More women than ever are having babies at the peak of their careers. When will we stop punishing them for it?
Interpretation
This quote highlights the struggle women face in balancing career success with motherhood, questioning societal judgments about their choices.
Rebecca Traister's quote points out a significant change in societal norms where more women are choosing to have children during their peak career years. It emphasizes the need to reevaluate the existing biases that often penalize women for pursuing both professional and personal aspirations, advocating for a more supportive environment that acknowledges the complexity of their choices without stigma.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a women's rights seminar discussing the evolving roles of women in society.
There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful, who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work.
There are all kinds of ways in which women, together, change the world. And I don't mean that in a cheesy way. I'm not somebody who believes all women should support each other. I believe very strongly in women critiquing each other, just not critiquing each other more intensely because they're women.
Plenty of the women who were single in the nineteenth century wrote about their desire to evade marriage. Marriage was scary in a lot of ways. It often involved having a lot of kids, losing your autonomy, being in service to a husband and children who were often born at an unremitting pace without the benefit of modern medicine.
Up until 1920, women couldn't vote. Until 1974, married women couldn't get their own credit cards or, in some cases, their own loans. Basically, the husband's professional, social, and economic identity covered the individual identity of the wife.
Being able to control your reproduction is essential to women's ability to flourish in the United States.
We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we are afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.
Never put a question mark where God has put a period. When something is over and done, let it go and move on to the next chapter of your life.
It's not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It's a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it's hard work, but it's the price you pay for owning everything.
Will we make all poverty history? No. But can we solve some of these extreme and egregious forms of poverty? I think yes, and we should.
Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.
The world, as we know it, is coming to an end. The world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which love is reserved for members of the in-group: that is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and complacency are coming to an end.
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