DH and I both had the high powered long hours required positions when we had our first child. His mother was diagnosed with late stage cancer a year later. It caused some tension in the extended family when he was unable to take a leave of absence to care for her in her home hours away from ours. I experienced some health issues related to trying to manage it all so that he could focus on career and his mother. Not good times. Not at all. It did force us though to discuss being a two career household and make some choices about how to pull that off. Our DD was born a little over a year after DH’s mother passed away. I think we would have only had one child, missed out on the joy of having her in our lives, if those career vs caregiving decisions had not been made.
I have been able to continue in my chosen field on a PT basis with varying degrees of ease over the years. The biggest obstacle I have found is myself. I have to create the boundaries with each new boss, client, and project so that I allow myself to be PT. I cannot always take the lead at the office if I want to have time and energy to lead at home and in my community. I have learned that work will fill whatever time that you allow it but children grow up in a set amount of time.
DH and I have both experienced limitations to our professional success because of the choices we have made. Mine may be more visible but his are just as real. What we have “lost” professionally is not nearly as valuable as what we have gained as a family. Now that DS is planning for college, we are very aware that he reminisces about family vacations, school events that we both were able to attend, etc rather than about that big project at the office.
Somehow part of my post did not make it. I started out with:
I have not read the book but I have read the articles. Slaughter articulates much of what I have slowly learned over the years. You can have it all, but not all at once. Also, sometimes you have to vote with your feet, when a workplace cannot be adapted to your family life. It should not always be the family that adapts.
I will confess that I never in my widest dreams expected to be a SAHM, at least not for more than a couple of years. My mother was not, and neither was my widowed grandmother, although both stayed home with young children with support from extended family. It was my expectation that once childcare responsibilities eased, I would re-enter the workforce at some level, possibly getting another degree or certificate in preparation and hiring help that could take over some home responsibilities.
I am getting curious enough to read the book, and will pay special attention to what AMS has to say about parents raising children with special needs. I think that is never in anyone’s plans. And having a child with special needs who does not respond robustly to intervention, or whose needs intensify as the years go on even as they are likely to outlive the parent, is certainly not in anyone’s plans.
As far as I am concerned, this is distinctly different territory from typical childcare, or typical eldercare. The child grows up and can care for others, including the parent, and the elderly pass away.
I am assuming she doesn’t address issues of single parents in this situation, although it seems to me that many mothers who continue to work, married or single, have the support of their own mothers or another relative whether or not special needs are involved.
It seems to me from what I have read about the book that AMS and her husband found themselves in a position of having a child who did not, or no longer, fit into the institutionalized settings that we as a society use to socialize our children and care for our elderly, whether quality daycare, schools and camps, or (for the affluent) nannies and other hired help. I have to wonder if the book would have been written if there had been a grandparent willing and able to step in on a full-time basis, or exceptional hired help.
She does write about single parents and profiles one single mother whose hourly wage is really not a living wage, and the negative repercussions when she has to take time off for family emergencies.
I think she reports research that shows the so-called traditional family doesn’t exist for the majority of children, but I couldn’t find that part when I flipped back through the book. Maybe FallGirl remembers? I have read it someplace recently.
“As far as I am concerned, this is distinctly different territory from typical childcare, or typical eldercare. The child grows up and can care for others, including the parent, and the elderly pass away.”
Of course it is. The “normal” discussions about balancing work and family are out the window with a child with the special needs that frazzled has. It’s silly to pretend it’s the same discussion. Frazzled, I have a friend with a son with serious disabilities (he is 18, not toilet trained, cannot be left alone for any period of time, is non verbal - ironically his 22 yo sister just graduated from Yale so they have both extremes). Their trade offs are completely unlike mine.
I pulled out some quotes that sort of spoke to me. I especially like “care produces people” Sometime last year, at a dinner party where everyone was sort of bragging about their life achievements, I said, “I made some people” and I’ve been wondering every since if I just should have kept quiet. The look on one young woman’s face was really quite startling. And she repeated what I said very slowly. She has no children, but probably plans a family in the near future.
I don’t know. I’m retiring shortly and I look at the SAHMs around me. Their lives are yoga, Pilates, Starbucks and picking up the kids at 3 pm. It just doesn’t seem all that hard when they are in school full time - of course, excluding children with special needs, etc.
Btw my goal is to have my own life be yoga, Pilates and Starbucks! Lol.
of course, That was my quandary In my case, pretty much all I did was “make them” It would have been possible for them to have been made just as well by others, (maybe better made) but that just happened to be my particular life’s work and achievement.
I think I’m correct when I say AMS presents this as a continuum and a societal issue, not an individual issue. For me, it is a family issue, a woman’s issue. In a sisterhood, we have to care for each other and everyone’s children, not just our own.
My reading of Slaughter’s Atlantic article about “Having it All” was mainly to do with the tension between caring for her own child vs. potentially providing care for many more children while working as Secretary of State. Some jobs impact the greater world. Somewhere a sacrifice may have to be made.
ETA: AMS says valuing caregivers benefits everyone. I have been sort of doing my part there all along. Valuing caregivers doesn’t devalue competitors. We need both.
I have not read the book, but have read the article and heard interviews. Based on that, I think AMS’s position was different in that she had to be gone from the family for the work week. That was probably not tenable. Does she speak in the book as to why a solution was not for her husband to take a job at a U in the DC area so she could continue at the State Dept.? Or was hers a political appointment so might not last?
I stepped back in my career and went to part-time for many years. I was very lucky to be able to do so at my work and to have had a wonderful caregiver. But that came at a cost, both financial and being off an upward career trajectory. I think it is OK for kids to see that parents may sometimes have to miss a school event due to work. It is the work the parents do that supports the family. I don’t think work should always come first, because then the message to the child is that they are always less important. But having a parent miss some games, and the occasional performance or school activity may actually be good for a kid.
It is hard to know who to advise young woman who want families. Should they avoid spending a lot of money on law school or an MBA as it is harder to raise a family if both people have high-powered careers? Or should she do what she wants because she may not have a family or her husband may end up willing to cut back.
I know PhDs who teach high school or are “research assistants” because their academic husband’s jobs came first. And lawyers and at least one dentist that essentially retired when their first kid was born. Some have gone back to other less demanding careers (teaching seems popular) but others enjoy their SAH status.
It is great to say we should pay more for childcare workers, but most other workers can’t afford to pay more for child care. For those with the financial means to pay for high quality care, it doesn’t seem to be the issue. It is much more emotional than financial. Given that peak child raising years overlap with peak career building years, I don’t see this issue being solved easily.
“Does she speak in the book as to why a solution was not for her husband to take a job at a U in the DC area so she could continue at the State Dept.? Or was hers a political appointment so might not last?”
correction: of course she wasn’t Sec of State, just in the dept.
The last chapter is “Citizens Who Care” and many of the suggested solutions are political. I am not sure I can copy them here without getting into TOS prohibitions. Also, I’m typing out sections from the book and I’m not sure if that is really the best idea with regard to copyright.
She writes that “childcare workers make a median annual salary of less than twenty thousand dollars a year”
She writes about the importance of having women in elected offices, because that changes everything. She gives examples to back up that idea.
There was only a brief period when most women were at home. In farms, women and men were “home” but everyone was working. In other periods, women had to work in factories or took in piece work to help ends meet. Families lived in closer proximity so grandma was often around to help with childcare.
Once kids are in full day elementary school, SAHMs have a lot of open time. Many then work part time, some spend a lot of time (almost equivalent to a job) on volunteering in the schools, on the PTO or in their kid’s activities. But the reality is that many that live in suburban enclaves have a lot of free time. No judgement, but that certainly seems to be what my friends do, especially now that their kids are in HS. F
@mom2and has nailed it. For most of human history, women have worked inside and outside of the home. When societies were primarily agrarian, they farmed and made clothing and necessary household items. With industrialization they cycled in and out of the paid workforce depending on the age of their children and the availability of unemployed female relatives to help out.
Regarding this quote from the book posted above:
“Suppose then that what unites all women is the struggle to combine competition and care in a system that rewards one and penalizes the other? Yet if they are two equally valuable and necessary human drives, why should that be? I is no more justifiable to value the production of income over the provision of care than it is to value white over black, straight over gay, or men over women. Competition produces money. But care produces people.”
This is a lovely sentiment. Good luck making it happen. Friedrich Engels wrote about the tension between paid and unpaid work in an amazing book called The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State back in 1884. Yes, he and Marx were grinding a socialist ax. But the basic premise that women’s work is undervalued because it is unpaid seems somewhat inescapable in a capitalist society. Breaking that connection between money and ascribed social value would require profound societal change.
I also agree with Mom2and’s post #55. I enjoyed A Midwife’s Tale, The life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary 1785-1812, http://dohistory.org/book/ This could be read as a work/life balance story.
Slaughter acknowledges what was for me always an issue. Some white women had access to professional careers because some black women took care of their children. Those caregivers had their own families that needed caregiving as well. She gets into this idea quite a bit.
As Lonnae O’Neal Parker writes, “There has never been a national effort to keep black women at home, caring sweetly for their children. They have always worked, and their work has never been a separate thing from their mothering.” She quotes Taigi Smith, Alison Wolf, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marita Golden, Alice Walker on mothering.
With regard to profound societal change, seeing gay marriage become legal in my lifetime really makes me believe we can accomplish almost anything if we set our minds to it.
I have decided this is a much better book than I thought on first reading. I’m going to read the whole thing again more closely.
But having a parent miss some games, and the occasional performance or school activity may actually be good for a kid.
As my husband put it to me once, having your children observe a successful female role model is also important (and this is for both sons and daughters). Similarly depriving your children of their dad by making him work 60 hours a day while you SAHM … I am not sure that is the best strategy. Fathers can be very involved with their kids and that is a great thing.
It is hard to know who to advise young woman who want families. Should they avoid spending a lot of money on law school or an MBA as it is harder to raise a family if both people have high-powered careers? Or should she do what she wants because she may not have a family or her husband may end up willing to cut back.
Make enough money that you can pay for quality day care and also hire housekeeping, lawn, tax, and other help. Marry a spouse who is flexible and willing to work as a team to maximize family earnings and happiness, not a guy who is not willing to cut back (unless that maximized family earnings and happiness and not just his ego). Children maybe need you at home for 10 years, unless you have a big brood. And unless your hubby makes enough to pay for your court time and Starbucks and the bon bons you eat in bed, better get prepared to make some real money … oh, and make sure he doesn’t leave you poor and uneducated at age 40 …
I would not advise my D to avoid law/grad school in anticipation of having a family.
I would not give that advice to my S either.
Part of the issue is that many people still think in terms of combining raising children and a career as a “women’s issue”. I believe AMS bring that up in her book.
In my case, pretty much all I did was “make them” It would have been possible for them to have been made just as well by others, (maybe better made) but that just happened to be my particular life’s work and achievement.