression of life, and motherhood is a state of vitality. Quality nourishment and rest and time in nature will bolster this experience, and if anything, these are the things we as women should really be seeking to optimize. All else, including sexual pleasure and interest, shall follow. There too has to be a sense of acceptance here, because there will always be waxing and waning. Again, we can cultivate an inner environment that allows for more “waxing”.

Women waulking wool, from here

“How do you think a female-friendly work culture would operate?”

I will be radically honest with my answers here and I know that some of them will not please many people but ultimately I think that we (women) have gotten to the unfortunate place we are at in terms of our work culture by trying much too hard to contort ourselves, so there will be no contortion in my conceptualization of an idea that I think could make us much more happy.

A female-friendly work culture would include the following:

• I think most women should mainly work alongside other women (yes, of course there are exceptions here, this goes without saying). I think the sexual tension (this goes both ways) and strange male-female competition that comes with women working alongside men is distracting and often distressing. Even more importantly, I hold this image of women working together as a really beautiful example of this idea of “the feminine sphere”. Places and professions where women flourish and their brilliance is most able to shine through are what makes up this sphere, which in a way is often a more public extension of the home. Care work, creative work, some agricultural work, some culinary work….these careers all require the sorts of talents and experiences and skills women can cultivate in the home while raising small children or while they are young women. Thus, the places where this work exists are a sort of sisterhood, the public extension of the private feminine sphere. I also think women really yearn for the company of other women and this is a way to find that companionship. I think about women waulking wool and singing songs to keep the tempo of the activity, as shown above.

• I think women should strive to work part time while their children live at home with them if they must work or simply desire to (yes, even teens, they also need us in a very visceral way even if it may be different than the very visceral way babies and toddlers need us). This gives her an insurance policy of sorts (I know this is a big feminist talking point and I don’t disagree, it can be prudent to have our own money as wives and mothers but I also think that this is so very individual and that there are many good marriages that have a foundation of faith and trust that do not need “insurance policies” and we should trust women to know the difference) but also allows for the majority of her time to be at home.

• Flexible hours and space to work at home if at all possible would be ideal. Companies that trust women and their ability to multitask rather than being punitive about children being present during home work hours. Companies that allow for making up of hours when women have to miss work to care for sick children rather than strict limits on sick days.

• A female friendly work culture is a child friendly work culture. Childcare on site needs to be more of a reality in professions where women are the main workers (healthcare, education etc.). The presence of children in the workplace (if it poses no danger to the child or others) should be considered normal. This would require a sense of humor, a lessened emphasis on efficiency, and some patience. This also requires mothers to be creative and mindful of the needs of both child and company. I’m not saying nurses should bring their toddlers into a patient’s room, but I am saying why can’t they wear a sleeping baby on their back? I’m not saying an 8 year old should be present while her mother consults her clients as an attorney, but why can’t she be in the next room working on her homework or reading a book after school rather than be at after-care in a school cafeteria?

• A female friendly work culture emphasizes the need for community child care! Child care co-ops consisting of women who are friends and trusted acquaintances who all work part time and take a shift or two a week caring for the others’ children in their homes could work so beautifully if only we got out and spoke to one another and worked through the messy logistics of making this happen. This model would work even better if women without children and elder women with grown children were utilized as care workers as well so as to give the mothers some time for themselves. I think this means too that a female friendly work culture is a culture where families of origin live closer together, because this facilitates this sort of community childcare in a more enthusiastic and affordable way. It also means this female friendly work culture may be a culture that requires a renewed sense of faith and commitment to religion as the church can be an optimal source for this more affordable model of childcare. If childcare was provided by family, friends and trusted church and community members and on a more flexible schedule rather than by strangers on a more stringent schedule (having to sign up for a minimum amount of days or hours), I think more women would use this sort of childcare not just for work but for breaks and dates and time to get work at home done. If more women used it in this way, it could help to drive costs down in general. Flexibility and reciprocity are key here.

• A female friendly work culture is less utilitarian. Women would enjoy work more if we were allowed some beauty and the opportunity to express our excellence. As a nurse, I think about a workplace that was less concerned with getting patients out the door and filling beds and moving meds and more concerned with true measures of health and well-being and human connection as a good example.

Would women just start their professional life later, after their kids are grown?

Oftentimes, yes. This goes back to my concept of cultivation versus optimization I discussed above. I do think there is always space for some amount of professional endeavors, but we have to be tempered with our expectations while raising little children. We should not be neglecting them to focus on career if we don’t absolutely have to. Their needs, as the lives we chose to create and bring forth, do matter more than our wants. Therefore, if career is simply a want and not a need, a mother should only be engaging in it in her free time (and yes, there is almost always free time, it is a matter of utilizing it intelligently and with self-discipline—something I will admit I can struggle with at times!)

I have heard often the idea that a woman’s life has seasons, and I think this is true. While I don’t think it has to be a stark “child rearing season” contrasted with a later “career season”, I do think the season of child rearing must always have the children at the forefront of priorities. Also, since we all can agree that staying home and raising children is work—we should also agree that the resume the mother builds in those years has value. A woman who runs a functional household and raises functional children has a lot to bring to the workplace.

Or can women find professional fulfillment in other ways concurrent with child-rearing, like the many small business entrepreneurs on Etsy?

And this is where I get to scream into the ether yet again “BRING BACK THE COTTAGE ECONOMY”!!!!! (This is also very feminine-sphere coded). This would be good for men and women alike. I also think some amount of goods produced in the home setting should be considered for sale in the local economy versus online. The internet provides immense opportunity for mothers and it should absolutely be considered a tool for our success. In selling or consulting or producing or creating (or whatever-ing) locally though, we are contributing to local economy and setting an example for other women and our children. Working out of the home with children underfoot and then offering the results of that work the people we live alongside facilitates a stronger sense of community by way of the private feminine sphere reaching out into the public in a productive and meaningful way.

What of the (in)famous Ballerina Farm? Is it ever healthy to blend your private life and public work like that?

My thoughts on Hannah Neeleman and Co. and trad-wives can be found here:

In that piece, I didn’t really address the public versus private life element, more just the lore around her family and the concept of tradition.

I do not think putting the lives of our children on the internet is particularly wise. I also think pretending they don’t exist is weird. I think children in the background of a video is not the end of the world. Alternatively children at the forefront, as the total focus of content, is reprehensible and unethical. That said—I think saying women who are trying to make money from home have to do so in a kid-free zone, in the quiet, in the time they are sleeping, in a sterilized version of their own lives, is overly picky and not to the benefit of women or children. If your means of contributing to the family financially requires some filming in the home and you have multiple children, it will be nearly impossible to never have them in the background. Lisa of Farmhouse on Boone comes to mind here. I have watched her content for years, her children are often running around in the kitchen behind her, and I have never had one thought about it. Nothing feels exploitative about what she is doing, and she is able to work from home, was able to bring her husband home as well, and they are raising their 8 children together., at home! This to me feels very different than the parents who do “family vlogging” or film their little girls doing gymnastics or whatever. That sort of thing is the opposite of healthy.

Ultimately, children are the natural extension of the mother, and I think it is unfair to expect her to fully separate from them in her work, whether it be at home or outside of the home as described above.

How do you personally balance childbirth and rearing with your other ambitions?And, especially if you are an older woman, what has the shape of your career and/or life path looked like?

Going back to my previous answers, I don’t think I believe in balance. Maybe in a similar way that

Mary Harrington

famously “doesn’t believe in progress”. Theoretically, does it exist, at some points in time, for some mothers? Sure. But overall does it really exist in a palpable and meaningful and consistent way? I don’t think so, and I think that’s actually fine.

That said, I suppose I manage childbirth and rearing with my other ambitions much like women always have-they have to exist in tandem. As much as I would love to go hide away in a little cozy writing hut in the woods and spend the whole day reading and writing and crafting uninterrupted, the demands of motherhood cannot entertain such indulgence. And as much as I want to throw my phone off a bridge and never drive the hour into the city to work again so I can be at home baking cookies and reading stories to my kids, marveling at their shiny eyelashes and laughing at the weird things they say, the demands of economic need and the bills cannot allow for this 100% of the time. And as much as I enjoy my coworkers and the mothers and babies I work with, I enjoy my own family and my hobbies more.

Some days are work days. Most days are home days speckled with various pick ups and drop offs and errands and park time and library story time and grocery shopping. Some days are truly at home, those are my favorite. The days I make the really good meals, where I actually get down in the floor and play dinosaurs with my four year old, where I might even get a little knitting done. Some days I’m pulled in every direction all at once and want to tear my hair out. Very occasionally I take a day to be alone and do as I please. This is why there is no balance-the sum of all of these sorts of days does not equal a nice, tidy number that can be divided equally.

My highest honor and ultimate ambition is to raise my children myself and to do it well. The roles of child-bearer and mother are the ones I align with the most. Childbirth has been a fire that has forged me into not only the mother I am today, but also the nurse and writer I am today as well. Every role I embody is touched by what I am, and what I really am is not a funds-earner, a member of the working class, or a professional. What I really am is a female animal ensouled with a human feminine spirit, created by creation in order to create. By very virtue of my female-ness, I cannot be anything but this. Any way I am creating, whether it be growing a child or making a sweater, I am aligning with this truth. Any time spent in maintenance phase (working, earning, driving) is simply in service of what I’m truly aligned with.

***I am currently running a 15% off Labor Day weekend sale on paid subscriptions, should you find yourself inclined or compelled to pay me. This writing is one of the things I enjoy most, but it takes much precious time and mental resource, so any contribution is most appreciated. Find the sale here 💗

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