Here's my original post on this issue, and here's my call for responses. Here's my cafemama post in which I tell a little of my own story. If this project sounds interesting to you, and you'd like to be profiled on Blogging Baby, send me the answers to as many of these questions you can - and tell me whatever else you think adds to the debate. Include a photo - of you, of your children, or your husband, or your degree. Whatever illustrates you. You can also send me the link to a photo on the web (.jpg and .gif are the best formats). Email the whole mess to mama @ cafemama.com and I'll include your story in my series.
1. First the demographics. Where did you go to school, what degrees did you obtain, and how old are you? How old are your children?
2. What was your career goal when you chose your undergraduate major? What was it when you graduated? If it changed, why did it change?
3. If you went back to get an advanced degree, how long after college before you returned to school? And what did you hope to obtain?
4. When you graduated from your most recent institution, how hopeful were you of succeeding? What were your lofty goals? If you had any deadlines (CEO by 40!) what were they?
5. Are you working now? What are you doing? Full, part-time, working from home? If you took maternity leave, how long did you take with each child? Are you making equal to or greater pay than you were when you were at an earlier stage in your career?
6. And your partner - what is he/she doing? How does his/her income compare to yours - now, and when you first met (or when you both graduated from college/grad school)?
7. How do you feel you're doing in your career relative to your goals in question #4?
8. Do you enjoy working? If you could quit, would you? (or if you have quit, do you ever want to work again?)
9. If you are staying at home or working part-time, what factored into that decision? Please include your childcare decisions in your discussion.
10. Do you feel satisfied with your "choices"?
11. Household work: who does what? Laundry, cleaning, cooking, getting kids ready in the morning, bedtimes, family finances, etc.? Do you feel that each partner contributes fairly?
12. How many times have you changed jobs, compared to your partner?
13. Hirshman talks a lot about "social power" and relative status/power/age when men and women marry. If you haven't already, say a little about your and your partner's balance of power, especially mention if either of you have significant family wealth.
14. In your opinion, why aren't there more women in "executive suites" and in other powerful positions? Do you ever imagine yourself there?
15. Hirshman has several "rules" she says women should follow, and in that section of her essay there are many inflammatory statements. I'd love your opinion on any or all of the following statements:
- "The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, "A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.""
- "Never figure out where the butter is. "Where's the butter?" Nora Ephron's legendary riff on marriage begins. In it, a man asks the question when looking directly at the butter container in the refrigerator. "Where's the butter?" actually means butter my toast, buy the butter, remember when we're out of butter. Next thing you know you're quitting your job at the law firm because you're so busy managing the butter."
- "Have a baby. Just don't have two... A second kid pressures the mother's organizational skills, doubles the demands for appointments, wildly raises the cost of education and housing, and drives the family to the suburbs. But cities, with their Chinese carryouts and all, are better for working mothers."
- "what [the nyt brides] do is ... bad for society, and is widely imitated... This last is called the "regime effect," and it means that even if women don't quit their jobs for their families, they think they should and feel guilty about not doing it."
