MBA OR MOTHERHOOD?

This article from The New York Times really bothers me. In theory it shouldn't, but it does. It's all about the trend of high achieving women at elite colleges making long terms goals to either end or indefinetely postpone their career goals in favor of being stay at home moms.

There is the whole stay at home versus go to work and let a child care provider raise your child debate lurking here, but that's not what concerns me. I have no problem with other people's choices in that regard. Who am I to tell you how to raise your child or run your family? I constantly debate this in my own head all the time. If and when I ever have a family which will I chose? Since I cannot make a clear choice for myself [and luckily don't have to at the moment] I would be a complete hypocrite if I extolled one option as being superior over another. But I digress ...

What bothers me is that the competition to get into elite schools and superior porograms is fierce and expensive. If you know 100% when you are 20 that you never plan to use your degree then why not free up the space for someone else? I am all for education and broadening your mind, but do you really need a degree from Wharton or Yale Law to arrange car pools or attend PTA meetings? Do not misunderstand, I am not downplaying the role of full time moms. It is an awesome responsibility that requires patience and managing skills and the temperment of a saint. I have a ton of respect for people who make that choice. However, pragmatically degrees from elite schools are pieces of paper that open doors to job opportunities. The real skills are usually learned after you get hired. If you don't intend to open those doors then why horde the keys so that no one else can either?

There are a lot of those keys sitting in drawers at home, unused while those women attend to other, more domestic, goals. I have pondered this for quite some time in my own course of study. If roughly half of all law school graduating classes are women, then shouldn't half of all new lawyers also be women? They are not though. Step into a firm, large or small. The majority of attorneys, especially partners, are men. Women have had a serious presence in law schools nationwide for quite some time now, certainly enough time for many of those women to have ascended the career ladder into a large corner office. And yet ... they are conspicuously absent. Is it true that Rosie the Riveter really just wanted to go back home all this time and no one noticed?

The entire article reminded me of the movie Mona Lisa Smile, where the free thinking art professor, played by Julia Roberts, goes to teach at Wellesley College to open minds of the best and the brightest female, college students in the 1950's only to find that they are all being encouraged to abandon academia and any career plans upon graduation in favor of marriage and children. She describes the institution as a finishiing school disguised as a ladies college. Certainly the Wellesley of today has changed, but what of the notion? Does a stay at home mom who makes the decision to make her children and her home her sole focus need a high priced degree from a top school? Is it "just" that her place in the graduating class means that someone else who would have utilized her education and is as deserving and qualified is stripped of the opportunity to attend that specific school or program?

Many students say staying home is not a shocking idea among their friends. Shannon Flynn, an 18-year-old from Guilford, Conn., who is a freshman at Harvard, says many of her girlfriends do not want to work full time.

I wonder if Ms. Flynn has considered all the disappointed people who received rejection letters from Harvard who could have gone in her place or in place of one of her girlfriends. She got in, she is deserving and she may change her mind, after all eighteen years old is a time of uncertainty.

The other reason all this bothers me is the age old notion that women have to chose at all. Men don't have to chose. Men never seek advice on how to manage a career and a family. Yes, there are rare exceptions, but in the vast majority of households the child rearing and household management falls on the female, regardless of how many hours she works outside of the home.

Then there is also the idea that women who are choosing in this new millenium to go back into the kitchen, so to speak, are somehow betraying their gender. Just because we have additional opportunities in today's day and age are we obligated to take them? Isn't being a "soccer mom" just as imporant to some people as being a CEO? It brings me back to the movie. If the goal of the free thinking professor was to make her students understand that they had choices then wouldn't that mean that they could chose to maintain traditional roles?

Like I said, the article bothers me and it shouldn't. People are free to do what they want, as they should be. I cannot tell Ms. Flynn that if she plans to stay at home that she is not allowed to go to Harvard, nor should I. Someday she may use her degree, and if not it is still quite an achievement to have it. I just look at where we are, where we've been and wonder what comes next. I wonder about my own future choices. Will I consider my time at law school a "waste" if I decide to make raising a family my sole objective? Doubtful. Will I feel like I am squandering an opportunity to have a career? Perhaps. Are we all returning to a time of 1950's values and perspectives? I don't know. I do know this, no matter what happens, I am NEVER going to wear a full skirt, heels and pearls to vacuum!

Note: See the companion article which details how the research was obtained for the original article.