What If Motherhood Was Considered as Ambitious as ‘Real’ Work?
glamour.com—not the sex positive variety I experienced in college nor the reproductive rights battles I participated in later on—got in my gullet like the of the early 2010s. ’s push for women’s professional domination, a call-to-action that spawned a decade of #bossbabes and #girlbosses and other such hashtags in which career and femininity were united triumphantly, was as magnetic as the sun.That I never aspired to the corner suite or anything that represented professional domination didn’t matter.
For my grandmother and mother, getting a job, any job, qualified as success. The point was . But according to , women needed impressive résumés but also a manic work ethic, a highly curated online persona, an effortlessly cool wardrobe, and an overinflated sense that whatever they were selling would somehow lift up all women and end the patriarchy.
Family life was fine, eventually, as long as it didn’t get in the way of the above.Inconveniently for me, the arrival of “Lean In” coincided with the arrival of motherhood.
Talk about dissonance. I never had much hunger to dominate at outside-the-home work before becoming a mom, but it always seemed like maybe, one day, I would or least could.
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