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My Family’s Slave

theatlantic.com

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Re: My Family’s Slave

#281

Post by throwaway9980 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #270
Mz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen career women kind of jokingly say "I need a wife." I was struck by the fact that Alex's mother, whom some people here are vilifying, managed to have a serious career like a man because she had Lola at home to do all the "women's work." This is mostly being overlooked in discussion and I didn't know how to bring it up myself. I appreciate you remarking upon it.

As a male, I'd personally prefer to live a life filled with traditional housewife work. Kids are fun, and I'd like raising them. I like cooking. Cleaning is pretty fun. More than that, though, employment sucks. If you keep me fed, clothed, and with an internet connection, I'd be happy as a clam, even spending eight hours a day doing nothing but housework. I sometimes wonder if there are others who feel this way, espe…

It often feels like two income households are counter productive. Sure, we make more money, but it feels like 2x the dollars chasing 1.5x the pie out in the world. And then you have to pay for childcare.

As for the household work, I was just telling someone today how much I miss being able to work all the time. I love my kids and they come first, but it's a sacrifice to for me not to work 12+ hour days.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#282

Post by praneshp »

yardie wrote: post #165
praneshp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you usually ask your Indian clasmates' caste? Or did they volunteer that information themselves?

If you're familiar with Indian culture you can kind of tell the caste from the surname.

I'm a little bit familiar with Indian culture; I think it's not that easy to tell the caste from the surname. It's probably easier to figure out if someone is Brahmin I guess.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#283

Post by rayiner »

carapace wrote: post #271
achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

> "An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor." What? Non-capitalist societies don't have housewives?

Pre-Industrial agrarian societies have quite a different structure. A "housewife" is defined by a wife performing domestic labor supporting a husband who in turn participates in the market economy. That's not how it works on a farm, where the husband and wife both work on the farm.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#284

Post by mirimir »

emodendroket wrote: post #260
ajross wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An argument could be made that the entire capitalist system is built upon uncompensated labor. In isolation, I think I can agree with that. But in context you seem to be making a moral point using "slavery" as a jumping-off point to an economic argument. Needless to say, slavery isn't well-defined by "compensation". That whole "freedom" angle tends to be more important to most people.

Certainly one could question to what extent wage earners are truly "free" given the need to continue to perform wage labor to survive.

Thereby the term "wage slavery".

Re: My Family’s Slave

#285

Post by praneshp »

13of40 wrote: post #168
yardie wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're familiar with Indian culture you can kind of tell the caste from the surname.

Don't know how contemporary this advice is, but this seems to be the guidance: http://www.hindubooks.org/scriptures/manusmriti/ch2/ch2_31_4...

In many parts of India, in most cases, Mr Foo Bar's kid will be called Baz Foo. So as people start calling their kids more modern names not derived from Sanskrit, the text you linked starts getting outdated.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#286

Post by achou »

Mz wrote: post #242
diN0bot wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor and for taking care of children and elderly. we could choose to economically value teachers and nurses instead of economically devaluing "feminine" roles -- and creating economic value specifically for masculine-branded roles. (those moments when piloting and programming became branded and $$ as male professions) in order to end professional segregation, we…

we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor and for taking care of children and elderly. This tends to not work. Paying people to care often means paying people to pretend to care. This often goes bad places. Furthermore, the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing and we shifted "jobs" (gender based work) around to make family life still fun…

"the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing"

Thank you for this much needed shift in perspective. It should be obvious: mothers' work has been on the critical path for humanity, and other work has shifted around to accommodate it. This is such a forehead slapping observation.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#287

Post by emodendroket »

merpnderp wrote: post #53
balls187 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, What did your mom say? "Paid house keeper plus all supplies and food. Helped her family also." While I have no proof, I'm inclined to believe her. It's hard to imagine my parents owning a slave AND the US Military allowing it's personnel to keep slaves AND word of that not making it back to the US Mainland.

Knowing how base authorities handle off-base housing, I'd say the chances of this are next to zero. I doubt there's a military officer who isn't fully aware that the US's war with the most casualties was the one to end slavery.

By that logic no American institution would ever countenance racism, given that the 14th Amendment was intended to give equal protection under the law for all and was also a result of the Civil War.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#288

Post by bonniemuffin »

randyrand wrote: post #186
shas3 wrote: post #51

Great read! Many Asian countries have the concept of live-in housekeepers. I think the 'best' (scraping the bottom, here) arrangement is in Singapore, where the government, laws, and law-enforcement ensure that immigrant live-in housekeepers are treated fairly- kinda like au pairs, etc. in the US. I knew someone in India who brought their live-in maid's sister to the US in some capacity (and AFAIK, paid her wages- sh…

Can you elaborate on why some live-in maids in those countries are effectively slaves, but a maid that comes to the house daily would not be? What is the significance of the live-in part?

It makes the maid dependent on the family -- you can't quit or look for a better job because you'll be homeless.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#289

Post by Mz »

achou wrote: post #286
Mz wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor and for taking care of children and elderly. This tends to not work. Paying people to care often means paying people to pretend to care. This often goes bad places. Furthermore, the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing and we shifted "jobs" (gender based work) around to make family life still fun…

"the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing" Thank you for this much needed shift in perspective. It should be obvious: mothers' work has been on the critical path for humanity , and other work has shifted around to accommodate it. This is such a forehead slapping observation.

You might enjoy the book More Work for Mother. (I don't know why this is being downvoted, but the book is about the history of how domestic labor was shifted off men to women to free men up to get paid jobs.)

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-history-...

Re: My Family’s Slave

#290

Post by wyclif »

achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income

This is the primary reason these domestic labourers are so common in the Philippines and in pinoy culture. Also, many men's involvement in their children's lives is non-existent or minimal. A lot of men get their girlfriends or wives pregnant and dump them quickly. So there's also a huge number of single moms in the Philippines. It's a matriarchal culture, and women (including servants, nannies, and housekeepers) are the glue that hold the culture together.

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