There is no alternative?

I’m haunted by a story a friend told me the other day of her sister-in-law who dropped out of the paid workforce. Joanne (not her real name) had been a lawyer until her children came along. Now she doesn’t work for pay and has no plans to do so ever again. Cynical me says half of marriages end in divorce. Add in the possibility of the husband losing his job or dying or being incapacitated and are those odds you want to play?

But that’s not the part of the story that got to me. Joanne told her sister-in-law that her law degree and her practice had been a waste. She should never have bothered, because you just can’t have it all. If you want to be a mother, you can’t have a (paid) career.

It’s the powerlessness and hopelessness of Joanne’s perspective that gets to me. In this grim vision, motherhood as practiced in our culture is an iron lung from which there’s no escape. It will always be this way. As Maggie Thatcher said, There Is No Alternative.

But here’s the shred of hope: My friend asked her sister-in-law about her daughters. Should they not bother with careers and degrees? Should they face up to no choice but unpaid mothering or no children? That stopped Joanne cold. She said no, she couldn’t accept that for her daughters. Some faint corner of Joanne’s mind insists there must be an alternative, if not for herself, then for her children.

If that’s true, why defer the dream?