In
writer Lisa Belkin’s recent, much-discussed
New York Times Magazine piece, entitled “The Opt-Out
Revolution,” she made the case that one of the primary reasons
so many of today’s highly educated, accomplished women never
make it to the very top rungs of their professions is because they’ve
come to realize that, in fact, they really don’t want to.
Belkin argues that a trend is in the making, as more professional
women are choosing to voluntarily “opt out” of male-pattern
career advancement in order to stay home with their children and
compose more meaningful family lives.
Bolstering her thesis,
Belkin identifies a group of her own peers and colleagues: professional
women in their thirties and forties who have stepped away from the
world of work to concentrate more fully on mothering. Included among
her admittedly narrow interview group are college-educated, married,
professional, white women who love their kids, their husbands, their
wine-sipping book discussion groups, and the comfortable homes they
are making for their families.
In other words, these
women are me. Or at least they were me up until about a year ago,
when I too was a thirty-something, married mother of three with
a college degree, a nice house, a flexible, work-at-home writing
career, and a husband with a good job providing health insurance.
Like Belkin, I too smugly pontificated about the many joys and benefits
of creating a work life that allowed me to nurture my family and
explore my own creativity. I patted myself on the back for my willingness
to forego a full-time, salaried job in my field -- journalism --
to be a better mother.
What I never considered,
however, was that I could end up the Gen- X version of the infamous
“displaced homemaker,” but unfortunately, that’s
exactly what happened. In 2002, a sudden and unexpected shift of
seismic proportions rearranged my enviable work-life balance and
today, I find myself a single mother of three, no longer living
in a house I own, and cobbling together a living without the benefit
of a live-in spousal income.
I’ve done pretty
well as an author and freelance writer over the years, but there’s
a big difference between “doing well” as a writer when
a partner has a job with benefits, and “doing well”
when freelance work is your primary source of income. Still, the
uniquely solitary nature of my profession lends itself far more
easily to transitioning between part-time and full-time employment
than many others, and I am getting by. I will no longer have health
insurance or a 401K when my divorce is finalized, but I know I am
luckier than many women in my situation. Female doctors, lawyers,
accountants, engineers, and teachers generally have a tough row
to hoe if they suddenly find themselves forced back into the workforce
by divorce or widowhood after years spent at home.
But is this a surprise?
Didn’t women my age learn the risks of depending too heavily
on our spouses for future economic security by watching middle-aged
women who had been full-time mothers limp into the workforce in
droves as divorce rates skyrocketed during the 70s and 80s? These
women -- many of whom had cultivated careers or at least career
skills in the years before marriage and motherhood - found that
their voluntary sabbatical from the labor force left them ill-equipped
to support themselves, much less pay for health care or save for
retirement.
In response to the growing
problem of what came to dubbed “displaced homemakers’
syndrome,” economists and feminists urged the professional
women of my generation to take care of ourselves and our kids by
assuming that no one else was going to take care of us. Apparently,
however, we didn’t get the message. I know that I didn’t;
unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way. I fear that many of
Lisa Belkin’s opt-out pals are setting themselves up for the
same rude awakening.
As I read Belkin’s
article, I shook my head sadly as I applied current divorce statistics
--including the rise in no-fault divorce and the virtual disappearance
of alimony from most divorce settlements -- to her interview sample.
Odds are that around half of the happily fulfilled, college-educated,
para-homemakers she interviewed will find themselves single at some
point in the next decade, at which point their choice to “opt
out” of their formerly promising career trajectories may also
mean that they have “opted out” of not only the lifestyle
extras they seem to take for granted, but also fundamentals like
a house, health insurance, and retirement funds.
Let me be clear: despite
my current circumstances, I don’t regret the many personal
benefits my kids and I gained during the years I worked less and
mothered more, but the plain fact is that my choices have left me
at a distinct economic disadvantage at a time in my life when I
always assumed I’d be “all set.”. What I wish
I had known then and what I do know now is that the years I spent
primarily concentrating on being a mother and wife didn’t
represent anything more than one phase among many in a working life
that will, by today’s economic necessity, span my entire adult
life.
While Lisa Belkin and
her interview subjects may believe that they have “opted out,”
the reality is likely to be much less clear cut for them as their
children grow and many of their marriages end. Ten years from now,
I suspect that we may be hearing from a new group of suddenly single,
50 year old, college-educated women who haven’t held a paying
job in a decade about a new and fascinating trend: the “I-was-only-kidding-and-I-really-need-to-opt-back-in
Revolution.”
mmo : January
2004 |
