Read Online Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter - Free Book Online
Authors: Anne-Marie Slaughter
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found that, whilemen and women valued workplace flexibility equally, men were less likely to seek a flexible schedule if they believed (as many did) that doing so would make them appear less masculine.Overall, the share of companies that offer paternity leave actually dropped 5 percentage points from 2010 to 2014, and 20 percent of companies that are supposed to provide unpaid leave via the Family and Medical Leave Act don’t comply with the law when it comes to fathers who want time off. The annals of litigation tell similar stories.In one case, a management trainee was told straight out that he would be “cutting his own throat” if he took paternity leave.
So it’s true that many men can reasonably say not only that they don’t have it all either, but also that at least some of them pay an even higher price than women do when they try. In the West, at least, a woman who downshifts her professional ambitions for a while may experience an identity crisis when she can no longer define herself primarily in terms of her work, but she is unlikely to face a crisis of femininity.
The experience of many gay men underlines this point. Gauzy commercials featuring same-sex parents notwithstanding, gay men still face enormous social prejudice in their efforts to become parents and caregivers. This point was brought home to me in a blistering but justified letter in response to my
Atlantic
article from Scott Siegel, a former academic who now works for a start-up in San Francisco. He read me, as so many men did, as arguing that the pull of caregiving was felt only by women and indeed as saying that this pull is biological. That is much too strong a reading, but his response is still eye-opening. “You are probably not aware that your piece is being read by the gay community, especially those with children, as saying that ‘Oh, well, I don’t have those pressures because I’m not a woman—how DAREHER!’ EVERY type of caregiver, gay or straight, faces this difficulty….To say that PRIMARILY WOMEN face the pressure to ‘have it all’ is itself sexist.”
The intensity of his response is driven by his fear that I was “giving ammunition to those groups who deny and wish to take away those rights gays and gay families have fought for and received in the last 20 years.” I would be deeply upset if my article contributed to anti-gay discrimination of any kind. But the passion with which Siegel makes his point reminds us of how hard it still is for gay men to be fully recognized as men—men who are attracted to other men, but no less men for that. And as men, they should have the same right to raise a family, to love and care for children and each other, as any woman does.
Settling
T HE THIRD VARIATION ON THE “Men can’t have it all either” theme was articulated on the
Atlantic
website, in a response to my article by Andrew Cohen, a single father who describes himself as a “work-at-home dad.” He’s modest: others describe him as one of the nation’s leading legal journalists, who works for
60 Minutes
and CBS Radio News. But he describes his life in a way that most working mothers I know would immediately recognize, the daily dance of “work and parenting, parenting and work.”He tries to mesh his obligations to his son, and indeed still to his parents, with the demands of his job: writing all day, overseeing homework and getting dinner on the table at night, while trying to cram in the rest of life, from laundry to love, in between.
Cohen says that he doesn’t know any man who “has it all, or who says that he does, or who complains that he doesn’t.” When he goes out with the guys, they talk about lots of things—work, sports, women, and, yes, how they can be better parents to theirkids. But they don’t talk about “having it all.” Indeed, he thinks about his father, who never thought about having it all but rather about “having enough, simply being able to provide for his loved ones.”
Does this
So it’s true that many men can reasonably say not only that they don’t have it all either, but also that at least some of them pay an even higher price than women do when they try. In the West, at least, a woman who downshifts her professional ambitions for a while may experience an identity crisis when she can no longer define herself primarily in terms of her work, but she is unlikely to face a crisis of femininity.
The experience of many gay men underlines this point. Gauzy commercials featuring same-sex parents notwithstanding, gay men still face enormous social prejudice in their efforts to become parents and caregivers. This point was brought home to me in a blistering but justified letter in response to my
Atlantic
article from Scott Siegel, a former academic who now works for a start-up in San Francisco. He read me, as so many men did, as arguing that the pull of caregiving was felt only by women and indeed as saying that this pull is biological. That is much too strong a reading, but his response is still eye-opening. “You are probably not aware that your piece is being read by the gay community, especially those with children, as saying that ‘Oh, well, I don’t have those pressures because I’m not a woman—how DAREHER!’ EVERY type of caregiver, gay or straight, faces this difficulty….To say that PRIMARILY WOMEN face the pressure to ‘have it all’ is itself sexist.”
The intensity of his response is driven by his fear that I was “giving ammunition to those groups who deny and wish to take away those rights gays and gay families have fought for and received in the last 20 years.” I would be deeply upset if my article contributed to anti-gay discrimination of any kind. But the passion with which Siegel makes his point reminds us of how hard it still is for gay men to be fully recognized as men—men who are attracted to other men, but no less men for that. And as men, they should have the same right to raise a family, to love and care for children and each other, as any woman does.
Settling
T HE THIRD VARIATION ON THE “Men can’t have it all either” theme was articulated on the
Atlantic
website, in a response to my article by Andrew Cohen, a single father who describes himself as a “work-at-home dad.” He’s modest: others describe him as one of the nation’s leading legal journalists, who works for
60 Minutes
and CBS Radio News. But he describes his life in a way that most working mothers I know would immediately recognize, the daily dance of “work and parenting, parenting and work.”He tries to mesh his obligations to his son, and indeed still to his parents, with the demands of his job: writing all day, overseeing homework and getting dinner on the table at night, while trying to cram in the rest of life, from laundry to love, in between.
Cohen says that he doesn’t know any man who “has it all, or who says that he does, or who complains that he doesn’t.” When he goes out with the guys, they talk about lots of things—work, sports, women, and, yes, how they can be better parents to theirkids. But they don’t talk about “having it all.” Indeed, he thinks about his father, who never thought about having it all but rather about “having enough, simply being able to provide for his loved ones.”
Does this
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