Back in September there was a blogoflap (my neologism for flap in the blogosphere) about a New York Times article "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood." (See two posts by Kieran Healey at Crooked Timber, and Tim Burke, for good discussion). The gist of the article was that "many" young women at highly ranked colleges have plans to leave work when they have children. Since this is not unrelated to my dissertation topic I thought I should have something intelligent to say on the matter, but I couldn't think beyond my own prejudices and childhood experience, and felt I should take the time to write something coherent on a topic I know a little about (as opposed to nothing, like most of the other stuff I comment on ...)
A couple of things struck me then, that I didn't expand into a post. One is that there's a long way between what you think you'll do at 20, and what you end up doing at 29 when you have your first child. These women will learn that for themselves, as did we all. That said, expectations about your own life do have a powerful influence on outcomes (see this paper by Claudia Goldin). Another is that people at elite colleges are not exactly a big proportion of the American population. While fascination with what the east coast elites do is hardly unusual, it's a smaller and smaller proportion of American society so extrapolation is risky.
And in fact, that is the case. Heather Boushey at the Center for Economic Policy Research has some research that shows that, actually, the impact of motherhood on labor force participation has continued to fall (via Angrybear) In short, more mothers are opting in.
Another response to the New York Times article was by Linda Hirschman in the American Prospect, an article that received high praise from Yglesias and Atrios, but pretty strong criticism from educated women who have put family ahead of career.
A couple of things, at least, went missing in the debate.
Fathers
One was much discussion of the role of fathers in caring for children. I thought this argument by Linda Hirschman addressed an all-too-common fallacy in people's child care decisions:
The economic temptation is to assign the cost of child care to the woman’s income . If a woman making $50,000 per year whose husband makes $100,000 decides to have a baby, and the cost of a full-time nanny is $30,000, the couple reason that, after paying 40 percent in taxes, she makes $30,000, just enough to pay the nanny. So she might as well stay home. This totally ignores that both adults are in the enterprise together and the demonstrable future loss of income, power, and security for the woman who quits. Instead, calculate that all parents make a total of $150,000 and take home $90,000. After paying a full-time nanny, they have $60,000 left to live on. (emphasis added)
Moreover, any prospects that women will continue to advance their representation in American politics will slow down and founder if people get the idea that motherhood is a good full-time occupation. I say this not as a value judgment, but as an observation. Women that get elected to political office don't have to be good mothers, they just have to not be incompetent. For better or worse, the voting public tends to vote for women who have been successful in business, academia and civil society, not women who have home schooled four children.
Hours of work
Another thing that deserves a little attention is the expectations about hours of work in America, compared with other western countries, and in professional occupations in particular. First up, on average, Americans work more hours per week, and more weeks per year than Europeans (PDF). All that time working is time not spent with children, for both parents. If your choice is full-time or no-time, and some people face that choice because employers are inflexible about working hours, then it might make sense for families who can afford it to have one parent opt out.
Expectations
The change in elite expectations about women's work is also striking, when you switch between the 1920s and 1930s, and current debates. The tone of the New York Times article, and a lot of other commentary, is that educated women should work. Think of that what you will, but it's quite the change from the early twentieth century. Things were somewhat different for the small minority of women who went to college, and then had to choose between career and family. It is striking to observe the number of professionaly successful women who remained single, whether that profession was managing an office or department in a department store, or teaching, nursing, law etc.
I don't want to step too far into a debate about whether feminism should be the handmaiden of capitalism, and merely seek to allow women to achieve success in the market. But it's a remarkable turn-around that current expectations in many quarters of society are that women should work. When you bring your head from the papers in which married women are castigated for having the desire to work just a little, the transformation to a world where they're expected to work 50 hour weeks is quite remarkable.
Posted by robe0419 at December 15, 2005 2:00 PM