Meet Betty and Sam: two highly educated, intelligent, motivated young people who happen to be married to each other. Both Betty and Sam are flying up the professional ranks. Both Betty and Sam love their jobs. Things are going as planned and life is great.
Then one day the rabbit dies. Whoa . . . now what? Suppose this couple is so wildly successful that they can raise a family and live comfortably on either one of their salaries. Now that they're pregnant, what are they going to do with their careers? And what about their kid?
Hopefully, many of us will have the luxury of facing this dilemma one day. But while women's strides in the work force have changed the nature of this issue, this question is not gender neutral. The deciding question usually becomes: What is the mother going to do about it? Will she continue on her current career track and find someone to watch her kid? Or will she stay home and put her professional aspirations on hold--and if so, for how long?
Betty and Sam decide to sacrifice her corner office (or medical practice, or career in civil engineering or whatever) for a shot at diaper changing and breast feeding. Betty figures she'll stick around until Junior gets to be a year old before she resumes her professional career. But time goes by and diaper changing turns into potty training and Betty's still on hand, now chasing Junior about with a pair of rubber pants. Before you know it, it's time for training wheels and lunch boxes and Betty is still home, sporting the Keds, driving the station wagon, and deciding when to give Junior a little sister or brother. Betty is in this for the long haul--and she loves it.
She loves it except for the fact that all of her old Duke friends and colleagues just keep shaking their heads, astounded and dismayed at her fate. They see only the tragic waste of Betty's intellect and impressive academic training. They see a smart and successful woman degenerating into a housewife who spends her time discussing Big Bird with a four-year-old. Poor, pathetic woman. A few of them approach her as one does a patient unaware of just how sick she is: Betty, honey, isn't it time you got yourself back to work?
Well, is it? After years of pursuing an ever-higher education, can a woman ethically rely on Sesame Street for her daily mental stimulus? Is she wasting her education? Is she betraying her society? Does the answer change if she specialized in history or histology? What is her responsibility to her child? Is staying home and trying to make a contributing member of society out of a drooling bundle of diaper rash a worthy goal? Or is it a cop out?
Somewhere between the merits of ``gender equality'' and the inherent value of traditional family roles rest the answers to these questions. But for most women in Betty's shoes the path to those answers is littered with conflicting promises, investments and expectations.
As liberated'' women, most female Dukies channel their energies into high-powered career paths, trying to ignore the distinctly feminine challenges of parenting they will face. And with all the emphasis on prestige, money and career goals that we take from a place like Duke, many of us have made the unfortunate mistake of treating education only as a means to an end. We overlook the possibility of education as an end in itself. Adopting a purely goal-oriented point of view of education and subsequently looking down on the educated woman who isjust a housewife'' is missing the forest for the trees. Education is not merely a ticket to ride in the fast lanes of life; it is a means towards enriching life as a whole.
Maybe in the grand scheme of things, staying home to read Pat the Bunny'' or to wipe a runny little nose actually is more important than scaling the heights of the corporate ladder. I'm not saying women must stake out a place in their kitchens and never leave. But those who choose to do so deserve respect for the awesome task they undertake. Before they can gain that respect, we need to recognize the chains that now bind thisliberated'' woman.
Too many tired cliches about women in kitchens have taken hold of the subject and have created a view of motherhood as a curse lurking in the dark corners of the future, waiting to demolish a lifetime of carefully laid career plans. It seems as if a liberated'' woman who decides to assume traditional family roles is somehow betraying the cause of equality for all women;liberated'' women should know that their place is no longer in the home and they should do everything possible to make a woman's place anywhere and everywhere else.
There is a caustic irony in a community that belittles the educated homemaker, the lifesource of the community itself. For those fortunate enough to ever face this choice, the decision to be just a mom'' is one that deserves not contempt, but the highest levels of honor and respect. But the unruly tides of social progress lead us to a new question: How can an educated, career-oriented young womango domestic'' without hearing the bitter charge of blasphemy and suffering a loss of respect from a purely goal-oriented community?
Wendy Rosenberg is a Trinity senior.
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