<p>From the NYT, 9/20-2005:
Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood</p>
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<p>No, you don’t. Having a baby takes a few months off a woman’s career. Does she need a law degree to change diapers? Parenting is an equal opportunity job. Been there twice, done that for the last 20+ years.</p>
<p>Well, Marite, she’s got it all planned out, doesn’t she? Wonder if it will work out as she expects.</p>
<p>Actually, and this is not gender-related, but the fewer lawyers that actually practice, the better off we are.</p>
<p>Chief, right you are. Marite, it depends upon your definition of being “the best career woman.” Liu can be an outstanding lawyer both before and after her child-rearing years. But if she chooses to stay at home for them–and there’s nothing wrong with that–she won’t be being “the best career woman,” even if she happens to be the best lawyer on the planet. Same thing would be true for her husband if he stayed home with the kids. That’s why the “glass ceiling” is such a myth. Larry Summers can’t say it, but I can.</p>
<p>Driver:</p>
<p>I agree with you to a large extent, though I have also seen prejudice at work. I wonder what she considers her child-rearing years, though. Me, I see a helicopter parent in the making.</p>
<p>I am a lawyer who believes some of my focus on my career (and not just when the kids were very young- I was home for 6 years) was harmful to my family. Everyone is different, but I think it is very difficult to do both things well. I am not at all saying that all women should be stay-at-home moms-that simply is not an option for many families for a number of reasons, both economic and personal. However, some career paths are so demanding that the family can be adversely affected.</p>
<p>And all this time I’ve been telling my boys they need to know how to do things for themselves (cook, clean the bathroom) because there’s no way they’re going to find a wife interested in staying home. . .</p>
<p>I figured this article would make the cut on CC today. </p>
<p>Marite, I think you’re making unfair assumptions about stay at home moms in your comment about helicopter moms.</p>
<p>Just because parenting is an equal opportunity job doesn’t mean that all men understand that. I thought I would continue to work but found the schedule too unpredictable and discovered I had married a man who understood the idea of partnership in theory but not in practice. I used to hold on to the notion that children with stay at home parents were better off but I have met many young women and men who were raised by working parents and they are just as well adjusted as my kids. It’s all in how you balance it.</p>
<p>One consequence of staying at home is the difficulty of getting back to work It can be like starting over when you wait a long time, so much so that I have lately second guessed my decision to leave my career fifteen years ago. In my case, I don’t think my kids would have turned out like they did if I had worked full time. Every person’s situation is different - it is a unique blend of how your partner participates, the particular career or job, and your own personal attributes such as energy level, organization, patience, etc. etc.</p>
<p>Wow! We’re making fun of a 19 year old Yalee because she wants to stay home with her kids when they’re young and we’re judging her and accusing her of being a helicopter mom to be! Aren’t we liberated!</p>
<p>Context, context! It’s interesting that these young women are at elite universities, where, from what I am seeing, the mass push is toward super-achieving in one’s career to such a degree that it takes up 16 hours a day, often six days a week. I’m talking i-banking, law, medicine, etc. If that is the only kind of career these women are contemplating, it is no wonder they doubt it can be done while raising children. And if they assume they will marry men working those kinds of hours, then maybe it is occurring to them that somebody really ought to spend some time with the kids. </p>
<p>If you read the article, it says that many are planning to cut back on their careers after the children are born, not stop altogether. The headline is misleading. And doing that isn’t necessarily a sign of backwardness. I was talking to someone who was telling me that a woman can work part time in big law after the children come. No more than 9 to 5, she said! Since when was a 40-hour week part time?</p>
<p>It would be sad if the women’s movement were equated with a blind, unquestioning joining of the current high-powered career scene, which – where I live, at least – is an awful lot like the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Maybe these women want a richer life for themselves and their families.</p>
<p>I have worked full time in a professional (but not extremely stressful) job since my kids were infants, and I totally agree with Lizschup’s post about personal circumstances determining each person’s choices as to the career/home balance. I did take offense at the the Penn student who said she could see “obvious differences” in her friends whose mothers stayed home versus those whose mothers worked.</p>
<p>Both of my kids were raised in day care. I say that facetiously, but it’s partially true. I don’t even know what potty-training was like, because I didn’t have to do it. I remember dropping the second one off at 6 weeks. I put him down on the floor in his little baby carrier, and he just looked at me, intently sucking on his binky. I went out to the car and burst into tears, and had to go home and change because I was lactating through my blouse. Funny thing though…when we moved, and I had to take him out of that place, I had to call on my car phone (this was before they called them cell phones) from the driveway and ask them to bring him out to me, because I couldn’t bear the thought of taking him away from the people that had given him so much affection. Writing this is making me cry, even now.</p>
<p>So what’s the answer? I don’t know. I have no regrets…my kids turned out great, our family relationship has always been wonderful, and they were in a financial position to retire after middle school. I don’t miss changing diapers, but now that I’m facing an empty nest in a couple of years I do wonder what they were like as toddlers, and kind of wish I could have been there for more of it. But there’s no right answer here, and no point in looking back.</p>
<p>My kids attended day care, too, but it seems like I spend an awful lot of time with them. Maybe my hours weren’t as long as yours. I definitely remember potty training, in detail!</p>
<p>When my mom visited me, a month after I’d gotten married, she was horrified that my H was doing so many things for himself, and sharing equally in housework (we were both grad students). She thought it was unseemly, unfeminine of me. Then, in the next breath, she complained that my Dad still left his towels on the bathroom floor and her bad back made it difficult to bend down and retrieve them. He also expected drinks to migrate from the fridge to the living room without his getting up from his armchair: and usually, they did. My mom wished he would pick up after himself. I had a “told you so” moment: “Start as you mean to go on; it’s too late when you’re both 50 to change habits that took 50 years to build.” When I have to take long trips, I don’t fret about my H leaving the house in a mess or surviving on microwaved food (which he does not like). By the way, my MIL was also horrified when she heard her one and only son was marrying a woman bent on acquiring a Ph.D., and for the same reasons as my mom. She came around when her own D went for a Ph.D. and a career that was even more demanding than mine. </p>
<p>Firsttimemom: It’s the notion of “perfection” that worries me, not the stay-at home bit. She wants to be either the perfect lawyer or the perfect mom. It’s an all or nothing approach. Since she’s decided she will be a stay-at-home mom, she will train her perfectionism on her kids. As those who followed Robyrm’s posts in the past, I’m a great believer in “good enough.” It has served me well in my career and in my parenting.</p>
<p>Marite, That was very well put! And it is obvious that your kids are better than “good enough” :)</p>
<p>I agree with what you guys say…if you strive for perfection, then you can’t be a wife, a mom and have a career. …good enough is good enough. I remember Robyrm…</p>
<p>Well, speak for yourselves. I was, and remain, perfect. :)</p>
<p>This thread reminds me of the turmoil I experienced in returning to work when my son was 3 months old. I went to college at a time when young women were expected to reject the notion of being a housewife, and I was troubled at the idea that I had spent so many years in school and in getting a career off the ground – to just raise babies seemed like a waste of my education and abilities. But I just wasn’t cut out to delegate this task. I worked full time for a several years and then stayed home when our second child was born. The fact that my husband wanted to take a foreign assignement influenced that choice, but I think I was just too tired to keep up the treadmill of work and mommy-dom. In the end, I think that my education has helped me in creating a rich environment for my family, and I take some credit for their success, including my husband’s. There is certainly the difficulty of re-entering the workforce, but I’ll deal with that in the next couple of years. After raising 2 sons, I don’t think anything can intimidate me. So, I guess I think that an elite education is not just about pursuing a career – if a Yale degree enriches this young woman’s life, good for her. I’ve come to believe that anyone can have it all, but not always at the same time. There are some women I know who seem to be able to make it happen, but they aren’t in business or law. There seems to be a better chance of combining work and motherhood in academia and medicine, but I didn’t choose those paths. So, good luck to our younger sisters – whatever they choose, they are smart enough to make it work.</p>
<p>I believe that there are many women who are practicing lawyers who have kids. There are many different types of jobs for lawyers.</p>
<p>Anecdotal I admit…but…In all the wealthy towns I know of in NY,CT, and MA I would estimate that at least 90% of the mothers (who are highly educated with degrees from top schools) are stay at home moms. Some of these ladies are from the ages of 25-40. Even in my simple middle class town the figure is the same except the colleges they graduated from are not top schools. I have asked many if they plan to continue their career after the children move out and an equal amount have no interest at all? Apprently the husband’s income is sufficient or their trust funds are sufficient to support the lifestyle they prefer.</p>
<p>No flames please, but I ask this in a sincere manner: Did the female liberation movement fail in this regard? or was it a success because these women have choices? And do you consider that these women took a college seat that would have gone to another female that would use her degree in a career? or was a seat taken from a minority or male? I realize that the aspirations of an 18 year old can fade later on once the reality of the work place sets in, but I detest when the press or someone points out that their is a glass ceiling in the top management jobs for women in corporations (specifically fortune 500) when the reality is that the qualified women chose to be a stay at home mom…isn’t it possible that their is no glass celing? Every woman that I know that started in finance the same time I did back in 1980 and chose a career rather than stay at home, (and most have children) are very successful today. EVERY ONE! And only 30% or so had Ivy league degrees…With the shifts in technology and new business models that emerge every year a fortune 500 corporation should hire a stay at home mom that has been out of the workforce for ten years just because she has a Harvard MBA?</p>
<p>No flames- but is this not the reality that the press calls the glass ceiling? Or do you think it is still outright discrimination?</p>