There’s a debate on twitter at the moment around the hashtag #havingitall: about the women who want to have it all, and about whether or not they can.
It’s funny how the having-it-all discussion gets stuck at greedy, career-hungry women who are stupid enough to think that they can do well professionally, lead a good life, and have a family at the same time. No one talks about the greedy, career-hungry men who are stupid enough to think the same thing. And, much more annoyingly, no one gets that, really, the discussion we should be having is about choice as opposed to greed.
Can women really have it all?, people ask. How about we change that to: Why can’t women choose from it all? Or, even better: Who’s allowed to choose what they have?
Arguing for women’s right to the opportunity to create a rewarding career for themselves while also having a family, or for men’s right to decent paternity leave and the opportunity to be a real presence in their children’s lives, is not the same as advocating a rat race kind of lifestyle where more and faster are better. Zen and mindfulness are popular enough at the moment for me to guess that most people have begun to think that less is more. You could almost say that most people probably don’t even want to have it all.
What we should be talking about is how to create a society in which every individual and family can choose for themselves. We should enable careerists to climb the ladder they want to climb and family people to spend a lot of time with their family, whether they’re men or women, while making sure that it’s actually possible to keep a job and do it well without having to neglect your children while you’re at it – if that happens to be what you want, that is.
Let’s not kid ourselves: the way things stand, not even men have that much freedom.
