June 29, 2012
'Having It All'? How About: 'Doing The Best I Can'?
Andrew Cohen weighing in as part of The Atlantic's continuing debate on work-life balance:
Anne-Marie Slaughter's remarkable article Why Women Still Can't Have It All clearly has meant different things to different people since it was published and posted. To me, first, it is further evidence of what I have come to believe after 46 years on this planet: most women are not just smarter than most men but braver and more aspirational, too. There is the noble, ancient striving to "have it all." And then there is the earnest and thought-provoking debate, largely between and among women if I am not mistaken, over exactly what that phrase means and whether the quest to achieve it is even worth it.
Men? Please. Such an earnest public conversation on this topic between and among men is impossible to imagine (no matter how hard The Atlantic tries). That's why so many of us diplomatically stayed on the sideline last week. And haven't men as a group largely given up hope of "having it all" anyway? Did we ever have such hope to begin with? I don't remember ever getting a memo on that. Without any statistics to back me up -- how typical of a man, right? -- I humbly suggest that a great many of us long ago decided in any event to focus upon lesser, more obtainable mottoes, like "doing the best I can" or "hanging in there," as we try to juggle work, family, and a life.
Read the rest here.
Posted by Zujaja Tauqeer at 12:22 PM | Permalink
Comments
"further evidence of what I have come to believe after 46 years on this planet: most women are not just smarter than most men but braver and more aspirational, too."
I really hope this guy doesn't raise children with this degree of misandry in his head. You cannot make up for the sins of your father's generation by diminishing your sons. The best thing we can do is leave both the sins and the guilt in the past, it is not the next generation's problem. It's selfish in the extreme to take the course above.
"...There is the noble, ancient striving to "have it all..."
This expectation of and by women isn't ancient. It's only about 30 years old, highly dysfunctional, and it will pass.
Posted by: Bruce | Jun 29, 2012 1:19:49 PM
...and it's passing like a kidney stone.
I don't notice anybody asking a homeless woman or a crack-whore what "having it all" means to them.
HIA is a middle-class virus. There may be no cure.
That wave of feminism sure was a wipe-out.
Posted by: Anita | Jun 29, 2012 4:19:52 PM
As a woman who graduated from college in the 70s, let me tell you what girls then meant when they aimed to "have it all." They meant: a significant career, not just a job; a happy and healthy family, not just neglected kids with upper middle class privileges; and, finally, enough personal time not to feel like a biddy. Where did this thinking come from??? A flourishing career, a family that was doing fine, and time for golf made up the birthright of professional men of that era -- that distant era. It seems like a pipe dream now, but back then, for a woman to strive for, and get, what an educated and motivated man took for granted was fair enough. It's only the last 10 years that have made all this a subject for snark.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 29, 2012 5:10:37 PM
"further evidence of what I have come to believe after 46 years on this planet: most women are not just smarter than most men but braver and more aspirational, too."
How does trash like this get published? Let alone reblogged on 3QD?
Posted by: Ian | Jun 29, 2012 6:21:20 PM
Because it was never possible without a hugely unequal distribution of family duties.
Now that the spread is more equal for the generation raising families in the last 10-20 years (not perfect, but much better), that fact is obvious.
But in the generation after yours, young women were socialized to compete with each other to display "having it all", to meet the expectations of their mother's generation. It will take one more generation, one not raised by the warriors of the 70's, for sanity and true equality to prevail.
Posted by: Bruce | Jun 29, 2012 6:25:41 PM
Too right, Bruce -- if both partners work a 60-hr week on that "career track" job, if both go on KP, if both take on the real needs of the children, and if nobody pleads precedence or entitlement owing to earning more -- if only because everyone earns equal and low shite -- then women coming into their earning years in 2040 will indeed have achieved parity.
Now, what's wrong with that? Nothing? Or, everything?
And, please -- give Second Wave feminists some credit for knowing the rhetoric of the movement when they hear it. Not every girl-child born in the 70s was raised to be a proxy world-beater for a mom who came late to the party.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 29, 2012 6:58:07 PM
The sad truth is that most men are ahead of the curve. They have figured out that "having it all" is an illusion that all too often involves selling out to the consumerist and destructive cultural forces that are wrecking the economy. Women, by and large, buy much more readily and deeply into the current culture of capitalist thriving and overacievement, and then wonder why they feel dissatisfied. Hopefully by next generation, they too, will start to see the evident cracks in our Late Capitalist institutions and structures so that we can finally move toward a more sustainable future, one that actually has the potential to "have it all" if having it all is having a fulfilling, rich, and contented life.
Posted by: Mig | Jun 29, 2012 8:18:13 PM
Hmm. Women being treated just like men. Joining the workforce, increasing the household earning potential, enough to hire outside help to raise the kids, or outsource it to kiddiecare. This was entirely uncontroversial and just to all of us matriculating into adulthood in the sixties and seventies. All us boomers. That huge demographic surge.
But all those double income more buying power couples in the better neighborhoods had an effect. Real estate went up, and the pressure was on single income families to keep up, which they frequently did by abandoning dreams of mom staying home with the kids even if they wanted too. Of course they had a right to do that. Many women chose to work and then drop back into mommy mode for a while. Fine if you could pull it off and that was what floated your boat. But for many that became too difficult in the new economy.
Then too, all those double income families had an effect on the labor force. Supply and demand had the same effect there, flattening wage growth even as desirable real estate continued to climb.
Having it all was not just a woman's dream, it was an emancipated couple dream as well. But there is a measurable degree to which the reach for such a thing made the attainment of it harder for everybody, and impossible for a growing majority, to the point where we are now seemingly worse off than when single-income households were the rule. Stress ensues.
Posted by: Carlos | Jun 29, 2012 9:11:31 PM
Carlos, that's close to the argument that women in the 70s who wanted or needed to work "spoiled things" for men (and for themselves) -- but I know you don't mean it that way. If the needs of families -- and society -- are indeed best served by there being one breadwinner per household, then wouldn't it be fairer if able-bodied educated couples flipped a coin to see which one would assume that role? With half the partnered adults removing themselves from the labor force, overnight, jobs and bennies would have to become more attractive to the many fewer people seeking them, and the quick sale of most houses in upper middle class neighborhoods would depress the housing market so intensely that there would be an instant three-decade price rollback. Henceforth, two-parent families would consist of one wage-slave working two jobs and one homemaker watching Frasier in syndication. Just like way back when. Only, a coin toss would determine which one was which. Am I cooking with gas -- or what?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 29, 2012 11:28:30 PM
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