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.

[MikeWaters]

I suspect women are given more latitude than men when it comes to re-entering the work force after years off from the fast-track.

What's so great about being career-driven anyway? What's so good about putting in 80 hours a week?

[RedHeadGal]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I suspect women are given more latitude than men when it comes to re-entering the work force after years off from the fast-track.

What's so great about being career-driven anyway? What's so good about putting in 80 hours a week?

they probably do, but probably not as much as they deserve, which is kind of the point.

I'm not sure what you're saying about being "career driven." I don't think that's the point. I'm wondering whether we are really capable of nurturing non-traditional career tracks the way we probably should. And whether we want to.

In my ideal world both mothers and fathers contribute more equally to the work force and the home-work force. But it's not as efficient, and I don't think most people even want it that way.

[MikeWaters]

Simple fact: the person who is not there is not going to be made the boss.

If you want to be boss, you need to be present.

And then the other issue is this: would you rather have an employee who is going to be at work everyday, or one that will take several months off unexpectedly? Which of these two is more likely to progress further, all other things being equal?

There will be certain careers for whom the on-off-on model of work is going to be a good fit. but for other careers it will not work as well.

[RedHeadGal]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Simple fact: the person who is not there is not going to be made the boss.

If you want to be boss, you need to be present.

And then the other issue is this: would you rather have an employee who is going to be at work everyday, or one that will take several months off unexpectedly? Which of these two is more likely to progress further, all other things being equal?

There will be certain careers for whom the on-off-on model of work is going to be a good fit. but for other careers it will not work as well.

Working your way "up" does not necessarily mean being the boss. And most mothers who take time out do not do so "unexectedly."

But you're still off-track. I'm asking about whether we really do value unpaid labor. How much do we talk about how hard a mother's job is and how significant her contribution? How much she has to manage and juggle? And then when they want to switch into the paid market labor, we make distinctions about how it's different, lesser, etc.

I watched my mother, who sacrificed her adult life to caring for her children, when she needed to get a job signed up for a gig with barely any pay or hours or respect, but it was what she could get. She was in a bad marriage, and if she had wanted to leave (which I don't know if she did or not), she couldn't have. She had no marketable skills. It limited her choices, and I also think it limited her feelings of self-worth.

The social/political/cultural problem as I see it is that we want people to be self-reliant, and yet we want to rely on women to raise children and then the market turns its back on them when they do, in many cases forcing them to donate their ability to be self-reliant in the process.