Between "Are You Mom Enough?" (a.k.a. the extremely controversial TIME magazine breastfeeding cover) and Elisabeth Badinter's extremely controversial book The Conflict, which cast a critical eye on the current trend (among some sets) toward attachment parenting, and the Daily Mail's latest offense about the "ambitious career women" who don't want kids and "enforce childlessness" upon their partners, you have to wonder whose finger is on the trigger when it comes to the war on women.
While the media and the talking heads sling headlines and talking points, we're all just left to slug it out. Or, more likely, to reserve the slugs and instead talk behind each other's backs, feel guilty, worry that we're doing whatever it is we're doing wrong. That what we're doing is wrong.
Which is bad enough. But what kills me is this: When was the last time you saw a magazine cover asking "Are You Dad Enough?" or a piece worrying for the women married to "career-driven" men who deprive them of parenthood? (Then again, men rarely "enforce childlessness" because they generally don't have to choose between career and parenthood... because mom -- whether she's career-oriented or not -- will be there to do the lion's share. Not to mention the gestating, the birthing and the breastfeeding. As a friend once observed, for men, parenthood is an addition to everything else in their lives; for women, it's a choice. The trade-offs are more stark.) Would a man's choice to embrace his traditional breadwinning role with gusto be marked as an end to progress, or to opt out of parenthood as a harbinger of the downfall of society as we know it?
Men's roles haven't changed much. Yes, the dads of today are likely more involved in their children's lives than their own dads were in theirs. Yes, they probably do more of the chores than their dads did, but these are incremental moves we're talking about. And precious few worry that a dad picking up the dry cleaning or making dinner somehow constitutes an attack on "family values" -- or that a man who doesn't want to have kids is somehow defective or unnatural. A man's minor deviations beyond the confines of his traditional gender role are rarely seen as cause for alarm.
Women are the ones who have changed -- and who have fought, every step of the way, for those changes... changes that have, in turn (and slowly) affected the incremental changes in men and (slower still) in the structures of society. Perhaps it's because our rights remain under attack, because our position still feels tenuous, because we still have such a ways to go, that our reflexive response to trend stories about opting out or real-life trends toward attachment parenting or aprons as fashion statements is that it will undermine feminism. We're still on shaky ground.
And because it's shaky, we cling to our positions ferociously. With our newfound freedom to do things any which way, it's harder to feel that what we're doing is right. Or even just good enough. And because women today have been raised on the message that we can do anything, we do whatever it is we do with a certain amount of ferocity. The same ambition some might turn on in the boardroom, some will focus onto their children.
And because it's shaky, there will be those who will insist that the old way was the right way.
The thing is, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. The parameters of women's lives have changed. We have our reproductive rights -- and will fight for them no matter what right-winged extremist boogieman appears claiming God and the Founding Fathers wanted women beholden to our uteri. We have access and opportunity and can do all kinds of things with our lives. We can parent -- or not parent -- as we see fit. And that is a good thing.
The "enough" I worry about is this: when will there be enough change -- enough change to the structures, attitudes, finger-pointing and self-doubt -- that "choices," in all their forms, will be available, realistic, safe, and workable for all women?
Follow Barbara & Shannon Kelley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@undecidedbook
Elizabeth Debold: The War on Women -- and the War Within Women
Really? You don't think fathers ever feel the same kind of guilt mothers do dropping kids off at daycare or working late and missing family time? Men may not share those feelings the same way women do, but dads who are worth a darn struggle every day in the balance between work and family.
We lived next door to a woman who worked at a local Hospice branch and she once told me that by far the most common regret old men had was that they didn't spend enough time with their families when they were younger.
Here's the reality of career and family: It's never going to be perfect. For every hour you spend on the job, even if it's in your home office, that's an hour you're not spending with your kids. If you take a year off from work after your baby is born, that's year on the career track you can't get back.
Accept the challenge and the trade-offs and the compromise. Understand that men actually care about family time, too, and often miss out on career opportunities because of their families. Just do the best you can.
I'm so tired of hearing people whine about this stuff instead of acknowledging that parenthood is a blessing and privilege. Embrace it in whatever form you can.
Also, I'm of the mind that the "us vs. them" bit is just an illusion--a grand fiction fed by certain people who must think they are going to cheat death somehow. I do see individuals feeding this fictional narrative, however, so I can see where the confusion might come from. But really, there is no "us vs. them." It's just "us" out here (more of my thoughts on the topic: http://bit.ly/IT9JhR).
I understand that you're trying to point out that there still exists a double standard, and that women often carry around guilt for things that men would otherwise not think twice about, but your positioning on this "men haven't changed" bit reads as a bit divisive.