The Washington Post's Leslie Morgan Steiner's
blog today led me to an excellent
article in the Columbia Journalism Review, which in turn led me to this even more excellent
research study (PDF) from the Center for WorkLife Law at UC-Hastings. All these items deal specifically with an issue our family has talked about quite a bit: the "Opt-Out" story so popular in newspapers, especially the
New York Times.
This kind of story frames the charged issue that so many families face -- how to balance a family's economic needs, childcare needs, and career needs -- as a matter of whether working women choose to "opt out" of their careers in favor of staying home with their children. In recent years, the highest-profile such story was Lisa Belkin's 2003 cover story for the
Times Magazine, "
The Opt Out Revolution." Another Times piece that garnered a lot of
attention was Louise Story's front-page piece in 2005, "
Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood."
These kinds of stories drive my wife completely crazy. And it was my wife who forwarded me Steiner's blog this morning, with the subject line "Yay!", because finally someone had written about
why these stories are so odious. It's not just that, as Jack Shafer noted about Story's piece in 2005, these kinds of trend pieces rarely reflect actual trends but are instead mishmashes of anecdote and assumption -- one could say the same about almost any trend piece written in the past ten years.
No, what makes "Opt-Out" stories so infuriating is the simple fact that for most women, whether or not to leave the workplace is not and will never be a "choice."
Financial realities force my wife to work, not her refusal to make the "choice" to stay at home with our daughter. She has a job she likes and is good at and that pays well enough for us to have a small apartment in New York. Notably, it pays far better than, say, any job her husband has ever had. And like millions of mothers out there -- mothers whose husbands make less than them, or single mothers, or mothers who live in expensive cities -- the "choice" between working and staying at home is a false one, and every article that frames the debate that way bears little resemblance to reality.
The UC-Hastings research behind both the Post blog and the CJR piece covers a number of fascinating topics and really drives home how totally insane the environment for workers is in the United States. In a recent survey of 168 countries, the US was one of only five that does not require companies to offer paid maternity leave; the other four hotbeds of socially responsible corporate policy were Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. While the Family and Medical Leave Act requires companies to offer parental leave to its employees, such leave is unpaid -- and anyways, companies with under 50 employees are exempt from the law. (When my wife was pregnant, I had to argue with my previous employer for four months in order to secure a generous two weeks of unpaid leave.)
We all work longer hours at more inflexible jobs than ever before. Mothers whose family life interferes in any way with their work life are frequently resented, mocked, or passed over for promotion. Fathers who express a desire to lessen their workload in order to participate more fully in their children's lives are viewed with suspicion. Women who leave the workplace to raise children find their career and earnings potentials severely limited upon their return. It's in this environment that articles about wealthy, married women who can quit their jobs to hang out with their kids grate on the nerves, to say the least.
As E.J. Graff at the CJR so adroitly puts it:
Here’s why this matters: if journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution. If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that’s a private decision. But it’s a public policy issue if most women (and men) need to work to support their families, and if the economy needs women’s skills to remain competitive. It’s a public policy issue if schools, jobs, and other American institutions are structured in ways that make it frustratingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, for parents to manage both their jobs and family responsibilities.
Does my wife wish she could quit her job and take care of our daughter full-time? I don't think she knows the answer, because it's never been a reasonable question for our family, just as it isn't for many, many families. My guess is that she enjoys the important work she does enough -- at a company that, for the record, is exceptional in its field for its family-friendliness -- that she would want to continue to work. But what does it matter? The only way such an idea would ever be possible for our family is if I wrote a buzzy novel that sold for a lot of money. Or, you know, if American culture evolved (or was legislatively forced into) a conscience about allowing its employees to balance work and family.
Guess I better start buying those lottery tickets!
Labels: family, media
