You Can Have It All (Just Not At The Same Time)
by Andrea
Hayhurst
zone3
I was glancing at a local paper recently when an ad for a nearby health
club caught my attention. There was a picture of an attractive,
well-dressed woman who appeared to be pregnant. The ad started off by
giving her first name and followed with a list of the essential elements
of her life, including the fact that she has been married for 12 years,
has 2 kids (with another on the way) and owns her own business. The
message of the ad was that not only does she take care of her family, but
she also makes time for herself by dropping her kids off at the health
club’s kiddie room so she can Aqua-cise on a regular basis and treats
herself to a massage at the club’s spa twice a month.
There was a
time, not so long ago, that seeing that health club ad would have evoked
in me a mixture of envy, insecurity and guilt. Those advertisements and
articles used to make me feel, as I’m sure they do many women, that there
was something wrong with me. As a professional woman with a law degree, a
good job, stable marriage and a beautiful daughter, why did I feel
miserable most of the time? Why did other women seem to juggle it all so
effortlessly while I felt that the minute I stepped out of bed every
morning I was in a race to beat the clock, a race which wouldn’t end until
close to 18 hours later?
It wasn’t until I had a second child and
slowed down for a while after her birth that I was able to recognize and
come to terms with what I had been feeling for so long. I was also able to
take a look around and what I saw was that the majority of women in this
country seem to be feeling the same things I had. I heard and saw the same
disillusionment from ordinary women such as myself and it didn’t seem to
matter whether they had professional degrees or not. The hair colorist
seemed to be just as disillusioned as the medical doctor. I also began to
notice more articles about women choosing to leave the workplace to raise
their children. I even read recent popular works of fiction in which the
use of nannies and the struggle by one or more female characters to “have
it all” was not portrayed as something to be desired.
It seems that a
new word has even been coined to describe this phenomenon-it’s called
“sequencing”. To my understanding, it’s supposed to convey the notion that
at certain points in their lifetime women need, or want, to concentrate on
different aspects of their lives and that once children enter the picture
women should be able to step away from the workplace for however long they
deem necessary in order to concentrate on their children and families. I
knew that there must really be some mighty strong winds of change in the
air when I heard a medical student state on a nationally syndicated
program that once she was married her family and children would come first
and that she did not intend on being a working mother. She went on to say
that she saw her own mother do it and was placed in day care herself from
the time she was very young and that she did not want to raise her own
children in that way. She said that she felt so strongly about it that if
she were to get married while she was still in medical school that she
would drop out since it would be useless to pursue a medical degree if she
was that close to starting a family.
I also read the now often cited
piece by Lisa Belkin in the New York Times about all those professional
women “opting out” of their careers to be stay at home moms. But I also
saw many non-professional women doing the same thing. I think the article
in the Times was only touching the tip of the iceberg. Yes, well-educated,
professional women are giving up their careers to raise families, but so
are women without advanced degrees. I think that this trend toward putting
aside work to concentrate on family is about women in general in this
country, not just about one subcategory of women.
According to the
2000 census, the number of children being cared for by stay at home moms
has increased nearly 13 percent in less then a decade. Two-thirds of
mothers aged 25 to 44 now work less then 40 hours a week. Fifty-five
percent of women with infants were in the labor force in June 2000 (the
most recent data), compared with 59 percent just two years earlier. That
was the first drop in that number in a full quarter century. And as for
the previously mentioned professional women, between a quarter and a third
are out of the work force.
My informal education about the topic
seemed to indicate to me that contrary to what women in their 30's had all
been raised to expect, it was nearly impossible to have a career, a
contented marriage, children and time for yourself all at the same time.
Not in a 24 hour day anyway. I still don’t know how those supposed
“superwomen” that I mentioned in the beginning of the article do it, but I
am certain that they are in a very small majority. And I definitely know
that I no longer feel either envious, insecure or guilty. As a matter of
fact, the first word that comes to mind when I see those ads and articles
nowadays is pity. No matter how easy those women make it look, no one can
keep all those balls in the air for very long before getting very, very
tired. Not even Superwoman.
It also seems that public opinion supports
the novel idea of people actually raising their own children. A Gallup
survey last year found that only 13 percent of the respondents thought
that the ideal family situation was for both parents to work full time
outside the home. Forty-one percent believed the ideal situation was for
one parent to work full time while the other worked either part time or at
home. And another forty-one percent felt that one parent should stay at
home solely to raise the children while the other parent worked to support
the family. Surprisingly, the Department of Labor ranks full-time
homemakers as the largest single job category in the country. And the
numbers are probably even larger then we know, since mothers who do any
paid work at all out of their home, even if just for a few hours a week,
aren’t even considered full-time homemakers by the government, even if
that’s how they categorize themselves.
Before going any further, let
me say that I wholeheartedly believe in all the feminist principles and
ideals that women fought so long and hard to achieve. I think that women
absolutely should be free to pursue whatever path they choose and be able
to do so without being pigeonholed by their gender. However, I also think
that women for a long time felt that they had to be exactly like men to be
considered equals with them. After the feminist movement, women entered
the corporate world and began to compete on a man’s playing field. For
decades now, women have been attempting to compete, achieve and succeed in
a man’s world. But it seems that we women have forgotten that we are very
different from men in some very real and important ways. But that in no
way makes us less equal. While men and women are very different, those
differences, on the whole, are complementary. I think that for too long
now women have been trying to push their femininity to the background in
order to compete in a man’s world. Isn’t it time we simply acknowledge the
very real differences between the sexes and be proud of them? Women
shouldn’t have to be carbon copies of men in order to gain equality.
Different doesn’t mean better or worse-it just means different.
Consider a rather thought provoking theory propounded by the authors
Coney & Mackey in their 1998 article “Cultural Evolution & Gender
Roles: Advantage...Patriarchy.” In it, they state that evolution is not in
favor of females overtaking the work force. They note in their study that
across the world the female is expected to be the primary caretaker. This
notion arose out of the fact that in the past “if a job or task interfered
with mothering, then that task was given to men.” This would explain why
women are genetically programmed to be caretakers. Coney & Mackey go
on to establish that the expansion of opportunities, both in education and
other areas, for women is correlated with a reduction in fertility in that
cultural group. Consequently, they conclude that groups which expect and
emphasize women to take on the mother role will eventually replace other
societies. That’s a pretty powerful theory, but their hypothesis is based
on solid research and data.
I also know that there are plenty of
examples out there of men raising children and same sex partners adopting
children and having families of their own and I have no doubt that they do
an excellent job of caring for those children. I simply think that as a
society maybe it is finally time for us to acknowledge that women on the
whole do tend to have an inherent caretaker instinct that does not exist,
at least not in the same way, in men. I mean, from the beginning of time
women and men have just been put together differently, both in a physical
and mental/emotional sense. Even in our earliest days, men were the
hunters and gatherers and women were the ones who did the nurturing. I
don’t think it was an accident that society, on the whole, tended to
organize itself around the family as the central unit with the male
partner providing for the family in an economic sense and the female
partner tending to care for the home and family in the domestic sense.
Again, I am not trying to perpetuate stereotypes, but simply trying to
acknowledge the very real reason that women today feel torn between their
families and work lives in a way that very few men do. Instead of
demanding equality on our own terms it seems to me that women have
demanded equality on men’s terms.. No wonder women now feel such conflict
in their lives. They are attempting on one hand to do everything a man has
traditionally done and at the same time they cannot give up the real sense
of obligation they often feel to be the nurturer and caretaker of their
home and family. So they end up taking on both roles and soon realize that
there is not enough time in the day to do both. And when you add children
to that mix, the conflict becomes even more apparent.
Men, on the
other hand, don’t face the same sort of conflict in their lives since they
have never, as a group, attempted to take on two roles at the same time.
Sure, there was a time when men were encouraged to “get in touch with
their feminine side” and there is no doubt that as a result of the
feminist movement men are much more hands on around the house and with the
kids then they once were, but men have never felt the need to take on the
caretaker role in order to prove themselves entitled to anything.
With
women, however, it’s a different story. We go into the office and work
hard at showing the corporate world qualities that are traditionally
considered masculine in nature such as competitiveness and winning at all
costs and then have to do a 180 degree turn at the end of the workday when
we go home to our families who are expecting to see a wife and mother walk
through the door and fix a tasty, nutritious and well-balanced
dinner.
Let’s face it, very few men have qualms about using slice and
bake cookie dough for their child’s annual school bake sale or being too
overscheduled to make every dance recital, school play or PTA meeting.
When a woman frets about these things her husband will tell her not to
worry, no one could possibly expect a woman with a full time job to worry
about baking home made cookies or attending every school function that’s
scheduled smack in the middle of the day. What the men don’t get is that
WOMEN do expect it. As a matter of fact, working women expect it of
themselves more then anyone else. We feel guilty because we see those
domestic functions as being our area of expertise and god help any husband
who innocently suggests that he step in to help out with one of these
tasks. Women may complain that they need more help or support from their
husbands, but they also don’t want any of the traditional job
responsibilities that go with the “mommy” title being appropriated by them
either.
I made the decision to be a stay at home mom after my second
daughter was born. Once I committed to the decision I felt like the weight
of the world had suddenly been lifted from my shoulders. For a short
while, I felt like I was betraying the entire feminist movement, which in
earlier days I had quite vocally supported. But the more I thought about
it, the more I realized that more then anything else, I finally felt like
I was being true to myself. And isn’t that what the real goal of the
feminist movement was all about? I don’t need to prove to myself or any
man that I can earn a paycheck and “make it” in a man’s world. I’ve
already “made it” in my own world. I’m surprisingly content being the
domestic caretaker of my family. I revel in trying new recipes and doing
all those other domestic tasks that I never had time for before I made my
decision to be a full time mom. I will even admit to having spent hours
making cranberry and popcorn garland for the family Christmas tree this
past holiday season, a task which I previously wouldn’t have even
considered given my former notorious lack of spare time. But you know
what? I’m not ashamed of that one little bit. And you know what else? When
I fall into bed every night absolutely exhausted from taking care of my
two toddlers, at least I know that I have spent my day making a difference
in their lives, no matter how insignificant that day’s activities may have
been. When I worked outside the home and fell into bed exhausted every
night I felt miserable because I had spent my day doing a variety of
completely mind numbing activities for a faceless corporate entity and
working my tail off to put a couple more million into some CEO’s pocket
whose name I can honestly say I don’t even recall.
I’m not trying to
make women who work outside the home feel guilty or ashamed for their
choices either. I am perfectly aware of the harsh realities which dictate
some family situations. All I’m trying to say is that I think women have
painted themselves into a corner. We can be our husband’s equals without
having to live in their world. Women should learn how to celebrate and be
proud of the differences between the sexes. So go ahead and be that
domestic goddess if that’s what you truly want and don’t let anyone make
you feel anything less then proud for having the courage to live the life
you want! I absolutely love this quote from an unidentified woman who was
interviewed for a book entitled “And What Do You Do? When Women Choose to
Stay Home”. She said that her favorite answer to “ And what do you do?”
was “I’m changing the world.........one child at a time.” We’ve come a
long way, baby!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Hayhurst is a freelance writer who specializes in writing
articles about family and women's issues as well as fiction novels. The
author can be contacted via email at ahyhrst12@aol.com for further
information.
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