Ann Romney-Hilary Rosen dust-up can't be reduced to a question of 'choice'

Clearly there is a deep desire on the part of Americans for reasonable and significant possibilities for parental care of children. Those possibilities extend far beyond a choice that women make between two mutually exclusive options.

But this desire runs smack dab into constraint.

Our modern work culture and structures of paid employment constrain decision-making day in and day out. As Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California and others have argued, we live with a mismatch: workplaces designed for the 19th century and household economics of the 21st century. Jobs with long hours and little flexibility designed for male-breadwinner households, limited access to paid parental leave, and few opportunities for well-paid part-time work all constrain care.

My sister-in-law, an executive at a large insurance company, told me a story a couple of years ago about her workplace, which encapsulates this culture perfectly. The professionals on her team put in long hours, and while she respected their family obligations and worked hard to fulfill her own, she could not escape the feeling that those who left the office on the early side contributed less.

Her framework was choice, but what she really confronted was constraint: the constraints of a system where there is no level playing field for work-family needs because there are no systematic government or private-sector rules of the game that recognize that all workers have family obligations – men and women.

Typically, we are blind to this constraint. We accept it simply as “the way things work.” Nor do we look at the deeply held desires that push against those constraints. Men and women both share deep and valid desires to nurture their children while still earning a living or sustaining careers beyond the home.

The painful desires and constraints that shape the “choices” surrounding childcare, parenting, and paid work often simply disappear from the debate. But when the complexity behind the Rosen-Romney remarks gets reduced to a question of choice, we are left with a bland, ultimately unhelpful admonishment to “respect each other.”

The truth is that American families live their lives under competing pressures of both constraint and desire. In order to have a conversation that might actually lead to productive solutions and changes to workplace culture, government policy, and societal attitudes, we must speak clearly about the forces that constrain American families and the desires shaping their decisions.

Yes, “every mother is a working mother” – but let’s make sure that phrase doesn’t end up an empty slogan.

Kirsten Swinth is an associate professor of history at Fordham University. Her work focuses on women, work, and culture. She is working on a book about care and competition in postindustrial America and the making of the working family. This op-ed was written in association with The Op-Ed Project.

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