too busy to blog

Linda Hirshman is a masochist. Or someone who desperately wants to sell books. Or perhaps she's just an idiot.

This morning's Post has Hirshman on the front page of its "Outlook" section, authoring a piece in response to the hostility she incited after the publication of an article in American Prospect this past December. The article, "Homeward Bound," argued that women who are members of the educated elite class are making a mistake when they "opt out" of the workforce to become stay at home moms. In fact, she says, in the original article, while these women will state otherwise, they are not actually making a choice to prioritize their families over their careers because "the belief that women are responsible for child-rearing and homemaking (has been) largely untouched by decades of workplace feminism".

The article, she explains in the Post piece, set off a torrent of criticism among mommy bloggers as well as the mass media.

Hirshman's Post piece is reminiscent of the paper's Ombudsman Deborah Howell's reponse to the hostile reaction she received to a column she wrote about lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Both women, bruised and battered by bloggers who opposed their viewpoints, chose to be condescending toward their critics.

In Hirshman's case, she ridicules their content,

"My favorite example is the benighted soul, pregnant and renovating, reporting daily on her roofing and her barfing. Really makes you long for the iron-fisted editors of "The Front Pages".

as well as their ability to express their anger,

"I was at a loss to figure out how to argue with 'You make me want to vomit.' You make me want to vomit too?"

and suggests that many of her critics are solely tools of the Christian right or simply have too much time on their hands,

"I guess working women are too busy to blog about their lives."

Hirshman also calls to mind the mother of Katherine Lester, the honor student who took off to Jordan to meet a man she met on MySpace. Mom decided that the best solution was to remove the computer from the home versus addressing WHY her teenage daughter thought it was a good idea to lie to her and travel to the Middle East to meet a man who was significantly older than she is.

Yeah, Hirshman's solution?

"I did what any sensible person would do when exposed for the first time to the unmediated content of the Internet. I stopped reading it."

In other words, promote intellectual debate until someone disagrees with you.

Now, I have to tell you, until this morning, I had never heard of Linda Hirshman and I had never read her American Prospect article, despite my great love for mommy bloggers. I knew that the stay at home mom debate was strong within the mommy blogging community, but I did not know that Hirshman had been a catalyst for much of that conversation. So, after reading the Post article, I read "Homeward Bound" and discovered a whole new set of frustrations.

I am a member of the "educated elite". I am not, however, married. Nor do I have children. I believe, personally, that the choices that I have made in my life have led me to prioritize my career over family. In fact, I think that I have prioritized myself over family: I do what I want to do 95 percent of the time and have little interest in having someone tell me to do otherwise. I have been frustrated by friends who have given up their careers to stay at home with their children because I can not relate to the choice. But then I remind myself that they might know something that I don't -- at least about their own lives -- and I move on. Besides, they think I've lost out on something through the choices that I have made.

Hirshman, as I said, does not believe that these women are actually making cognitive choices. Instead, she believes they have been socialized to the point where they believe that they, as women, SHOULD be the primary caregivers and SHOULD choose family over career. Their inability to tell the difference, says Hirshman, has meant that feminism has stalled, as evidenced by the lack of women in corporate leadership positions.

There are economic, social and personal reasons why women choose to stay home with the kids and why men do not. But many women who make that decision feel good about it -- and should. Did socialized gender roles contribute to that choice? Sure, probably. But does that make their pleasure any less real? Why does the success or failure of the entire feminist movement need to rest on their backs? And why does Hirshman get to define what that success or failure looks like?

I don't know how much the remainder of Hirshman's article has been debated, but I'm also a little grumpy this morning about her recommendations for "what is to be done," her own version of The Rules. She craps on liberal arts education for failing to lead women toward a profitable career and appears to fall on the side of the argument that says that education is about learning what to think as opposed to how to think -- which, as a graduate of a truly liberal liberal arts education, I find to be ridiculous and antiquated. Hirshman also craps on those of us whose training and ideals have led us toward careers that are based on public service rather than cash. Condoleeza Rice wanted to be a piano player, she says, but she ignored that desire and now look at her!

I'm sure this latest article will kick up a new storm of debate over Hirshman. Hundreds or even thousands of women talking about her and pushing her name to the top of the list of search results on Google and Technorati. Which leads me once again to ask, masochist, book seller or idiot?

You choose.

(As if you actually could.)