This piece from The New Republic (via Althouse) explores the phenomenon of highly educated, high-powered women who opt to be stay-at-home-moms, rather than push ever higher in their professional lives. It also offers a solution.
To understand why female lawyers, doctors, bankers, academics, high-tech executives and other, often expensively pedigreed, professionals quit work to stay home, you need not search their souls for ambivalence or nostalgia....
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. I think that many high-powered, professional women are somewhat conflicted or ambivalent about it. I know that they are at least afraid of being judged by women who are in the other camp.
Specifically, stay-at-home-moms are afraid of being judged as not ambitious by the women who pursue successful careers. On the flip side of the coin, I think that some professional women are afraid of being judged as not being as child oriented as they could be. It certainly takes long hours to climb the ladder in certain professions.
Specifically, stay-at-home-moms are afraid of being judged as not ambitious by the women who pursue successful careers. On the flip side of the coin, I think that some professional women are afraid of being judged as not being as child oriented as they could be. It certainly takes long hours to climb the ladder in certain professions.
To reject a high-flying career, as this man did and so many women have done, is not to reject aspiration; it is to refuse to succumb to a kind of madness.
I certainly agree with this. The old feminist mantra was that as a woman, you could "have it all". That's just not possible, especially if you're in a profession where you have extreme demands on your time if you want to beat everyone else out for advancement.
Achieving professional success is admirable, but what's the point of making all that money if you don't have a life? I think it's a question of what each person finds to be most fulfilling. That will be different for everyone, and it doesn't mean that either choice is better in the abstract. The bottom line is that life is full of trade-offs. You can't have it all. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a fool or is selling something.
The problem with this piece is the solution it proposes. The proposed solution is to have the government come in and mandate maximum working hours for professionals. Everyone will be barred from working long hours, so the folks who want to spend more time with their families don't have to compete with those who sacrifice family time to achieve professional success.
The main reason white-collar workers can be driven to work 80-hour-or-so weeks is that very few of them have government protections. Most of them are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandates the 40-hour-week and overtime pay. American managers aren’t allowed to join unions. Other countries have laws that protect against overwork even for professionals, such as standard or maximum number of hours anyone can work in a week.
This would never work here in America, and it's a horrible idea. Can you imagine a law that mandated the maximum hours lawyers could work in a week? The bell rings at 5:00PM and all the lawyers go home for the day? Oh, you had an issue that needed some extra attention on Friday? Sorry. We'll get to it on Monday.
Or for doctors? Oh, you went into labor at 6:30PM on a Friday? I guess we'll just keep you in a holding pattern until Monday morning. The doctor has already done her government mandated time. We could just let a nurse do the delivery for you, though.
A fundamental part of the American ethos is hard work. Hard work separates the great achievers from the slackers or those who choose not to work. Everyone isn't equal, and you can't just tell the folks who want to sacrifice their home life for their careers that they have to go home now. Different people have different priorities.
Wow, talk about a restriction on choice, too. This sounds like a prohibition on ambition. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not taking sides in the stay-at-home vs. career mom debate, but the government can't simply solve this problem by requiring that people only work 40 hours a week.
Hey! You can't work so hard and go the extra mile because there are others out there who choose other priorities, and it wouldn't be fair to make them have to compete with you.
Life is full of choices. Be a grown-up. Make your choices and live with them. The government isn't here to make everyone the same.
I do not disagree with anything you've written. But I think you (and Althouse, her commentariat, and the author of the article) have missed the main point pithily stated in the 2nd paragraph: Pure envy.
ReplyDeleteThe government is also not here to make sure there is no one left to envy.
I kind of look at envy as another way to describe the "it's not fair" attitude that some people have. It's a way to be envious without feeling guilty. The person that you're envious of got what you want through some unfair means, so it's ok for you to feel envious.
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