Earlier this week, The New York Times published a very thought-provoking article on new cultural trends in Germany. I know very little about German culture other than beer, wurst, lederhosen, and BMWs, having been a French student myself. So I was pretty surprised to learn that this country, with Europe’s largest economy, and headed by a woman (Angela Merkel), still goes by a culture that largely forces its women to stay at home.
I pass no value judgments on the practice itself; I’m sure that staying home gives your children innumerable benefits, but that should be an individual, or a familial, decision, not one made for you by the school system.
The article raises a lot of interesting points – you should read the article yourself, since you’ll most likely find more things to think about than I did:
1) Why shouldn’t men stay at home, too, to help with the kids? Paternal leaves sound just as logical as maternal leaves, to me. Every parent needs to spend time with his or her kids, right? And this way, both parents will understand “sacrifice.”
2) Every form of government has pros and cons. Americans tend to shriek in horror at the sight of the word “communism,” and anything that’s even remotely “socialist” (e.g. universal healthcare) is an abomination. But our northern neighbors, who are the more socialist version of us, are doing just fine, and they take better care of their elderly than we do. To go a bit more radical, it seems that if there’s one thing communist countries can do, it’s promoting women’s equality. It’s not about rights – it’s not fighting for something extra. It’s about being able to have the same options that men do. Communist governments don’t have to wait for society to change, since they’re typically not democratic. They can do certain things much faster, and much more efficiently. But in general, Winston Churchill’s words still stand. It doesn’t mean, though, that there isn’t anything to learn from other forms of government.
3) Last point is sort of unrelated to the article. One reader commented that a high fertility rate makes a country poor, citing Haiti as an example. I think the commentator has it a bit confused. Isn’t it that poverty, a lack of education and opportunity, particularly for women, makes fertility rates high?
Dear Susan
. But women have all the possiblities that the man do and concerning the combination of education/job and children also some programms are beeing developed to make things easier in the future. Concerning our older generations here a lot of things have to be done in the future, but it is us (the young) who have to take care of that, and I think living together with the “old” generation is an excellent thing to do. We can learn so much from their experience and it is our duty to give them back what they have given to us their livetime. So it is up to us young man AND women. For optical reasons I would stay with my Dirndl though!!! Women in Lederhosen just looks ugly!!!
I have not read the article yet you are referring to, but as a german woman I can tell you, things are not as bad as they may be described there. Actually we are at a changing point. Government has been setting up some opportunities for males and females to stay home for one year to take care of the children and have it been less than 1% males that took that opportunity 5 years ago, it is now nearly 5%. That it is not 50% yet is probably mostely due to the fact that woman are mostely better in nursing young than man! Thats how nature has made us
haha, Madeleine, thank you for your comment. The part about lederhosen was meant to be a German counterpart to the American metaphor of “who wears the pants?” After I have kids, I’ll get back to you on whether or not I agree that women are better at nursing than men are