To Work or Not To Work

It's not every day that your professor laughs at you. To prove a point about gender inequality, my professor asked all the guys in our class whether anyone would consider staying home to raise the kids. No one raised his hand. The professor then added, "What about any female students?" Again, no response--until I slowly raised my hand. The professor caught sight of me and could not stop laughing. I looked up, a bit shocked, a bit dismayed. First, my professor is a woman herself. Next, I thought educated men and women in a psychology course would translate their knowledge that the early years of every child's life are a critical time to promote development into a decision to spend those years with them.

The entire experience, minus the laughter, echoes a conversation I've had several times, particularly with female friends, as we approach graduation. It is challenging to find women (or men) at Harvard who want to stay home with their children. You'll never hear me suggest women should be submissive: I'm not about to defer to anyone about how my family will work. I passionately want to be a doctor, yet I am even more invested in raising my future children. However, when talking with my peers, I seem to be the only one who views staying at home while my children are young as a viable, desirable option.

I want to be with my kids as they grow up and would be even happier to split the time at home with a like-minded husband. Not because I think working parents can't be great parents--in fact, my mom raised us by herself, worked full-time and never missed a baseball game or concert. I was surprised when I walked her to her gate at the airport on Sunday and asked what she thought. "Tig," she said, "I wish I could have stayed home with you." I asked her why. She said she could have been a better mom. "How?" "I could have baked more cookies." I smiled and told her I had plenty of cookies. I couldn't believe that my mom, who did an amazing and unselfish job with us, would doubt that for a second. She showed me that any family and professional combination is feasible.

I hope I will be able to make the choice to be at home while my children grow up. Many mothers and fathers struggle with long hours at multiple jobs with inflexible hours to provide homes for their families and do not have the luxury of deciding to stay home with their children. Conversely, some women and men do not want to stay home with their families full or part time--also a valid choice.

What angers me is that just as we once suggested "a woman's place is in the home," we now see ourselves entrapped by the need to be at work. Women are not at college to land great providers as they may once have been but to pursue careers and attain certain lifestyles. Just think about how many people would say you'd wasted the opportunity of Harvard if all you wanted was to stay home with your kids.

Very few seem to consider raising children a challenging, rewarding choice, let alone a singularly important goal. I would never advocate anyone, female or male, sacrificing his or her dreams to please their mate or children. However, I do hope we've reached the point where we can be creative enough to conceive of ways to blend the joys and hardships of the home with the rigors of the workplace. I'm a firm believer in the credo that necessity is the mother, or better, the parent, of invention.

Perhaps one problem is the image of the stay-at-home parent. What do we envision when thinking of a mother at home with her kids? Classic suburban life, station wagon and picket fence, husband returning to a clean house and dinner on the table? Instead of asking ourselves whether or not to work, we need to decide how we can make the combination of work and family possible. Many parents, like my mom, can work from home--I always figured that was why fax machines were invented in the first place. Some husbands and wives have worked out schedules dividing the week, each spending two or three days at home with their children.

If we, as future leading professionals, decide it is essential that we spend the first few years of our children's lives with them, the structure of the workforce will continue to change in that direction. Then we will be able to consider the more challenging question of how we extend that flexibility to low- and middle-income parents and single parents who are conforming to set schedules. To transform policies and create lasting change, we all need to include the value of children within our expectations before accepting any job. How will we be able to build a responsive, creative, caring society if we don't make staying at home with our children a valued and viable possibility?

Tiger Edwards '01 is a psychology concentrator in Winthrop House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.