Today's Mommy Wars

Motherhood, it seems, is the Middle East of social controversy.   Alliances may shift, new dogmas and leaders may arise, tactics may change, but the fundamental conflict resists resolution.   Despite the efforts of would-be peacemakers, impassioned partisans continue battling to claim all the territory as their own.   My way, they declare, is the one right way to be a good mother, a real woman, a fulfilled human being.

Fortunately, nobody dies in the mommy wars.   And, despite the ongoing verbal assaults, American women have actually established a modus vivendi.  Most continue to have and raise children and, in greater numbers than ever before, to combine motherhood not just with jobs but careers—vocations in which they make long-term investments and from which they derive not only income but personal satisfaction and identity.

To compete on a level playing field with men, today's career women may continue to have other women (who continue to hold onto outdated perceptions of what a woman needs to be and do) label them as "selfish" like Tina Fey writes about in the Feb. 14th The New Yorker about the choice of continuing in her successful career or taking a detour to have another child:

"What is the rudest question you can ask a woman?"

"How old are you?"  "What do you weigh?"  "When you and your twin sister are alone with Mr. Hefner, do you have to pretend to be lesbians?"   No, the worst question is: "How do you juggle it all?"

"The topic of working moms is a tap-dance recital in a minefield.   How do you juggle it all?" people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes.  'You're screwing it all up, aren't you?' their eyes say.   My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune to be working at my dream job."

Of course, not all professional women are alike.  Some focus primarily on careers, making the same trade-offs traditionally made by the men who seek leadership positions.  But most want children, and once they have kids, these talented and creative women, are willing to trade some career growth and compensation for freedom from the constant pressure to work long hours and weekends.

To retain these productive women, wise employers have offered more flexibility, including part-time arrangements.  This accommodation, in most cases, meant slower promotions and lower pay but most career-and-family women were entirely willing to make that trade-off.   Harvard economist Claudia Goldin recalls that, unlike her own cohort of early Baby Boomers, today's younger women don't plan to postpone family life while pursuing career goals.

Career women's ambitions produced the angst and absolutism of the mommy wars.  But, Prof. Goldin concludes from survey data, women who graduated in the 1980s were much more likely than their predecessors to achieve that once-elusive combination.  By the time they turned 40, between 21% and 27% had both careers and children—up from 13% to 18% among women who graduated between 1966 and 1979.  (About three-quarters of both groups had kids.)

Today, highly educated women are not "opting out."   In a study of Harvard graduates co-written with Lawrence F. Katz, Prof. Goldin found that women with children left the labor force for no more than two years altogether, with younger women (graduating from 1989 to 1992) taking less time than their elders.   A third of all female graduates worked part-time, however, compared to less than 10% of men.

Similarly, a study of University of Chicago MBAs, with Marianne Bertrand, found that, a decade after graduation, women with children work on average 24% fewer weekly hours than men. (Women without children work about 3% fewer hours.)   Only half of them work full-time.   Many strike out on their own, establishing consulting practices that permit flexible, project-based work.  "MBA mothers," the economists write, "seem to actively choose jobs that are family-friendly, and avoid jobs with long hours and greater career-advancement possibilities."

Source: 'Mommy Track' Without Shame, The Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2011