I
confess I’m not sure what that means.
Does it mean having a career and family? Because given that 71% of women who have children under 18 work, plenty of women “have it all.” Is it not feeling frazzled, making trade-offs, and not knowing if what you are doing is the right thing? Because if that’s the case, no one “has it all.” I admit, I cringed when I read the article. It just seems so childish. Did she really think it was possible to move 4 hours away, leave her kids behind, and still think she was going to be involved in the day-to-day of her kids’ lives? She had some hard decisions to make, like turn the job down, move her kids with her, or be resigned to knowing she wasn’t going to be as hands-on as she would have liked with her kids. She chose the last option, didn’t like the results, and decides to blame feminism for the whole enterprise not working out. But the thing is, a guy in her shoes would have had the exact same options to choose from, and may have felt the exact same way about being so far from his children. Is that also a failure of feminism?
Does it mean having a career and family? Because given that 71% of women who have children under 18 work, plenty of women “have it all.” Is it not feeling frazzled, making trade-offs, and not knowing if what you are doing is the right thing? Because if that’s the case, no one “has it all.” I admit, I cringed when I read the article. It just seems so childish. Did she really think it was possible to move 4 hours away, leave her kids behind, and still think she was going to be involved in the day-to-day of her kids’ lives? She had some hard decisions to make, like turn the job down, move her kids with her, or be resigned to knowing she wasn’t going to be as hands-on as she would have liked with her kids. She chose the last option, didn’t like the results, and decides to blame feminism for the whole enterprise not working out. But the thing is, a guy in her shoes would have had the exact same options to choose from, and may have felt the exact same way about being so far from his children. Is that also a failure of feminism?
If
modern feminism is about choices, there is still no guarantee that a person is
protected from feeling regret, sadness, or anger when they exercise their
options, and things don’t turn out the way they would prefer. It isn’t feminism’s job to shield you from
the consequences of your own decision making.
Life is about the road not taken, and by trying to have it all, whatever
that means, is trying to immaturely going down both paths simultaneously. In the real world, that simply can’t happen,
and it’s better if more people recognize this.
"I confess I’m not sure what that means."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Every time I hear someone ask "can women have it all?" my response is "Well, what do you mean by 'all'?" I really hate that people are viewing this issue (like pretty much every other one involving mothers) through this black-and-white filter and refusing to acknowledge the huge number of factors involved in every family.
I totally agree with you, both.
ReplyDeleteI just love how so many women like to say they aren't feminist and say feminists are radical or "feminazis," but then feminism is still supposed to fix it all because feminism promised them something. Or worse, because everything in life is all about what feminism/the government/society can give to you, personally (which is a problem in politics, generally, these days).
Also, I think life is largely about the choices you make, and so, yes: you cannot make every choice. That would be a choose-your-own-adventure book. In real life, you have to commit and choose what is important to you. The awesome thing about the feminist movement is that where my mother and grandmother were barred from all kinds of schools and professions, my daughter will be barred from almost none of them. That's pretty darn fast progress.
It is fast progress, and I think the younger generation understands a little bit more about the different choices and trade-offs one must make at various stages of life. Which is not to say there are aren't institutional changes which still need to be made, there are. But with that said, not every position is meant for every person. That has always been the case, and not the fault of feminism. Like beadgirl said, there are a huge number of factors involved in every family.
ReplyDeleteI can't even read the article. My brain is smoking, my eyes are swimming and I needed to leave 5 mins ago to pick up Emma at pre-school. Just moving means I get to go home to my second and third job of dinner, quality time with a 5 year old, and unpacking. If this is having it all, you can have it I don't want it, it is too much work for me!
ReplyDeleteI think I know what women might mean when they question whether they can "have it all." They mean that they want to be both a great mother and great at their career. And in that sense, sometimes it is hard to feel that we "have it all" because we worry that we aren't being great at both. We worry about the trade-offs we are making.
ReplyDeleteIs feminism to blame? I suppose so, since if it weren't for feminism, I wouldn't be trying the crazy work-family balance that I'm currently attempting. Instead, I'd be cleaning the house all day and going just as crazy while caring for the children, but with no option to use the other part of my brain to have any profession I choose. So of course we wouldn't want it any other way, and it's just silly to blame feminism for this problem. It's a good problem to have. We get to choose -- somewhat -- how to try to balance motherhood and career. But it's not an easy balance, and I think society has more work to do to make it better.
The question is how to deal with the problem that women, more than men, feel stressed about being both good parents and good professionals. This is slowly changing; my husband and I share many of the household chores and the caring for our boys, and I know several families in which it was the husband who sacrificed his career (for a while) to stay home with kids. But still, biological factors exist(the women are the ones bearing the children and, often, breastfeeding them), and societal norms exist, which make it harder for mothers than fathers.
I would love it if we had an economy in which one parent -- mother or father, in near-equal numbers!-- could afford to stay home at least part time while rearing young children. But the reality is that for most families, it takes two incomes now to stay in the middle class. And employees are working long hours. And childcare in this country is expensive and not always of good quality. And so on. It's hard on families!
I feel so lucky because I do feel, almost, that I "have it all." I have found a job -- teaching 3/4 time, some days and some evenings -- that is immensely rewarding professionally and also allows me to be home much of the time with my little ones (which is even more rewarding, in a different way). But I can still see the impact on my career of my choice (lower income over time, slower advancement). That's one of the stressful parts for women.
But no - don't blame feminism for giving women choices. Let's just find more ways to honor both parenting and careers, and, as women, to stress less about them!
I should stop now!
Heather
I think the answer, if there is an "answer," is that we need to be more conscious about what kind of lives and what kind of society we want. I suspect most people (women AND men) would like to see us move more towards a work life/family life balance that allows more family life. But to get there, we have to make un-capitalist choices in our society. Maybe not even strictly un-capitalist, so much as outside-the-box: people work better/more efficiently when they are happier and healthier. So we should create preferences for alternative work schedules, job-sharing, and telecommuting. But it would help if companies could think that way. So we may need to rethink the way we structure companies, and they things we expect from them. And we cold create a federal framework for child care or at least universal public preschool. And to do some of that, we probably need more women in politics. Which is hard to accomplish, because politics requires more work life than most women are willing to give, and more money than most women have.
ReplyDelete"They mean that they want to be both a great mother and great at their career. And in that sense, sometimes it is hard to feel that we "have it all" because we worry that we aren't being great at both. We worry about the trade-offs we are making."
ReplyDeleteIt also matters what we mean by great -- gourmet, nutritious, home-cooked meals for our families? Making lots of money? Having a high-powered career? Attending every single school event? I'm "great" at my career in the sense that I am really good at my job and my supervisors keep giving me more training and responsibility. Yet I only work 20 hours a week (never mind all the weeks I can't work at all because of the kids) for crap pay and no benefits, I would have a hard time getting a full-time position (even if I could handle it right now), and my work is largely invisible to society.
It's like Emily said -- we have to think about what kind of a life we want for ourselves and our families. And I think the real, underlying problem is that our economic system is broken in so many ways, so that people are working far longer for less pay and fewer benefits and no job security, and meanwhile the consumer-driven aspects of society are telling us we have to buy lots of fancy stuff and live glamorously, and the ideological components of society seem to think that there is only one way to be good mother and those who approach it differently are bad bad bad.
...we have to think about what kind of a life we want for ourselves and our families. And I think the real, underlying problem is that our economic system is broken in so many ways, so that people are working far longer for less pay and fewer benefits and no job security, and meanwhile the consumer-driven aspects of society are telling us we have to buy lots of fancy stuff and live glamorously, and the ideological components of society seem to think that there is only one way to be good mother and those who approach it differently are bad bad bad.
ReplyDeleteI agree with beadgirl here. There is definitely a disconnect between where our economy is headed, and the media driven message about what our lives should look like. The expectations have gotten higher, while the means for achieving those expectations has shrunk. Some people, seeing the disconnect, decide to prioritize what is personally important to them, and chuck the rest, while others try to live up to everything, and almost inevitably feel like failures doing so.
That, and I think we are hard on each other. Women are hard on each other. We expect ourselves and each other to look good all the time, we expect ourselves to do a perfect job parenting - and there are so many different ideas of what that means it can make you dizzy, and we expect ourselves to not let any of that hold us back or impact our work lives. AND part of what we do to let off steam is gossip, which can be okay or can exacerbate the expectations game. The looks and gossip things - those are deeply rooted in our culture, though, so I'm not sure they can be changed easily.
ReplyDelete