For women, ‘all’ isn’t better
Anne-Marie Slaughter’s eye-catching Atlantic article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” is being greeted with a certain reverse snobbery. We’ve been reminded that the choices and challenges of women with advanced degrees are hardly typical and not the sort of thing that should divert us from the problems of the middle class.
Perhaps. But there are millions of women in the upper middle class, and the culture they create and reflect affects everyone. Besides, Slaughter deserves some credit for honesty. As she recounts in the piece, when she mentioned to a friend that she was considering writing that women can’t have it all, the friend was adamant: “You can’t write that. You, of all people.” Slaughter explains: “… such a statement, coming from a high-profile career woman – a role model – would be a terrible signal to younger generations …”
Slaughter, the “first woman director of policy planning at the State Department,” had been one of those reliable soldiers in the “mommy wars” who had assured young women that, of course, they could have a satisfying career, a high income, a loving husband and 2.5 ego-gratifying, low-maintenance children whose problems wouldn’t intrude when they “sipped champagne” at a “glamorous reception” hosted by President and Mrs. Obama. But she has discovered that the “have-it-all” catechism was a lie. Even with a supportive husband who was willing to “take on the lion’s share of parenting … (while) I was in Washington,” she found that she didn’t want to be away from her two teenage sons, particularly when one was having trouble in school.
“Want” is the critical word here. Slaughter made a choice, as adults do. She writes, “I realized that I didn’t just need to go home. Deep down, I wanted to go home. I wanted to be able to spend time with my children in the last few years that they are likely to live at home, crucial years for their development into responsible, productive, happy, and caring adults.”
Slaughter’s wants mirror those of other women (high-earning and otherwise). A 2007 Pew survey found that among working mothers with children 17 and younger, fully 79 percent said they would prefer part-time (60 percent) or zero (19 percent) work outside the home. Only 21 percent said they would choose full-time employment while their children were young. This was down from 32 percent who preferred to work full time in 1997.
Despite endless repetition by Democrats and feminists, the idea that women earn less than men for the same work is fiction. Single women without children earn just as much, and sometimes more, than comparably qualified young men. Women earn less (over their whole careers) because they choose to. And they choose to because they place more value on child rearing than on money or status.
A better feminism would applaud women for this and stress the incomparable contribution mothers make to society. Instead, feminists define progress as the “first woman” this or that and the degree to which a woman’s life parallels a man’s. Feminists have been missing what’s best about womanhood for decades.
They keep up a relentless drumbeat for “better” (by which they mean government-subsidized) child care and fret that men don’t have to make the same trade-offs. But as Anne-Marie Slaughter found, most women don’t want more opportunities to farm out our children. Slaughter wasn’t even satisfied to have her own husband be the principal parent. She wanted the kind of relationship with her sons that only time – and lots of it – can allow.
Most mothers feel that way, and unlike feminists who find this truth to be embarrassingly retro, we freely affirm that we want to be there for the first words, the first independent ride on a two-wheeler, the Little League games, the school plays, the violin lessons, and the thousand little private jokes, shared confidences and other intimacies that are some of the sweetest parts of life.
We’ve seen some of the women who are described as “having it all.” We see the glamorous careers, the attention and the prizes. And perhaps we feel a twinge or two of envy. But it’s an illusion. Something has to give. Too many exhausted women blame themselves for not being able to be Ruth Bader Ginsberg, June Cleaver and Sally Ride all at the same time. They’ve been lied to about life, mostly by feminists. Slaughter discovered the truth in time. Many don’t.