The Shriver Report Serves Up Compulsory Marriage and Mothering. That was the claim I made in my previous post. The report, I argued, seemed simply to assume that just about every woman wants to marry and have children and just about every woman does. It then puts those women at the center of its report, marginalizing - or not even recognizing the existence of - women who neither marry nor have children.
I ended Part 1 with this:
It is the year 2009. It is past time to accord single women and women who do not have children a place of recognition and respect in our society, our universities, our policies, our politics, our workplaces, our marketplaces, our media, and in reports with the title, "A Woman's Nation." We should do this not just for the women (and men) who are single and do not have children. We should do it because until staying single, or deciding not to have children, are valued options, then marriage and parenting are not options, either - they are compulsory.
In this post, I will back up my claim with reams of quotes and survey questions drawn directly from the Shriver Report. I'll also point to the implications of all that we miss in women's (and men's) lives when we focus too myopically on marriage and family. I'll highlight some remarkable and conventional-wisdom-defying findings from the report that were published but never headlined. Along the way, but especially at the end, I will also credit many of the strengths in the report, and the authors here and there who were not so taken by the Ideology of Marriage and Family.
In addition to a preface by John Podesta, an introduction by Maria Shriver, an executive summary, and an epilogue by Oprah Winfrey, the Shriver Report includes 13 more chapters. Scattered throughout are 20 brief essays (typically just two pages). It is in some of the essays, and a few of the chapters, that some enlightenment shines through.
Because this post is longer than usual, I'll begin with an outline of what is to come:
I. Oops, We Never Even Thought to Include You! Actually, We Didn't Even Realize You Exist!
A. The Survey Questions
B. The Writings
II. It's Hard Out Here for a Couple. Then Isn't It Hard for a Single Person, Too?
III. What We Miss When We Maroon Women on a Nuclear Family Island
A. A Marooned Mentality Misses Out on Friends and on Three Degrees of Connection
B. A Marooned Mentality Misses Out on Work that Is Passionate
IV. Ring the Doorbell and Run Away:
The Remarkable Findings that Did Not Make Any Headlines
V. Saving the Best for Last
VI. Final Word
Don't stop reading before you get to the section, "Ring the doorbell and run away." There are some amazing survey findings described there.
I. Oops, We Never Even Thought to Include You! Actually, We Didn't Even Realize You Exist!
A. The Survey Questions
Single and childless Americans faced with the Shriver survey questions don't need to try to generate answers - they can tell just from the questions that they don't count. Consider, for example, these three:
1. "Which of these things, in particular, would need to change in order for working parents to balance evenly their job, their marriage, and their children?"
2. "Was there ever a time when you wanted to take time off from work to care for your child or elderly parents but were unable to do so?"
3. Do you agree or disagree: "Businesses that fail to adapt to the needs of modern families risk losing good workers."
What is so exasperating about these kinds of examples is that it would have taken so little to have made them inclusive. In question #3, for example, simply changing the word "families" to "workers," or even rewording as "Americans and their families" would have made all the difference.
Fortunately, not all of the questions required marriage and parenting for admission. The non-discriminatory questions occasionally produced knock-your-socks-off results. Take, for instance, this one: "Is it important to be self-sufficient and not to have to depend on others?" Ninety-eight percent of women and 97 percent of men said yes.
B. The Writings
One of the goals of women's movements throughout the years has been to win recognition for women. What that meant in the past was so fundamental that it is still sobering, even in retrospect. For example:
• Don't use the word "men" when you are referring to both women and men.
• If you are going to study heart disease (or any other disease relevant to men and women), don't just include men in your research.
• Don't write history books that cover only the contributions made by men
Many of the authors of the Shriver Report participated in the hard work that made women a part of our consciousness, as well as our workplaces, schools, boardrooms, operating rooms, athletic teams, military missions, and so much more. Others are students of that history. How, then, did so many of them kick childless single women to the curb, maybe without even realizing it?
Here are just a few of the examples in which the Shriver Report seems not to even acknowledge that single, childless women, or non-family households, exist, or are of any consequence.
1. At the end of his preface to the Shriver Report, John Podesta expresses his hope that we will all join the "efforts to transform our ideas into actual policies that make the world around us work better for families." Fine. But how about transforming the world to work better for ALL of us? More than 38 million Americans live in non-family households. Shouldn't we count, too?
2. In her introductory chapter, Maria Shriver tells us that she is trying to teach her girls "to look not for a savior, but a loving, supportive, open-minded partner." Does that mean that staying single is not an option? Will other young women who read this assume that Maria Shriver, and others like her, think less of women who do not marry?
2. Heather Boushey's chapter on "The New Breadwinners" is in many ways a brilliant and telling piece of work. She describes, for example, how a woman who is equally qualified as a man in every way will earn 5 percent less the first year out of school, and how that initial gap will grow into a chasm just by the usual practice of calculating raises as a percent of current salary. She even mentions single women here and there.
But look at some of the tables and figures. The differences between what they claim to describe in their titles, and what they actually do describe, are stunning examples of the erasure of single women, especially those without children, from our consciousness. Here are some examples:
• Figure 2 is titled "The new workforce." Great - single women with and without children are surely part of that. What does Figure 2 actually show? The share of mothers who are breadwinners or co-breadwinners, 1967 to 2008.
• Table 1 is titled "Bringing home the bacon." Okay, single women do that. But what's really in the table? Numbers showing that working wives bring home half or more of family earnings.
• Figure 3 is titled "A snapshot of today's working women." That surely includes single women, doesn't it? Nope. The graphs show the percentage of working wives (divided into various subgroups) earning as much or more than their husbands.
3. Consider just this chapter title: "Family friendly for all families." A laudable goal, but again, why shut the book on all women in non-family households before they have even read the first word? The report is called "A Woman's Nation," not "A Family's Nation." There is no chapter dedicated to friendly workplaces, retirement benefits, or access to health insurance for people who are single - just a two-page essay.
