Senator track

[RedHeadGal]

From the most recent NYT Magazine

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/ma...1&ref=magazine

What's interesting to me about these thoughts is wondering whether most traditionalists (meaning mainly those who embrace the 1950s concept of how families should function--which includes many main-stream Mormons) would embrace this view, that the career ladder should be a career lattice.

The rhythm of office work — its hours, its demands, its life cycle — is designed for a man, ideally a man with a wife back home with the kids. Ever since the industrial age, career tracks have been built on the assumption that you can work around the clock in your 20s, shoulder increasing responsibility in your 30s and 40s and begin to ratchet down and move over for the next generation in your 50s and 60s.

That doesn’t work for many women, who are apt to want to pause, physically and emotionally, for children, maybe slow down in their 30s, when men are charging ahead, and come back with a new energy in their 50s, when men are slowing down. Someday, perhaps, work will become more a lattice than a ladder — a path that allows for moving up, stepping down a notch or two, taking a few large sideways strides, making your way upward but not necessarily at a sprint.

I don't know the answer to that. As much as we value the at-home contributions, I wonder how much we really want them to be worth. I wonder how much we want women to be able to step on and off career paths at all.