A recent NYT article by David Leonhardt ("A Labor Market Punishing to Mothers") points out:
The last three men nominated to the Supreme Court have all been married and, among them, have seven children. The last three women — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Harriet Miers (who withdrew) — have all been single and without children.
This little pattern makes the court a good symbol of the American job market.
The article continues with one of my favorite arguments, that that the 'glass ceilings' that persist in the American job market have more to do with the demands of parenthood (borne predominately by women) than gender discrimination. And, as Leonhardt points out:
The fact that the job market has evolved in this way is no accident. It’s a result of policy choices. As Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University professor who studies families and work, says, “American feminists made
a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities,
but not to talk about policies that would address family
responsibilities.”
In many ways, the choice was shrewd. The feminist movement has been
fabulously successful fighting for antidiscrimination laws that require
men and women to be treated equally. These laws have not eliminated the
blatant sexism of past decades — think “Mad Men” — but they have beaten back much of it.
As a result, outright sexism is no longer the main barrier to gender
equality. The main barrier is the harsh price most workers pay for
pursuing anything other than the old-fashioned career path.
Julie Suk has recently published an excellent article in Columbia Law Review, "Are Gender Stereotypes Bad for Women? Rethinking Antidiscrimination Law and Work-Family Conflict", in which she analyzes the consequences of this strategic choice by the feminist movement in the U.S, contrasting it with the different legal frameworks that
allow European countries like France and Sweden offer such generous maternity
and paternity support. In Europe, the issue of maternity leave was considered entirely separately from the issue of general sick
leave or disability leave. The resulting
legal schemes treat childbirth as something unique, not necessarily a
disability or a sickness, and an endeavor in which the women who were primarily affected by it deserve the support of the entire social network – not
just the individual employer. In
contrast, in the United States, the issue of maternity leave has always been
inseparably intertwined with employment law, and has always shaped primarily by
the concern of feminists that distinguishing between childbirth and any other
medical condition, by requiring employers to offer more generous maternity
benefits, would perpetuate negative stereotypes about women’s ability to work, exacerbating
discrimination against women.
Suk argues that we ought to follow the European lead, recognize childbirth as something unique to women, and distinguish family leave from medial leave. As Leonhardt points out in his NYT article, though, these sorts of polices aren't enough -- even in those European countries with generous family leave policies, women fall behind men in rising to the top of the career tracks. That's because the costs of taking advantage of these generous policies persist -- the legal right to take off time from your career to parent doesn't immunize anyone from the judgment that doing so makes you a less serious candidate for advancement to the upper levels of your chosen profession.
On that front, I agree with Leonhardt's conclusion: "The best hope for making progress against today’s gender inequality
probably involves some combination of legal and cultural changes, which
happens to be the same combination that beat back the old sexism. We’ll
have to get beyond the Mommy Wars and instead create rewarding career
paths even for parents — fathers, too — who take months or years
off. We’ll have to get more creative about part-time and flexible work,
too." In a soon-to-be published book chapter ("Dueling Vocations"), I argue that these sorts work-life balance issues shouldn't be seen as only 'women's issues' -- they're manifestations of the tensions inherent in the precarious balance
between the private vocation and the public vocation to which each of
us, whether male or female, a parent or childless, is called.
In all of these arguments about the importance of workplace restructuring to accommodate family care obligations, it's important to remember that those of us with who have the luxury of making these arguments are typically not the ones who most need the arguments to be made. Yes, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor did beat the odds and make it to the top of the legal profession with children. Yes, many professional women do have the option accepting the career costs of parenting, by of 'opting out' of the workplace or simply accepting the lower salaries that the "Mommy track" offers. But, as Leonhardt writes, "On the other side of the spectrum, low-income women generally do not have a choice between career and family. Many are single parents. Their chances of escaping poverty are hurt by the long-term costs of taking time off after childbirth and having little flexibility in their schedules."
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
In doing some research on Jean Vanier and the L'Arche communities he founded, I came across this description of different forms of Christian life. It struck me as relevant to the debates we sometimes engage in about how a Catholic law school best demonstrates its true 'Catholicity'. (It's from A Blessed Weakness: The Spirit of Jean Vanier and l'Arche, by Michael Downey (Harper & Row, 1986), at p. 94.
Each Christian and each group of Christian select, sometimes quite unconsciously, certain themes or elements of the gospel as more important than others. As these elements become taken in or embodied by individuals or groups, they give rise to different Christian spiritualities; they shape different forms of Christian life. What Dorothy Day considered vital and essential in the Christian gospel was different from what most Cistercian monks, tucked away in monasteries large and small throughout the world, think is primary in Christian living. We see in the Cistercian tradition a strong attachment to the gospel elements of the hidden life or the heavy emphasis on the biblical theme of seeking God's face. These do not have the same importance in the life and writings of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers. Day's own reading of the gospel led her to see the all-important value of love shown in direct active service to the poor (corporal works of mercy) and the importance of community. What results from these two different selections of gospel themes are quite different, though not conflicting, approaches to living the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thought each is very different from the other, both are equally valid and authentic expressions of the message of Jesus Christ.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Stanley Hauerwas provided
what I think is the best response to Peter Singer’s question in an article he wrote
back in 1977, called “Having and Learning to Care for Retarded Children.” [Which you can find in a great collection edited
by John Swinton, Critical Reflections on
Stanley Hauerwas’ Theology of Disability , Haworth Pastoral Press
(2004).] Hauerwas argues that viewing
our children as choices, rather than gifts, is corrosive. As Christians, he argues, we should
understand that we have children because we are commanded to, and we follow
that command because we accept that God’s creation is good. He writes that children are our “promissory
notes”, our sign to the present and to the future, that we trust God and his
creation. In his words:
[O]ur having children draws on our deepest convictions
that God is the Lord of this world, that in spite of all the evidence of misery
in this world, it is a world and existence that we can affirm as good as long
as we have the assurance that He is its creator and redeemer . . . Children are
thus our promissory note, our sign to present and future generations, that we
Christians trust the Lord who has called us together to be his people. . . .
Once having children is put in the context of this story
and the people formed by it we can see how inappropriate the language of choice
is to describe our parenting. For
children are not beings created by our wills – we do not choose them – but
rather they are called into the world as beings separate and independent from
us. They are not ours for they, like
each of us, have a Father who wills them as his own prior to our choice of
them.
Thus, children must be seen as a gift, for they are
possible exactly because we do not determine their right to exist or not to
exist . . . . [G]ifts come to us as a given they are not under our
control. Moreover, they are not always
what we want or expect and thus they necessarily have an independence from us.
Insofar as gifts are independent they do not always
bring joy and surprise, but they equally may bring pain and suffering.
I think Hauerwas is
right. We have to understand our
children as gifts, rather than choices.
Singer’s question is ultimately about whether or not we trust the
goodness of creation and of our Creator.
Of course, Michael Sandel, in
The Case against perfection , argues
that it is possible to hold a vision of humanity based on this same notion of
‘giftedness’ that has nothing to do with God, that is based instead on the
moral concepts of humility, responsibility, and solidarity. I’m not so certain he succeeds, but I do
think he’s on the right track.
