It has taken me a while to come back to this post because of the craziness of life! That, in and of itself, explains my problem. I am constantly running, and aiming for that goal she is talking about. But it is making me miserable. The nights on the road without the baby are no fun. Yet, to even acheive middle management, which isn’t her dream, requires that I make these sacrafices. Thank you for this post! I really appreciate it.

Laura

Happy Halloween!

As Kristen mentions the Anne-Marie Slaughter slew of articles (I had plenty of commentary on those myself), I will return to the Atlantic coverage, and the fact that “infrastructure” to support families was touched on, but remains largely ignored as a factor – best I can tell.

And infrastructure – including decent schools, availability of childcare, options for those without an “employment relationship,” and so on – affect women at all levels, and far less, those who are at the top.

But in getting to the top, wouldn’t most women need those infrastructure supports in place? And aren’t they harder when women are still earning roughly 77 cents on the dollar?

I am plucking this bit from your post above:

Feminism wasn’t supposed to make us miserable. It was supposed to make us free…

But I would modify that phrase to say freer. We kid ourselves when we think we are able to find some blissful state of utter freedom. That would mean no cares, no worries, no responsibilities except perhaps the self. And what kind of life would that be – really?

I did read Slaughter’s article over the summer. (I tried to work it into this post but couldn’t manage it without getting way too long…) I felt that she took a much more balanced approach to the topic and recognized that there are many women who could never manage to “have it all” due to the fact that they don’t have the money or support systems and that no one can do it alone. Nevertheless, the unstated understanding is that everyone wants the “super-life” that these authors describe. No one seems to mention that so many women have found insurmountable happiness with less. The implication is always that they’ve made their peace with less, but that given the choice they would opt for more. And I just find that to be an intellectually dishonest view.

The other issue I take with both Spar and Slaughter is that they both came to these conclusions after dedicating their adults lives to juggling high-powered careers with their role as mothers. I don’t fault them for that choice – it was theirs to make. But I take exception to the fact the fact that they both begin their articles with their professional and educational backgrounds. I’m sure that tactic is to establish their credibility on issues of work-life balance, but it comes across a bit like, “You should listen to me because I’m probably smarter and more successful than you.” I also find traces of hypocrisy in their retrospective approach to this advice. Perhaps it’s just that they’ve gained this 20/20 clarity in hindsight (as is so often the case), but are they also having their cake and eating it too? They’ve both gunned through high-powered careers for years only to now sit on the top of the mountain and tell the rest of us how we’re doing it all wrong. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way.

Perhaps I’m being prickly. I don’t intend to. I just think that a life with less is also a very full life for many, many people. Sure we have progress yet to make in the arena of getting women into positions of power, etc. But women who are happy where they are shouldn’t be made to feel inadequate because of it.

Did you read Anne Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic that went viral this summer on the idea of women “having it all”? In it, she looks at some women and notes that women who do, indeed, have it all have to be superwomen in order to manage. It’s worth noting that the women she discusses are the same high-flying women that Spar does.

So I’m interested in your argument about the “rest of us,” the ones who either through choice or ability aren’t president of Barnard or Secretary of State. I’ve always thought that one of the great gifts of the women’s movement for women of our generation was the choice to opt in or opt out, to say what “all” is for ourselves.