I encourage you to read the article in the on-line Huffington Post titled “Why Today’s Mother’s Can’t Follow in Pelosi’s Footsteps”. It is interesting to note that during the discussion with reporters recently while Nancy Pelosi was responding to questions about how she had five children and went on to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives, it was her daughter who interrupted to point out that Ms. Pelosi was a stay-at-home mom for most of the years when her children were young. In fact, as pointed out by her daughter, Ms. Pelosi did not run for public office until her youngest child was out of high school.
Ms. Pelosi’s response was very telling, “I don’t have any ideal of how people have kids and jobs,” she stated, making it clear that she did not face that challenge and dilemma. So what does that mean for the current generation of women lawyers?It means that times have changed and that perhaps women like Nancy Pelosi are not really the role models they need. It means that long ago when Nancy Pelosi—and I—were faced with raising children pretty much on our own we had a choice. Many women like Ms. Pelosi chose to be stay-at home moms, and others, like me, chose to stay in our profession as best we could. Women like me went part-time, became of counsel, opted for the public sector and stuck it out because we did not want to leave our professions. There is no right or wrong to this, but it does make one very important point. We HAD A CHOICE, and we made it.
How does that differ from young women today? A lot. Back “in the day” our husbands made enough money to support a home and a reasonably good lifestyle, and many of us did not have to work unless we wanted to. That is not the situation today. Today, it takes two incomes to buy a starter home and two incomes to support a reasonable lifestyle with kids—and to educate them. More and more young women are finding that they do not have a choice, and women of my generation need to understand that and the contrast to our situations so long ago now. We need to factor that into our mentoring and get off our high horses. Times have changed.
However, one thing that the article gets wrong, I think, is that it sets up the choice for women today as staying in the workforce full-time or stepping out for a few years hoping to return after the most difficult years of childcare. There is a middle ground that is ignored. That middle ground is staying in the profession in some kind of status short of full-time or with typical office hours, and I think that is the preferred route for many young women. Yes, they may have to put their career goals on ice for awhile, but they stay connected to their profession and can more readily re-enter full steam at a later date. I address the important issues of “off ramp” and the ensuing “on ramp” in my book, Best Friends at the Bar: What Women Need to Know about a Career in the Law, and I invite you to take a look. It is worth the read. As the article points out, it is always a gamble to think that you can ramp up after being out of work for a significant period of time. It might have worked for the women of Ms. Pelosi’s generation, but it does not work as easily today or in the law profession. Too often the doors will be closed when that time comes.
More on this subject on Thursday. Stay tuned.
