The Wedding Planners
At a small table in a dimly lit corner of Bertucci’s, an attractive Harvard couple had a conversation about marriage. They had been dating for less than six months.
Looking back, she says that even then she could see his ambition. He was tall and dark with serious eyes, and often spoke about how he wanted to go into the Foreign Service. Picking at a piece of pizza, she remembers he said he needed a wife who was flexible, someone who would never be tied down to a single city because of her career. His wife would don a winning smile and fitted, colored dresses, and her charm and etiquette would grace the numerous lavish parties that he held at the embassy.
He probably remembers seeing her small lips contort into a smile, as she told him he would never find what he was looking for in their relationship. She had spent the first days of her sophomore year crouched over her cumbersome, gray Women’s Leadership Project binder as she brushed up on feminist issues in her DeWolfe suite. She knew she wanted to be an actress, and that in the months that would follow her graduation her dreams would take her to only one city—Los Angeles. Her mother, a nurse, had given up many of her career goals to raise a beautiful family, and she always taught her only daughter to never shy away from independence.
But that was three years ago, when he was an industrious junior and she was adjusting to life as a sophomore. In the years that followed, their relationship carried them through one serious bought of depression, a graduation and long lazy summer days spent together in Bali. But there was always an unspoken tension that stemmed from a single conversation.
“There was always this awareness underneath it all that this wasn’t for the long term, that we would never be getting married,” Tara E. Carella ’02 said. “There is something about a marriage that is practical in a sense, and my mother always taught me that you have to look beyond just finding a soulmate when you think about settling down. Our stars just seemed incompatible, and I knew that no matter what I could never live in a marriage where I was only one who ever felt the need to be flexible.”
However, his star carried him away to England after graduation, and the time and distance changed the fundamental nature of their conversation.
“He realized after a while that maybe he was fishing in the wrong pond the entire time,” Carella said. “He began to see that maybe he never wanted to find that dependent girl, and that that was OK. He’s even mentioned casually that he’s thinking of moving to LA after his stint at Goldman [Sachs.]”
Many women and men at Harvard are engaged in a debate over the role of women as career divas and devoted mothers. The question is particularly poignant to Harvard females as they begin to look ahead. Conversation about the proper role of women, according to many, becomes more common as they come of age.
Reaching an answer, however, has become increasingly difficult. Many recognize that the debate has changed greatly from the way it was framed in the 1970s and 1980s, when women were often encouraged to engage in a “Mommy track” approach to their careers. This approach to professional life told Radcliffe graduates of yesteryear that, in order to succeed in business, they needed to act like men. To succeed women were encouraged to push back the start of their domestic, family lives until they had reached the pinnacle of professional achievement in their careers.
In the past few weeks, Sylvia Anne Hewlett, the author of Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, has been in the news for highlighting those women of past, many of whom discovered that their dreams of families deferred became dreams denied. Many Harvard women say they were already aware of the dilemma Hewlett outlines and had planned ahead for a checkered future of stop-and-start careers where children would fill in the gaps.
“I think it is a faux pas to talk about these things openly at Harvard, but when it comes right down to it, many of us will take time off to have families,” Nell G. Brennan ’02 said. “There’s this strange pressure here that silences you, because you realize that we need women in those upper positions, and the only reason why we all managed to succeed is because women took risks and came over to Harvard from Radcliffe. It’s awful in this society that men can always have a powerful career and a family, because they will always want those women who have less strings and are more attractive because they are ready to have families right away.”
In Hewlett’s research she noticed a similar trend. In interviewing successful career men at a variety of ages, she noted that these men simply were not looking for women in their age bracket.
“Successful and high-achieving men so often want a woman who will be home at 5 [p.m.], who will be there to rub backs or give them dinner,” she said. “In high-altitude careers, where the air is thin, professionals need breathing space. For successful men it is so much easier to find that air by marrying women who will provide them with TLC. Women who really want that air to be there need to realize that they need to give real priority to relationships when they are young and still have options.”
Hewlett encourages senior women to assess their options now. She says they should look ahead and realize what they want at 45, and if that is a healthy family relationship with children, they need to give priority to finding a serious relationship in their 20s and having their first child in their early 30s. Hewlett emphasizes that she “hates to make this argument,” but that women must realize they all face a biological wall. At age 27 a woman’s ability to carry children begins to decline, and the only way to ensure a family life is to lay the groundwork early.
“I think one telling story in this regard is that of Katie Couric,” Hewlett said. “I was on the Today Show on Monday and later in the week I saw Katie at a reception held at Tina Brown’s home. She told the story of how she spent her 20s being incredibly ambitious, not focused on men. But at age 30, she went to a funeral of a CBS executive and looked around and realized that all the pallbearers were the woman’s colleagues. She vowed to change her life and went on every date she was asked on, and in the end, she got married and had two beautiful daughters. She said she never had the courage to tell that story before she read this book.”
Some Harvard women, however, admit that they already have the courage to say that they will place priority on forming serious relationships in their 20s. Rebecca D. Chase ’02 says that her solid family life and the fact that her parents met while on a blind date the summer before their senior year often pushes her to realize the importance of getting an early start on finding a family.
“I’ll tell anyone that my top priority next year is to fall love,” Chase says. “The night of my 21st birthday this summer, I was trashed and completely in tears over the fact that I hadn’t yet met someone to love. I idealize my parents and the bond that they have, and all I want in my life is to have really meaningful relationships with my family.”
Some women who have already found the love of their lives say that only now can they focus fully on developing their professional lives. Nisha B. Marks ’02, a senior who is planning on getting married and beginning Harvard Law School next fall, says she feels relieved to know that some aspects of her life are already in order.
“I think it is really hard to plan your whole life in advance,” Marks said. “I know I’d like to have a kid before I’m 30, but in terms of my career, I guess I’ll have to see what happens. There is a certain flexibility there because I’ve already found the person I am going to marry.”
However, Hewlett encourages women to realize that their ability to balance family and career should extend beyond just finding a man with whom they can settle down. “Women should also be mindful of what careers they choose and what companies they decide to work for,” Hewlett said. “For example, doctors tend to do a better job balancing families than lawyers, and academics tend to have terrible luck balancing both. Academics have the highest rate of failure of any group. Entrepreneurs, however, tend to have incredible luck.”
Liz R. Kessler ’02 is one senior who has seen the effects of career choices first hand. Her father worked on Wall Street for Goldman Sachs when Kessler was growing up, and as a college student, she worked there for two consecutive summers. “I remember my managing director one summer was a woman and she was very talented, but she always had trouble keeping in touch with her kids,” Kessler said. “It was so hard for her because she was working 100-plus hours a week, while also trying to make time for her nine-year-old daughter.”
For Kessler, such considerations influence her choice of career path. Next year she will be attending Cantorial School in New York in preparation for a career in a Jewish synagogue. She recognizes that the flexibility of the job, and the fact that most cantors live within walking distance from their synagogues will allow her to “be at work when she needs to and to be at home when her family needs her.”
“To me, personally, it is so important that I have a family,” Kessler said. “I cannot imagine a life scenario that wouldn’t involve a child. I love working with children, and that is part of the reason why I wanted to work as a cantor.”
Some women who are not ready to segue into more flexible careers after finishing Harvard realize they will face additional challenges as they gain distance from school. Ali J. Loeb ’02 recognizes that her lifestyle makes settling down somewhat difficult. Loeb plans to work in consulting for two years after graduation, before beginning studies at Oxford or law school.
However, Loeb realizes that no matter where her life takes her, she wants to have children “in her 30s, before 35.” In fact, although Hewlett points to an epidemic of women wanting to have children later than biologically possible, many Harvard women set on having a career admit that they do not want to be older parents. Pasha M. Coupet ’02, who is attending Columbia Law School next year, says she will never want to be on a partner track at a law firm because she wants to have children before she is 30. Brennan says because her parents are still less than 50 years old, she can never see herself as an older parent.
“I think that having kids late seems almost selfish,” Brennan said. “I think it would be hard to be an older parent because it would be so difficult to be active and have fun with your kids. Not even to mention that it is wonderful to have kids at thirty because then you can still enjoy life with your spouse when you’re 50.”
However, as Loeb points out, there’s a difference between knowing what one’s ideal family life would look like and knowing how to bring it about. “The other day at lunch I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do, and I realized I’d never taken a moment to think about when I would take the time to stop and have kids,” she said. “I know I will have to make tradeoffs, but it’s hard for me to realize sometimes just when I will fit all these things in.”