From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keli-goff/is-having-only-one-child-_b_3752740.html
Keli Goff
08/14/2013
Ten years ago a New York Times article marked the beginning of a new chapter in the so-called “mommy wars.” The piece, which was so provocative it inspired a 60 Minutes segment, highlighted the number of highly educated, successful, Gen X career women who were choosing to “opt-out” and become stay-at-home mothers. Last week The Times caught up with some of those women. While there were some success stories — depending on a very fluid definition of success — there were some serious horror stories. The most horrifying of all to any woman who has ever grappled with whether leaving the workplace is a mistake, is the story of Sheilah O’Donnel, a woman who gave up a job earning half a million dollars a year to become a stay-at-home mother. Years later her marriage crumbled, leaving her struggling to get back on her feet financially and professionally with three children in tow.
Now, 10 years later, her advice to her own daughter is very different from the advice she gave 10 years ago when she sang the praises of full-time motherhood. “This is the perfect reason why you need to work. You don’t have to make a million dollars. You don’t have to have a wealthy lifestyle. You just always have to be able to at least earn enough so you can support yourself.”
But I couldn’t help wondering if there was another piece of advice that, while completely politically incorrect to say out loud, might have made all of the difference to her story, and could make all of the difference to her daughter’s future: have only one child.
The reason? Because all of the data shows that women who have fewer children end up better off financially, a message that feminist writer Linda Hirshman tried to convey when the initial story of the Gen-X Stay-at-home mom revolution came out 10 years ago. Though a mother herself, Hirshman was branded a child-hating, mother-hating, man-hating lunatic. Now a decade later, as a generation of women searches for the perfect compromise to balance their professional ambitions with their parental ones, Hirshman’s advice — have one child, not two or three — sounds quite sane, or at least more sane than the other options which seem to be either become financially dependent on your husband while raising a brood of children, or remain childless altogether.
When I caught up with Hirshman to ask if she was surprised to hear that a decade later some of these stay-at-home mothers were struggling, she said emphatically, “No. I’m not surprised.” She was sympathetic, however, because as she noted, “We keep telling women different things every 10 years. We tell them to work one decade, and then stay home another decade. Then we tell them to go back to work. They’ve failed if they work. They’ve failed if they stay home. But we don’t keep telling men different things. We tell men the same thing consistently.” But she added that she stands by something she told me in a previous interview, “The second child makes it more than twice as hard.”
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keli-goff/is-having-only-one-child-_b_3752740.html
