{"id":3071,"date":"2015-10-20T07:46:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T13:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=3071"},"modified":"2015-10-20T07:46:43","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T13:46:43","slug":"from-the-library-unfinished-business-by-anne-marie-slaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/10\/from-the-library-unfinished-business-by-anne-marie-slaughter.html","title":{"rendered":"From the library: Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yes, it\u2019s \u201cJane the Actuary writes a book report\u201d again, though at least this time around the book was fairly recently published, and, even though I wasn\u2019t very impressed with it in the end, it\u2019s a good jumping-off point for the issues it raises. \u00a0But there are only so many synod-related posts I can write, when I\u2019m, honestly, out of my depth there.<\/p>\n

Anne-Marie Slaughter, if you didn\u2019t know (and I hadn\u2019t known) was a top-level State Department policy strategist, reporting to Hilary Clinton, who made waves when she left that post to return to her comparatively more family-friendly job as dean of Princeton\u2019s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, in New Jersey, from which she had been commuting during the week, much to the distress of her preteen sons. \u00a0Shortly thereafter, she wrote an article in The Atlantic<\/em>, with the click-bait title of \u201cWhy Women Still Can\u2019t Have It All,\u201d which exploded in popularity (2.7 million pageviews), and launched her into a sideline career of speaking and writing on related issues, leading to this book.<\/p>\n

Her title, Unfinished Business, refers to the changes needed, she believes, in families, in the workplace, and in government, that will allow women to \u201chave it all\u201d \u2014 with the \u201call\u201d being defined differently than it is today, but ultimately being defined the same for men and women. \u00a0She thinks she\u2019s speaking of all women, but her concern is squarely with that sort of young woman who aspires to being made partner, or getting tenure, or making it to the C-Suite, or the the top levels of government, the women who attend her talks and write to her for advice.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s her world \u2014 she writes of a failed starter marriage, then working endless hours to achieve tenure, then marrying again a second time at 35 and, after some rounds of fertility treatment, having two children in her late 30s. \u00a0After her children were born, she and her husband juggled schedules \u2014 though it seems they continued to work long hours, presumably achieved by a combination of daycare\/nanny care and weekend\/night work. \u00a0Here\u2019s one piece of advice she offers early on based on her experiences: \u00a0\u201cthe faster you can become the boss, the easier it is to fit work and family together\u201d \u2014 never mind that neither the vast majority of women nor the vast majority of men, will ever become \u201cthe boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the key items on her agenda is prodding the workforce to be more accommodating of not just women and mothers, but also fathers, caregivers of elderly parents, any anyone who wants to pursue a hobby. \u00a0Too few employers offer their employees the opportunity to work part-time, or, if they do, they judge the employee to be insufficiently dedicated to their job and all hope of career advancement is lost. \u00a0Men, in particular, fear ridicule for any reduction in work hours or even a modest paternity leave. \u00a0Even for those working full-time, she calls for employer accommodation of schedule irregularities for school meetings, sick kids, snow days, etc., and for employers to embrace an attitude of valuing productivity over face time, and permitting working at home to the greatest extent possible, though she overestimates the benefit of working remotely, buying into the mythology of \u201cmultitasking\u201d and the notion that multitasking parents, because of their superior motivation, can be more productive in fewer hours, than a typical worker. \u00a0(In reality, one simply cannot care for small children and be a productive employee simultaneously \u2014 here\u2019s my prior post on the subject<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where she briefly ventures into the issues that blue-collar women, and blue-collar workers generally face \u2014 the fact that shift workers have little flexibility, and are often punished excessively for missed shifts, with retail workers having an even more difficult time with unpredictable work hours. \u00a0Of course, for these workers, and for blue-collar work generally, you can\u2019t imagine that telecommunting is an answer, either.<\/p>\n

In a perfect world, especially with later retirement ages, men and women could work reduced hours during their childrearing years (which, let\u2019s face is, ought to occur earlier than her late 30s\/40s experience \u2014 but, then, my third was born when I was Slaughter\u2019s age when she had her first), then push themselves harder as their kids become more independent, and begin climbing the career ladder, just perhaps later than usual. \u00a0The trouble is that, as it stands, employers have their pick of employees willing to put in long hours. \u00a0Slaughter\u2019s vision is, so far as I can see, for men and women to collectively reject this demand, or perhaps for employers to be pressured into making advancement possible even after time away; it\u2019s not clear which. \u00a0She also doesn\u2019t seem to recognize that it\u2019s a numbers game \u2014 not everyone will get that promotion.<\/p>\n

Slaughter is very clear as well that she views accommodation for parenting to be an issue for men and women both. \u00a0In her view, there is nothing special about \u201cmothering\u201d; no reason, other than cultural conditioning, why women should feel more drawn to being caregivers for their children than men, or why their aptitude for the task should be any greater than men\u2019s. \u00a0She believes that men are particularly unlikely to take on the task because of the ways in which they\u2019re discouraged from doing so by the culture: \u00a0from ridicule at work, to a popular culture that demeans men as parents, to the very idea that a man taking care of his children is \u201cbabysitting\u201d them. \u00a0She wants male caregivers to be enough the norm that couples decide among themselves how they divide the load based on their individual situation, with each partner in turn alternatingly prioritizing career vs. childcare as they pursue advancement and achievement and their full (non-staying-at-home) potential \u2014 though at the same time, she does recognize that, in the present day, ambitious women tend to aim at marrying equally-ambitious men, which then places them in a struggle for which of them lets go of their ambition, even temporarily, not just for childcare reasons but when a job requires a transfer or the career climb requires a new job elsewhere.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t enough to get us where she wants. \u00a0She develops a notion of twin values of Care and Competition, and says we need to increase the degree to which we value Care \u2014 including paid and unpaid care, such as that of parents of small children, and children of aging parents. \u00a0She even fits singles into her framework because they may do volunteer work or need time for \u201cself-care.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0The fact that daycare workers and home health workers for the elderly are paid poorly she calls \u201cdiscrimination against Care\u201d which\u00a0must be remedied.<\/p>\n

At this point, she devotes some pages to\u00a0discussing how difficult a job it is to care for young children, and suggesting that only extremely skilled people are up to the task. \u00a0She references favorably the high status of Finnish school teachers, who must complete a master\u2019s degree in the subject \u2014 and yet, well, to begin with, this section does read as if the majority of parents aren\u2019t themselves qualified to raise their own children. \u00a0And beyond this, the skills needed to do a great, rather than just adequate job, caring for small children, or for the frail elderly, are not skills which are acquired through years spent in university classrooms, and, accordingly, those skills cannot be measured by means of counting the\u00a0years of schooling.<\/p>\n

And here bottom line: \u00a0a long wish list of items needed to build an \u201cinfrastructure of care\u201d including daycare and elder care (and with the employees paid higher wages than the parents who place their children there), financial support for single parents, paid family and medical leave, a right to part-time or flex schedules, and \u201creform of elementary and secondary school schedules to meet the needs of a digital rather than an agricultural economy and to take advantage of what we now know about how children learn\u201d \u2014 which I presume to mean year-round, full-day schooling (though, by the way, our June \u2013 August vacation schedule wasn\u2019t driven by farm rhythms; or, at least, in the Little House books, it was spring and fall where kids were needed in the fields, not summer). \u00a0How to make this happen? \u00a0By electing women to Congress.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s Slaughter\u2019s book, in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

Now, it is certainly true that couples should be freer to plan their family life in the way that best suits them, whether it\u2019s a mom or a dad as primary caregiver. \u00a0And if there are still a few Neanderthals calling men who care for their children \u201cbabysitters,\u201d well, cut it out!<\/p>\n

But, in general, it is still the case that women are more likely than men to feel that tug to be at home with their children, and even many \u201chigh-potential\u201d women will choose to do so. \u00a0Slaughter\u2019s pitch for high-quality government-paid childcare, provided by highly-paid employees at daycare centers, comes pretty close to rejecting staying-at-home altogether; she throws in a mention of part-time work, but her operating assumption is that all women will, and should, work full-time, and what needs to be figured out is simply how to enable parents to manage (and prod bosses to accommodate) the child and family-related interruptions to their 40-hour week, and how to restore jobs back to 40 hours of work, rather than ever-increasing hours.<\/p>\n

Certainly the wish list of accommodations at work is a laudable one: \u00a0part-time work and flexibility to work at home where the nature of the job permits this, opportunity to work a standard 40 hours rather than mandatory overtime, flexibility with midday absences. \u00a0(Withe respect to the last of these: \u00a0in my line of work, my colleagues are so often out of pocket at client meetings that there\u2019s not necessarily a greater issue of unavailability, if someone\u2019s out for personal reasons.) \u00a0I would add that, in general, men and women, and society, would be better off with an earlier marriage\/childbearing norm, and if employers gave women seeking to return to the workforce in their 30s the same consideration as more recent college graduates, and treated both groups as worthy of consideration for advancement \u2014 I think Slaughter\u2019s approach of, in your 20s and early 30s, working your tail off for career advancement, then having kids and slowing down briefly, has the timing wrong.<\/p>\n

But there are two very real roadblocks: \u00a0 a still very weak labor market in blue-collar and white-collar non-management ranks (and, let\u2019s face is, the willingness by employers and legislators to keep it weak by immigration), and the continued willingness of many in, or aiming for upper management,\u00a0to work those long hours, motivated by the large paychecks they earn, or hope to earn \u2014 whether they plan to spend them on a Manhattan apartment, or the latest in designer duds, or just on dining out at the sort of places with the sort of prices that I can\u2019t comprehend spending.<\/p>\n

And besides this:\u00a0with respect to the women she cites, tragically wasting their potential because they\u2019ve been unable to keep climbing the corporate ladder after they have children: \u00a0why, in their younger years, are they dreaming of being executives, partners, high achievers? \u00a0Is it because they want the big paychecks? \u00a0Is it the nature of the work at that high level, engaging, stimulating, that draws them? \u00a0Is it the feeling of accomplishment? \u00a0The desire to have that label? \u00a0To what extent is it, now, a matter of feeling an obligation to reach those high levels \u2014 because the high-potential young women she interacts with have been told that they have an obligation to do their share for women\u2019s equality, by their success, and have been told that it\u2019s practically shameful not to \u201clean in\u201d? \u00a0 When these women have kids (if they have kids) will they still want that corporate reward?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, it\u2019s \u201cJane the Actuary writes a book report\u201d again, though at least this time around the book was fairly recently published, and, even though I wasn\u2019t very impressed with it in the end, it\u2019s a good jumping-off point for the issues it raises. \u00a0But there are only so many synod-related posts I can write, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the library: Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yes, it's "Jane the Actuary writes a book report" again, though at least this time around the book was fairly recently published, and, even though I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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