The XX Factor: What women really think.

The White House: "Family-Friendly" for a Few?

I read Liza’s summary of Mimi Swarz’s take on mature women in the most powerful workplace in the world with some interest. After all, I’d previously written on the preponderance of single women in the Obama White House, lamenting the fact that a bold-face name like Melody Barnes put off marriage for years, in order to run policy in an administration poised to overhaul health care, energy action, and the economy ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)

The Feminism of Penicillin

When we talk about barriers to the entrance of women in the American workforce in the 20th century, the story we tell is largely cultural and economic. Married women with career aspirations had to contend with wage discrimination, marriage bars, and the perception that a working woman was ipso facto a degenerate wife and mother. A neat new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that we often understate the role of basic medical advances when talking about that sudden, collective jump from home to workplace. It's easy to forget how dangerous childbirth used to be; complications associated with sepsis, toxaemia and obstructed labor could ravage a body well into middle age. "Many maternal conditions had very long lasting or chronic effects on health," the researchers report, "hindering women's ability to work beyond their childbearing years."

Using historical data to quantify the effects of various maternal conditions, economists Stefania Albanesi and Claudia Olivetti find that medical advances like the introduction of antibiotics, the standardization of obstetric practice, and the hospitalization of childbirth were absolutely critical to the rise of married women's participation in the labor market over the last century. They also find a very large effect for the introduction of formula as a mainstream alternative to breastfeeding in the 1930s. A typical woman in 1920 between the ages of 23 and 33 would be nursing for something like 40 percent of her potential working time. As Hanna has so forcefully illustrated, our cost/benefit calculations change when we start to consider the possibility that a mother's time might have some kind of value.

Recession-Era America: Rich in Love?

Jessica nails the millionaires-playing-at-poverty trope so beloved by the New York Times Style section of late. But for sheer editorial laziness nothing beats the recession-as-moral-uplift story. Here is Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson explaining that recessions might free us from the shackles of consumerism and "expand our horizons—like an escape from the dungeon of our own desires." Here is the New York Times' Shaila Dewan explaining that forced time off might "work as a kind of recalibration" for Americans who too often choose "money over time." Here is Main Street explaining that "recessions can often bring families together."

 I suppose that some downwardly mobile families really will rally around the campfire for a recession-fueled round of "Kumbaya." But the poverty-as-familial-bonding-mechanism narrative has some serious problems, the most obvious being that divorce rates tend to jump and birth rates tend to fall during economic downturns. (Gerson's column makes a very big deal about the fact that the divorce rate fell during the Great Depression, but this is atypical.) Self-reported measures of subjective well-being have plummeted since the start of the financial decline, suggesting that partners and parents are more anxious than they were in times of plenty. And, of course, less disposable income also means less spending on family vacations, day trips, and romantic evenings out. There seems to be some idea, lodged deep in the American psyche, that moneyed people spend all of their time alone in bathtubs full of cash. As it happens, Americans spend quite a bit on consumption experiences enjoyed as families. "Cutting back" surely means cutting back on these expenditures as well. I would not pin my hopes on an upsurge in family whittling.

Whatever Will Be, Will Be

Oh, Bonnie, thanks for that inspiring and wise post. With a job I love, a child that is a serious contender for the title of world's greatest kid (I know every parent thinks that, but hey, one of us has to be right, right?), not to mention a partner so devoted, hardworking, and cute that I recently compared him to Wall-E, I know I have precious little to bitch about. (Not that that's ever stopped me before.) The story of your years as a single-mom private investigator in D.C. is riveting (have you pitched this to Showtime yet?), and that vision of happily-ever-after—you and your honey pursuing your writing on separate floors, with occasional YMCA breaks—is something to aspire to. (Oh, and thanks for calling me "thirtysomething." Heh.)

And Samantha, because you solicited our thoughts on what to say to a daughter daydreaming about a financial Prince Charming: Though I'm sure it is likely happen at some point, I would be horrified. This is why I plan to keep her away as long as possible from Cinderella, Snow White, The Little Mermaid—pretty much any Disney movie or other heterosexual rescue fantasy. Can't she have a few years of imagining her life in some way unbound by those narratives?

My grandmother used to sing my siblings and me a song, "Que Sera Sera" (it's the song sung by Doris Day to her son at the creepy climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much.) The lyrics of the first verse go like this: "When I was just a little girl/ I asked my mother, what will I be?/ Will I be pretty, will I be rich?/ Here's what she said to me ..." Now, since I'm put off by the the values espoused in those lines, I sing it to my daughter like this: "Will I be happy/Will I be strong?" I know my doctored version won't keep the princess fantasies at bay forever, but whatever will be will be.

On Happily Ever After

Not to be overly clichéd here but, Dahlia, Hanna, Emily, and Dana, you are right now having the best and most exciting moments in your crowded, demanding, and conflict-filled lives and are incidentally superb role models for Jessica, Samantha (welcome to both!) and Noreen's Gen Y cohort. You awe-inspiring thirtysomething mommies can enjoy who you became for the next couple decades while only having to work like dogs to keep the inconsistencies and chaos (brunch and a birthday party?) at a tolerable level. When I was in the throes of work-life balancing, long before Queen made it a lyric, I used to whisper to myself during especially hectic periods, "These are the days of our lives." Not much time to appreciate them, but deeply exhaustingly satisfying. (Speaking of role models, Dana, Pearl sees that her mommy loves her work. One day your little boss lady will thrive in her own professional glory.)  

As the most chronologically advanced of the women in this discussion (though the least experienced writer), my career and education opportunities were measured by an entirely different rubric than either of you post-feminist generations of women. In the late '70s, I was a high-school educated, comparatively underprivileged, unwed mother raising a first-grader in Washington, D.C.'s pre-gentrified Adams Morgan neighborhood. I was not expecting Prince Charming to rescue us. I cobbled together day care, latchkeys and a series of live-in babysitters for my little girl while I used my investigative talents to earn our keep. I earnestly tried freelance writing but the reality of 10 cents a word, even counting in 1978 dimes, was unworkable.

As it was, my long hours on client matters spilled over to homework hastily completed in the McDonald's booth after bedtime. When my daughter was 12, I married a guy who wrote books for a living. He poured the proceeds from five novels into shoring up our collapsing kitchen. He adopted my daughter, and we adopted him. Since he and I were in our mid-30s and each owned a mortgaged D.C. row house, we wondered if we needed a prenup. This was it: We each declared soberly, "Everything I have is yours."  

Who supports whom in a marriage is always a matter of perspective. Either way, we pooled our resources. Two incomes are better than one. My steady investigative work and his sometimes lucrative flights of imagination paid for "private schools for future children." My daughter grew up a steadfast professional who loves her demanding work as a documentary maker, pays her own mortgage, and looks forward to having children to complain about. My Prince Charming and I are now child-free, both at-home writers' with offices on separate floors. Some days we leave the house only to work out at the YMCA. Samantha, you and your generational cohorts may not build the same cozy lifestyle as your parents but you may be thrilled to discover you build something more exciting and enriching when you work harder for it. In the end, the fantasy is whatever you make of it.