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The media's obsession with the "opt-out revolution" has become pretty annoying, but Jane Leber Herr of the University of Chicago has some interesting research on which educated women are most likely to drop out of the labor force and why. Fifteen years after graduation, doctors are much more likely to keep working than lawyers, who are more likely to keep working than women with MBAs. Data like those could just tell us something about the kinds of women who choose to pursue medical degrees and the kinds of women who opt for financial careers, but Herr thinks something more is going on. She controlled for "factors that might proxy for a woman's underlying taste for time at home with her children" and the value women place on their professional identities, but she still found the aforementioned differences to be statistically significant. One plausible conclusion is that family-friendly work alternatives generally are more available to educated women with, say, JDs than they are to women with MBAs.
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Dahlia, when you give these work-life balance talks, do you tell the young women who've come to hear you the unvarnished truth? Because I'd have to say that I tend to accentuate the happier truth (that writing is one of the most flexible careers around, girls, because you can tailor and re-tailor it to meet your ever-changing needs!) over those other, unhappier true facts: And your childless colleagues will resent the hell out of you, while you more or less constantly reproach yourself for falling short both at home and at work. While I agree with Dana that there's plenty to be done in terms of restructuring the American workplace to make it more family-friendly, even in the most accommodating circumstances, stories don't write themselves and kids need you when they need you. But you know what? Lucky, lucky us if that is our worst problem. Marjorie Williams wrote a great column about this one time, to the effect that what the complaining childless people don't get is that part of their compensation is: they don't have to deal with children. And that what complaining people with children tend to forget is: part of our compensation is that we do.
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Dahlia, now I'm cracking up at the image of you racing off to give talks on work-life balance while two midgets yank at your coat begging you not to go. "Hands off! I have to go talk about work-life balance!"
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Dahlia, I think you've introduced the missing ingredient that Dana, too, stirred into the equation: kids. And Hanna, mother of three, I wonder what you say to this: the fantasy of having the security (courtesy of a spouse with a regular, and large enough, paycheck or some other source of support) to mix being the person overseeing the kids and their care with being a freelancer who also pursues meaningful, if sometimes less-than-predictable, work.
Isn't that a reality that plenty of well-educated, lucky couples pursue, or would like to? (I'm not saying they choose each other with that in mind, or that it's the savviest course given the prospect of divorce, but it's where they end up.) I agree that it's more often the woman who gets the child + part-time work gig, while the man does the more regular breadwinning. And I would say that she may well sometimes publicly gnash her teeth that she isn't the one who's been able to pursue the "real" career while perhaps privately not really being so sorry that she gets to be with the kids a lot and have a more flexible, and often less stressful, work life. Does she face up to the contradictions of her predicament? Perhaps not; we all have our fantasies. But sometimes—increasingly, I would hope—the man may well be the juggler, and my bet is he's all but guaranteed to be belly-aching rather than thanking his sugar-mommy, whatever he really feels.
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Meghan, I think I agree with your diagnosis but perhaps not your prescription. It’s true that every woman in the public eye in America is instantly run through the sum-of-her-choices machine and found wanting. From Sarah Palin to Angelina Jolie, it seems nobody has calibrated her responsibilities to her job and her family in ways the rest of us can applaud. It’s also true that as women we run ourselves through the sum-of-our-choices machine on pretty much a daily basis. (This morning my 3-year-old’s preschool teacher handed me a laminated book of Our Feelings, in which my son is featured in a desolate-looking photo with the caption “I am sad when my mommy goes for walks and leaves me alone.” Awesome. Immortalized for life as the Mommy Who Ditches.)
I agree that any story about women and choices is mommy catnip, a way for us to check our own bargains and compromises against everyone else’s, which really increases our efficiency by allowing us to beat up on ourselves and others at the same time. But I wonder what’s required to, as you put it, “break free.” I don’t know if it requires reconciling ourselves to the choices we have made or fighting harder for better, fuller choices for women. For Michelle Obama that might mean redefining the role of first lady as something more substantial than Traister imagines. For the rest of us, it may require giving up on the idea that if we take turns in our marriages, the choices for women will get easier or better. Just ask Hillary Clinton how that worked out for her.
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Ladies, gentlemen: Are any of you, like me, getting tired of all the discussion surrounding Michelle Obama's "choices"? Yesterday in the New York Times: a long piece about women worrying whether Michelle "will become a pioneer or a dispiriting symbol of the limitations of modern working motherhood." And last night on CNN: a spiraling segment about Michelle and what she "represents" to all the “little girls out there.” So here’s a woman who has a powerful job and decided to give it up to support her husband when he became president. Does that really send such a terrible message? Or is the terrible message our obsession with scrutinizing her choices and finding fault? Rebecca Traister recently wrote a good piece about the "momification" of Michelle, critiquing the fact that the media spend so much time on her role as a mother. But I think the problem is more complicated: The media know that all they have to do is utter the words "work" and "mother" and "choice" and everyone gets all frothed up, like Pavlov’s dogs at the dinner bell.
To me, the real difficulty in being a professional woman today is that no matter what you do—whether you make the decision to stay at home or go to work, to take time off to help a sick parent or to stay focused on your work—someone criticizes it. Often, you yourself criticize it. You spend lots of (otherwise useful) energy wondering if you’re doing "the right thing." At this point in time, women are called on to be both individuals and symbols—and they treat one another that way. And sure, symbolism is important: I’m a poet, for god’s sake; I get it. But if women are going to push forward toward further equality, the media has to let go of our obsession with turning powerful women’s choices into representative dramas—from Hillary to Michelle to Sarah Palin. Because this psychological wheel-spinning is starting to hold us back, I think—it’s the kind of obsessive "should we, shouldn’t we" that happens when you’re at the end of a relationship and can’t figure out whether to break free.
So, let’s break free. As Michelle herself has said, being first lady is a powerful platform. And the modern professional marriage, for better or for worse, usually requires some alternating in who gets to take the professional lead (that is, if you want your kids to get any attention). It’s too bad, sure, that there aren’t more men stepping up to support their wives—but it’s not as though that’s not happening in our political culture. (Hi there, Todd Palin!) The best way Michelle Obama can act as a role model for women right now is not by making the decision any one of us would make (because we’d all make different decisions), but by reminding us that life is fleeting, and we ought to immerse ourselves in the opportunities and joys of our own life as it exists. Not as it might exist.
Oh, but also this, Michelle: In eight years, tell your husband it’s your turn.
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