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It Would Be So Great

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Clarissa

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It would be so great if once, just once I encountered a story where a female academic doesn’t tell the readers how “I gave up a tenure-track job so our family could stay together” without even attempting to question why it was she and not her husband who had to sacrifice her career.

It would be so great to encounter a story where once, just once a highly educated woman didn’t say that “I wish I wasn’t stuck with the entirety of the “second shift” of cooking and cleaning” without questioning who the hell needs a partner capable of sticking you with the entirety of these chores while he prances out of the house to enjoy “candidate dinners, night grad classes, faculty senate meetings, social gatherings that represent important opportunities to network”.

It would be so great if instead of this endless whining about the general unfairness of the inhospitable universe that inundates my blogroll lately, I could find one – just one – story where the writer shares their situation and then analyzes how he or she contributed to creating his or her problems.

I’m not saying that stories of the “OMG, I’m such a victim and I have no idea how it even happened to me” variety don’t have the right to exist. I’m just saying that from time to time, very occasionally it would be nice to read another kind of stories.

28 responses to “It Would Be So Great”

  1. David Bellamy Avatar
    David Bellamy

    “…to question why it was she and not her husband who had to sacrifice her career.”

    Please…some grammatical misuses are really distressing. English does not have much of a case differential left. Let’s not destroy it!

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      What an ugly mistake! Initially, the text said “her sacrifice to make”, so that’s what created the problem.

      Thank you for catching it!!! I wouldn’t want this ugly sentence to remain on my blog.

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      1. Jonathan Avatar
        Jonathan

        It was “she” is very ugly and stilted. It was “her” is idiomatic English and sounds fine.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          OK, the native speakers of English need to come to consensus here and let me know. 🙂 Because this is not my decision to make since I’m not a native-speaker.

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    2. Priyanka Avatar
      Priyanka

      Not a ‘native speaker’, but I’d have to go with David. Although, as Jonathan points out, ‘her’ is quite commonly spoken, and if not exactly grammatical, is accepted within the linguistic culture. So there is no need whatsoever for you to share David’s preference (and mine).

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        Isn’t English one of your first languages?

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      2. Priyanka Avatar
        Priyanka

        It is that 🙂 But I’m not, how shall I put this delicately… not light enough to be considered a native Received Standard Anglophone.

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  2. Kellen Avatar
    Kellen

    I’ve met a woman who was an investment banker who said her husband had to give up his rocket science career to stay home with the kids in a suburb of New York, while she spent her week in an apartment in the city and only came home on weekends. She was head of private wealth management at Lehman brothers.

    She is an inspiration, but also a bit overwhelming. If she can do all that, then certainly mom can be a professor and have a husband give up his career. On the other hand, she had to be incredibly tenacious and competitive to get to where she is, specifically, and I’m not interested in being just like her.

    Which is why, of course, we need more examples of women doing it!

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Both cases are pathological, in my opinion. One partner – of whatever gender – giving up their professional and social realization while the other partners thrives is a deeply unhealthy situation. If a romantic partnership requires that one of the partners give up their complete personhood, then that’s a definitely not a healthy relationship.

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      1. Kellen Avatar
        Kellen

        Well I’m not sure giving up a paying career is necessarily giving up personhood? Although Americans are becoming more and more defined by their careers. I wouldn’t want to give it up, but some women manage to retain feeling like a person when they become a SAHM…

        Of course, if both of you DO feel like giving up a career involves becoming undefined, then of course it doesn’t make sense for one to give it all up. That’s what daycare and nannies are for 🙂

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          “Well I’m not sure giving up a paying career is necessarily giving up personhood? ”

          -You are saying this like there are non-paying careers or something. 🙂

          This isn’t specific to the Americans. A human being needs a public and a private dimension to their existence to retain psychological health.

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          1. Kellen Avatar
            Kellen

            -You are saying this like there are non-paying careers or something.

            Haha, I was thinking of Madeleine L’Engel, who spent the decade of her 30’s being an at-home writer, but didn’t get paid for it until later on in her 40’s. (I’m in the middle of reading a memior of hers.) So, at the time it wasn’t what I’d call a “job” but it was what she did as her focus. Doesn’t have to come with a paycheck to be a career.

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    2. Blissc. Avatar
      Blissc.

      Why does a husband or wife have to give up their career? Why does one partner have to “give up”? Why is it essential to have “a husband give up his career”? Why is it an “inspiration” for someone to require their spouse to give up their career?

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  3. Kellen Avatar
    Kellen

    I did a little search to try and find you some more women, but instead just came accross this post about a marriage falling apart possibly because the dad is stay-at-home, and the comments on the post are even more depressing… http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/07/20/my-own-marriage-and-the-myth-of-the-stay-at-home-dad/

    But she does link to a bunch of happy stay at home dad bloggers, so it seems like it’s working out for someone!

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      The problem is not that stay-at-home parents are unhappy. The problem is that they devour the lives of the rest of the family members for lack of a life of their own. Believe me, this is a very painful personal issue for me on a variety of levels. I know what it is like to be consumed alive by a bored, miserable, depressed, permanently underappreciated house-spouse / house-parent.

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      1. Kellen Avatar
        Kellen

        Sounds like it’s a common issue. It sounds like the house-spouse needs to take some steps to define themselves though. For example, my boyfriend claims that he would like to be a stay at home dad, but that is only because he’s still in the “figuring out what to do with my life” stage and that *seems* like an easy out to having to figure it out yourself.

        But, and this would be very far down the road, I will keep this in mind if the topic comes up. Clearly, he would still keep needing to work towards figuring out what to do with himself.

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      2. el Avatar
        el

        //I know what it is like to be consumed alive by a bored, miserable, depressed, permanently underappreciated house-spouse / house-parent.//

        But both your parents worked, as you previously said.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Until 1992, yes. Nineteen years have passed since then.

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  4. Ol. Avatar
    Ol.

    Well… I am a male academic who gave up an excellent tenure track job to raise a family.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      You are our hero, my friend.

      But you are also from Quebec, there is a huge difference.

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      1. Blissc. Avatar
        Blissc.

        Would a female academic who gave up an excellent tenure track job to raise a family also be “our hero”?

        Is it necessary to give up jobs to raise a family? Were my parents wrong because neither thought they had to give up their careers to have a family?

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          “Is it necessary to give up jobs to raise a family? Were my parents wrong because neither thought they had to give up their careers to have a family?”

          No, of course not. My point is exactly that there will not be a healthy relationship if either partner, irrespective of their gender, makes such an enormous sacrifice for the “family.” So, good for your parents. I think they did the right thing.

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  5. Z Avatar
    Z

    My brother did it, too. It was a sort of obvious decision since his wife’s tenure track job is a whole lot more lucrative than his was or would ever become (different fields) and the concept was, he’s versatile enough to, theoretically, get interesting work in a lot of places. But, age and the economy seem to be serious factors, as it turns out. So yes, rational decision and the woman got the career in this case, but still not the most healthy situation.

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    1. Blissc. Avatar
      Blissc.

      Why is it a rational or obvious decision when it’s the man who gives up his career, and when it’s the woman, it’s a tragedy?

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  6. Z Avatar
    Z

    Then I had a colleague who quit academia to go into industry because it didn’t pay enough to support all the kids and also her husband the artist – who does sell work and have a professional life, and also is the main house/childcare worker, but isn’t the main breadwinner.

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  7. Z Avatar
    Z

    Oh, and a friend’s husband quit his job so he could live with her at her job. He’s basically unemployed, and he did have a career not just a job. Now he alleges he doesn’t care what he does, just any job is fine, working retail, whatever; what he ought to do is retrain (so should my brother, in my view) but they both feel they’ve already done enough school, so … round we go.

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  8. Adi Avatar
    Adi

    Some people, perhaps many in fact, actually like their stay-at-home life but also enjoy complaining about it or drawing attention to the fact that they “could have had a great career too” or just to draw attention for the sake of it.

    I certainly prefer the stay-at-home path for myself. If I had the choice, that’s the one I’d make. Exchanging your time for money (which is what most jobs are) is a bad idea anyway.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Professional realization is so much more than exchanging time for money. At my job, I experience such intense feelings of happiness and enjoyment at least 3 times a week that I often think the university should be charging me for letting me have these experiences. 🙂 🙂

      Also, the energies one directs into one’s job would otherwise find no outlet and be dumped on one’s family members. Unless nobody in the family works and has the same excess of energy, family members who have to be on the receiving end of these excessive energies always suffer. Imagine that you come home drained from work but there is your partner who didn’t have a chance to talk to as many people as you did, expend themselves intellectually and physically. So they turn to you with their chirpiness and high energy, expecting fun, conversations, exchange of ideas. For the working partner, it’s like doing the second shift after coming home.

      I’ve been on the receiving end of this constant excess of energy and let me tell you, it isn’t fun. As my friend said about her stay-at-home husband, “Sure, the daycare would be more expensive. But at least people at the daycare wouldn’t expect that I entertain them for 5 hours after getting home from work.”

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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