Like the Silhouettes, Linda Hirshman thinks women should get a job. The decreasing number of women with children who do not, troubles her.
Should we care if women leave the work force? Yes, because participation in public life allows women to use their talents and to powerfully affect society. And once they leave, they usually cannot regain the income or status they had. . . .
And despite the happy talk of “on ramps” back in, only 40 percent of even high-powered professionals get back to full-time work at all.
That the most educated have opted out the most should raise questions about how our society allocates scarce educational resources. The next generation of girls will have a greatly reduced pool of role models.
Or a greatly increased one, depending on how you look at it. To think that the quality of life is determined by whether one is “employed.” To think that mothers who do not “work” do not contribute to public life. How absurd, how narrow-minded, how arrogant.
It used to be called liberation, but it was always about doing what other, self-certain people thought you should do.
Thanks to Veronica for the link.
And I say to Linda Hirshman, “Get a life!”
Man, she irritates me!
long, long before anyone had dreamed the word ‘liberation’, it was already about doing what other, “self-certain” people thought should be done. hirshman’s just being hyper-vigilant for societal reversions to the barefoot-and-pregnant model of the old south, to the mothers-of-german-soldiers role during the third reich. she’s on target, but there’s an unstated subtext here which makes her sound in-your-face.
and that exhausts my quota of hyphens for the day.
If society values stay-at-home moms, why doesn’t it count as Social Security earnings?
If foregoing paid labor and staying home raising the babies is such a vitally important “contribution to public life”, why aren’t more men doing it?
Advocate (may I call you Advocate?), not as many men choose to stay home. The complaint I have about Ms. Hirshman is that she doesn’t accept staying home as a permissible choice. As someone no less than Albus Dumbledore has said, “It is our choices,…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
And Doc Doc, when did you first get the mistaken impression that society is consistent in paying for what is says it values?