Dear Linda:

If only it were that simple! If the furor over your denigration of parenting were all canned fundamentalism, it would have burned out by now.

I'm a planning student, feminist/environmental activist and mother with a professional background in research management and economic development. My husband earns the money. I pursue our unpaid agenda. Should I ever find paid employment that allows me to learn and do precisely what I want to when I want to, accountable only to my evolving goals and perceptions, I will certainly take it; in the meantime, I'm free to work on behalf of other women.

Among those women is my five-year-old daughter. I agree that women aren't honored enough for parenting work under patriarchy, but this misguided assessment of its value is not truth. Because mothers aren't paid and are very hard to fire, there are many underperformers, but this, too, is not intrinsic to the work. I'd like to suggest that the problem for educated women is not leaving paid work, but failing to reimagine maternal passion as a source of power and a galvanizing force for change.

Precisely What I Want to Do
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Dear Precisely:

Sometimes the collective produces more wisdom than the individual. Here's a response that came in within days of your letter from another Asker.

Dear Linda,
Way back in 1966 I didn't have Aunt Linda to give me her bracing advice, so I went and did all the wrong things. Majored in art in college (oops), got married after junior year to an ambitious man who had just finished college. I finished college while doing all the commuting and domestic chores while he did none, because he said his law school was more important than my college art studies. Had a baby, guess who took care of the baby. Then we moved a million or so times whenever his job or mood required it, and each time I had to manage the moves and try to start my career from zero. 10 years later I was working 50 hours per week as a junior architect to his 40 as a partner in a big law firm. I was commuting 3 hours a day, breast-feeding the baby, taking care of 2 kids and the nanny, whose pay came out of my salary because she was doing "my" work. I felt bad that I had given up giving fancy dinner parties and working on a couple of town committees. When I told my husband I needed him to help he said if I was tired I should quit my job. It had been my decision to work, therefore it was up to me to solve my own tiredness problems. I did eventually divorce him, but after all the time-outs from work and a pattern of career changes I don't know how to get back to doing good solid work. Now I'm 61 and I have huge holes in my resume and obsolete skills. What advice do you have for the women who for 40 years did all the things you're telling us not to do? I will take your advice to get serious about work. I will cut way back on so many things that chew up my time: family, friends, house. I will give up idealistic imaginary pursuits in favor of finding a way to make a decent living.
Aside from the problems of the workplace and the men we live with, what are the problems privileged women like me have within ourselves? Why do women like me get seduced by the narcissistic notion that if you do what you love the money will magically appear? Why do we think we're smart enough to make full-time home-making really fun and creative and invigorating? Why do we think we have what it takes to make a good life even though we don't have a plan? Are we just too cool for practicality and serious jobs?

Thanks, Asker, I could not have answered Precisely What I Want to Do Any Better Myself.
L.