The Stanford Magazine, which the Alumni Association so thoughtfully sends to me despite the fact I haven’t paid to join (if you don’t count the thousands of dollars in tuition, which I don’t since my father paid that), has a section called One Question. They ask one question, and well known members of the Stanford community (i.e. not me) answer that one question. Last months edition (i.e. the one I’m currently reading) had an interesting juxtaposition of two answers. First up is a condescending piece of snot by a professor (who else?):
Marjorie Perloff is the Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, emerita: Until recently, I honestly believed that the feminist revolution was irreversible. I took it for granted that women could now have real careers and be independent people. But as I read my daughter Carey’s 25th-reunion class book or the New York Times, I learn that little has changed. Indeed, in some ways, the situation has deteriorated as the “soccer mom,” the mom who “uses her SUV as her office,” is valorized. Moms in my day (late ’50s-early ’60s) who didn’t work outside the home used their spare time to work in the community and the arts, take courses, and so on. We would have been ashamed to be soccer moms and spend our afternoons chauffeuring kids around. So I regard the current scene with dismay but also with bemusement: it will change again just as everything does.
I suppose I could read this with a detached bemusement too if it wasn’t coming from a professor, so I’m forced to have nothing but dismay. This is the chief reason I have come to disdain capital F Feminism while I consider myself a small f feminism — I’m all for throwing open the doors of opportunity to all people regardless of gender (or sex) or race or pretty much anything other than criminal behavior, but where I’m also in favor of people deciding on their own what opportunities to persue, the Feminists are not open at all and only consider particular choices the right ones. I, too, am amazed when I read my reunion books how many of the women chose to stop persuing careers, and I’m talking about high paying, prestigous careers, to be full time mothers. But I don’t think they’ve made the wrong choice, just as I don’t think those women who continued with their careers made the wrong choice, because it’s their choice to make, not mine. On a side note (what, not in parentheses for a change?), I was shocked to read this from a professor; perhaps the instaprofessor wouldn’t be so shocked since he comes in contact to such disdain on a far more regular basis.
But the truly wonderful thing is immediately following they have the perfect rejoinder:
Jim Collins, ’80, MBA ’83, founded a management research laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and is the author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don’t: I used to believe that the critical questions in life were about -what — what decisions to make, what goals to pursue, what answers to give, what mountains to climb. I’ve come to see that the most important decisions are not about what, but about who. The primary question is not what mountains to climb, but who should be your climbing partner. If you want to have a great life, the most important question is not what you spend your time doing, but who you spend your time with. First who, then what – life is people.
Apparently there are plenty of women (and men too!) who have also made it past what to who and have decided that spouses and children are the who, or at least the most signficant who, when it comes to answering who do you spend your time with. Amen, brother Jim.
