Why Chris Williamson wants caregiving to carry more status

Chris Williamson tells the story of a friend who had two children while working as an executive at a large technology company. After the pandemic and the birth of her third child, she decided to leave work and become a full-time mother, partly because she regretted not spending more time with her first two children.

After moving for her husband’s work, the woman joined a group for mothers with young children. Williamson says another mother remarked that she wished she had known her when she was still working and had more going on. He reads the comment as belittling the woman’s choice, despite her previous career.

For Williamson, the story raises a question: how can a movement intended to support women end up criticizing traditionally feminine choices? He argues that judging his friend as less interesting because she stays at home places too little value on raising children.

He turns to a 2023 study that reported evidence of women hunting in 50 of 63 societies examined and large-game hunting in a third of the societies where women hunted. He then cites a later critique by 15 hunter-gatherer researchers that reported sample-selection and coding problems in the study.

Williamson interprets the debate as an example of what he calls the “soft bigotry of male expectations”: assuming that women are elevated only when they perform activities traditionally associated with men. He argues that this can assign high status to hunting while undervaluing gathering, food processing, childcare and social relationships.

He asks why women hunting should be treated as more emancipatory than recognizing the importance of their other contributions. In his account, making male-coded achievement the standard can imply that women are valuable because they match it, rather than valuing work historically associated with women on its own terms.

Williamson points to actor Rachel Zegler’s description of Snow White wanting to become a leader rather than dreaming of true love. He says leadership is worthwhile but questions why it must be presented as a more worthy alternative to love.

He also mentions cooking and lifestyle creator Nara Smith, who has said she received criticism from women calling her a traditional wife and accusing her of setting women back. Williamson sees such reactions as another way of treating a domestic choice as a betrayal of women’s advancement.

He argues that a status-focused form of feminism celebrates women as chief executives, soldiers, founders or breadwinners but has less to say about the status of motherhood, caregiving, homemaking and emotional labor. In his view, the result is a hierarchy in which women supposedly rise into masculine-coded work and fall back into feminine-coded work.

Williamson says he is not prescribing a career, full-time homemaking or a combination. Preferences, money and age constrain choices. His objection is that some people who describe themselves as supporting women seem to award prestige in only one direction.

He extends the argument to insults aimed at men for acting in stereotypically feminine ways. If an insult works by treating femininity as degrading or weak, he says, it also expresses a judgment about women and the value of feminine traits.

Williamson recognizes that women historically had few alternatives to domestic work and child-rearing, so choosing that life under those conditions was not fully free. He argues that the existence of more alternatives should not make a woman who chooses homemaking less valuable, or justify dismissing all stay-at-home mothers.

He asks why advocates cannot raise the standing of contributions associated with women alongside expanding access to male-dominated roles. He closes by saying he wants his future daughters’ choices to be respected, whether or not their lives resemble his, provided those choices are their own.