TBR: Opting Out?
This week’s book is Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home, by Pamela Stone. Stone is a sociologist, and the book reports on her study of the experiences of 54 white, highly educated professional married mothers who left their well-paid careers to stay home. The book is framed as a response to Lisa Belkin’s famous Opt-Out Revolution article, although I think Stone had actually started her research before it was published.
Overall, Stone’s thesis is that these women did not stop working because of a call to full-time motherhood, but because of the lack of flexibility in their high-powered jobs that made it impossible to both work at the level that they were accustomed to and have any semblance of family lives, especially given the expectations for intensive parenting in upper and middle class families. Most of their husbands worked even more crazy hours, and something had to give. Many of the women had requested part-time or flexible work situations — and in several cases, had taken advantage of such situations for a while, but were denied to permission to continue them. Stone concludes that for these women, it was easier to incorporate professional skills into at-home parenting (often through high level volunteering) than to be a parent while working in their intensive jobs.
While Stone’s findings generally seemed plausible to me, I found it frustrating that she only talked to the women who had "opted-out." I wanted to know what was different about those who had faced similar pressures and continued to work — did they have husbands who were more involved in family life? more supportive bosses? a greater willingness to outsource family duties? healthier kids?
Since I’ve read and thought a lot about this issue, I felt like a lot of the book was old news to me. The only real new ideas were in some of the details, like the suggestion that corporate mergers and downsizing often led to less flexible work arrangements, because people suddenly found themselves working for new bosses who didn’t have a history with them. I also was struck by the ways that, once there was a parent at home, families’ lives rearranged in ways that made it harder for the mothers to return to work — fathers worked longer hours, the children started participating in extra-curricular activities that required them to be ferried all over town.
Ultimately, I’m not sure that Stone’s understanding is as different from Belkin’s as she thinks it is. Belkin too had argued that her subjects were pushed from the work side as much as pulled from the family side. Belkin focuses more on on- and off-ramps, while Stone is more interested in part-time and flexible arrangements. My guess is that’s more a difference between parents of younger versus older children than anything else.
August 29th, 2007 at 6:12 am
I can only speak from personal experience, but when I worked at a medium sized civil engineering firm and there was NO flexibility in hours, etc. These guys were very old school – stories floated around about the founder of the firm walking by desks at 7:35am to check that everyone was there. That kind of corporate culture carries over.
But, when we got bought by a very large engineering firm (49K+ employees), flexibility magically appeared. Some of it was invisibility too – nobody knew or cared really if we were there. But flex time was officially at the discretion of the individual managers, which was nice. I could also leave if I needed to get a sick kid from school and work at home for that day.
Oddly though, work at home was really looked down upon, in my division at least. I’m sure they thought we were just doing laundry. 🙂
Now I WAH full time and try to take a minute every day to remember how good it really is. I have total flexibility in my hours and I don’t feel at all guilty about spending some of those hours at my kids’ school on occasion. It also helps that I am a direct report to the CEO and his philosophy is along the lines of “work to live, don’t live to work.” His family will take precedence over his job if it comes down to it – he expects we will make the same choice. How cool is that?
Finally, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t these studies mostly focus on very high income families statistically? If that’s the case, it’s apples and oranges to say that a highly educated educated woman opting out, who is married to an equally credentialed husband compares to a working class family – isn’t it?
August 29th, 2007 at 10:31 am
“. . . lack of flexibility in their high-powered jobs that made it impossible to both work at the level that they were accustomed to and have any semblance of family lives. . . . Most of their husbands worked even more crazy hours, and something had to give. Many of the women had requested part-time or flexible work situations — and in several cases, had taken advantage of such situations for a while, but were denied to permission to continue them.”
Boy, that describes my situation exactly. I opted to leave the work force because it was hard to find flexibility in my line of work.
“My guess is that’s more a difference between parents of younger versus older children than anything else.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this, but here’s my take. Juggling it all was much easier when the kids were pre-schoolers. But at about age 8-9, I found the issues of friends, homework, activities, media influence, etc. made it more important for me to be around rather than rely on a nanny for childcare. I feel strongly about this and I’m glad I’m able to be home. And, yes, sometimes it’s the “quantity” time that’s more important than the “quality” time.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I’d really like to see the discussion around “opting out” in a wider frame. I don’t think it’s solely about women working vs. women staying at home. I see it much more as a bizarre love triangle between wife’s career, kids and husband’s career. In my own family, both my husband and I have gotten ourselves into great flexible job situations — full time, middle management — purposefully avoiding the CEO track, so we can both work and have time with the kids. But we have sacrificed promotion and money for that flexibility.
On the other hand, I know tons of women who stay home mostly because their husbands’ work 80-90 hours a week and often travel 4-5 days a week. Conversely, the few women I know who do have highger level jobs have husbands who either stay at home or have much less demanding positions.
Can both husband and wife be CEO-types and be truely active with the kids (as opposed to 24-hour nannies)? As much as I’d like it to be possible, I just don’t think it is.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
I like the triangle idea. It seems to me a lot of these discussions happen in the context of only considering one side of the triangle (the woman’s career/family), and not the other two. Elizabeth mentions that the book mentions the effect of the stay-at-home decision on the husband’s work hours (they go up), thus dividing the labor at home even more drastically.
I also like the idea of discussing what makes “opting in” possible. Where’s the case study of the 52 women who stayed in the workforce? When looking at the bloggers I read, there are women who are truly happy to be home with their children. That is their optimal “career”, and they have no angst over the choice; then there are those who stay hone with their children, but feel a loss in their work lives. The two bloggers in that category who come to mind both have children who have special needs (and I mean that in a broad sense). Then, there are those who balance by working. The shared characteristics in the blogging world (according to me) include the following: involved husbands (perhaps stay at home, but in any case husbands who are equally involved in family life), one child, or two at the max, children with no special needs, good childcare situations (which include children who seem to enjoy their out-of-home options), enjoyable significant work, some degree of flexibility in their workplace, and some degree of flexibility in the parenting partner’s workplace.
Not statistical, of course, but interesting to think about.
bj
PS: In any debate like this, we are really talking about an elite group. But as long as we don’t build policies around this particular group, I don’t see anything wrong with engaging in navel gazing.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I’d like to see a study of men who stayed home with their children and/or who didn’t and how they made it all work. I’d like to see a magazine called Working Father that deals with juggling work and family life.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Tex, the point I was trying to make is that I’m not sure how much part-time and flexible work helps when your children are infants, especially if there’s not a corresponding availability of part-time child care. But for parents of school age kids, Stone reports that the holy grail is a part-time job that “lets you be home to meet the bus.”
In the families that Stone studies, the fathers reducing their work effort was clearly not on the table at all. The dads were “supportive” of their wives’ “choice” to work or not to work, but they never considered cutting back on their own work. The question that begs, of course, is how representative they are. It could be a selection issue, in that the moms who “opted out” are disproportionately likely to be married to men who are unavailable for parenting activities.
However, I’m reminded that the SAHM in Orenstein’s Flux talks about how they had considered having the father be a SAHD, but once they had made the decision for her to stay home, their lives shifted in more traditional patterns as well.