Don't Forget to Have Kids -- Part II
Last week I let you know my thoughts on how children could fit into the lives of the professional woman.
Some were not amused.
"Not only is your post embarrassingly stupid," began one tweet, "it's offensive to anyone who believes in reproductive choice"
Thank God the many on twitter only have 140 characters to tell me what they really thought.
But many were grateful that I shared my own personal thoughts in my last blog "Don't Forget to have Kids".
What surprises me is the sheer volume of reaction I've gotten from women, young and old, about a topic we just don't talk about enough.
For years, feminists have been insisting that we women could have it all. But since diapers, bras and babies have been seen as symbols of oppression from the Old World run by the likes of Don Draper, there hasn't been enough written about women like me who want to work like hell, rise to the top of my profession, and then rush home to be with the kids and also work to make my husband happy and build his life.
For me, having it all doesn't mean having the corner office at work and a penthouse at home if there aren't kids running around as I'm trying to cook my husband something special.
For those who still want to take off their bras and burn them, so be it. But I'd rather find one to wear that is pretty. And when it comes off, its not because it's being thrown into the fireplace.
So with apologies to those who think we women should put off love and babies in our younger years (which I passed too long ago), I am going to risk going there again.
My 22-year-old assistant says the blog spurred a big conversation amongst her peers who have rarely even considered the concept of embracing the possibility of children and a career earlier on in life.
They were shocked at my advice to consider finding a man (or partner) as seriously as pursuing a career.
Sarah, a graduate of Fairfield University, tells me that her friends were stunned to hear that advice from me, of all people.
She says talk of babies and business sparked a debate of young women around a kitchen table on a Friday night, just before they were going out to a bar in the Village. Among her peer group, it is simply assumed that "kids and marriage must be saved for your thirties". And any poor fool who is "looking for a husband" is "embarrassing herself."
That's too bad.
Women face enough pressures and challenges in a workplace that is still depressingly biased against a female's success. Add to that, the fact that the very thing many women I know find most rewarding (having kids) is now frowned upon.
Some of Sarah's friends say they felt relieved to read my blog--that they weren't sure what to do with their desire to get married and have children. That it was great to hear someone they watch come out and say it.
Others, reflected the views of my critics in twitter streams.
The "twenties" are for "me".. while family and kids can definitely wait for the thirty-something years.
My worry is that these new age rules that urge you to wait on family-- whittle away at your possibility to have it at all--- IF that is what you want out of life.
Another huffpo blogger wrote this: "We don't all lose sleep over finding the perfect partner, whether that partner is male or female. The dreams and aspirations of women cannot be summarized so neatly. It is disheartening to see a successful woman like Mika Brzezinski operate on such a blind assumption regarding those aspirations."
You go girl. That's your opinion and I respect it. But I am speaking to the women who DO want to have a family and consider a lifelong relationship valuable, rather than a badge of weakness or a sign that she missed the boat on the women's rights movement.
I am not afraid to say my relationship with my man is important, even vital, to who I am as a person.
A woman shouldn't feel the need to shy away from wanting to build a world around a man she loves and do whatever she can to make him happy and whole --as he should for her.
One can love her husband and be a strong career woman. They aren't mutually exclusive. Any life partnership is a challenge that is filled with love, consternation, joy, and a thousand other emotions.
But ultimately, it is an extremely fulfilling part of my life.
I consider my girls the greatest gift from God in life. And I also love the career that I have built, lost and rebuilt. But the highs and lows of my career would not have been as exciting or manageable to me if I didn't have children and a partner for life with whom to share it all.
The ups and downs.
Getting to this point wasn't easy and it didn't happen by chance. I was open as a young woman, and make it clear that I wanted to try and have a career, a marriage and mommyhood. And I looked for it all.
I considered the possibility of being a wife to be the most exciting and fulfilling proposition. I love the chance to share in the challenge with a soul mate and make his life better. Again, this does not preclude my being a strong focused career woman. It just means that when I go to work, I go there fulfilled. And, dare I say it, being a woman with her own goals and interests at work makes me a better, more interesting partner at home and a happier person. (My apologies to those women who don't want children but if you could, keep your invective-laden, F-Bomb laced tweets to yourself.)
I'm not naïve. The path I travel is not a simple one to navigate. I'll be the first to admit that my path has not been without great challenge and trouble and failure.
Trying to cope with the constant needs of caring for a husband, two children, and an intense job is often an impossible juggling act. At times I feel helpless at playing any one of those roles well. In fact, I usually feel like I'm failing miserably at one of my many roles and overcompensate ridiculously at times.
But in the early morning hours when my husband and kids are asleep, I go off to work knowing that I am doing my best as a wife and mother and that Jim and I are doing pretty darn well raising extraordinary girls.
I intend to share some of my personal stories in blogs to come and tell a great deal more in my upcoming book, "All things at Once". But again, for young women considering so many choices and options in life, I stand by my advice.
Go for it all at once, if all of it is what you want. Don't be afraid of telling the world that marriage is important to you. Sarah says that her peers feel that wanting a husband and babies is "backward" and looked down upon. She said it shows that you lack ambition.
I say wanting love and children and career is about as ambitious as it gets. And a young woman should be proud of that desire to be fulfilled on every level.
Don't miss out because it is not in fashion this year to want a man in your life and to build a family with him. Women should be upfront with their friends, their dates, and more importantly, with themselves.
Today's woman doesn't have to put her dreams on hold be "modern". She just has to be true to herself and all of her desires. THAT is what is truly modern.
So if you want it all, go for it all. This 42 year old will tell you that life is too short.
Get to work chasing all of your dreams.
For more go to www.morningmika.com
Follow Mika Brzezinski on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@morningmika
Jill Brooke: News Flash to Mika Brzezinski: Not All Women Get Your Breaks And Can Have It All
Brzezinski seems to lack any compassion for the many women who desperately wanted husbands and children, but fate -- not desire -- worked against them.
Taylor Marsh: Mika Brzezinski as Life Coach
Feminism isn't about having it all or "all things at once," as Mika Brzezinski asserts. It's about following your bliss to manifest your heart's desire.
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I am totally in agreement with Mika- people make too many assumptions things will magically happen when they're ready.
I am about to hit 38 (male). Since I am not going to cure cancer or whatnot, I'm not going to make a difference in the world... unless I pass on my DNA by having kids. Unlike other guys- I am obsessed about finding a wife and having kids. Currently childless, if I died tomorrow I'd be remembered a short time then it would be like I never existed. I do not want that to be my fate.
I worked straight out of college 8 years, 7 days a week year round, 10-24 hours a day and lost my 20's focusing on my career, with nothing to show for it. Now I've been lengthily unemployed- since 2002, and haven't gone on a date since 1997 because I have incurable anxiety disorder.
Because I've barely dated, and I feel I missed out on love and sex in my 20's, I'm only attracted to women 10+ years younger than me, especially since I want kids so bad, and don't share interests with women my age. It's so hard to find a 26 year old to date a 38 year old... I will likely end up alone- a failure.
DO NOT think things are automatic. Embrace youth. You never know what life or other people are going to do to you, and you can't assume you'll have a chance later.
It is so great that you have opened this debate which, as you say, is one of the most important of our time and the least discussed. I am sorry you are facing so much aggression for your views but I for one am very clear that if I had my twenties and thirties over again I would do it all differently (although I am fortunate to have ended up happily at 44 with a wonderful husband and gorgeous twin girls). I would have loved someone to have given me permission to want to be married since I recognise that secretly I definitely wanted that. It is so sad that so much of the discourse surrounding young women who want a career is that having a husband is antithetical to that. Lets hope the next generation of women are less strident in one direction or another and recognise that getting support and love from a loving home and a good husband makes a career a little less tough going.
A woman who chooses to have children in her twenties would be more likely to be taken out of the workforce. It would be nice if employers supported tired overworked moms up all night with sick children, but that is not the reality. Especially during times of high unemployment when more is expected with less pay and anything can be used for dismissal. I have seen again and again, work conflicts when women try to 'have it all.' The consistently nice co-worker suddenly turned harried and stressed all the time.
The twenties are an ideal time for completing college, working to establish careers, exploring and growing. Older women may develop skills better suited for parenting through the natural maturing process. And with a fuller bank account accrued through twenties employment, losing a job because one had to stay home yet one more day with a sick child, may not have such a terrible consequence. These are the stark realities. If we were living in a different world, where good jobs were plentiful, and families were more protected, then it may be safer to heed Mika's advice, IF that is what a woman desires. But this is not our world today and it does not appear that this will change any time soon.
Every reality you've listed is correct.
But you forgot one: Putting off childbearing until later presents new and unique challenges that most women never consider. Past 30, your fertility begins to decline. Past 35, it becomes and issue. Past 40, you're actually beating the odds if you do manage to become pregnant. This doesn't even take into consideration all those women (in increasing numbers) who put off having children until it's convenient, only to be told -- toward the end of what would have been the natural span -- that they have (and have always had) fertility problems.
What women are alarmingly beginning to ignore, what with all the choices we do have these days, is that biologically our span of fertility is not enlarging. And trust me when I say that fertility treatments are grossly expensive.
A career CAN be established later, but your biological clock will run out. That's a nearly unchangeable fact.
THANK YOU!!! What a lot of these women in their 20's don't seem to grasp is that the work-world has imposed on them waiting to have children, because employers don't want new employees to take maternity leave or, God forbid, stay home with a sick child, until they have proven themselves and risen up in the company. This is anti-woman and it is a terrible shame that women have embraced it as "feminist" or whatever. The workplace in America needs to get its act together and be supportive of working mothers at all levels of employment. And why don't I throw in that there should be a law that punishes any company that gives unequal pay based on gender.
there are a number of single women in the workplace who are bullied by older married women with children
and vice versa
it goes both ways
Regarding the first part of your comment, I think it some ways it's not bad for couples to wait until a bit later to have kids as they'll have had time for themselves, established more of a stable life, and may be in a better position to devote the attention needed to their children. My sister had her two children in her early 30s and is really glad she spent her 20s not as a parent. She got her education, had a brief but very successful business career, traveled, etc. For the last several years she's been a stay-at-home mom because she wanted to and she could.
I feel sorry for women who don't want to have kids--they sure have to put up with a lot of unfair judgement from others.
In Daniel Gilbert's 2006 book "Stumbling on Happiness," the Harvard professor of psychology looks at several studies and concludes that marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of the first child—and increases only when the last child has left home. He also ascertains that parents are happier grocery shopping and even sleeping than spending time with their kids. Other data cited by 2008's "Gross National Happiness" author, Arthur C. Brooks, finds that parents are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than the childless.
The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term "bundle of joy" may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. "Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers," says Florida State University's Robin Simon, a sociology professor who's conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. "In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It's such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they're not."
http://www
This couldn't be chalked up, quite simply, to added responsibility?
If they did the same sort of study on college students/p
No one thinks that children are the key to happiness; that would be naive.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear someone say what really IS the key to happiness. Mankind hasn't figured that one out yet.
My life is still richer and fuller, and I am a better human being, for my children.
It could be chalked up to many things; the point is, why should anyone let Mika B, with her TV-star salary, tell US what to do with our lives and bodies, when for most people that choice creates a lower level of satisfaction with life?
We always see posts from women going "My life is better because of my kids," and all that. And that's great.
But what you do NOT see represented are people living in poverty because kids got into drugs and swindled the parents' lifesavings, or any of the other negative scenarios.
I cannot imagine life without my kids. I don't want to contemplate it, and that's not because I was always one of those oochy-cooc
I've successfully run, (and sold) two businesses, and am on my second (and final) marriage. I'm educated and intelligent, and I've never had religious or cultural teachings telling me that I must have children. So mine -- all four of them, with a fifth on the way -- have been entirely by choice.
My 23 year old, an articulate fellow who will be entering med school next year, asked me recently if I had ever wished I'd done things differently instead of throwing myself into my family.
I could honestly tell him that I have many regrets in my life, from the horrible choice of their father and a bad first marriage to letting my own higher dreams slip away while they were right there within my grasp... But that he should understand EVERYONE in this world will have regrets about what they did or didn't do... And that the one and only thing in my life that I have ever had no regrets about, the one and only thing that has completely enriched and shaped me into a better person, is and was the choice to have children.
Wow, Mika am shocked that your phone didn't melt from all those white hot angry messages!
Look, if those of you who don't have/want kids want the 'respect' of the 'rest of us' perhaps you would do parents the honor of not assuming we are uneducated, lazy, unambitious, boring bottom-feeders. I have an MBA from a school most of you would only dream about getting in to. I have two kids. I didn't check my brain at the delivery room door. Neither did any of my MBA classmates - most of whom have kids.
Ten years ago, I would have reacted to Mika's article with the same venomous rage. My life today is the product of years of trial, error, tears, joy, success and failure. I am happier now than ever before. My life is more interesting than ever before (even considering I have lived in 3 countries, traveled extensively, flown first class, shopped expensively, eaten/drank/partied very well etc......) I love my kids and my husband and thanks to them, I have found joy in ways and activities I NEVER would have explored when I was younger.
I hope that younger women quickly learn that they are the only ones accountable for their choices. If happiness means not having a family - fine. However, don't let a great thing pass you by just because someone else says it's 'not cool'. Really, didn't you learn that lesson in the 7th grade??
Boast much? Sheesh.
One might think of it as boasting. When I read this post however, I thought of my life and the countless women I know who've had similar experiences. I got my master's degree, had 2 kids and then took my husband's offer of moving to 2 different countries. Life as an expat is amazing. If I'd stayed here would I have been a working mom? I don't know, but raising 2 kids in 2 different European countries provided all of us with enough stimulation that when at a cocktail party, I'm never afraid to answer that I chose to "stay home" and raise my kids.
Surely you understand why the strong criticism. It's not complicated- forever women have been assigned the roles of mothers and wives (often servants) for men, willingly or not. It's been considered their true, unique calling. In an overwhelming majority of countries, this is prevalent even today. In advanced nations, (dare I say) like ours, while there is a more moderate reality and women seem to have a better shot at formulating and exercising independent choices for their lives, the patriarchal paradigm still exists in many a pervasive ways, like an atavism from the past.
There’s no shame in wanting to be a mother and wife. The shame is in not deciding for oneself, not formulating one's own choice, whichever it is. And it is articles like yours that attempt not so much to give advice, but to push a model by saying- here's your true calling: be wives, mothers and career women. It is like the 50s, except you add "career". And you even push a timeline - do it before 30! You tell women, all women, what to do like they couldn’t decide and like there’s one formula for all.
Essentially, feminism says this - women are individuals. They are unique, different, not cattle: you don’t treat them in mass. Each one can formulate an independent choice that is valid for her not the mass in general. Feminism doesn’t tell you what to do, it simply teaches you to think by yourself.
Great post.
Wow, most excellently stated.
fanned & faved. thanks for the great post.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.
See Sarah E. Jones's Profile
For the record, I am in a serious relationship that I consider very valuable indeed. The difference is that I do not want children, not now and probably not ever. I am not somehow unfeminine because of this choice. Nor do I feel that I am missing out on anything.
more power to you. Much respect for deciding what is best for you.
I don't think that was Mika's point. I think she's just saying that in today's world we have choices. So, her choice was to have it all, including a husband and children. You now have the choice to have none of those things. But her point is still very valid that women nowadays, especially young women, are often discouraged from wanting a husband and family as if it's some sort of 1950's oppressive fantasy that we should run screaming in the other direction from. I want a husband and family, in addition, to my great job and MBA. So, just like it's not unfeminine of you to not want children, it's also not oppressive for Mika, myself or any other woman to want them.
See Sarah E. Jones's Profile
I absolutely agree that it is not oppressive for women to want children. I merely resent the implication present in the first article: that it is something all women want. And the statement that children are life's greatest gift not only completely ignores women who are childless, it paints them as somehow unfulfilled. Personally, I find my greatest fulfillment is found in my relationship, advocacy for various issues and my academic and professional success.
You are right, feminism is about having choices. It is also about respect. Let's respect childless women as much as we respect mothers--instead of pitying them for missing out on "life's greatest gift."
Mika, there is nothing more sexy than a loving, mature, intelligent woman who loves her family as much as her career! YOU go girl!
As for those girls who 'know so much' and scoff now - when that man or partner does come along, they'll fall right into it. What they don't understand is, when they're in their 30's or 40's, they're gonna be wishing they had the children back in their 20's! A person might be more settled and patient at that point, but they sure don't have the energy they had when they were younger - and raising kids takes ungodly amounts of that!
There's nothing more... "sexy"... ?? Huh huh. Sure, 'cause that's what's it's all about.
part 111 MIGHT ANSWER THAT: Mika seems unable to take any criticism.
uh..
doesn't having kids cause more CO2 thereby causing global warming..
thereby causing the total destruction of the planet..
and oh yes those children.. and the polar bears?
no more kids!!!
I'm not interested in using Mika as an outlet for pent up ad hominem antimatter. Nor was I in Part I.
So once again: Hurray for personal fulfillment, shattering ceilings, romantic, candle lit dinners; heirs to cherish, and epics to share before the curtains close the final act sooner than we know it.
Oh, and hurray for baby sex.
Mika - we'd love to see you fighting for "average Americans" on Morning Joe. If you honestly believe that women should be able to "have it all" - a successful career, husband and children - please advocate for the resources that would make this a reality for more people.
Start fighting for - higher incomes for the middle and lower classes (think 1970s when one job supported a family), single payer health care, universal child care, affordable housing, etc.
Mika, that was a good post with good points.
However, you do know that the bra burning thing was something that happened once, at the Miss America contest, and was taken up by the media and used to exploit woman, to belittle the women's movement, right?
So why did you use that continuously as a symbol here?
http://www
Thank you!
You go Mika. I would only urge you to think about the young women with jobs and family without your resources and assets. If you consider what it would be like if you were a share-croppers daughter with current earnings under $30,000 how would you "do it all" then?
exactly my point.
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