An article in today’s New York Times tells us that:
Many women at the nation’s most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.
Much attention has been focused on career women who leave the work force to rear children. What seems to be changing is that while many women in college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers, their daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to suspend or end their careers when they have children.
An interesting article.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051017/pollitt
As a lawyer and now a stay at home mom, this article made me CRAZY. I certainly have nothing against a mom raising her kids or picking kids over career, etc. But did you notice how many of them wanna be stay at home moms AFTER they get their law degrees so that they can just get right back into that legal field when the kids are in school? Well, I wish someone could tell these well-intentioned, naive women law is a bad, bad pursuit if you intend to have kids. Most law firms, no matter how “family friendly” will make you a second-class citizen. And, unfortunately, there is just no such thing as a “part time” law job. So, I’m not saying that it’s totally impossible to “have it all.” My beef with the article is that I found it ridiculous that being a lawyer figured so prominently in the women’s plans when, in fact, it is an unrealistic pursuit in the long run (unless a lot of things change).