Tango, June 30th, 2007
I spent many years establishing a rewarding professional life before having two children — just as my biological clock was winding down—and ever since then I’ve felt as though I won the lottery. A great career! A wonderful husband! Two beautiful, healthy children! Lucky me!Imagine my surprise, then, to learn that Having It All—the quintessential goal of recent generations of women—has gone out of fashion. Who knew?
One day I opened the newspaper to discover that today’s young moms have nothing but scorn for the choices we baby boomers made. “The new breed of wife has learned from the ’80s and ’90s wives that ‘having it all’ is a myth,” proclaimed Susan Shapiro Barash, a gender-studies professor at Marymount Manhattan College, in the New York Post.
A myth? Gosh, you could have fooled me. My own life, and those of countless peers who also enjoy happy families and challenging careers, seemed to have worked out so well.
But apparently we’ve been deluded—or simply misguided—in our pursuit of the goals we set out to achieve so long ago.
According to Barash’s book, The New Wife: The Evolving Role of the American Wife, this superior young woman has no intention of wrestling with the inevitable hassles of juggling a job and a family. She has a far cushier existence in mind for herself. “She wants a pleasurable, struggle-free life—and has no doubt she can get it,” Barash, who interviewed 500 women around the country, told the Post.
A pleasurable, struggle-free life—boy, that sounds nice! Perhaps this is why the New Wife has so much company in going after her goal. Anyone who reads the news has been bombarded lately with “trend” stories about women giving up their careers to become stay-at-home moms—picture-perfect domestic icons who dote on their kids, attend every soccer game, and volunteer at school fairs. Needless to say, all this free time is made possible by the income-producing labors of their hard-working (and high-earning) husbands.
And, yes, it really is a trend. Reversing a pattern that has held for nearly 30 years, the workforce participation of married mothers with a child less than one year old dropped from 59 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In November, the Census Bureau announced that an estimated 5.4 million mothers stayed home with their children in 2003–about 850,000 more than did so a decade ago. Another study cited by The New York Times found that “twice as many Gen-X mothers as boomer mothers spent more than 12 hours a day” attending to child-rearing and household responsibilities.
Of course the media jumped right on the bandwagon, trumpeting “The Case for Staying Home,” as Time magazine put it in one cover story–as if no one had ever done such a remarkable thing before. Conservative commentators reacted with
predictable glee, congratulating these full-time moms and trashing the older pioneers who broke down workplace barriers for women in a previous era. “A generational shift has also taken place, as young women are less interested in taking orders from the feminist ’sisterhood,’”� sneered columnist Rich Lowry in the New York Post. It seems that an entire generation of younger women has unwittingly embarked on a remake of Back to the Future. See the new wives repeat the past! Watch them make the same mistakes their grandmothers did!
Now call me old-fashioned if you want, but all I can say about these clueless yummy mummies is: When will they ever learn?
Those of us who came of age during the exhilarating heyday of the women’s movement are watching these developments with a heavy heart. Back when I was starting my career, a popular slogan cautioned women that any
non-working mother is “just one husband away from welfare.” Divorce rates were surging, and women discovered that the role of wife and mother lacked job security, not to mention pension benefits.
If a man suddenly took a fancy to a secretary half his age, his wife could be discarded like yesterday’s garbage. Errant husbands often didn’t pay child support or alimony, even when ordered to do so by the courts. Too many women in my mother’s generation got blindsided; their daughters vowed never to let themselves be so vulnerable. Why risk impoverishment in one’s later years at the whim of an aging male who just might have a midlife crisis and trade his faithful wife for a younger model?
Even when our parents stayed married, it was painfully apparent that many mothers were frustrated by a domestic life that didn’t provide the independent identity or the manifold satisfactions offered by a career. Not that being a mother isn’t a rewarding job, but after all, men don’t have to choose between being parents and being economically self-sufficient professionals, so why should women?
Or so we thought back then. Now, in Manhattan, where I live, school bake-sales are run by hyper-efficient executive
types with Harvard MBAs and law degrees who have given up their careers to become full-time moms. They perform wonderful services for their communities by volunteering, and many schools, charities, and other nonprofit organizations are profoundly grateful for their contributions. As are their families, I’m sure. When mothers drop out of the workforce,
it’s usually with the best possible motives. Instead of being frantic all the time, they will be able to concentrate solely on their children and husbands, creating lovely home lives and nurturing their families in every possible way–or so the theory goes. The experience of previous generations notwithstanding, Barash found that these women share an almost mystical belief that such devotion will ensure the success of their marriages. “They feel there will be less conflict; they won’t be
torn in so many directions,” she explains. “They’re saying, ‘I’m not going to stress out my marriage and get divorced.’”
It’s a great idea–unless something goes wrong. What are these über-moms going to do if they end up having to support themselves? When you ask them about that possibility, they generally look shocked and offended. “My marriage is terrific,” they say stiffly, glaring as if you’d just turned into the skunk at the garden party. They assure you that their
wedded bliss will last forever.
And yet, since almost half of all American marriages continue to end in divorce, it’s a good bet that half of these women are eventually going to be retired from their wifely roles–just like those 1950s stay-at-home moms.
The difference, as they hasten to point out, is that these contemporary women often boast impressive credentials. They seem to think they can dust off their resumés and waltz back into the workforce whenever they want. But judging by the experiences of my own friends, it isn’t so easy to find a full-time position with health care and other benefits if you’re over 40 and have been out of the game for a while.
My friend Beth’s* marriage to a very successful man lasted for 20 years, during which she stayed home to raise their children. When she was in her mid-forties, her husband abruptly left her for another woman. Beth tried desperately to rejoin the workforce, but was unable to find a steady job. Although her former husband paid the required alimony and
child support, their kids have grown up, and his payments ended this year. Beth is unlikely ever to earn any substantial income, and she wonders how she will support herself for the rest of her life.
Another friend, Daphne* quit a lucrative career to stay home and raise her three children. On her 11th wedding anniversary, her husband announced that he was leaving her. Daphne immediately started looking for work,
only to be greeted by closed doors.
After six years, she’s still trying to find a decent job. She is currently working part-time, for so little money she can barely afford childcare. Her ex-husband–who remarried immediately and had another baby with his new wife–does not
keep up with his child-support payments, and Daphne’s financial situation is precarious. She has already downsized, selling her big house and moving to a small one, which turned out to be infested with rats and contaminated by mold. Despite her long-ago success, the career train now seems to have passed her by, and she feels tremendous anxiety about her financial future.
Just as my friends did, most women who stop working seem to assume they can go back whenever it’s convenient for them. Indeed, the majority fully intend to do so, according to the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York. A recent poll of nearly 500 well-educated women who left their jobs primarily to stay home with their families found that 66 percent wanted
to return to work eventually.
These women believe that their own wonderful attributes, combined with their experiences at home, will qualify them for a bravura comeback. “I still have education, brainpower, and a mom’s multifaceted attention to detail. That’s a hot commodity in the business world,” boasted one mother quoted in the Post’s article on the new breed of wives.
According to Barash, such stay-at-home moms typically share that kind of confidence. “Perhaps a false confidence,” the author admits. “What they’re saying is, ‘I’ll go back to work when I’m ready, and I’ll be just fine; someone will take me.’ They have an almost cavalier attitude about it. They believe they can march into a law firm at age 38 and say, ‘I quit in my twenties,’ and they’ll be able to get back in there. They have this naïve belief that the old rules don’t apply to them.”
They may be in for quite a shock. A recent Wall Street Journal investigation found that women are kidding themselves if they think that volunteer work and grocery shopping can compete with years of professional accomplishments on the resumés of those who stayed the course in the workplace.
“Many professional women who quit their jobs to raise children are trying to go back, and they’re finding it harder than they ever imagined,” reported the Journal. “The sluggish economy has made jobs scarce for many well-qualified candidates, let alone those with gaps in their resumés. With advances in technology, women who have taken even a few years off likely have fallen behind or feel out of touch. The job-hopping of the past decade has meant many of their old professional contacts, mentors, and networks are dispersed.”
The Journal illustrated this dilemma with a sobering parade of women shocked by the tremendous obstacles they’ve encountered in attempting to reenter the workforce. A former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office stayed home until her daughter went to college, whereupon she contacted more than 100 employers in a fruitless search for a new position. She was even rejected for a job as an executive assistant. “I refuse to accept the fact that I’m not employable,” she said, still jobless. “I always thought it would never be hard for me to go back to work.”
She might as well have believed in a fairy godmother.
Another woman gave up her teaching career to stay home with her kids. When she and her husband divorced, she discovered that the only position she could get was a minimum-wage, entry-level job at Starbucks, which she was forced to take.
“If an employer uses the criteria ‘We will hire the best person for the job,’ I think it’s very difficult to choose someone who’s been out of the work force that long,” Tory Johnson, the chief executive of Women for Hire, told the Journal.
Another reason is the ugly but pervasive reality of age discrimination. If you’re over a certain age–and it’s a sliding scale, depending on your field, the current economy, and other variables–you’re just not what most employers are looking for. Even if you’re a male. Recently a very talented man I know was demoted from a job he loved and did brilliantly, in favor of a younger peer whose abilities were widely viewed as inferior. “Why are you doing this�” my friend asked his boss. “I’m better at this job than he is.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said his boss, “but it’s about potential.”
When you’re 30, you still have what employers see as “potential.” When you’re 50–or if you’re female, maybe a minute over 40–you don’t. That’s the hard truth, no matter what some women may choose to believe. I recently ran into a female executive at the company where my friend Beth used to work. When she told me to give Beth her regards, I glared at her. “Why wouldn’t you people let her back in?” I asked indignantly. “She can’t find a job. You know how good she is! What’s the problem?”
The executive shrugged. “She’s an older woman, and they don’t want older women,” she said. “It’s as simple as that.” We both knew that by “they,” she was referring to the men who run the corporation.
I’m not claiming it’s impossible for a woman to leave the work force and return successfully; some manage this feat, although many have to settle for lesser jobs or lower incomes. Nor am I saying it’s always wrong to stay home; no doubt women who are lucky enough to be supported throughout their lives by devoted, healthy, well-to-do husbands would
argue that being a full-time wife was an excellent career choice. But that choice can turn into a catastrophe for those who aren’t so fortunate.
Even if your spouse lives up to his wedding vows, his fidelity won’t help you support your family if he dies. Another woman I know is married to a man with such an illustrious career that she felt free to focus on the needs of their four children.
She and her husband are only in their forties, but he has just been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that may not give him much time to live. I know half a dozen other people in their forties, all parents ofyoung children, who have died of cancer or received terminal diagnoses in the last couple of years. (And that’s not even counting the husbands
who dropped dead of heart attacks.) The wives lie awake at three a.m. in a cold sweat, wondering how their families are going to survive.
I understand the desire for a “pleasurable, struggle-free life”–and if you know where to get one, please sign me up, too. But that isn’t the nature of the human condition; most lives contain many struggles of various kinds. The idea
that you can escape such challenges forever is a fantasy few people will find borne out by reality.
Which is why I cannot comprehend the current epidemic of wishful thinking among younger wives who assume they can always depend on their husbands financially. The risk they are taking amazes me. These are smart, capable women who would never be so rash as to raise a family without medical insurance or life insurance or home insurance, but who think
nothing of betting everything they’ve got on a lifelong run of good luck that isn’t supported by the actuarial tables. Since women typically live longer than men, most of us end up alone eventually, matter what kind of guy we marry. Can we really afford to stake our children’s futures, not to mention our own, on a roll of the cosmic dice?
Nor do I understand the backlash against the whole idea of “having it all.” Yes, it’s hard to juggle the demands of a job and the needs of your family. Yes, you often feel frazzled. Yes, it’s true that you don’t get enough time for yourself.
But it’s not true that your children necessarily get shortchanged; studies show that working women spend almost as much time with their kids as do stay-at-home moms. And what working mothers get in return for their labor is priceless: not only the incomparable joy of family life plus the tremendous satisfaction of earning their own individual successes,
but also the peace of mind in knowing they can always take care of themselves and their kids if something happens to their partners.
Or to their partners’ incomes. A few months ago, the company where my husband worked was sold. The new owner fired my husband’s boss, replacing her with a younger man who informed my husband that his services were no longer needed. Nothing personal: just business. Out with the old team, in with the new.
My husband works in a field that was hard-hit by the recent recession. Jobs at his level are scarce, and we were both very worried. But I still had my job, and we knew we could survive.
As it turned out, he found another job immediately. But I shudder to think about the terror we would have felt if I had been a stay-at-home wife and he had endured a long period of unemployment. How would we have managed?
My career has given me far more than a salary, however.
There have been many days when I agonized over the inevitable conflicts between work and family. But in the 16 years I’ve been a working mother, I have never once regretted my immeasurably rewarding life as a married woman with children and a career.
And after all, the job of raising children doesn’t last forever. As my kids turn into ever-more-independent teenagers, the prospect of the empty nest looms in the not-so-distant future. I know I’ll miss them desperately when they go off to college, but I’ll still have my own exciting, intellectually stimulating life to focus on. I can’t imagine how bereft I’d feel if I didn’t have my work to sustain me when they’re gone.
“Having it all” may be out of fashion now, but there hasn’t been a single moment when I didn’t feel unbelievably lucky to have engaged in the struggles necessary to attain that goal. To my husband, I am an equal partner in a marriage founded
on the premise that we share all the responsibilities for our family, both financial and domestic. And my children see me as having just as important a professional identity as their father does. Neither my daughter nor my son has to look further than our own home for role models on how to combine work and family life, no matter what your gender.
If having it all is a myth, you sure can’t prove it by me. As far as I’m concerned, this is as good as it gets.
