Assignment 8: Belkin

In Belkin’s essay “The Opt-Out Revolution”, she argues that many professional women are using childbirth as an easy way of ‘opting out’ of jobs which fail to satisfy them. She insinuates that women—and she generalizes her findings to all women from her relatively small sample of highly educated, wealthy women—are quitting their jobs after having children because they simply find that their families are more important to them than their careers, and many have criticized her for this. A major criticism is that she may overemphasize the pull of family while underemphasizing the ‘push’ of work—the unwillingness at women’s workplaces to consider the added burden of a child and offer assistance such as granting new mothers more paid leave time and flexible hours.

My experience growing up was perhaps opposite of the norm; my mom worked full-time while my dad stayed at home for much of my childhood. Unfortunately, I was not really able to see if he had more or less trouble than a woman might in returning to the workforce after such a long hiatus, since he chose to start his own business. As for my mother, though, I’ve always had a great deal of respect for her as a career woman and never really felt like I didn’t have enough time with her or that she was choosing her career over me. I feel she has set a great example for me—even though I know I can’t necessarily expect to find as easy a solution to the dilemma of child care versus career as she did.