What do women want to be when they grow up?
Results of a new study of Yale University undergrads suggest that for about 60 percent of Ivy League undergrads, the answer is "mom." The resulting article in the New York Times, written by the study's author, recent Yale alumna Louise Storey, depicted a supposed sociological flip-flop that our mother's generation of feminists failed to anticipate, in which retiring into domesticity at the age of 30 has become not a constraint, but a sought-after privilege for a significant chunk of generation-Y women.
But the New York Times story has been greeted with criticism for failing to address the study's methodological weaknesses and leaving many questions unanswered. For instance, if young women who express a desire to stay at home have thought through the economic implications of their plans, they must realize that they'll need either an inheritance or a high-earning husband to recreate the privileged lifestyles to which they are accustomed. So much for marrying that sexy, starving artist or socially conscious public interest lawyer.
To give voices to some of the many young women pondering the unresolved questions presented in the Times article, I've recorded about two dozen conversations with Brown undergrads about the intersection of work, marriage and motherhood. Rarely have I interviewed people on a topic about which they were so eager to speak: No woman I talked to declined to be interviewed on this topic, and each one said they had already thought carefully about the choices between family and career that they expect to make over the next decades of their lives.
These young women are a fairly diverse lot: They hail from Seattle, Kansas, Long Island, Bangkok. Their mothers are psychiatrists, cosmetologists, homemakers, and night-shift secretaries. And it was clear that almost every young woman had spoken about these issues at length with their mothers, aunts, grandmas, sisters, and girlfriends. Still, not one young woman I spoke to on Brown's campus said she plans on giving up working after she has children -even if she does want to have flexible hours or the option of working from home.
One of the most striking facets of my interviews was the extent to which each woman was influenced by her mother. As in Storey's Times article, many of those who were raised by stay-at-home moms say they would never allow a nanny to "influence" their child, and almost all of those whose own moms juggled home life with careers long to experience the best of both worlds. More surprising was that for several women I spoke to, their mothers' experiences with taking time off from work served as a cautionary tale, convincing them not to stray too far from the career ladder themselves.
"My mom told me not to stop working if I had kids. It wasn't a subtle message," said law school hopeful Kate Magaram '06, whose mother quit her job as an attorney after having three children. Magaram said she's learned from her mother's experience that taking even a short break from work can have a lasting impact on a woman's ability to find meaningful employment. "It is nowhere in any conception I have of my life that I would stop working for any length of time beyond maternity leave," she said insistently. "It puts you at a huge disadvantage career-wise, because then, when you have to get another job, you have to explain why you haven't been working for five years."
For aspiring journalist Sunisa Nardone '07, watching her formerly stay-at-home mom struggle to find her footing after getting divorced convinced her that it was important to be financially independent. "After the divorce, it mattered that taking time off had hurt her career," Nardone said.
Indeed, "independence" was a word I heard from many of the people I interviewed, belying the idea that women of our generation have no feminist sympathies. Diksha Kohli '06, who plans to attend graduate school in psychology, emigrated with her family from India to the United States at the age of 6, where her mom got a job for the first time and her parents shared childcare. "Even growing up in a traditional Indian family, where there is pressure to get married, my mom's always been really strong about establishing myself independently from anyone else, and that includes men and children," Kohli said.
But that's not to say these women have no trepidations about balancing work and motherhood. In fact, they all want to have children, and recognize that their lives will have to change significantly when they do. Summer jobs can be a wake-up call for those who believe society has made "having it all" accessible. During her internship at a Time Inc. magazine this past summer, Nardone found herself asking almost as many questions about work/life balance as she did about journalism. She ended up concluding, "Maybe such a corporate place isn't for me and freelance is the way to go."
The bottom line is that just like our mothers, we generation-Y women are stuck between a rock and hard place. We are savvier about what we can realistically expect from the business world, but many of us still dream about having adorable, happy kids and reaching the top of our professions. The question is, what is the world going to do to help us achieve our goals?
Kholi says that American and Indian culture have similar expectations for mothers, namely, that they be the primary caregivers for their children. Yet so many more women have careers here. "What does that say about America?" she asks. "Yes, we're progressing in one sense, but when it comes to society's role (in raising a child), it's completely stagnant. We have not moved."
Dana Goldstein '06 is three-quarters Judith Miller and one-quarter June Cleaver.
