On the Mommy Track

by Betsy Hart

Lois Beard seemed poised to become the Mother of all Generals. Or at least a Mother General.

Col. Beard, 45, served in the Panama Invasion and the Persian Gulf War. Well-respected, she was promoted to colonel two years ahead of schedule. Her impressive resume and rigorous training appeared perfectly suited to keep her on the general's track. Only, that resume also included three children, the oldest of which is 16. And in favor of them, she recently decided to retire from the Army. One might say she decided to leave the general's track for something akin to the "mommy track."

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the appearance of the famous and controversial essay, "Management Women and the Facts of Life," which appeared in the "Harvard Business Review." In that piece feminist Felice Schwartz argued that companies should find ways to be more responsive to the many women managers they were losing, women who interrupted or gave up their careers for their children. One idea was creating a separate company career path for women who wanted to combine work and family -- what came to be known derisively as the "mommy track."

This sparked a national debate in which Schwartz was excoriated by the elite, including many of her fellow feminists, for her admittedly provocative suggestion. But what amazes me is that the idea prompting it -- that mothers often want very different and more limited work lives than their male counterparts -- is still considered in many quarters the most provocative notion of all.

The New York Times ran a piece about Col. Beard on a recent front page. Granted, for Beard the career stakes may have been particularly high. And the story had added sex appeal given how far she had risen in a traditionally male preserve. But in the end Beard was only doing what millions of American women choose to do every day -- to get on a self-made "mommy track," even when it means sacrificing some career aspirations. They do it not because they feel obligated, but because they want to.

"Moms Want to Be With Their Kids!" Read all about it! This just isn't news to a group called FEMALE, for Formerly Employed Mothers At the Leading Edge, headquartered in Elmhurst, Ill. Founded in 1987, it's an organization that serves "women who have altered their career paths in order to care for their children at home," as their mission statement puts it. Or as Joanne Brundage, executive director of FEMALE told me, the organization strives to make it "okay for women to admit a need and a desire to nurture."

Apparently, that's a truth more and more women are eager to embrace. FEMALE now has 7,500 members in 185 chapters around the country. A typical member is in her mid-thirties, has two children, and a background in middle management. Eighty-four percent have college degrees, 30 percent have an advanced degree. A majority of members stop working altogether for a time to be home with their families, though a third work part-time. But these mothers all have one thing in common -- a desire to rearrange their work lives to care for their kids. Is this profound pull we mothers feel to spend a great deal of time nurturing our little ones different than what most fathers experience? Of course it is. It's not better or more intense than the unique relationship a good dad has with his children. But it is wonderfully special and very important. The shocking thing is that there are people who consider such a statement, well, shocking.

This is not to say that women can't have it all. They just might not be able to have it all at the same time. And so what? Maybe leaving the chaos of children and the demands of the home to experience the chaos of the office and the demands of a high-powered career isn't such a great trade-off after all. Yes, it's true that some men are beginning to rearrange their own careers to spend more time with their families. It's also true that many women can't financially afford to do so. But whether it's nature or thousands of years of nurture, it's almost always women who will experience the most intense desire to be there for their young -- to be the ones who "mother" them.

So, Col. Beard may have made today's headlines. But in the end she is really just a small part of a very old, and very beautiful, story.

If patriarchy is simply a social construct, why is it that every society in the world follows a patriarchal system? Why would each society, each with its different cultural characteristics and geographical separation, all have miraculously chosen patriarchy, if it is simply a matter of choice? Strictly speaking, since there are two sexes, there is a 50% chance that a society "chooses" to be patriarchal. However, since approximately 100% of societies throughout time have been and are patriarchal, it is likely that patriarchy is more than a mere matter of selection, but rather a reflection of basic human characteristics; this can be said of nearly all things which occur uniformly throughout all societies, not only patriarchy. It is commonly known that most characteristics which are common between cultures, such as religion, eating traits, and ideas of right and wrong, result from an innate desire for the most fruitful and productive life. Why is it, then, that gender roles should be viewed differently? Why is it implausible that "traditional" gender roles are natural, not societal, constructs designed to make life as livable as possible?

Why is patriarchy bad? We propose the idea that patriarchal organization is the best model for the continued success of a society. The capitalist economic model, which has proven to be the most effective in history, is intrinsically masculine and therefore patriarchal. Every great society has been based on patriarchy, and those that began to abandon it faced increasingly difficult problems. The very few matriarchal structures which have existed were extremely small and manifested themselves only in tiny tribes in remote regions of the world. Needless to say, these cultures have not thrived.

Why is it that women should be the ones to take care of the children? Can't men do it equally as well?

As we have mentioned above, men and women are not simply carbon copies of each other. If this were the case, there would be no such thing as male and female; we would all be the same. The theory of evolution states that the strongest species survive; and that if a species has traits which it does not need for survival, those traits will be phased out over time (such as hairy, ape-like, bodies for humans). Therefore, we must conclude that there is some biological reason, for the benefit of the human race, for the differentiation between male and female, otherwise there would be no such thing as male and female. Thus, the next issue then becomes, what are the differences between men and women, and what are the implications of these differences? Women have smaller waists, broader hips, breasts, higher-pitched voices, and in general are more sensitive and nurturing than men. Men have wider shoulders, stronger muscles, deeper, commanding voices, and in general are more competitive and aggressive than women. It seems clear then that the former, the female species, were the ones selected by nature to rear children. Broader hips for child birth, breasts for feeding, and more sensitive and nurturing psyches for comforting complete the equation for the female species as child-nurturer. This should come as no surprise, since nearly every other female species in nature has the same responsibilities. Likewise, the broad shoulders, strong muscles, and aggressive psyches of men make men ideal for the role of hunter and provider. Again, this should come as no surprise, being that the vast majority of male species in the animal kingdom have the same responsibilities as the human male.

Be aware, however, that we are not advocating that men have no part whatsoever in raising their children. On the contrary we believe that fathers should be an integral part of the upbringing of their children. We simply believe that this is not the fathers primary task, whereas it is the mother's.

Why is it good for women to work?

The common assumption is that it is better for women, both married and non-married, children or not, to work than not to work. However, this assumption is not justified.

It seems likely and natural that, based on the above noted differences between men and women, a high percentage of women would choose to forgo market production in order to care for their offspring on a full-time basis. Indeed for a long time this was considered healthy and normal; it was the mark of an advanced society to have very few women involved in market production (see Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"). However, in their attempt to shape society in their Utopian vision, feminists have managed to galvanize public opinion against this basic and logical idea. Day care centers have now taken up a large share of the responsibility of raising children. Some may argue that this is harmless, if not healthy, but this is irrelevant. The fact is that women have been wrongly duped into believing that they must become market producers, not family women or child-raisers, in order to have self-worth. As a result, a great many women may be experiencing unhappiness that they would not have otherwise felt had they not been socialized into market production since the day they were born. There is no way to measure the number of women and abandoned children that have been negatively affected by the ideology of female market production. However, it is almost certain that it has not benefited women to have more women in the workplace, if the aggregate happiness of women after feminism is no more than it was in times when there were few women in the marketplace. Danielle Crittendon articulates this concept well in her book "What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman." Carolyn Graglia also examines the happiness of women in the pre-feminist era in her work "Domestic Tranquility: A Critique of Feminism."

And clearly, having more women in the workplace does not benefit men, it only strains them. In the post-feminist workplace, men must bend over backwards to make sure that they do not inadvertently offend any woman who might happen to hear a joke or comment uttered in humor and harmlessness. We must introduce numerous sexual harassment laws which spawn a barrage of sexual harassment cases of frivolous proportions, wasting the time and energy of the courts and legal system, and taxpayer dollars (sidenote: the author's sister works in the sexual harassment complaints office of a local government bureau, and attests to the fact that the majority of the cases are frivolous). Businesses must also make a concerted effort to hire and promote women who may or may not be up to par with their male counterparts. In addition, the chemistry of having women in a masculine environment may reduce business cohesiveness and productivity from what it might have been otherwise (this is especially true of the military, although by no means limited to it). Needless to say all these things subtract from a team's effort to do the real business of running the business.

Therefore, since the increased presence of women in the workplace does not benefit men, women, or business operations, there is no factual basis on which to claim that it is better to have more women in the workplace.

Are feminism and communism related?

Perhaps.

Communism was devised based upon a flawed perception of human nature: that humans are idealistic enough and pure enough to innovate and produce wealth without capital incentive. Feminism is based upon the flawed perception that there are no differences other than physical between men and women. Both systems are therefore impossible, since their primary assumptions are false. We have witnessed the demise of the Soviet Union as a testament to the failure of communism, and eventually the demise of feminism will be a testament to it's own irrationality.

Capitalist business culture is inherently masculine; masculine traits such as aggressiveness and competitiveness are necessary. This fact compels a fair amount of feminists to court communism. Hillary Rodham Clinton supports a radical feminist agenda as well as socialism.