Anybody else catch this man-slam by Madeleine Albright in the Times on Sunday?
It has become a cliché to say that powerful women scare off husbands and lovers. Do you think it is true?
I don’t think I ever would have been secretary of state if I had stayed married. But I loved being married. I was married for 23 years. I was very sorry when it ended.
Will you marry again?
I doubt it.
Why not?
Why?
Companionship?
I have lots of companionship. I am about to be 69 years old, and I have three daughters, three sons-in-law and six grandchildren. I am not looking to meet men. I also truly can’t imagine who is out there who might be interested in someone like me. I’m intimidating, don’t you think?
Not only is Albright convinced that men are scared off by powerful women, but she’s sure that she would never have been secretary of state if she had stayed married.
Apt. 11d 
You can add to the list of high-ranking husbandless women Condoleezza Rice and Janet Reno. I’m sure that this has been said before, but one factor in the disproportionate success of childless spinsters is that they are much less likely to run into illegal nanny problems.
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Can we put Madeleine Albright in a room with Caitlin Flanagan and let them duke it out? Please? Please?
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At least from what I could make from her biographies online, aside from being divorced, Albright is almost a Caitlin Flanagan poster child. She got her PHD while bringing up her three kids, and only seriously started her career fairly late in life (I believe Sandra Day O’Connor did more or less the same). Flanagan’s successful writing career also started relatively late in life.
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LOL, Mrs. Coulter.
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I thought it was interesting that Albright did not say that her children were a hindrance to advancement, but it was her husband. I would have loved to see a follow up question to that. Why do you think that your husband would have held you back? Is it the housework or the ego? I know that men of that generation were more high maintenance and perhaps her situation is too unique to make generalizations, but I am curious what she would have said.
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I’d also like to here more on why her husband would have “held her back,” but I put that in quotes because it might have been incidental.
I’m thinking of the story I read once (if anyone knows who wrote it I’d love to know) about a man who loses his job as a church janitor because he is unable to read, and becomes a huge success as a business man. The last line of the story is his answer to the question, “You’ve accomplished so much and you can’t read? What would you have done if you could.” “I’d be vicar of St Peter’s, Neville Square.”
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I hope this post didn’t come off as being too hard on M.A. Au contraire. I’m very sympathetic.
Allison sends me a good interview with her.
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I surmise that a large part of this is a generational thing – for MoDo and Ms. Albright alike. For one thing, men of that generation really were/are more high-maintenance, as a poster above pointed out. And another thing that I never see discussed in all the ink spilled about women, men and marriage: Women in the [late] boomer and later generations have a LOT more choices in the “marriage market” than women of Albright’s age did. We have the options of interracial marriage, marriage to a younger man, to one who makes less money, etc. Women of Albright’s and MoDo’s generations did not, and still do not, have those broad horizons. It was pretty much “marry a man of your same race, who is older, taller, makes more money.” I, born in the 1960’s, don’t feel constrained by those boundaries, nor do most women my age or younger.
Perhaps Ms. Albright (and MoDo) felt/feel constrained to a few narrow options in the pool of eligible men, which makes her feel that marriage would constrain her. An Albright born a generation later would have the option of a younger, lower-earning man who would willingly accommodate to her career.
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I’m not sure how getting her Ph.D in her 40s makes her a Caitlin Flanagan poster child.
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if i remember correctly, in her autobio she gently alludes to her husband’s displeasure with her moving out into a more ambitious career– she did a shit-ton of typical feminine volunteer activities while she was raising small children, and i think he much preferred that.
the autobio is good– typical politicial whitewashing in some cases, but very intriguing overall.
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OK, Albright isn’t a Caitlin Flanagan poster child (although they followed a similar career path), but she is a poster child for sequencing. The question is whether in our day sequencing can work–maybe one winds up too far behind.
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SamChevre: The short story “The Verger” is from vol. 2 os short stories by William Somerset Maugham
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Thank you, Schlupp!
I read the story 10 years ago or so and have been looking for it ever since.
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Amy,
Yeah, but to get the Albright-style sequencing right, you have to grab the guy that’s available when you are really young and get going having kids. She said that when she got divorced at 45, her kids were pretty much out of the house. To make that work, you’ve gotta have the kids in your 20’s.
Also, the kind of senior level political jobs are so incredibly all-encompassing — evenings, weekends, travelling. I think that it would be hard to keep an average, non-high maintenance husband of our generation happy. The problem isn’t catering to his needs, it’s just being around home at all. Even women can’t take it, and Washington marriages can be way strained.
Remember Naomi Wolf forced her husband to quit a fab job as speechwriter in the Clinton White House because she was sick of single parenting.
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Allison,
That’s very interesting–it sounds like sequencing is unworkable, at least at the very top. I live in DC myself and enjoy studying the anthropology of the upper middle/upper class, and it seems like “single parenting” is about right. It would be interesting to know how much time mothers and fathers from different parts of the country and different classes spend with their children. Religious affiliation, level of religious activity, ethnicity, and political affiliation would be things to look at, too. I’d make a point of counting separately time spent as part of audience watching a child perform.
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