My mom used to fill out my emergency contact forms with a delightful sense of whimsy. Depending on her mood, she might list her job as genie, savant or enchantress. She finally stopped after the school nurse, looking through my file, excitedly called my mother to ask for advice, since she had described her employment as “psychic friend.”
Though my mother’s sense of humor was the primary motivation for those false listings, I think perhaps there was a subtle cultural subtext at work there that compelled her to fill in the line for “career.” She is a product of the feminist generation, a group of women so proud of breaking through the barriers of the male-dominated workplace that they are sometimes unconsciously condescending toward women like my mother, who decided to forgo a career in order to fully devote herself to raising a family.
The decision of whether or not to give up a career for motherhood is a complicated one. A key tenet of the ‘70s feminists was that they could have it all-no need to sacrifice either the child-rearing or professional instincts. And many of our mothers did just that. Today, however, our generation is distinctly post-feminist, and the prevailing assumption is that most of the necessary work has already been done to remove gender-motivated impediments to employment. There is a general sense that one is no traitor to her gender if she opts to quit her job to raise a family.
As someone who has reaped the benefits of having a mother who unselfishly sacrificed personal aspirations to be a full-time, exceptional parent, I have always sympathized with this school of thought.
Apparently this conundrum has been on the mind of many college-aged young women, according to a Sept. 20 New York Times article, “Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood.” The piece claims that 60 percent of Yale first years` and seniors have already decided they will choose not to work when they have children.
The women quoted were high achievers, with outstanding GPAs and healthy plans for professional paths-these were not gold-diggers attending Yale merely for their M.R.S degree-and they perceived the all-or-nothing option as the best way to carry that high degree of achievement into the realm of motherhood.
My first instinct was to applaud that stance, but then I began to wonder why they were already making such a consequential decision at the age of 18. None were married, engaged or pregnant, so why limit your options before you have to?
The glass ceiling is still in place to a certain degree, largely because many women leave their jobs at pivotal moments to become mothers, and it’s difficult to re-enter the workplace. Fewer women make partner in law firms than do men because of this, and last spring’s controversy over the dearth of national female columnists showed that fields like writing are affected as well.
I don’t think these women should keep their jobs at the expense of children, but no one should enter a career field with the a priori idea that it is just filler until child-rearing. This attitude only results in women cheating themselves out of a meaningful and engaged career.
The Times article also not-so-subtly implied that women at expensive schools like, say, $42,000-a-year Georgetown, were wasting both their tuition dollars and the resources of the school. It all but asked, why devote all that time to mastering Shakespeare and Nietzsche when you’re just going to be reading Pat the Bunny in a few years? And why should the college waste its money on someone who won’t take their expected place as a “leader?”
This brings to the forefront troubling and pervasive attitudes about both education and motherhood. I have always thought that, although on some level education’s point is to teach needed skills, there is a higher purpose, a sort of soul-elevating effect that is particularly implicit in the curriculum of a liberal arts degree. I think an understanding of Shakespeare or Nietzsche deepens your perspective on the world, and a mother benefits from that just as much as a CEO. My own mother is intelligent and well-read, and she never sacrificed intellectual independence. She was a “leader,” too-the primary role model for six children.
There is no easy solution to this, no mental Midol that can ease this particular difficulty of womanhood that men biologically sidestep. I had a male advisor ask me once whether I was planning to have children, with the implication being that I shouldn’t dream so big if I couldn’t wholeheartedly pursue those plans for very long. I refused to answer him, since I have no idea what the answer to that question is, and that’s how it should be at my age.
I can set my sights as high as I want right now, and get as many degrees as I want. Whether or not I become a mother or a CEO, none of my education will have been wasted.
