AN INVISIBLE OPTION IN THE AFTERMATH OF SLAUGHTER’S “WHY WOMEN CAN’T HAVE IT ALLâ€
by Lisa Wade
I’ve been watching the response to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Why Women Still Can’t Have It All roll out across the web. Commentators are making excellent points, but E.J. Graff at The American Prospect sums it up nicely:
Being both a good parent and an all-out professional cannot be done the way we currently run our educational and work systems… Being a working parent in our society is structurally impossible. It can’t be done right… You’ll always be failing at something — as a spouse, as a parent, as a worker. Just get used to that feeling.
In other words, the cards are stacked against you and it’s gonna suck.
And it’s true, trust me, as someone who’s currently knee-deep in the literature on parenting and gender, I’m pleased to see the structural contradictions between work and parenting being discussed.
