work/life

I ‘fess up: I struggled with the tone in my post below, as my live-in editor Marco, who I made read it twice before I hit “publish” can attest. My ethics dictate that I try (at least) to take issue without trashing, cause really, who needs more trash in this world. On that note, some of the best, aka most balanced, posts and commentaries I’ve seen so far: Joan Walsh on Salon and Mojo Mom , and an interesting bit about a review Mojo submitted to Amazon which Amazon wouldn’t publish.

PS. Leslie, if you are reading, I look forward to meeting you, and to engaging in conversation not only about the issues, but about reception — an issue that intrigues me, politically and personally and professionally, to no end.

Tonight I’m going to hear Leslie Bennetts interviewed by Elissa Schappell at the New York Public Library. Bennetts is also speaking at a salon I’m a part of, next week. So, to prepare for said events, I excitedly started reading her book, The Feminine Mistake — how can anyone who has written about Betty Friedan pass up a book with such a title? But the prologue itself gives me pause. Not for the reasons expressed by the “stay at home brigade,” as Bennetts calls them in her retort on HuffPost to the barrage of opening critiques she’s received from SAHMs, but on behalf of my generation.

Well-intentioned and heartfelt, Bennett’s writing nevertheless positions younger women as in need of cautionary tales. Some of us, no doubt, do, and Feminine Mistake is full of important information about what happens when opt-out wives get left. But many others of us clamor instead for tales of workplaces that have realized women (AND men) have families. Where are the cautionary tales aimed at corporations about how bottom lines suffer when they fail to retain their women? Or the cautionary tales aimed at young husbands about how miserable they’ll be if they opt out of time at home with the kids?

Thumbing ahead, Bennetts writes about the difficulties of reentering the work force and the penalties women pay for their time out (and the need for crucial changes in the divorce laws). But the tone set early on (and Leslie, please tell me I’m off – I want to be – I’m still in the early chapters) seems to focus on personal decision-making, rather than much-needed structural (aka workplace) change.

Wait – I’m switching to second person, so let’s go with it:

Leslie, you completely have me when you wrote that the real issues behind women’s work/life predicaments have nothing to do with words like “choice” and “values.” But then you write about the “willfully retrograde choice” of women who opt out on the very next page. If you ask me, the “feminine mistake” has been — to borrow a phrase from my elders — a focus on the personal at the expense of the political, the structural. I think you and I will both agree that words like “options” are meaningless until we are talking about viable workplace options — not the “option” to work or not.

A personal postscript: Raised to be my own person and divorced at 35, I have never for a moment expected that a husband would support me for the duration. These young women who keep appearing in print are certainly not the majority. As I thought Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic Policy Research rather convincingly documented, the “opt out” phenomenon named by Lisa Belkin back in 2003 was not hard evidence of a generation bailing on work but rather a dip in women’s labor market participation due to a recession. Why do young mothers, instead, keep getting castigated, warned, and blamed? (I’m thinking of other books here…more soon.)

Attention heavily degreed women-with-babies: I love this. Caroline Grant, movie columnist for the blog Literary Mama, is coming out with a book called Mama, PhD, about, what else? Mamas with PhDs. Keep an eye out for more about it on MotherTalk.

I’ve added a list (scroll down, it’s on the left) of forthcoming books by savvy feminist scholars to watch out for – and will continue to try to list em as I see em going forth.

Did you catch that front page story in Sunday’s New York Times on “amazing girls”? My gal Courtney Martin has a whole book on the topic (and much more) coming out April 17. It’s called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. (Courtney and I are teaming up to do some joint speaking this summer about feminism’s daughters. Stay tuned…) For a great counterpoint to the article, though, check out Courtney’s post on feministing.com and Patti Binder on What’s Good for Girls.

The other book I’ve listed comes out around Mother’s Day and promises to clear up a lot of the annoying myths about “opting out.” Penned by sociologist Pamela Stone, it’s called Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home. Publisher’s Weekly writes, “Stone’s revealing study adds an important counterpoint to Leslie Bennetts’s forthcoming The Feminine Mistake.” I’m not sure yet how it’s a “counterpoint” (I need to read it!), but I urge people to check it out. It looks at what really happens to women who opt out of the workplace and their careers for the sake of their families and sheds light on new research about the American workplace. (Hint: The dirty little secret of today’s work world is that it is not providing work-committed women with the support they need to keep working once they become mothers.)

On a related note, and in case anyone missed it, a special March issue of The American Prospect grew out of an October 2006 work/family research conference sponsored by the Council on Contemporary Families and looks at “Why Can’t America Have a Family-Friendly Workplace.” The issue includes articles by the creme de la creme on this topic: Joan Williams, Kathleen Gerson, Heather Bousey, Janet Gornick, Scott Coltrane, Tamara Draut, Jodie Levin-Epstein, Ellen Bravo, Ann Friedman. These people are all doing amazing work and, like Pamela Stone, merit increased visibility for their solid and grounded research.

Friends have started to ask me what I’m working on next. I’m thinking of working on a book with the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership. As such, I’ve been scouring the shelves for books on women and leadership. (If you know of any good ones, please send me a post!)

As far as I can tell so far, the few books on leadership aimed at women seem to focus on ambition, promise power, and encourage readers to cultivate a “bad girl” attitude in order to achieve it. Their titles are telling: Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead But Gutsy Girls Do, by Kate White. Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a SmartMouth Goddess by Susan Jane Gilman. And most recently, Am-BITCH-ous: Learn to Be Her Now by Debra Condren. I have to say, I love absorbing these books and more or less laud their bad-ass bad-girlness. But I have two qualms with this general approach:

1) Teaching women to be smartmouthed goddesses or gutsy and amBITCHous can’t take place in a vaccuum. It’s not just inner change, but external change that’s needed (the personal is STILL political, no?)

2) These titles leave me wondering, is it possible to claim ambition as a virtue for women without having to claim ourselves as “bitches”?

I welcome any thoughts.