This sounds like my friend from HS. Went to a top law school, graduated with some sort of honers, got hired into a top law firm was really climbing the ladder for a few years, got pregnant, became stay at home mom.

A co-worker recently confided in me that she did not want to climb any higher and is planning on retiring in a few years to be a stay at home mom.

Ivy League lawyers working in New York: It's a tough life they've been forced into.

Ms. Jampel feels angry that the time she spends caregiving isn't valued the way paid work is.

Well, "paid work" is valued because it's paid.

Besides, anyone can do housework. As a single guy, I did laundry and cleaned my apartment. I nursed myself when I was sick, balanced my checkbook, scheduled events, and drove myself. I even cooked meals for myself. We all have.

The idea that keeping house and caring for a family is equivalent to being at once a master chef, nanny, professional maid, chauffeur, prostitute, social worker, pediatrician, psychologist, nutritionist, crime scene cleaner, project manager, and accountant all rolled into one super-being is self-serving fantasy.

And, yes, some people are better at it than others.

Valued by whom? By her husband, people in her social circle, or random strangers?

And valued how? Money is one way, respect and appreciation from people you respect is another.

More on the biology thing and the psychology that follows, leading many women to want to, you know, raise their children instead of stuffing them into the arms of a nanny while running out the door to work:
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Except that in the past (as in, before day-care centers existed) working-class women, at least, often counted on each other to watch their children for free, since they HAD to work for pay. Even paying mere sporadic babysitters was unheard of - before the 20th century, anyway. Maybe even later than WWI.

(I also heard that even today, in the Czech Republic, for one, paying babysitters is STILL not done - mainly because Czechs don't tend to move far away from their extended families, so you can usually count on a relative to be there.)

Nannies and governesses, of course, spent far more time with their charges than babysitters, so they had to be paid, since they had to eat.

Nowadays, however, a woman who wants at least 10 hours of weekly leisure time is not going to sacrifice that tiny amount for free. Who can blame her? Especially when other exhausted women aren't feeling any more charitable? What's more, if we're going to let working-class mothers off the hook for using day-care centers, why not affluent mothers who use nannies?

Also, people are waking up to the fact that it's foolish for middle-class women to let their marketable skills lag if they expect to hang on to their standard of living forever. Accidents happen to spouses, after all. I have never heard of any great numbers of children suffering for having had a nanny in their preschool years or for going to afterschool programs after age 4. (Leaving aside those who weren't really wanted by their parents in the first place - such as the two rich families in "The Secret Garden.")

Trade offs. Life is filled with trade offs which are choices. This couple has the financial where with all to at least have choices. A lot of couples don't get a choice they just have make due as best they can. The couple in this story could have got a nanny so both parents could work full time but then they might regret missing out on raising their child. Again this is a trade off which is inherent to life and effects almost everyone regardless of sex. But if the NY times would acknowledge that life can get a little messy and is full of trade offs then they wouldn't get a write this silly twaddle of the invisible sexism that upper middle class women of means face.

Valued by whom? ~ N at May 1, 2019 6:39 AM

Valued by society at large - as in paid work. She seems to want the respect and validation she used to get as a high-paid full-time attorney at a large firm. As a stay-at-home spouse, she doesn't get that validation. Her work is not reviewed with raises and bonuses awarded; and she doesn't have that sense of closure that the end of a case or a concluded negotiation can bring. Stay-at-home spouses also tend to be taken for granted much more than paid workers, so that builds resentment.

Forgot to say - here's a classic John Rosemond column, from 2000. It's essentially about telling mothers of school-age kids to stop feeling guilty about working outside the home. (Note: In the past, he has not been supportive of mothers who use daycare BEFORE age 3 or so, but that brings us back to what I said about working-class mothers.)

Check out the last paragraph, especially.

https://books.google.com/books?id=8dgX2hObsawC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=rosemond+%22forty+mothers%22&source=bl&ots=tmdQiCSNP3&sig=ACfU3U17UygihJRNKk5xCxwrD4GkWT37_w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiW_9Op0frhAhVvhOAKHWBwA4MQ6AEwAHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=rosemond%20%22forty%20mothers%22&f=false

Also, this is the column that sent Dr. Laura into a fit. Apparently, she couldn't believe any conservative could have the audacity to say anything she didn't like. (Note that I didn't write "say anything less conservative than she would," since, chances are, to Rosemond's mind, he WAS being an old-fashioned conservative, unlike her. As in, pre-Edwardian, when kids were more or less expected to take care of their own emotional lives, most of the time.)

Ms. Jampel feels angry that the time she spends caregiving isn't valued the way paid work is.

Then demand your husband pay you. He can then charge you rent, utilities and the other services he provides. Maybe you'll find out that he doesn't really enjoy his job that much, and would prefer to work fewer, less stressful, hours?

Let me ask this question: how valuable is the time you spend with your kids? is there enough money in the world that could properly compensate for you missing out on that time?

If you look up her government salary (public information, by the way) you will see that she makes $46 per hour for her job, which at 21 hours per week averages out to about $1000 per week.

$1000 per week for a part-time job? We should all be so "oppressed".

"Ms. Jampel feels angry that the time she spends caregiving isn't valued the way paid work is. "

Basically, that's time that she's given to her husband to work. And from the sound of the article, her husband's employer values it a lot. If he had to do more of those things, he'd be spending less time at work and would be paid less.

Couples can decide from themselves how they want to split their work and family time, and it's none of anyone else's business. Presumably the woman isn't feeling all that dissatisfied with the arrangement, or else they'd have a different arrangement.

Where to start? I'm disgusted at their attitudes and expectations. This couple has an incredibly fortunate setup. My husband and I are also attorneys who struggled with the work/kids balance. We were fortunate in that we both had government jobs as prosecutors and so had pretty regular hours and a good amount of sick leave and vacation. Husband rose to the very top of the profession, which did involve more hours and being on-call, and I stayed at mid-level which gave us more flexibility. I would have jumped at the chance to work half-time,as this woman does. Notice that the wife only has to work 7 hour days, and that she is able to re-arrange that time if needed. What does "society" owe this woman?? Where is there even a smidgen of sexism oppressing them? If anything, it's obvious that societal changes have made it possible for her to have a government job with part-time hours.

"But if they could rewrite their lives? They wish they could have had better options."

So said pretty much every human who has ever been born. As Rick point out if only the rest of us could be so oppressed.

Married couples dominate the high income brackets. If two incomes, that helps the $ total. If only he works, he can really focus on the work. I know a couple where she is a high-paid lawyer and he is mostly a house-husband, but she rather holds him in contempt.
Of course everyone wishes there were "better options". I am sure my neighbor wishes his new job with much better pay didn't also require a longer commute, which, by the way, men on average have a longer one of.
It is easy to be "grass is greener" but when given the option fewer women want to work long hours or travel every month. Raising children is hard. The wife may wish she could have it all but the husband can't have it all either--he has to miss lots of kid things because he is at work or traveling. Women just assume that men don't mind, but they do mind.
Lots of people resent childcare and housework but I can say that without my grown kids my life would sure be a lot worse--and I had a blast when they were little.

Conan wrote:

As a single guy, I did laundry and cleaned my apartment. I nursed myself when I was sick, balanced my checkbook, scheduled events, and drove myself. I even cooked meals for myself. We all have. The idea that keeping house and caring for a family is equivalent to being at once a master chef, nanny, professional maid, chauffeur, prostitute, social worker, pediatrician, psychologist, nutritionist, crime scene cleaner, project manager, and accountant all rolled into one super-being is self-serving fantasy.

Beautifully expressed. I have no idea why people who have children (by choice or carelessness) think these basic household duties are the exclusive province of the bechilded, nor why they think they're somehow worthy of compensation.

Drew Carey: "Oh, you hate your job? There's a word for that. It's called, "everybody", and they meet at the bar."

Next: if you pick a job that requires hourly accounting, no amount of $$ per hour will get you home early. You've picked a career that demands your attention, and if you don't want to do that, you need a different job.

"she works 21 hours a week as a lawyer for New York City, a job that enables her to spend two days a week at home with their children, ages 5 and 1."

And she wishes she could have had better options?

I guess law school didn't really teach her a damn thing about the real world. I know plenty of folks who would love to have it as good as her "lesser" options.

Yep, Boo Hoo us right.

"Also, people are waking up to the fact that it's foolish for middle-class women to let their marketable skills lag if they expect to hang on to their standard of living forever. Accidents happen to spouses, after all."

Good point. One would hope that in the case of a couple where one spouse works at a job and one stays home, the income-earning spouse will make some provision to ensure that the in-house spouse is taken care of if the worst happens. Although my wife and both work, she's in a field that doesn't pay well, so I make most of the money. I have life and AD&D policies that will pay off the house if something happens to me; with that taken care of, her income would be sufficient to pay the other bills and maintain her lifestyle. (Plus she'd inherit my retirement accounts.)

Admittedly, that may not be possible in all cases. There's no ideal answer. I know a lady engineer who took years out of work to raise children. Now that they are out of the house, she's looking for work, but no one wants to hire her because she's not current in the field. It's a tough situation because you can see both sides; from the employer's standpoint, they don't want to hire someone who is behind the times. But from her standpoint, she's a smart and talented engineer and she could probably come back up to speed pretty quickly. She and I are both finding that some employers in tech just won't hire anyone over 40 no matter what; they want young and cheap.

She and I are both finding that some employers in tech just won't hire anyone over 40 no matter what; they want young and cheap. ~ Cousin Dave at May 2, 2019 8:46 AM

Non-tech fields, too.

It's always a question of desperation. How desperate are they for workers? How desperate are you for a job?

Cousin Dave, has she considered making her own job? Most of your new money rich had poor grades in school. They found they were fairly unemployable when they hit the workforce. So they hired themselves and started their own company.

Good point.
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Thank you.