re: Washington Post Article
[personal email address deleted]

As a financial analyst working in the investment business, I read parts of The Wall Street Journal, NYT, Washington Post and my local paper every day. And while I understand that this is not exactly usual, I am exceedingly disappointed at the profiles of the women voters you wrote of today and offended at the thought of women getting their news through their husbands. Are we really still so unsophisticated (although I’m sure they know all the wardrobes of the stars in People), or is this just a sample of women who do not work and stay at home? I cannot believe these stereotypes……you may have actually done many of us a grave disservice to suggest they are the norm. Why don’t you write about the women who don’t stay at home and their thinking and reading processes? I am watching Hillary carefully, and I think she has proven herself an excellent senator, very knowledgeable on the issues, a good mother, an unfathomable wife, and an exciting candidate. I don’t think the premise that women will elect her holds a drop of water. I think it totally depends on the general populace and how her positions on the war, health care, immigration, taxes etc., and her personal charisma resonate with them. She drew from a wide constituency when she ran for Senate, and as an Upstate New Yorker by birth, she ran surprisingly well in a part of New York that doesn’t normally embrace NYC liberals, much less liberal women. I have no idea at this point if Hillary will be my choice for President. But I can damn sure sort out the issues and come to an opinion myself.

Shame on you for making that article so one-sided.

Stephanie Haggerty
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A Little from Linda:

Dear Ms. Haggerty:

And shame on the political scientists and statisticians from The Center for Civic Education, the University of Michigan, the Pew Trusts, and Columbia University for their deeply researched, statistically validated studies of women's relative lack of political knowledge, lack of political interest, and unwillingness to read or watch violent or text-based material about political affairs. (Or did you not read my article in the Washington Post to the end?) I fear these scholars and experts have done you a disservice by researching the issue and then publishing their findings in books from the Yale University Press and papers presented, for example, to the American Political Science Association as recently as last year. I'm not sure what I added to the disservice -- publishing their findings? Are you suggesting that the work should be censored, since not a single study turned up the opposite conclusions?

Although your autobiographical information is reassuring on the subject of your capacity for politics, I doubt you would base your professional career as an investment advisor on looking in the mirror rather than facing the actual data scientifically gathered and reported by experts over a decade. You may be right that Hillary Clinton's campaign will not rest, as her advisors Carville and Penn assert, on women's decision-making. But your tactic of offering your personal story and seeming ignorance of 50% of my argument does not immediately strike me as effective advocacy for your point of view.

L.
ps
Please don't write to tell me you don't like my tone of voice. That is, to paraphrase Rebecca West, what everyone always says when I say something to distinguish myself from a door mat, and would sit ill in the mouth of someone who writes to tell me there's "shame" on me.

Dear Frustrated,

You have identified a very important problem: when there are few women at work, they are not only scrutinized more than the men, they often experience very real emotional cost of isolation. My recommendation is to find the local chapter of women in science and computing and reach outside your company for female companionship.
Such professional organizations exist in almost every town of any size and are a great way to network as well as for the support of others in similar positions. Your college alumnae association may offer other options.
and . . . consider the value of us thirty plus women. Someday soon you may be one too.
L

Question: So, here's a question for you. I'm a happily childless, cheerfully unmarried, professional woman, approaching 40, who's done pretty well for herself. I loved your book, and fundamentally agree with what you argue. But I'm struggling with a somewhat different dilemma. I'm bored. I've reached a senior level in my (male-dominated) field while still comparatively young, and if I stay in that field, my choice is either to keep doing what I'm doing for decades to come (which many do) or shift to management (which many others do). Neither appeals to me. Instead, I'm thinking that I want a total career shift. But I worry that if I leave, I will damage the opportunities and outlook for younger women in my field who, with me gone, will see one less woman near the top. And I do feel a responsibility to them. What do you think?
Local Yokel
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A Little from Linda

Dear Local,

I do not understand why you chose field that did not engage your capacities for the length of your career. Since you do not reveal the field or the aspirational whole career change, it's hard for me to answer well. I will say that many engineers and journalists I know have faced the conflict between their love of craft and the inevitable wicking up into management.
In my opinion, management is the better choice. Unless you're going to invent Velcro or reveal the government's wiretapping program, there's a limit to the flourishing life that can be derived for example for engineers or journalists from doing the same thing over and over again as you describe it. Anyway, man is a political animal, as Aristotle says, so it's natural that the most remunerative positions in a corporate society would involve managing other human beings. Why not take management training and see if you like it?
L

And I've got a question for you:

What you seemed to be arguing is that fulfillment has both a subjective and an objective component. You also seem to be arguing that when educated women choose to stay home with kids - even if they think this is subjectively fulfilling - it isn't objectively fulfilling. And the kicker - the thing that people seem to be getting riled up about - is the conclusion: it is more important to be objectively fulfilled than subjectively fulfilled.

You also seemed to say that women who think they're subjectively fulfilled by staying home with kids are wrong - they've lost touch with their real feelings.

All this reminded me of the philosophical concept of authenticity, and the pursuit of the authentic life. That is a tough route, pursuing the authentic life, because you'll be challenged by yourself, by society, by your family, your boss, by everyone to get off track and to follow their paths rather than finding your own authentic path.
People settle for less than the authentic path because it's easier and it's socially acceptable. And - like Nietzsche knew - people who are living inauthentic lives will tell people living authentically that they're bad and immoral and wrong.

What I was wondering was whether I was correctly analyzing your piece, and if there was this connection to authenticity. I thought of this connection when I heard the podcast of your interview with Brian Lehrer, when the reinsurance lawyer who hated working at a big law firm called in, and your response was to ask why she'd spent all those years in school just to get an education, and then a job, she thought was valueless. The answer, I'm sure, was that the woman went to law school with all sorts of good hopes and ideals, and found those difficult to achieve. She got a job working in reinsurance, found that (predictably) unfulfilling, and left to raise kids. Is there
something other than reinsurance or staying home with kids she could have done? I thought that was where authenticity came in - her job was objectively but not subjectively fulfilling. The problem was that the woman had *chosen* the subjectively unfulfilling job, when she should have chosen a job that would be both objectively and subjectively fulfilling. People have set all this up as a false dichotomy, in other words - the reinsurance lawyer created a world for herself in which reinsurance law or kids were her only options. She
denied herself the authentic life, which would have been to find a job that was harder to get and less obvious, but which would have been both subjectively and objectively fulfilling.

Again, I'm not sure I'm reading you right, but this analytical model made sense to me in the context of your essay and what I see.

Anyway, thank you for your essay - I think it's important and interesting, and it's given my friends and me a lot to talk about.

A Philosophical Reader
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A Little from Linda

Dear Philosophical,

I did not buy the reinsurance lawyer's story for two reasons. One, a well-educted young lawyer can always change fields within the firm or change firms and fields. So I thought the disaffection from the job was a transparent excuse to quit altogether, a decision I think is usually a mistake. Two, I have long wanted to take on the female criticism of capitalism, what I call in my book the "it's only money" syndrome.

If people have values that are going to make them feel inauthentic in any job in the market economy, they have a very narrow range of options indeed. So rather than seeing it as a disconnect between what the society values and what the individual's socially disconnected inner voice tells her to value, I'm interested in where her value system came unmoored from society's. "It's hard to be a good man in a bad state," as Plato says, so if capitalism is really bad, she's right not to want to participate. So the question becomes, is capitalism all bad? Or is there something about reinsurance that is particularly bad? Why is this attitude so concentrated among women?
I don't have a lot of answers, but those are the questions I think need to be addressed.
L

Hi, Ms. Hirshman. Enjoyed your entertaining article about the wrath of stay-home moms, although, as a former stay-home mom, I disagree with your premise that these women are wasting intellect and talent, and avoiding risk. As my signature block attests, I’m a public affairs officer/major in the Army, and have won awards for my writing at DoD level, so hopefully would qualify as a “woman of intellect.” The nine years I spent as a stay-home mother were blessed – and please don’t think that affiliates me with the fundamentalists, as I am very open-minded about religion despite my own strong faith. I’m sure you did a great job raising your daughters as a working mom, and many do, but I don’t understand why you seem to despise the choice that some women have made to devote a portion of their lives solely to the enriching endeavor of raising their own children by themselves, vs. paying someone else to do it. I guess I concur with the woman you lambasted for her poor wording about feminism being about supporting other women’s choices… isn’t that truly what it IS all about, choice? And talk about risk! If I hadn’t done my job properly, my children might not be the gifted, large-souled adolescents they now are. Any way, best to you, ma’am, and do think YOU might work on opening YOUR mind a bit… narrow-mindedness being a particular, if untrumpeted, failing of those on the left.

Broad Minded
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A Little from Linda

Dear Broad Minded,
I have long thought the military might be an outlet for female energy and talent in a discriminatory market place, so I am interested in your success and justifiable pride in it, particularly since you overcame the substantial odds against women ramping back onto the workplace after a long absence.
I do wish that you and others who have not read the book would stop writing and 1) chanting the word "choice" and 2) telling me about your blessedness. In the book, I made a powerful argument that choice is NOT what feminism is all about. If you have a counterargument, fine. But just saying "choice" again and again is meaningless. It is not a magic incantation. As to blessedness, I have also said at least a thousand times that there is no discussion to be had with people who talk to god. What kind of counterargument could I make? That I have better access to god than you do, so MY decision to work is actually the blessed one? Since there is no counterargument, blessing seems wholly out of place in political discourse.
ps
I'm glad you are willing to read material from us narrow minded lefties, but it strikes me as a little strange to assert that narrowmindedness is "a particular failing of those on the left." Is that what passes for a broad minded position of those on the right?
L

Getting from the Government

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A Little from Linda

Dear Getting,

There are several mothers' organizations with policy agendas such as you describe. One, Moms Rising, was just started by the women from Moveon.org, the liberal internet organization. Others include Mothers and More and Mothers Movement Online.

As I say in Get To Work, women have been trying to get help from business and the government for almost forty years. The U.S., unlike Europe, has moved steadily to the right since 1968 and certainly since 1980, and almost all levels of government are controlled by Republicans at this point. So, unlike Europe, I see no help in sight. Continuing to press the conservative U.S. government for help is okay, I guess, but NOT A SUBSTITUTE for women acting as much as they can individually to improve their lots, and that is what my book is about. Otherwise, wishing for help where it is not forthcoming is the same as doing nothing.

L.

Career Clock Ticking

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A Little from Linda

Dear Clock Ticking,

You are not the only woman to ask Linda about a late career dream. Readers, take note. Pay attention to how you want to spend your lives as quickly as you can, as the prospects for medical school at thirty-seven or eight are daunting.

Realistically, by the time you make up the science courses you would need and go to four years of medical school, plus internship and residency, you will be close to fifty years old. Women live a long time, now, longer than men by several years, so fifty may be the "new forty." Nonetheless, I would be concerned about starting a professional career at fifty, including issues of debt from the extended education you would be undertaking. If you feel your life would be wasted if you did not realize this passion for medicine, then you might as well do it. Certainly the alternative of a wasted life is not desirable.
Otherwise, why not turn your existing talent and training to something related to medicine, like fund raising for a medical research enterprise or working for a foundation like the Gates Foundation with a real commitment to medical problems? You could do some good and be involved in the issues that interest you without the burden of starting over at thirty-seven.
L.

A Little from Linda

Dear Dr. Freud:

Your letter indeed helped make my (wonderful) day. I know that someone who listens to talk radio must indeed be looking for a dispassionate analysis of social issues. Certainly, my hosts' tones are a constant inspiration to me.
I receive a trickle of these "you must have a terrible life" letters. I assume the writers mean that anyone who disagrees with them must be depressed from their present or crazy from their childhood. It's sort of the secular version of "you haven't come to God," which I get from my religious talk show listeners. What is missing, of course, is just the faint possibility that I might believe what I speak and write as a rational, educated human thinker, trained as a lawyer to tailor my presentation to the context in which I am arguing.
I thought I would take this opportunity to reassure my readers that I had and have an absolutely great life.
But you already knew that.
L.

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.

I have read your work about women opting out with great interest and I wanted to thank you for raising a latent issue for a lot of educated women today.

Going back is tough. A lot of us women in our 30s, educated, with careers, married, with children often opt out and going back is so difficult, that we decide to stay out. We get either (1) paralyzed with fear or insecurities (e.g. after 3 years out of work, how can I go back to where I was before? Am I already too old?) or (2) way too comfortable/lazy to do anything about it (e.g. my husband makes enough money, why go back?). Working and building a career is tough and when we decide to give it up "for a while" we never realize how tough it is to get back in. If we can avoid it: we should not get out -even for a little bit. But this is the difficult part, how can we manage to work and have children and do all well, with so little support?

An Honest Woman
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A Little from Linda:

Dear Honest,

It takes a lot of courage to admit that once you step out of the ring, the barriers to stepping back in include two from inside: fear and laziness. I have never said that a lot of the women are victims of such mental habits, but a lot of the stories I heard in interviews had that subtext clear as day. "I just don't have the stomach for the politics and stress that go along with an executive position," as one stay at home mom put it on BloggingBaby.com.

If this is any comfort to you, it's not just you. Sequencing, which was made popular by one of a wave of backlash books in the 80's, "Sequencing," by someone named Arlene Rossen Cardozo, turns out to be a really unsuccessful strategy for dealing with the conflicting demands of work and family. According to an extremely informative article in Women's eNews in May, http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2728/context/archive, in a
2004 survey, the Center for Work Life Policy, a New York Think Tank, "found that 93 percent of women who 'off-ramp' want to work again, yet only 74 percent succeeded in obtaining jobs during the study and, among these women, only 40 percent return to full-time professional jobs. The rest are either self-employed or part-timers." That would be 29% who returned.

Even Cardozo, joining another Backlash writer, Terry Martin Hekker, whose husband famously left her after her fifteen minutes of fame as an advocate for devoting yourself to your husband, has now recanted and admitted that sequencing isn't a good idea. Her current advice, for what that is worth, is to work part time.

My advice is to put fear to work for you. The estimable Women's eNews article carries this warning from two current analysts: "'Women who sequence . . . face long-term financial costs, even if they only take a few years off,' says Erin L. Kelly, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. Women not only forego wages while childrearing, Kelly says, they earn less once they return to work and these wage penalties continue for years afterward. As a result, women often have fewer assets to support their retirement and are working longer. The number of women over 65 who are still working has increased 38 percent since 1980, according to the U.S. Labor Department. 'In today's economy, it is a risky strategy for women's long-term economic security.'

So Get To Work, Honest, rattle your network and if necessary start a little lower than you think you deserve. You may not need the money, now or ever, but life is long and, as your honest and articulate letter reflects, you have talents and capacities to use and give beyond the four walls of the single family dwelling.

L.

I don't know if you believe in God & eternity spent in heaven or hell, but I do know this...I've never heard it said yet by anyone on their death bed that they regret not having spent more time at work.

A Proud Recycled Teenager
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A Little from Linda

Dear Teen,
Your letter is one of hundreds asking me: Have I ever heard anyone on their death bed regretting not spending more time at work? Like you, many of the writers worry about my beliefs in heaven, etc. I have no idea if tending to the modern nuclear family gets you into heaven or not. I do know that early Christians often abandoned their families and farms to follow the disciples and that celibacy is a high principle of the Catholic clergy. So there must be some people who don’t think the only way to heaven is to spend more time with your family.

Since it comes up so frequently, I will share my answer. I have never been at anyone’s death bed at all. I did visit my mother right before she died, and she was very clear in regretting that she hadn’t spent more time at the opera.

I suspect they aren’t deeply engaged in conversation at that point, but I have a list of people who, I would bet, would regret not having enough time at work. They are: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Mother Teresa, Pope John XXIII, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jane Austen, Alexander Hamilton.

I could go on. But I won’t. Except to say that endlessly repeating an easily rebutted banal saying like this is unlikely to convince anyone capable of even elementary reason to change their mind about what constitutes a flourishing human life.

L.

On Edge in Austin
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A Little from Linda:

Dear Edgy,
I don't know anyone -- kids, no kids, job, no job, who does not feel pretty hamster wheelish most of the time. Maybe it's the connective technology of modern life, where you never get away from the cell phone; maybe it's the pace of late capitalism. But I suspect it's more a part of the human condition than you, or most people, think. We know from history that when factory workers started to organize and bargain for ONE DAY off from the seven day work week, they were told, "if you don't come in on Sunday, don't bother coming in on Monday." There's a reason the ancients thought slavery was good -- they couldn't figure out any other way that people could get enough leisure to have any life of the mind. Of course slavery is probably not a good solution, but it does show how far back your feeling goes.

Feeling tired can also be a symptom of mental or physical problems that I don't have any expertise in. But if you are healthy and cheerful, I fear you're just here in the Human Condition with the rest of us!
L.

I am a thirty year old wife and mother. I have been in graduate school for eight years off and on, mostly off in the last five years. I tried to finish my dissertation while getting married and having a baby (my daughter is one and still nursing), but I am not making much progress. I have great doubts about the academic life anyway. My sociology professors at [Ivy League school] were so focused on their writing and so indifferent to the students. I certainly wouldn’t want a single-mindedly ambitious life like theirs. But I am a feminist and I don’t think I will be happy staying home all the time. What should I do?

Lactating in Lackawanna

P.S.

My husband, who is also thirty, is incredibly busy working his way up the ladder at the law firm and isn’t around much to help.

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A Little from Linda:

Dear Lactating (and everyone else out there)

SOUND FAMILIAR?

It’s easy for me to prescribe broad changes for a whole society, often so hard for you to fit them onto your life. But I have met dozens of girls and women who want guidance so they do not wind up “At home in Brooklyn taking care of our daughter” as my Times groom described his Ivy League educated, Master of Arts, full time stay at home spouse. Write to me. Tell me the details of your situation. Get some advice before you make a decision it’s hard to rescind. Meet others in your situation.

L.

P.S. Meanwhile, don’t have that second baby 'til you call me.