When second-wave feminists called for women’s liberation
they did not limit themselves to politics. They prescribed a new way for women
to live their lives. I have called it a feminist life plan.
Fair to say, it was brilliant. Change behavior first and occupy minds later.
You are more than familiar with the feminist life plan.
Young women, in particular were exhorted to postpone marriage and childbearing in
favor of career. You see, a married woman with children would be less likely to
be completely invested in her career. The patriarchy invented motherhood in
order to repress women’s career potential… right?
Young women were told that once they established themselves
in their careers they would easily find husbands. Since they would not depend
on a man for support they would find husbands who would love them for
themselves alone.
The new feminist marriage would see husband and wife
contribute equally to the household coffers, share housework equally and enjoy
equal levels of career success.
Of course, it was all a lie. Just as older women who caught
the feminist bug made divorce lawyers rich, younger women who followed the
feminist life plan had more difficulty finding men to marry. Many of them
discovered that being a feminist is a turn-off. Often they ended up making reproductive
endocrinologists rich.
Beyond that, the gauzy vision of equal everything never
seemed to work out in practice. Women still did most of the housework, either
because their husbands were working late or because they were divorced.
Also, a young woman in college who has decided that she will
not marry until she is well-established in her career will probably avoid men
who are husband material in favor of men whom she would never marry.
In practice, this has meant that a feminist who started
looking for a husband in, for example, her mid-thirties also had to overcome
the traumas associated with multiple relationship failures. Under the
circumstances her judgment of men would be faulty, because trauma does that to
people.
The feminist life plan being sacred writ for most college
women, Susan Patton’s open letter to the Daily Princetonian, in which she
recommended that Princeton co-eds spend some of their recreational time looking
for a suitable husband, was roundly denounced by feminists.
How dare she consign young women to a life of domestic
servitude? Such was the protest and such is the pressure that forces young
women to live the feminist life plan, like it or not.
Let us be generous and say that feminism has offered young women an
alternative life plan, one that differs from the old plan whereby women would
marry young and then pursue or not pursue career success. Let us grant that
feminists want to provide women with a free choice.
If so, feminists should provide correct information
about the difficulties young women will face if they adopt the feminist life plan. With
good information young women can make an intelligent and free choice… and isn’t
that what we want?
Which brings us to Jessica Grose. I take that Grose is a
feminist, but the more important point is that her recent Slate XX article lays
out clearly some of the difficulties that a woman will face if she allows
feminism to shape her expectations or dictate her actions.
Responding to a recent article by Kate Tuttle, one in which
Tuttle attempts to reassert the value of being a housewife—said reclaiming
being necessary since Betty Friedan, in one of the most ignorant statements
ever made by a respected public intellectual, announced that being a suburban
housewife was like being in a concentration camp—Grose writes:
Tuttle’s
essay comes at a time when more and more people seem to be finally
acknowledging reality: that in our current system, it’s really difficult to
have two working parents with full-time jobs, because home life requires a lot
of necessary man-hours and a huge emotional investment, too.
A dose of reality is always a good thing. The throwaway line
about “in our current system” is a sop to the sisterhood. I call it a sop
because Grose does not offer any reference to a system in which
things would be radically different. She does not because there is no such
thing.
Be that as it may, Grose continues to describe the real life
of Pepsi CEO, Indra Nooyi. And she offers Nooyi’s experience as a counterpoint
to the claims by notable feminist recruiter and Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg.
Again, it’s a dose of reality that young women would do well
to consider.
Grose writes:
At last
week’s Aspen Ideas Festival, Nooyi spoke
to Atlanticowner David
Bradley about work-life balance. The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf called it “as frank a discussion
of work-life balance as I've seen from a U.S. CEO.” Nooyi talked about working
until midnight regularly—none of the “you can be CEO and home for dinner every
night at 6” fantasy that we hear from
Sheryl Sandberg. Nooyi also talked about how her parents and her husband’s
parents were intimately involved in the raising of her two children.
It is worth emphasizing that all CEO’s work extremely long
hours. Their time is not their own. They cannot define their own schedules.
This means that when a woman becomes a high level corporate executive, her
children will no longer have a mother.
Grose quotes Nooyi:
I don't think women can have it all. I just
don't think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all. My
husband and I have been married for 34 years. And we have two daughters. And
every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife
or a mother, in fact many times during the day you have to make those
decisions. And you have to co-opt a lot of people to help you. We co-opted our
families to help us. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent
parents. But if you ask our daughters, I'm not sure they will say that I've
been a good mom. I'm not sure. And I try all kinds of coping mechanisms …
You know, you have to cope, because you die with
guilt. You just die with guilt. My observation, David, is that the biological
clock and the career clock are in total conflict with each other. Total,
complete conflict. When you have to have kids you have to build your career.
Just as you're rising to middle management your kids need you because they're
teenagers.
Grose offers some policy
prescriptions, but they are neither here nor there. Nooyi’s powerful testimony
should serve as a counterweight to the fantasies that feminists have been
selling.
Grose does well to provide this
information. Armed with facts young women will have a truly free choice.
7 comments:
http://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/30/books/didion-movement.html?_r=1&
hefederalist.com/2014/07/07/the-pathetic-provincialism-of-american-feminists/
It is what happens when one lie is perpetrated over a long span of time. Reality finally demonstrate the damage those lies have created.
American feminism was always about upper class women at the expense of everyone else.
Correction: http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/07/the-pathetic-provincialism-of-american-feminists/
Semi associated, new study on youth and work. Notice how it is the 11 yr old boys who get it, not the mid teens.
http://news.ca.msn.com/canada/video/?videoid=cbcc2014-0807-0849-0043-247176820000
" Young women were told that once they established themselves in their careers they would easily find husbands. Since they would not depend on a man for support they would find husbands who would love them for themselves alone.
The new feminist marriage would see husband and wife contribute equally to the household coffers, share housework equally and enjoy equal levels of career success.
Of course, it was all a lie."
Salesmen and saleswomen don't give you all the facts, especially those that would blow the sale.
Add the reflected tragedy of people growing old and dying with no grand-children.
Larry Sheldon,
Feminism is in fact self limiting and cleans out the gene pool of that which does not fit the needs of evolution and the improvement of the species. One would think that after thousands of years of evolution, which many say they believe in, with essentially no real change in the requisites of procreation, that one might consider it pure folly to believe that they can alter that equation. Anything outside that equation is null.
This does not mean that one treats people badly in any shape or form and to understand that each person has a right to strive to meet their human potential. Becoming the best we can be is a laudable goal, but each of us has a responsibility to succeeding generations. Through procreation we improve ourselves.
You mean feminists have a plan? Everything I see is a reaction to what they don't want.
Tip
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