I remember reading the original article and thinking that we're slowly moving toward a situation where you could just replace "women" with "men". I've scaled back on my career because I have two small children, and I can't leave the house before 7:30 or get home much after 6pm if I want to stay involved to the extent I choose to be as a father. I want to help them with homework, music practice, sports, and just spend some time with them.
Now a lot of people may notice that I (very deliberately) used the word choose. Not everyone will make this choice, and some people have a tougher time with a choice than others. But as I remember from the Atlantic article, the author did have a husband who was available and willing to provide a very high level of domestic support. She wrote, with some hesitation, that she things women may be less inclined to spend time away from their families and at the office even when they do have this level of support (she cited both social conditioning as well as the possibility of basic biology as a factor in this).
I don't know if I'm unusual. I actually argued about this with my wife, who insists that I'm unusually at ease, as a male, with stepping back from my career to do domestic things. Personally, I have trouble believing that I am especially unusual, and I definitely know plenty of men who have made the same choice I did. Yeah, I can't have it all. If I want to limit work to 8:30am to 5:30pm, and at times have to shorten even those hours, that will affect my career. At times, I do look at other people's achievements with some envy, but I'm clear that this was my choice. I can't have it all, of course I can't. There are trade-offs in life.
There are of course still some big differences for women - I do think that it's probably harder for a woman to find a male partner who will fill the domestic gap than it is for a man to find a woman who will do this (though even if they do, they'll still have to accept the "understudy" role as a parent as they spend more time at the office than their husbands). If there truly is a deeper, biological pull here for women on average, then maybe we should look into better "on ramps" for people in their 40s (the author said she is frequently asked about this, and her honest answer is that there aren't really any good on ramps for middle aged people, at least not in her field).
I still see differences between men and women around the question of whether we can "have it all", but this does seem to be converging - and ultimately the answer will be "no, you can't."
Now a lot of people may notice that I (very deliberately) used the word choose. Not everyone will make this choice, and some people have a tougher time with a choice than others. But as I remember from the Atlantic article, the author did have a husband who was available and willing to provide a very high level of domestic support. She wrote, with some hesitation, that she things women may be less inclined to spend time away from their families and at the office even when they do have this level of support (she cited both social conditioning as well as the possibility of basic biology as a factor in this).
I don't know if I'm unusual. I actually argued about this with my wife, who insists that I'm unusually at ease, as a male, with stepping back from my career to do domestic things. Personally, I have trouble believing that I am especially unusual, and I definitely know plenty of men who have made the same choice I did. Yeah, I can't have it all. If I want to limit work to 8:30am to 5:30pm, and at times have to shorten even those hours, that will affect my career. At times, I do look at other people's achievements with some envy, but I'm clear that this was my choice. I can't have it all, of course I can't. There are trade-offs in life.
There are of course still some big differences for women - I do think that it's probably harder for a woman to find a male partner who will fill the domestic gap than it is for a man to find a woman who will do this (though even if they do, they'll still have to accept the "understudy" role as a parent as they spend more time at the office than their husbands). If there truly is a deeper, biological pull here for women on average, then maybe we should look into better "on ramps" for people in their 40s (the author said she is frequently asked about this, and her honest answer is that there aren't really any good on ramps for middle aged people, at least not in her field).
I still see differences between men and women around the question of whether we can "have it all", but this does seem to be converging - and ultimately the answer will be "no, you can't."