When I was a kid we had a lot of rabbits. We had a whole bunch of them, out in a shed in the side yard. Over the years we had a lot of different plans on how we could split up the task of feeding them, but little by little as the years went on, the task fell more and more to me.

Why?

Well, I guess I liked the rabbits. I guess I didn't mind going out in the dark or in the snow. And I guess there was always a part of me that worried that if I stopped feeding them in protest that one of them might die before somebody else would start doing it. I guess in that way I felt like the choice to feed them wasn't completely a free one.


At church on Tuesday night we were talking about gender roles. What were gender roles like in our countries of origin? How did they differ in France? Did we agree with the gender roles that our country assigned? We had some American girls, an American guy, a Pakistani guy, some French guys, and a Korean guy. The American girls (asian, white, filipina) went on for a while about how unbalanced things were in America, until the Pakistani guy told us about how things were in Pakistan. After that they all had to admit that things were pretty good in America. [For example, they were surprised to discover that a Pakistani woman does not get to decide how many children she wants to have. That choice is made without her input by her husband and his family.] I wasn't surprised at their kind of naive ideas about supposed inequality of women in America. I read all kinds of articles all of the time from women complaining about the fact that not many women hold high-powered CEO jobs, or that there is a huge leak in the "academic pipeline", meaning that a huge number of talented female graduate students never make it to the level of tenure-track professor. I went to a forum where a woman got up and passionately described how she had always dreamed of being a planetary scientist but she had to give up all of her dreams to follow her husband's job for the sake of her family. At the time I thought it might have been something she should have discussed with her husband ten years ago rather than right now in front of a huge audience of female planetary scientists. I guess I'd never really felt that kind of pressure. After all, I see myself as part of a new, privileged generation of liberated women. I have encountered no glass ceilings, no one telling me I wasn't good enough, and I'm allowed to walk freely around town without any male relatives in sight. In my mind, the fight was pretty much won. I had every choice and opportunity ahead of me, the Universe was at my disposal. After that, the decision of who should raise the kids and who should work at what job is up for negotiation in each individual case. In my case, I rather thought that I would like to stay home and take care of the kids, at least in their younger years--- didn't I have the prerogative to do that, too?

The guys at the church gathering were pretty forward-thinking. They didn't think that there should be any specific gender roles, either in the home or at church or in the office. They let us girls speak first and then just basically agreed with whatever we said.

"But honestly," said the Korean in french to the french guy, "if I had enough money, I'd like it if my wife was able to stay home."

"You should say that in English," said the french guy. And then he repeated it in English. We girls were perfectly neutral, and we asked him what he would do if his wife wanted to work outside of the home.

"Oh, she could do that too, if she wanted to. But personally, it would be nice, if it were financially feasible, for her to stay home."

The french guy laughed out loud and said, "Good luck finding a woman like that!"
But the other french/chinese guy agreed. The black guy from North Carolina also agreed. In principle it was fine for women to have jobs, but for each of them personally they would prefer it if their own wife stayed home.

"I mean, when I was growing up," said the North Carolinian, "The womenfolk did all of the housework and the cooking. So that's what I'm used to. But just because I'm a man don't mean I can't pick up a dish every once in a while."

They agreed that if she really wanted to have a job, well then, she could do that, too. We asked them if they would ever consider staying home with the kids, and they said that they thought that it was fine in the abstract, but they would never personally do it, and they wouldn't really respect a man who did.

I started to think about me and all my friends in the 'leaky academic pipeline'. I mean, those friends of mine, they're getting to the point where they're starting to talk about kids. You know, quietly, conspiratorially, out of the earshot of the menfolk. "I just don't want to put off having kids so long that I wake up one day and I've run out of time," they say. If they're dating a guy who is about their same age he feels very little of the same biological pressures. But they work full time! They're supposed to be applying to jobs! They're supposed to be getting tenure! Instead they have a never-ending progression of short-term assignments with no real stability and even less money. But these women, these women who have been told all of their lives that they are smart and ambitious and that they should become scientists and professors and engineers and lawyers and high-powered CEOs, this new generation of women upon whom the 70s-era feminists have pinned all of their unrealized dreams..... I think these women are finding themselves fishing from a pool of potential partners who support them in the abstract, but who personally think that it might be nice if their own wife were to stay home. If it were financially feasible. Or, among the academic crowd, those who personally think that both members of the couple should work. But for the women this means that they're finding themselves choosing between staying home and raising the kids, or having nobody stay home to raise the kids, leaving the day-cares and the after-school programs and the kids to raise themselves. Or maybe settling for a reality without kids at all.

I guess I could start to understand that woman at the planetary science forum who felt that she'd spent 27 years of her life preparing for something, that she'd finally been offered the whole Universe on a platter and given free rein to choose any or all of it---- only to find out that the choice was an illusion, that she couldn't actually have it all, and that she could make any choice she wanted as long as she chose to sacrifice everything.



I guess she found out that if she didn't feed the rabbits...


it meant that nobody would.

I'm not sure if I should feel lucky that I probably won't have to deal with as much of a conflict here, since I'm more interested in raising kids, or if I should feel bad that I don't have more career ambitions.
» randomjunk on 2012-10-26 01:03:35

I feel like my heart just got punched in the face, that was so well-written.

It's weird, how times haven't changed all that much. I expected differently.
» Unicornasaurus on 2012-10-26 03:08:20

Yes, times have changed and women are able to do things that they would not be able to say 50 years ago but we are still somehow bound by culture and family upbringing. I don't think that will change anytime soon ergo there will always be "leaky academic pipelines" and having to choose between family and career.

For me, I don't really have a career ambition, I work so that I can go out and enjoy life like I want to (even though I am still quite restricted right now thanks to a certain man but I am doing more living than before, comparatively). So I think when the time comes, the thing that will help me decide between family and career is how bored I'm going to be doing that.
» Nuttz on 2012-10-26 10:18:04

I read an article in the Atlantic by Anne-Marie Slaughter, saying that the idea that women can "have it all"--a satisfying career *and* a family with children--is an illusion, at least for today.

Why do we want it all? Why does it have to be such a sacrifice to choose between two loves--family and career?


Poor little rabbits. :/
» invisible on 2012-10-29 12:58:42

I suppose that's life. You can have it all, but it so much trouble and weariness to take on all of that. I found a quote, it's not quite the one I wanted but I think it fits:

�The sacrifice which causes sorrow to the doer of the sacrifice is no sacrifice. Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy. The Buddha gave up the pleasures of life because they had become painful to him.� - Mahatma Gandhi
» jinyu on 2012-10-29 01:36:17

OH! Well yeah there is that :D
» middaymoon on 2012-10-31 08:44:29

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