When my new ” Atlantic” came with the “Why Women Can’t Have it All” article by Anne-Marie Slaughter, I predicted this would be all the rage between Those Who Have and Those Who Have More.
Slaughter was featured on MSNBC and NPR, and countless other places. Andrea Mitchell said on her noon show that Slaughter caused a firestorm. Her article is one of the most liked articles ever on Facebook.
Yes, we’ll have this discussion again.
Yes, I’ve weighed in on it often for the last twenty-two years since I became a mother who works outside the home. (I refuse to use the term “working mother” to describe someone who is paid for her work.)
But this entire discussion from Slaughter’s perspective entirely misses the point.
Yes, I understand her anguish. Slaughters has a husband who is an educator (as do I). Slaughters felt that working in DC and coming home on weekends was not meeting the needs of her two sons.
Well, duh.
I think it is impressive that she served our country and made a contribution. Of course a woman with her cache and education could and will do better in the private sector.
My point is that her article is unquestionably about choice, and choice is what most American women do not have.
Frankly, many men don’t have choices either. Feminism isn't necessarily all about women. That is another topic for another day.
According to College Times, “Women account for 46% of the labor force, but 59% of workers making less than $8 an hour. What does it mean? It means that many women are taking on jobs that pay well under a living wage. With nearly 16% of U.S. households having women who are divorced, widowed or never married as the sole providers, this leaves many women at a distinct disadvantage and struggling to make ends meet as they dominate jobs in low paying fields.” http://collegetimes.us/10-surprising-statistics-on-women-in-the-workplace/
When my only child was young, I was climbing up a corporate ladder. The year he entered college, I was thrown off the ladder along with 4,000 of my closest colleagues during the worst month of “The Great Recession.” Say good-bye to the Six-Figure Job, fleet vehicle and Rolls-Royce insurance plan.
Do I have regrets about my choice to climb the ladder? Maybe.
Did I have choices? Yes.
While it would have meant a marked decrease in the way we lived, technically I could have stayed home with my child when he was younger. My contribution to our family savings kept us out of difficulty when that gig ended.
Most people do not have these choices.
I think Slaughters’ article is disingenuous and she speaks for a very small segment of our society. Ask the woman who works at the local dry cleaners if she has a choice? Unless she owns the business, I’m guessing she doesn’t.
Let’s not waste time on this debate. Let’s put our efforts toward improving health care access and educational resources that lift everyone up.
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Kathy Peacock
Leysa Lowery
zoeker
Linda Bilyeu
E. Henry Schoenberger
Erica K
Salon.com
Comments
Your last two sentences are so very wise. ~r
And the abortion debate is not a debate for the families who can go out of state or country to end pregnancies.
r.
When the lay offs came down, I volunteered to leave my job and asked my new competent male boss to hire the woman I'd trained to take it. He asked asked me to stay on and wanted to understand why I was determined to leave. I replied, "I was hired in as a contractor and in the three years since I went direct, I've had six different bosses. There are people here who need the benefits and wages that go with their jobs. They've got children who need health insurance, kids going to college and mortgages to pay. I don't have family or debt and I can work anywhere. Give my job to someone who needs it."
r./
"I am well aware that the majority of American women face problems far greater than any discussed in this article. I am writing for my demographic—highly educated, well-off women who are privileged enough to have choices in the first place. We may not have choices about whether to do paid work, as dual incomes have become indispensable. But we have choices about the type and tempo of the work we do. We are the women who could be leading, and who should be equally represented in the leadership ranks."
To me she is saying that we, as women as a whole, are between a rock and a hard place. The only solution to our struggle for equity with men is to have more women in government, preferably President and Congress, who can change the culture so that all women, not just those who have work-or-not-work choices, are brought to parity in earnings, workplace considerations, etc. with men.
One of the first tips I learned about writing was to first identify your audience. Slaughter did that. She was talking about women like her who are educated, talented, connected and well-mated who are still finding it difficult to balance motherhood and service.
What I find interesting about her POV is what seems like her undlying assumption that her son's problems are a) due to her absence and b) fixable by her being at home more. Why do we assume that a father can't do that?
Lezlie
I agree with you on fathers, another story for another day. Feminism is not just a female issue. Some women will not trust their partners if they are lucky enough to have a good one, and that again is an entirely different issue.
Whatever else is going on, though, we've allowed someone else to define the "all" we want to have. Women whose lives are far different from ours still have hard choices to make; they're just not as often about money.
That is the only way excellent child care will be a possibility for most women who need to work. I think Early Childhood Educators have a more decisive impact on their students' lives than high school or college teachers.
My wife is the sole earner in my household. Up until recently I was basically Mr. Mom. Since my daughter moved out three years ago, I have had to contend with figuring out how to make the day not be so tedious, onerous and depressing with more day than energy, money or opportunity to flex my mental muscles.
In order for us to create more jobs, increase the choices of the American worker or workers who wish to work, we must find ways to bring manufacturing, labor, and technical industry jobs back to America.
Let's face it. While there is definitely a "War on Women," and a "War on Education," higher education isn't for everyone. Those with it, however, are now having to compete for many more working class and service sector jobs that not only do not need a higher education, but will tell you if you have it, "I'm sorry, we don't think you'll be happy in this position," or that you're, "overqualified."
While women definitely face more challenges to working and having children, we all must start to face the reality of a country that is being made more and more like a third world unindustrialized semi-agrarian society (except that giant Agri-Business is taking that choice from us as well,) that makes more of us compete for jobs that won't provide for a single person, much less a family.
I don't feel bad for women in that elite portion of our population that worries about having it all. I'd be happy if I could just have what I used to. All the while I get to hear the pundits tell me we all have to make sacrifices and tighten our belts.
My belt is tighter and that means, like when I was working two jobs and going to college, I hardly eat meat because I cannot afford it, and I don't go out to the movies, eat at a restaurant (not even fast food) and I don't have any new clothes that I don't absolutely have to have.
My how I wish I could have to face the conundrum of "having it all."
--r--
When I saw the cover of the issue, I just rolled my eyes. I'm not only cynical; I'm really sick of trend stories in which writers claim "shock" that their feminist values have let them down and that they're compelled to speak out now in order to expose the truth. Just to be newsy, I feel like the same editor has been writing the same nut graf in these big Atlantic flap stories for at least a year.
Beyond the inability of most Americans to wrestle with such a choice, this is a particularly dreary entry in the Atlantic's "Ideas" issue. Why not talk about how the "having it all" trope affects both men and women, and is a problematic ideal for anybody who wants to do more than work 24/7? I'd say it's time to question the corporate religion of productivity more than anything else.
Rated!
There is also something unstated in these discussions having to do with American child raising practices among the privileged. We went from whatever you'd call the strict, repressive child raising philosophy of my parents' generation, to a new paradigm of hovering parents. It might come as a shock, but the rest of the world doesn't raise their kids that way. Foreign kids learn that they are not the center of the universe, and they therefore have less angst. They are not catered to. They do not have dedicated chauffeurs. They are shown a lot physical affection rather than told they are special. They love their siblings and enjoy their company. (I was shocked as a kid from a different cultural background at American sibling rivalry.) They are simply more independent and their parents don't feel as guilty because their child-rearing expectations are not impossible to meet. Kids are expected to contribute, not be trapped in prolonged infancy.
Guilt is what this author is talking about, and it is not just the privileged white woman who feels it. Any working woman in the U.S. is vulnerable to feeling like an inadequate parent because we have unrealistic standards that underestimate the capacity for resiliency and independence of kids. Maybe the author's son suffers from some mental condition that requires diagnosis and attention. At 13, I was a similar mess, and my mom hovering (which was inconceivable) would not have helped. Kids do better learning coping skills, which requires that parents trust in their ability to step up and take part in their own care.
I distrust this new child rearing model and suspect it is a way to expand the demands of motherhood and make it harder for women to leave the home. It looks to me like a revision and extrapolation of the 50's domestic bliss myth, the one featuring a satisfied, coiffed, high-heeled suburban mom who baked. To solve this issue, we need to look at what kids can contribute, not just what they need.
re: the "women having it all" conversation, the sentence itself is dysfunctional. no one can have it all because then there's nothing for anybody else.
great article, thanks for writing.