Choices Have Consequences

I read this article last week, and I've been thinking about it since then. There's something self-involved and entitled about it that I couldn't put my finger on. I knew I was going to have issues with the article as soon as I finished the first paragraph:

Amid all the recent buzz about Caroline Kennedy's bid for a U.S. Senate seat, there has been a great deal of talk about her connections, her power, her wealth. But the way I see it, if you strip away the glamour, the name and the money, then Caroline is . . . me. And many of my friends. Maybe even you. If, that is, you happen to be a midlife woman raising kids and returning -- or thinking of returning, or hoping one day to return -- to the full-time workforce.

The author argues that women who haven't followed the traditional, linear career path shouldn't be shut out of jobs they want when they want to return to work after raising child. Ah heck, why paraphrase? Here are the most relevant paragraphs:

Even though the job Kennedy is trying to nab is a far cry from the account executive or publicist positions that my friends might go after, the phenomenon at work is the same. The reaction seems to be: If she hasn't followed a straight-and-narrow, logical path, we simply can't imagine her in the role under discussion.

Confronted with employers' traditional expectations, many job-hunting women back down and settle for less, taking cuts in salary, seniority or both. One friend of mine had been a highly paid health-care executive before she had kids. She continued to work full-time when her children were young, until the work-family tango got to be too much. After taking a few years off, she decided to reenter the job market. But several interviews later, she realized that the very same inhospitable conditions that had driven her out remained: long hours that didn't mesh with the kind of family life she wanted. So she changed careers, took a whopping pay cut and became a teacher.

Let me get this straight. This lady wants women to be able to take time off from their career to raise kids, then reenter the workforce at a level as if they had been working in their full-time career during that period, and then have a perfect work-life balance? We make choices in life. Sure, those choices are often constrained by money, social expectations, and time. There's a name for that. What's it again? Oh, yeah. Reality.

Now, it may seem unfair that society expects women to be the primary care givers. I'll grant that. However, trying to mitigate problems caused by that expectations in other realms is a terrible idea. So, let's agree it's not fair that a woman is pressured to stay home and then when she wants to get back into the job market she faces problems because her job skills have atrophied. But isn't it also unfair to the men and single women who continued to worked full-time in those "inhospitable conditions" like "long hours?"

Reality has constraints. People make choices when faced with those constraints. People choose to have children. In the example cited above the woman returning to work chose to take a pay cut in exchange forthe more flexible work schedule of a teacher.

If the issue is that society pressures women into taking the time off to raise the kids, then okay. That's an issue that can be debated. But it is naive and quite frankly insane to argue that people who take time off from their career should be able to show up in the workforce and be hired roughly at where they would have been promoted to if they had continued working and have the flexibility to work when they want. That's not how it works. That's not how it should work.

I read this article in The Times last week, and this quote stuck with me:

I don’t know if we’re third-wave or post-feminist, but we definitely want to be all things and don’t feel like we can’t be.

I think that's the fundamental and fatal flaw of feminism. It says you not only that you can have everything, but that you ought to have everything. There are inequities and disparities that feminism can and should address, but the idea that women aren't faced with constraints and consequences for their choices and actions is a delusional and dangerous current that runs through and deeply in feminist theory, dogma, and logic.