Unfinished Business

by Anne-Marie Slaughter

  Think about how often married mothers are asked, “Oh, is your husband babysitting tonight?” during a night out. Can you imagine a married man in the same situation being asked whether his wife is “babysitting”? And why don’t we describe a male employee with children as a working father? On the flip side, why do we call a man who is a primary caregiver “Mr. Mom”? These linguistic distinctions may seem subtle or insignificant, but an entire structure of assumed responsibility and approved behavior patterns hangs in the balance.

  THE TROUBLE WITH EUPHEMISMS

  WHEN I LEFT THE STATE Department to return to my full-time position as a tenured professor, I was hardly leaving the ranks of career women. Yet many of the responses to my Atlantic article framed the debate as just another mommy problem. One commenter said that I was “backing away from [my] State Department job over mom-guilt.” Another put my story squarely in the genre of women “dropping out, ramping down or finding they just can’t combine career and family.”

  In the immortal language of Calvin and Hobbes, Arrrrgh! What was particularly frustrating is that I had anticipated such characterizations and had deliberately tried to counter them in the article itself. I knew all along that if I had kept my mouth shut about my kids and simply said that I was returning to academia at the end of my two-year public service leave like countless others before me, no one would have blinked an eye. The news—to the extent it made news—would have been: “Anne-Marie Slaughter resigned at the end of her leave to return to her position at Princeton.”

  But no. My brother Hoke, an investment banker who’s always been hugely supportive of me and my career, faced his own frustrations trying to tell people he encountered in the financial world that I had hardly “dropped out.” As he wrote to me in the wake of the reactions, the clear message in the media was that I am “someone who bailed because trying to be both a mother and a high foreign policy professional was ‘too tough.’ ” I was, in effect, painted as someone who just couldn’t cut it or couldn’t manage the juggle of work and family, when in fact I was still teaching a full load, writing regular columns on foreign policy, giving thirty to forty speeches per year, and working on a new book. All I had really done was shift from inflexible intensive work to flexible intensive work that I could schedule myself and thereby spend more time with my family, and yet I was being described with a word we typically apply to students who fail to finish high school or college.

  No wonder so many women and men, after making a choice to work at anything less than full tilt—whether part-time, in a less demanding job, or not at all—feel like failures. None of my critics were willing to say outright that I was a wimp, but that was certainly the message. Euphemisms like “opting out,” or certainly “dropping out,” send a deep cultural message about how we define success and failure, while also obfuscating that message in ways that make it very hard to challenge. Using coded language allows employers, journalists, and social critics to claim to be progressive while still marginalizing work-family conflicts as women’s issues rather than work issues—and weak women’s issues at that.

  In Washington it’s simply accepted that “leaving to spend time with your family” is a euphemism for being fired. This understanding is so ingrained that when Pentagon undersecretary for policy Michèle Flournoy announced in December 2011 that she would be stepping down after three years to spend time with her three children, ages fourteen, twelve, and nine, The New York Times covered her decision as follows: “Ms. Flournoy’s announcement surprised friends and a number of Pentagon officials, but all said they took her reason for resignation at face value and not as a standard Washington excuse for an official who has in reality been forced out.”

  The Pentagon itself was so concerned about this perception that they addressed it publicly. “ ‘I can absolutely and unequivocally state that her decision to step down has nothing to do with anything other than her commitment to her family,’ said Doug Wilson, a top Pentagon spokesman. ‘She has loved this job and people here love her.’ ”

  Consider what this standard Washington excuse implies: it’s so unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that it must be a cover for something else. Anyone who willingly chooses family over career, even for a short time, must not be able to cut it in the workforce, for lack of either ability or motivation. That’s simply ridiculous. It’s also a sign of deeply distorted values. So a first step that we can all take toward creating a world of real equality is to stop using this kind of undermining language when we talk about the choices women and men make about their work.

  DISSOLVING DOUBLE STANDARDS

  IF YOU’RE A WORKING MOTHER, think about how often you’re asked about how you manage to juggle your work with your family. Now ask your husband how often he’s asked that same question. Or if you’re a woman who doesn’t have kids yet but you are contemplating them, or maybe you’re just at an age where other people assume you’re contemplating them, consider how often you’re offered advice on how to balance work and family. Now compare notes with male friends your age about how often they’ve had similar conversations. I’m sure you’ll find that your male counterparts are not having these conversations nearly as frequently, if at all!

  If you’re a young woman who has recently been through a job interview, did your interviewer bring up family-friendly policies? (It’s illegal for an interviewer to ask whether you’re planning to have children.) Do you have any male friends who interviewed at the same firm? Ask them whether anyone raised such policies with them.

  One of my mentees, who wrote her undergraduate thesis on family-friendly policies in law firms and is now a talented young lawyer herself, reports that “law firms trip all over themselves in an effort to showcase their ‘family-friendly policies’ (which almost universally means permitting a few associates to work from home or to work part-time and allowing slightly longer maternity leaves than other places). When I interviewed with firms, without my saying anything, I met numerous part-time associates and, at more than one firm, every female litigation partner with children.” Her husband, however, is also a lawyer and had an almost identical résumé at the time, yet when he interviewed at many of the same firms he “met not a single woman,” nor did he hear a word about family-friendly policies in his interviews.

  Whether you are a woman or a man, be really honest and ask yourself if you’ve ever talked to a younger man about how he’s going to manage having kids and a career simultaneously. I have long had the kids conversation with my female students, but I have to come clean and admit that although I’ve been mentoring and advising students for over twenty years, I too have been guilty of this glaring double standard. Only in my last two years at Princeton, after thinking very hard about what needs to change, did I start talking to my male students about whether and when they are planning on having kids.

  Another telling double standard is what I call the “halo dad syndrome.” Every mother I know with a caregiving husband has witnessed this phenomenon, the same one Matt Vilano noted when he was called “a good dad.” Fathers do what is routinely expected of mothers and are treated as if they are extraordinary.

  I ran into this phenomenon repeatedly when I was a young dean and Andy, who had a far more flexible schedule than I did, would show up for school events. I heard constantly from teachers and other mothers about what a fabulous father Andy was. In their eyes, his halo shined brighter just for working and taking care of his sons, behavior that was expected as a matter of course from me. As I’ve made clear, Andy has been indispensable as a father and I am deeply grateful. But the halo dad syndrome is an all-too-common example of double standards—holding men to a different standard of behavior for praise or censure than women. We need to stop overpraising dads for simply showing up—something working moms have been doing forever. What that praise really says is that we don’t expect dads to behave in ways that are routine for moms, thereby reinforcing the very assumptions about traditional
gender roles that we seek to change.

  On the flip side, I have often, in a corporate setting, heard a woman introduced as a talented director, manager, marketer, or what have you. And then, after talking about her qualifications, the introducer will add something like, “And she has teenage twins on top of it all, so she is a master of work-life balance.” It is indeed important to make clear in the workplace that we have lives outside of work. But the problem is that the same presenter will then introduce a man and never mention whether he has a family, once again reinforcing the assumption that caregiving is the woman’s responsibility.

  The first generation of working mothers understood that in order to succeed they had to act like the men they worked with, so they never mentioned their children. And many senior women today still play this game, saying that they have a doctor’s appointment, or just an “appointment,” rather than revealing that they are missing work for a child. But as one small yet powerful step toward creating a world in which breadwinning and caregiving are equal, let’s be honest about our caregiving commitments when we are at work. This doesn’t mean insisting that your colleagues spend time cooing over the pictures of your baby or listening to tales of your kindergartner’s prodigious accomplishments. It does mean that if you can’t make an early morning meeting because it’s your turn to drive the kids to school, you’re honest about it.

  I propose too that when a man announces to his colleagues that he and his partner are expecting a child, we show the same concern and ask the same questions about his work-life issues that we ask women. We could just stop asking at all, but that would deny what we all know is true: that caring for kids is important and time-consuming. It’s right to acknowledge that; what’s wrong is to assume that it’s all a woman’s responsibility. Changing the conversation to include men is another important step in the right direction.

  Recently I was invited to give a foreign policy speech at a big annual forum for the top management of PIMCO, one of the world’s largest investment management firms. The organizer asked if I could give a second speech on work and family. I agreed and was pleasantly surprised to find myself talking not to a group called “PIMCO Women,” but to “PIMCO Parents.” The audience of more than fifty people was at least one-third men. The name change may seem small, but it is a big step in the direction of ensuring that family responsibilities are the province of all family members.

  Mark Weinberger, CEO of EY (formerly Ernst & Young), has a great catchphrase for this shift. In his words, “Women don’t want to be singled out; men don’t want to be left out.” Exactly.

  A NEW VOCABULARY OF REAL EQUALITY

  THE GREAT THING ABOUT LANGUAGE is that it is within the individual control of all of us. Each one of us can commit to talking differently, to talking as if care and competition are genuinely equal and equally valued for both men and women; as if we hold men and women equally responsible not only for creating children but also for raising them; and as if the people we respect and value most have full lives in which the people and things they love are just as important as their work. Here are a few more steps we can take to make that happen:

  • The next time someone tells you how many hours she worked last week, or talks only about work at a party, ask her what interesting books she’s read lately, or if she’s seen any good movies. In other words, refuse to play the competitive game. Find out what people care about other than work.

  • When you meet someone, try not to ask, “What do you do?” within the first five minutes. Ask him what he’s interested in, what his hobbies are, what he’s passionate about in life. Signal by the way you talk that you value more than how people earn an income.

  • When you talk about men who are in the workforce and have children, try describing them as “working fathers” or “working parents.” And if they are taking care of their parents or other family members, think about calling them “working caregivers.”

  • When you talk about a woman or a man who is home full-time with children, avoid using the term “stay-at-home mom” or “stay-at-home dad,” a phrase that implies that the office is the norm and thus someone at home needs a qualifier. Try using the descriptors “lead parent,” “anchor parent,” or “full-time parent.”

  • When you’re talking to a young man at your workplace who expects to have a family, try asking him, “How are you planning to fit your career together with your family?” If that man becomes the father of a child, ask him something like “How are you and your partner planning to divide responsibilities and what changes in your work life will help you manage?” It may seem a little intrusive and patronizing (though women are asked these questions all the time), but it’s vital that we acknowledge the importance of caregiving when we’re in the office.

  • When one of your work colleagues or someone you supervise must leave early, come in late, or work from home because of caregiving responsibilities, try to avoid asking things like “How do you plan to get your work done?” even if the question is not accusatory and is spoken in a friendly tone. Questions like these reinforce the assumption that if you are committed to your family you are less committed to your work.

  • If you have to come in late, leave early, or work from home because of caregiving responsibilities, make it clear that you’re attending to something that is every bit as important as your work. And if you want to organize a group at your workplace to focus on fitting work and caregiving responsibilities together, call it a “parents’ group” a “caregivers’ group,” or, best of all, a “how to work better group.”

  • If someone you thought was on leadership track slows down to work part-time or on a more flexible schedule due to caregiving responsibilities, assume that his or her ambitions have not changed. Initiate a conversation to find out. Talk about this period as an “investment interval” valuable for family reasons and for acquiring different skills and experiences. Plan together for ramping back up when she or he is ready.

  • If an employee decides that even part-time or flexible work is too much, whether out of desire or family necessity, discuss the possibility of taking courses, volunteering, or working in ways that will be professionally useful down the road. And talk about these employees as alumni or alumnae of your workplace; if you’re smart, you’ll want to hire them again someday.

  • Before you talk about someone you admire, first ask yourself if she is admirable all the way through—as much in the caring parts of her life as in the competitive parts. Talk about people in a way that indicates you value them in the round, for their successes in raising their children or caring for other relatives or their communities as much as their career accomplishments.

  Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that many of the common terms for describing the trade-offs we make between caregiving and breadwinning are still somewhat problematic. We’ve already discussed the pitfalls of the phrase “having it all,” but others, even some of the seemingly innocuous ones, have their own difficulties. One of my close friends gets particularly incensed at the term “juggling career and family.” As she points out, a juggler treats each of the balls or pins he is juggling equally; it’s not the same with work and family. If your child or parent is in danger of falling, nothing else matters—the juggling stops. Other friends hate the term “balance,” on the grounds that life never actually balances at some miraculous mechanical middle point between work and loved ones. Most of us are not balancing; we’re running to keep up.

  I use both “juggling” and “balance,” but I prefer the idea of striving toward a good “work/life fit,” a phrase I first discovered through Cali Williams Yost, a pioneering expert on workplace flexibility. “Fit” is a useful word because it implies customized policies for individual workers. Joan Blades and Nanette Fondas describe a “custom-fit workplace” as one that adapts to a worker’s changing needs over the course of a week, a month, a year, or a chunk of a career. As the term suggests, fitting the demands of work and caregiving together differs day to day, a
nd the only way to do it is to have the flexibility to adapt to continually changing circumstances, like a tightrope walker or a pilot in difficult wind conditions.

  Talk alone will not change everything. But talk can change the way we think, which can then change the way we act. If we want to better our world and improve the way we value people and the choices they make, we can start by making our language reflect the change we’d like to see.

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  PLANNING YOUR CAREER (EVEN THOUGH IT RARELY WORKS OUT AS PLANNED)

  If you want a life in which you can experience the joys and rewards of both a successful career and a loving family, you must plan ahead. As early as possible, you should try to anticipate the times in your future when you’ll want to focus intensively on your job and the ones when you’ll want to focus more on caregiving responsibilities. To the extent you can, tailor your professional choices accordingly.

  I’m guessing, however, that if you are not yet married or you’re not focused on having children and your parents and other family members are healthy and strong, you’re probably thinking this advice doesn’t apply to you. Part of being young is secretly believing that you’re invincible—that even though you know many, many other people have struggled with these issues, somehow you will muddle your way through and everything will work out. I certainly hope that’s true in your case; I do indeed know women—at least a few—who have managed to raise families and pursue their careers without ever having to make a major compromise on either side. But as we say in foreign policy, hope is not a strategy; neither is counting on luck. The odds are that a day will come when you will have to confront these issues—either with or without a partner.