Chronicles of Chaos
Husband as Career
I’ve started reading the paper online, which means I read random articles I’d normally skip and miss out on the stuff I usually read. I feel a little lost and at the same time full of too many details. Today I found Maureen Dowd’s list of advice for wives of philandering politicians. Towards the end, she warns them and the rest of us:
“10. High-powered women like Hillary, Elizabeth and Jenny who give up their careers to focus on their husbands’ ambitions feel doubly betrayed. But it’s not your husband’s fault if you sacrifice more for the relationship than he does. Like an investor in a down market, you took a risk without a guarantee it would pay off. If you make your husband your career and you lose your husband, you lose your career, too.”
Dowd overlooks (in making this particular point) the fact that all three women are mothers–Jenny Sanford has four children–and that for women, responsibilities and desires as mothers more than as wives might effect, or even determine, career decisions. A husband’s career may or may not factor into how we shape our days for ourselves and our kids. If husbands have demanding careers, we may reduce our commitment to work so at least one parent is more available for the kids. Politics demands that spouses participate to a certain degree, which wives may enjoy as an opportunity, a new kind of job. Political wives are participating, not surrendering. The sacrifice when it occurs is layered and can happen in any marriage–dads giving up time with their kids and wives, moms (whether we’re working or not) pulling more of the weight at home. The double betrayal involves cheating on the marriage on top of the chronic imbalance of never being as available as we were in the first place.
Our culture sustains this imbalance–it’s hard to break from the men are breadwinners (and earn more for the same job) and children need their mothers paradigm. Yet individually we are living within and beyond this framework. Women get the program–we understand the limitations of ambitious husbands and the unrelenting demands of high-powered careers. Married couples create all sorts of partnerships, and marriages are fluid, they can move with us. The slippery slope is that the supportive wife stereotype Dowd applies is alive and well. It’s part of our role, and without something acceptable to balance our resume we suddenly become losers, rather than women married to successful men who screwed around.
There is also no evidence that Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Jenny Sanford gave up their careers. Women more than men have learned how to shape our lives with career as a part of the whole. We often build careers, have children, drive carpool for a few years, and then pursue a different career. Or open a knitting shop. Our biological and cultural roles as mothers inspire us to be creative with our time and pursuits. Hillary Clinton became a senator and now the Secretary of State, Elizabeth Edwards wrote a best-selling book (turning her role as wife into a self-standing career), and who knows what Jenny Sanford may choose when her sons are older.
Our choices as wives and mothers are more complicated and nuanced than they appear.
Well stated!