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Letters - April 22, 1998
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Kids vs. careers I was disappointed by your March 11 cover story, "Careers or Kids?" Balancing career goals against family obligations and interests is a universal problem, and I found the approach taken in the article simplistic and narrow. I wish that more space had been given to the many people (suggested by the statistics cited in the article) who are working and raising families, and trying to do both to the best of their abilities. Some things are too obvious to require stating but were overlooked in your article. There is good child care and bad child care, and not all of the good care costs the earth. How a parent feels about leaving a child in child care is directly related to the perceived quality of the care the child will receive. Some people will always feel something lacking if they aren't caring directly for their children, and others will not. As a full-time working father, I was irritated by the bland assumption
that this is a woman's problem. It is a family problem. I have made being with
my family a priority and have chosen positions and employers who
understand this. I limit my work week to what I consider reasonable, despite the
fact that I work as a software engineer, a profession in which 70- or
80-hour weeks are common. My kids know exactly what time I'm going to walk
in the door in the evening. This inflexibility has probably hurt me
professionally, but it is worth it.
I have trouble understanding how a man or woman with primary responsibility for raising children can be competitive in today's job market. Although I'm now retired, my career was spent in the computer industry with IBM, Memorex, a startup, and finally my own company. I was mostly in software development and marketing, and the people I worked with were categorized by me and others as either "pros" or "amateurs." The amateurs expected to go home for dinner and rarely traveled on business. The pros kept packed suitcases and their passports handy and were ready to go anywhere anytime. Pros were able to work for two days straight without sleep, as I remember doing many times. There was great incentive to fix software problems that had stopped a multimillion-dollar computer. The pros went to dinner with customers who visited our plant and frequently traveled to other plants to discuss problems. I was away on trips about half the time for two decades. When home, I spent most of my evenings reading technical literature. The pros were constantly exposed to challenges. They earned the gratitude of customers whose problems they solved, and they had many personal contacts with our executives in other locations. For all these reasons, they got the lion's share of the raises, promotions, and glory. My friends in Silicon Valley tell me none of this has changed: you simply can't expect to advance if you're only putting in eight hours a day. In my view, the only people who can be pros today are men and women without children or who are supported by dedicated stay-at-home wives or husbands. A child-rearer of either sex lacks the time to compete with pros of similar background and ability, and would find little long-term career satisfaction as a result. Did my workaholic attitude damage my family? My wife, Anne, whom
I married in 1952, is still cheering me on; and of my three sons, two are
tenured professors and one is a lawyer-musician. Anne (Vassar '52) worked for four
years after the children left for college.
Thank you for the long-overdue discussion of the parenting/work dilemma in "Careers or Kids?" and its companion article, "The Great Divide." They acknowledge a central aspect of the Princeton experience: "in the nation's service" seems not to include being a mom. It is reassuring to learn that motherhood took so many alumnae by surprise and led to a painful reexamination of what we thought our lives were about. Your articles should help bring back into the fold many of us who felt alienated from Princeton by our choice to downplay careers for motherhood. The day I left my 10-month-old daughter in daycare to return to
work was emotionally the most difficult of my life. I feel lucky to have found
some balance in part-time work, but even so, every week brings questions for
which there are no easy answers.
I was disappointed by the views expressed in your articles on careers vs. kids. While it may be natural for college students to have unrealistic expectations concerning the ability to "have it all" in their lives, it surprised me to encounter this attitude in people years after they graduated. Why does such wishful thinking persist? Having a career, a relationship, and a family demands that painful compromises be made in each of these facets of life. Society could be more supportive of individuals and families, but the fact remains that you can't have it all. Getting past that fallacy allows a person to enjoy whatever precarious balance in life he or she can manage. My own situation consists of the demographically popular
two-career, two-child family. My spouse and I have made many compromises as we
have stumbled along in our lives: less business travel, shorter work hours,
slower career advancement, no corporate relocation, cheaper vacations, tighter
budgets, less time than we would like with the kids, etc. We still feel fortunate
to have as much as we do, and we would make most of the same choices again.
Since I came to Princeton in 1981, I have had the good fortune to
follow many graduates as they walk through FitzRandolph Gate and make their
way into the world of graduate school, professions, marriage, and
children. Most who come to mind are managing to strike the balance with
energy, intelligence, integrity, humor, and hope. What a shame that the article
"Careers or Kids?" focused on those who had
to sacrifice career, marriage, income, or their sense of well-being as a parent
to bridge what the title of your companion article called the Great Divide. As
a working mother with three children, I believe there is much less of a
divide than you presented, and there are lots of Princetonians who are proving it.
Your articles unfortunately disregard one important option in balancing parenting and career -- truly part-time work (two or three days a week, or 40-60 percent workload). After my daughter was born seven years ago, I worked as a lawyer at 40 percent time; when she went to school, I increased that to 60 percent. Many occupations, particularly those involving writing, do not inherently require a daily presence in an office and can be done on a reduced workload. Is part-time professional work easy? No. The little free time you have is
often coextensive with sleep time -- you may be writing documents in the middle
of the night. Does it affect your career advancement? Yes, but you have more
of a career than if you left employment completely, and you do have an
income. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Without giving up your career, you can still
have most of the week to play with, read to, and explore the world with your
child (tasks that can be more intellectually stimulating than work).
Undergraduates who read your articles and who despaired about
combining career and family can take heart: The key is sharing parenting
responsibilities equally -- and knowing a lot of
good places for take-out.
The clubs and drinking In fact, the decision to go dry was made after consultation among club trustees, undergraduate officers, and club managers on February 2. It did not involve any outside authority. And it is consistent with the determination of club leaders to continue the pendulum swing of the last decade toward greater social responsibility. Contrary to the assertion that "the entire scene is well on its way to being forgotten," conversations continue about how to apply the lessons learned toward enhancing the quality of the bicker process. More than ever before, club trustees work closely with undergraduate officers to develop and enforce proactive and effective policies to deal with the sometimes "immature and experimental" student behavior described by Mr. Tooke. These policies are enhanced through the InterClub Advisor, a position created by the clubs in 1993. As a result, we now have club-wide limits on the days and times at which alcohol is available, a unified hand-stamp system of controlling access to the taps, and measures to curb rampant property damage. Clubs have also undertaken multiple academic and community-service initiatives to make the club experience closer to the ideals of Woodrow Wilson. At other colleges this year, actions to curb irresponsible drinking have
taken place in the wake of tragedy. The last thing we want here is a tragedy.
With preventative and proactive measures, the clubs and the university are
continuing to take the lead in creating a healthier and fuller environment for
the student body.
Sex and sexuality For a dreadful moment I thought this article about a course taught at
Princeton was real, but then I realized that Princeton is not in California. Some
of the quotes were superbly crafted: "We dig heavily into the rich American
social history of sexuality, which is very carnal, very palpable." Also the finely
imagined bit about studying "lesbian sexuality
in medieval and early modern Europe, sexual categories, lesbians in
American Indian culture," etc. Your satirist
comes close to pushing the humor too far, but on balance the piece is of a quality
that Mark Twain, S.J. Perelman, and Jonathan Swift would appreciate.
Why would Princeton ever permit such a course? And seeing that it has,
why would any alumnus consider contributing one cent to the university?
I cringe to think that a member of Princeton's faculty would say that
"We pick apart the elements that make a sexual relationship like marriage
different in 1910 than it was in 1830."
Surely the current fetish for discarding correctness does not justify using
"different than" instead of "different from."
Campus recruiting
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