The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

A Shout-Out to the Second Wave

I remember a conversation I had with a female colleague at the Washington Post. It was right after I'd had my first child and decided to work four days a week instead of five. When my colleague found this out, she looked upon me with utter horror, pity, and disgust. Then she lectured me. The older generation of women—Mary McGrory's—broke the glass ceiling with great pain. They could make it to the top jobs but only after giving up the notion of any kind of domestic life at all. No husband, no kids, just work. The middle generation—Hillary's and this colleague's—were allowed to have a job AND a family only if they pretended the latter didn't exist. Sick child? Too bad. I'm on deadline. The nanny knows the way to the doctor's.

Now here I was, little Miss Mommy, ruining all they had sacrificed to build with my four day a week nonsense.  How dare I?

So there's the feminist generation gap.