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Wednesday, September 21, 2005
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Maybe Even Tending Toward Wanting to Not Work At All UD has already mentioned on this blog the famous quotation from John Adams, the father of John Quincy Adams, about education. Here it is in its entirety: The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. I think the generational slide of subject matter here, from worldly and conflictual to aesthetic and tranquil, can help make sense of a front-page article in today’s New York Times which has generated a lot of blog-angst. The article notes with some surprise that many female Ivy League undergraduates have “already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others … say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment. …Much attention has been focused on career women who leave the work force to rear children. What seems to be changing is that while many women in college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers, their daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to suspend or end their careers when they have children.” For instance, “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. ‘Most probably do feel like me, maybe even tending toward wanting to not work at all,’ said Ms. Flynn, who plans to work part time after having children, though she is torn because she has worked so hard in school.” The article notes the outrage and incomprehension in response to this trend on the part of some feminists, who regard it as a species of betrayal and regression. The piece also records the vapid assurances of some Ivy League administrators, like the head of Princeton, who insists, “There is nothing inconsistent with being a leader and a stay-at-home parent. Some women (and a handful of men) whom I have known who have done this have had a powerful impact on their communities." So Princeton University carefully selects among the best and the brightest in the United States in order to produce stay-at-homes who improve their communities. Not bloody likely. Either you are, as all Ivies describe themselves, in the business of generating business and government leaders on a significant scale, or you are grooming PTA presidents. The women interviewed in the article are merely fulfilling the hopes of Adams, who nailed it long ago: the more lovingly you are raised, the more intelligence you are enabled to exercise, the more clearly you understand the world in which you live, the more likely you are to want to temper the conflictual, public world of work with the less conflictual, private life of affective and aesthetic activity. Of that final generational list of pursuits, only one -- architecture -- has an obvious vocational setting. The rest conjure images of the artist in her garret, the amateur lover of music, and so forth. Note that Ms. Flynn says she “plans to work part time after having children, though she is torn because she has worked so hard in school.” These women have gotten to the educational pinnacle by working themselves to the bone. They have already amply played out the competitive hyperwork thing and they want a break. They’re not sure they see much percentage in continuing indefinitely to work their asses off. And that’s because one of the many ideas they’ve been exposed to has to do with the quality of life and the brevity of life. |