The other choice debate

It wasn't surprising when The New York Times ran an article about college women's take on work-family balance a few weeks ago; the results, however, were a bit surprising. The article, "Many women at elite colleges choose career path to motherhood" (Sept. 20), profiled a number of young women who plan to opt out of the workforce once they have children. While this is not a new phenomenon, the article was disconcerting on several levels.

To begin with, almost all the students in the interview — and perhaps the author herself — seemed convinced that it is just too hard to manage a thriving career and a happy family at the same time. "My mother's always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best mother ... You always have to choose one over the other," said one Yale sophomore. Choosing to stay at home with the kids isn't a bad thing. Many women find motherhood to be the most fulfilling job there is. Yet others aren't that interested in family at all. And then there is another group of women who would be fundamentally different, incomplete people without having jobs and children at the same time.

All these women exist today, and yet I wonder why more women of our generation do not realize the wealth of possibilities before them. To be sure, problems still exist. For most professions, the most important years for building a career still coincide with women's prime childbearing years, and there doesn't seem to be a cure for working parent guilt. But there is also progress. More men are opting to stay home to take care of kids while their wives go off to work. Many employers are beginning to offer — or even require — paternity leave for new fathers. Just this year, Princeton changed its policy for tenure track professors: All professors, male and female, are now automatically granted a tenure extension when they have a child. Employers can also provide affordable daycare and part-time work to accommodate new parents. For many jobs, having a phone and webmail at home is all employees need to get the job done. But we need to do a better job educating younger generations about all their options.

It's astounding that many young women do not realize that these choices exist. Yet even more alarming is the fact that some of the students in the article suggested that children of working mothers simply do not turn out as well as those whose with a stay-at-home mom: "I've seen the difference between kids who did have their mother stay at home and kids who didn't, and it's kind of like an obvious difference when you look at it," said a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. This statement is not just offensive to upper and middle class working mothers; it is an absolute affront to the many dedicated mothers who cannot afford to stay home with their children. In fact, many studies show that when it comes to parenting, it is not quantity, but quality that counts.

Many young women today need to be reassured that they can indeed work and have a family. Furthermore, we have to ask why it is that college-age women spend so much time grappling with the issue of work-family balance while their male classmates rarely give it a passing thought. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a stay-at-home parent — what is wrong is that the parents who stay at home are disproportionately women.

There is no right way to manage a career and family, there's no sweeping prescription for everyone, and there is not necessarily one choice for an entire lifetime. There is a problem, though, with the fact that men don't seem to face these questions on the same level women do. Oddly, while women may be struggling with their choices, men may still not be fully aware of theirs.

The challenge — for men and women — is to figure out where we belong on the work-family spectrum. For some, the answer will be to take some time away from the time sheets and enjoy being a parent; others may find more satisfaction performing open heart surgery than applying band-aids; and some of us will get some twisted sense of pleasure from trying to manage both and feeling guilty all the time. What's important is that we understand that these options exist, and that we make sure they really are available to everyone. Rather than grading our choices, we need to look at the distribution of choice. Maybe this is simply a case of a reporter failing to tell all sides of the story. Maybe it's a larger problem in educating younger generations about all their career and family options. My only hope is that it is not a problem of these options being a fantasy. Libby Shutkin is a Wilson School major from New York, N.Y. She is president of the Organization of Women Leaders.