I got a tip from international reader Endora about a piece in a recent issue of the Guardian discussing our (schools’? feminists’?) responsibility to girls to tell them that they almost certainly will not be able to “have it all,” to use a phrase I loathe.
We’ve discussed the value of single-sex schooling before, and noted how it especially seems to benefit girls, but I’m leery of girls-school leaders telling their charges that they’re going to have to settle for a stellar career OR a happy family. Most of what Jill Berry, the president of England’s Girls’ School Association, says is smart, and all of it seems well intentioned: prepare for the career you want, choose a partner who will support you, don’t try to be “perfect,” realize that life is about balance.
But. (There’s always a but, ain’t there?)
But Berry goes further, advising that her charges be taught to “be realistic” about their options, which reads to me as code for “settle.” While it’s true that the current cultural set-up in most of the Global North de-privileges family/personal life in general (which is good for no one but our corporate overlords), headmistresses saying “plan carefully, work hard, choose wisely, but really, don’t expect too much” seems infuriatingly fatalistic to me and a serious disservice–worse even, than saying “you CAN have it all, no probz!”–to girls.
This is the conversation we seem to have over and over again: are we better served by learning to cope, acquiescing to inequities on the personal level, or by directing our attention to changing the system that enforces those inequities? Of course we can, to some degree, do both, but a statement from a woman dedicated to girls’ education telling her students “you choose your choice, just don’t expect anyone to help you” is deeply disheartening.
I can 100% guarantee that no teacher/headmaster at an all-boys school has EVER told their students something like that.
Jill Berry may tell herself that she’s doing these girls a favor, but the truth is, she’s just another tool of the Patriarchy.
My partner sent me this story and asked what I thought of it. My response was, “who is telling men not to expect it all? Who is telling them their careers may make them miss their children, or not be able to participate fully in family life, and they should build in ways to go part time or seek lower positions in case they want or need to contribute around the house?” I suppose it isn’t entirely fair since this is an all girls school and we don’t know what Jill Berry might say to young men and boys, but I can pretty much guarantee that nobody is having these conversations with men. All the settling, all the accommodating, all the family/work angst, is on us. I actually left a comment on Rod Dreher’s column (a conservative pundit who fancies himself having a progressive streak) about a woman who downsized to have it all, asking why men never seem to be as anguished about their work life balance? No response.
I love how in the article, the main aspect of life that girls need to be “realistic” about is the fact that “maybe they will need to work part time” or “take some time off of work” when they have babies. That’s really what the article is getting at.
How about being realistic about the fact that maybe your partner will be at home with the kids more than you will for some of their lives, and you won’t see your kids that much?
Or how about being realistic about the fact that maybe you’ll have to be a single mother? Or have some other arrangement?
It’s fine to talk to girls about work/home balance, but why is the only option worth discussing “staying home for the kids”? It’s not the only option women have if they want to have children!
Article fail.
@JD: argh Rod Dreher. Crunch conservative my ass. He drives me nuts.
bluebears, i am inexplicably obsessed with him, he annoys me even more than much more far right people. i totally hate-stalk him.
Right May, why not say look, if you want to work full time and have kids and not hate your life, you are going to have to find a partner who is as willing or more willing to put his or her own career to the back burner for your family. Those are the breaks ladies. That would be some practical advice I could stand. You can’t do it all AND be married to a sexist ass. That much is true.
No one can “have it all”. I just wish someone would explain this to men. Hey men, if you want kids and a career, at some point one will suffer for the other.
No one can give 100% to their career and their children. But only women are shamed by this fact.
It strikes me that this lesson is being passed along by women who have been burned by the big P. Discouraging the next generation rather than helping them develop the skills to solve the problems you had is a pretty lousy thing to do, especially if you present yourself as a teacher. We don’t tell kids that the world is polluted, violent and unpredictable and therefore you should all give up hope and stay curled up in your shell as much as possible. We tell them that the world has problems and we hope that you will be the ones to fix them. Or can only boys fix problems?
This is infuriating. Most of the problems the article cites have to do with employers’ expectations, not women’s unrealistic aspirations: Having to go back to work soon after having a child, finding that they need to go back part-time, rather than full-time. I don’t think this is a matter of women needing to learn how to make compromises. Heaven knows our sex has been making compromises since the dawn of time. Instead, Berry’s time would be better spent lobbying corporations for better family leave, half-time options, and general flexibility when it comes to working mothers. Twice at my magazine, women who had fully planned to return to work after our 6 month maternity leave was up, decided that 6 weeks just wasn’t enough time, and when they asked for an option of returning half-time, or working from home a few days a week, both were told, full-time or nothing. Both of them quit. It seems that instead of preparing girls for those kinds of choices, time would be better spent working to change the system.
Yes, instead of telling girls to be “realistic” (code for settle) teach them handle these real-world situations. How to negotiate with their bosses, manage their money, discuss labor-sharing and expectations with their partners. The idealist in me is certain women could get a lot closer to having it all if we learned how to ask for it.
To me, there is a lot of class stuff going on here too. (It is an article about England, after all!) The Girls’ Schools Association exists to represent fee-charging schools, (which educate about 7% of the total school population), i.e. a very privileged few.
In the UK, poor school attendance and low achievement (on an individual basis) strongly correlate with teenage pregnancy and, as a consequence, incomplete education.
Basically, this feels like someone saying ‘Having babies is for poor, unsuccessful women and you don’t want to be one of those, do you?’
Classism is often manifested in UK (and other nations, I speculate) feminism, through an attitude that not achieving highly – both professionally and academically – is seen as ‘letting the side down’ and this article seems to play into that.
Thanks for the insight re: class, Plum-Pie, I knew we were talking pay-to-attend schools, but I missed incorporating that. (Durrrrrr.) It might be “babies are for poor people,” but it Berry seems to acknowledge that the vast majority of her (tiny minority of) students will want/have children, and is pitching to them to accept their mommy-track lot. Which makes it even more depressing to me, since GSA girls are likely to be the ones who, due to their class status, are among those most likely to continue their educations, enter the skilled workforce, and–ideally–rewrite the rulebook re: work life/home life. Oh, who’m I kidding, the monster of Capitalism will never allow that.
And Spark: right the fuck on! You don’t happen to be in education, do you? Maybe you ought to be.
I knew all of you would do a great job of hitting what was irritating about this on the head, and you have!
I found it depressing because it seemed to tell girls to accept the status quo instead of trying to change it, and that drives me nuts.
I disagree with Plum Pie’s interpretation of the class issue though. Obviously the GSA is catering to a select minority, and I find a lot of what I hear about them to be elitist and annoying, but in this case, I don’t think it was so much an issue of her saying that having babies is for poor women. In fact, in my brief encounters with rah society, it seemed like a lot of the girls didn’t feel under pressure to achieve highly at all (that being a middle class ideal) and really just wanted to have a good time, eventually find a husband, all that jazz. Maybe she was playing into that anti-ambitious dynamic in her comments. That would be a shame, seeing as a lot of these girls have good educations that could open up huge doors for them, and money that could give them freedom to make it easier not to ‘settle’ if they were determined not to.
How very free market. Girls, in ten years you are all going to be in your homes suffering from the same problems, but don’t think it’s a systemic change that is needed. Instead, manage your expectations.
Endora, I was actually talking about upper-middle class young women, rather than minor (or indeed major) aristos.
(I don’t think there is enough landed gentry left to produce 3.5% of the female school age population, inheritance tax being what it is.)
You can’t do it all AND be married to a sexist ass.
So true.
“Sure, girls, shoot for the stars. You can be a brain surgeon. For a year or so, anyway. Then you’ll be in your 30s…you know…babies…clock ticking”
to be followed in 10 years by “but women just don’t WANT to be brain surgeons. Must be hardwired DNA or something”
Wow, I just re-read my comment (written in an exhausted daze) and realized how inarticulate it was. Sorry!
Plum-Pie: I didn’t actually mean to say that all of the kids at girls’ schools are aristocrats, but it seems (in my limited experience) that the aristocratic ethos dominates in many (but not all) of the most elite ones and is adopted by the upper-middles, and that’s how I read this. Of course, you could be right too – there may well be elements of both class attitudes there. Either way, it’s disheartening.
Hm, although I see how you can read this as discouraging girls, I must say I wish I had heard a bit more advice in this line:
“Women can feel very guilty, whatever path they choose. It is as if they have somehow compromised their principles. What we can do as teachers is prepare them to have aspirations, but not aim for perfection. We can help them recognise that life is about balance.”
I feel that sometimes to be an independent, feminist woman is understood as being ambitious, reaching out to the highest possible goal. For me this translated to the black and white idea of being either perfect or a failure. This has of course a lot to do with my character, but it would have helped me a lot when I had heard once in a while that I didn’t have to be perfect to be independent, strong and respecting my possibilities.
But, this message shouldn’t only be send out to women. I think the problem she describes is bigger for women, because of the consistent views on motherhood, but it is also a problem of our society and time that effects both women and men, and by addressing women alone you do indeed suggest that it’s again about keeping women small and not letting them live up to their full potential. I do believe, however, that there should be more emphasize on balancing out the various aspects of life, because, frankly, there is only a small minority, of both men and women, good/talented enough to ‘have it all’. For the rest of us the emphasize on being good or preferably perfect can have the opposite effect.
I hope the point I’m trying to make is understandable, English not being my mother tongue makes it hard sometimes to effectively express my point of view
That’s a good point, Dutchie. (And your English is clear and lovely, far outstripping 99% of my students’.) I, too, struggle with perfectionist tendencies, although I feel like most of the pressure has come from parents and teachers, rather than feminist theory or other feminists. It’s the classic double-consciousness, “model minority” thing. “I must represent womanity flawlessly, so as to justify my existence and be a credit to my gender!” What a hellish thing it is.
I loathe “having it all” because NO ONE has it all. It is technically impossible to have it all. One might have a great career and a great family because one also has a great deal of money to hire help (nannies, personal assistants, drivers, cooks, etc.), and yes, that may be an enviable position, but choices must still be made, and with every choice comes an un-choice. (How’s that for bad English?)