Is "Having It All" Just A Myth?

Julie Fonda May 03, 2009

I was in the 1980s back-to-work-after-having-babies crowd of “liberated" women who surged to the challenge of being “all things to all people.” We were the test pilots of the “you can have it all” movement. But a lot of us crashed and burned because nobody taught us how to make it fly.

I graduated from high school in 1970, when the only requirement for graduation was a beating pulse. Everyone graduated from high school. You didn’t even have to know how to read!

After high school came college, but in those days more boys went than girls. And when a girl went to college, her top priority was finding a husband. Degreed males had more earning power than men who didn’t go to college.

In those days, I knew nothing about women’s liberation or feminism or equality in the workplace. Girls majored in things like Home Economics and Secretarial Science. Women were fluffy and fun, not educated and hardboiled.

When I entered college, though, I was exposed to different views. There was consciousness raising, where we learned about male chauvinist pigs and burning our bras and replacing the salutation “Miss” with “Ms”. They told us that it was healthy to be promiscuous and tony to use four-letter words in mixed company. Now we were seeing equality, all right: Now both sexes could be obnoxious.

They told us that motherhood was no longer a profession. Those who had said, “Is this all there is?” began to shout, “We want it all!” We needed to work outside the home to feel fulfilled. But somewhere in all of the hoopla, the women’s movement forgot about the children. Because it was cosmetically unattractive, they airbrushed away the downside of being a working mother. Such as sick kids who had to go to daycare and moms being tired all the time from burning the candle at both ends.

Women’s liberation gave us two jobs: one at the office and one at home. And there is nothing liberating about being a slave.

Men liked the fact that women were supplementing the family income, but they weren’t very excited about doing housework or cooking or caring for children. That was “women’s work.” In fact, now everything was “women’s work!”

I remember calling in “sick” to work when my children were ill. Sick children was not a valid reason to stay home. Only sick mothers. So all the women with sick kids lied and said that they were the ones who were sick. We did what we had to do.

Usually in a two-income family, the woman’s job was dispensable. The dad’s job generally paid more and came with family health insurance. After the mom had called in sick too many times, she could always quit and get another job. The women’s movement gave us job instability on our resumes. It’s a shame that we hadn’t foreseen equality’s pitfalls.

The women’s movement was based on truth. Women did deserve the same pay as men. Women should be able to be bank presidents and get loans and buy cars and houses. But society has fallen behind in addressing the problems that the women’s movement created.

Now women can be doctors, and men can be secretaries and nurses. But we still haven’t figured out how to delegate the cooking and cleaning and caring for the children.

As was said in the 1970 Virginia Slims commercial: “We’ve come a long way, baby.”

(But we still have a long, long way to go.)

Tags: Women's Liberation , Equality , Working Mothers , Kids