Two more quick points. First, let me clarify why so many women, including feminist bloggers, are annoyed at the Sandberg book.
Sandberg's advice is for women who want the CEO position and for that small group of people, her advice might be very useful. I think. I do think that anyone who achieves those high level of power, man or woman, has had the benefit of luck and privilege, and that particular road to success might not help anyone else. Books by male CEOs aren't that useful either.
The problem with Sandberg's book is that her particular formula for success (work super hard, don't complain, dream big, whatever) is actually terrible advice for everyone else. For people who want a good job, but not the highest job, they should do the exact opposite. They should get a nursing or a pharmacy degree, instead of a PhD. They should become teachers, not lawyers. They should think smaller.
I also think that a lot of feminist writers find it disturbing to rally behind a fabulously rich and privileged woman.
Second, I wanted to point to an article by Hanna Rosin in Slate.
Apt. 11d 
Getting a pharmacy degree isn’t actually the opposite of hard work. If my sister is anything to go by, it is the opposite of “don’t complain”. But she was always like that.
LikeLike
“They should get a nursing or a pharmacy degree, instead of a PhD. They should become teachers, not lawyers. They should think smaller. ”
Was it B.I. who said that she’s deeply uncomfortable with that advice, when you are telling one group of people, in that last comment, “don’t go to college?”
I am fundamentally unable to give that advice “think small” to my children. I don’t want them to think small, and I think them perfectly capable of being the president or a supreme court justice or running a major company or building the next thingamabob that changes the world. And, thinking small, really will make those things highly unlikely.
So my advice is think big but have a plan b and c (and to do my best to provide a plan d in the form of a safety net).
So, if I won’t give this advice to my children, and, especially not just my daughter, do I give it to other people’s daughter’s?
LikeLike
Also, there’s an implicit assumption that “thinking smaller” will result in a more secure future. And, I don’t think that’s true, unless we agree collectively in some way (unions, government, ?) to share risk.
LikeLike
I never told anyone not to go to college. I told people not to go to graduate school. I told people not to go to an expensive college and pile up a lot of debt, when they can go to a state school for less money.
OK. Here’s a qualification. Think big, if there is an option of thinking small down the line, if their perferences change. Don’t think think big in professions that don’t have the option of thinking small. Better?
LikeLike
Yes, better. And, know your odds. Everyone seems to understand that if you want to be an actor, your odds are really low, but remain persistently confused about the odds of becoming a professor at Harvard or Amherst, or somewhere else where you mostly get paid for the brilliance of your mind.
Re-evaluating is important, too, since the odds change, the person changes, the goals change, one’s comparative worth changes.
LikeLike
Laura, I respectfully disagree with you as to the solution, but I think you actually said it best here:
“I want women in the top levels of medicine and business, but it isn’t fair that they should lose money in order to purse that goal. Perhaps, the solution isn’t to tell women to aim lower, but to make the investment costs lower. Cheaper medical programs and shorter time in grad school.”
http://www.apt11d.com/2012/07/when-its-better-to-be-a-pa-not-an-md.html?cid=6a00d8341c576253ef016768b78618970b
Another solution might be to shift more of the costs of raising children over to their fathers. I read Sandberg’s advice to mean women must be more assertive, both at home and at work, demanding that husbands share more of the child care and housework, as well as learning how to negotiate with their bosses for higher salaries, promotions, and fringe benefits. I see how that may seem to some like blaming the victims of sexism, but nevertheless, it is sound advice.
LikeLike
Laura’s advice is what I am going to give my sons. If they really are driven to get the top job, they will ignore me.
LikeLike
Absolutely with the lower costs/time investments in education. But truthfully, I don’t see that happening any time soon.
I also don’t see a lot of lazy guys right now, who are watching TV while the women do the dishes. That’s so old school. I see a lot of people working their asses off all the time. I see a lot of 22-22-22 workers. Sandberg isn’t demanding that her husband work less, so she can work more. He’s the CEO of his own company. Her solution is to hire two nannies. Not really useful advice for most people.
LikeLike
If you keep posting about this book, you know that I’m going to have to read it. *sigh*
Seriously, this reminds me of two books on related topics. First, Anna Fels’ “Necessary dreams: ambition in women’s changing lives” where she honed in on how workplaces and culture consistently reward men for fatherhood as a state of being whereas women find motherhood a detriment in the workplace on many levels, from the practical to the philosophical. One point that stuck with me in her description of married women was that with their many responsibilities “Sheer survival becomes the goal.”
Another book that sticks with me is Babcock and Laschever’s “Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide” where they highlighted the ways in which women in the workforce are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Negotiate aggressively and you’re dismissed as bitchy. Conciliate and you’re a weak woman. “. . . both men and women in our society typically take a harder line against women than they take against men in a negotiation. They make worse first offers to women, pressure women to concede more, and themselves concede much less. This doesn’t simply limit the results women produce when they do negotiate. If the benefits from negotiating are likely to be small and the process promises to be difficult, many women feel less incentive to ask in the first place.” [11]
Changing these attitudes and experiences so that women can expect the same range of opportunities as a similarly-qualified man will take a seismic shift in our society when we are lucky to get incremental change. For those women who do succeed, it’s easy to think that they’ve figured out “the system” instead of, as successful men and women should both do, acknowledge that luck as well as hard work and talent got them where they are.
LikeLike
You can hire staff for a lot of things, but what does that do to the character of your family? The begged question here is whether success in the bigger world is the most important thing, or success as a family member, a friend, a person who has relationships with other people (will Sandberg think on her death bed “I should have spent more time at the office?”). Who cares for the elders, the children, the sick, those recovering from surgery?
I’m having surgery next month and I want family to care for me during my 2-week recovery at home, not a home nurse. I want someone there to make me breakfast and bring me my meds, to walk around the block with me as I recover my strength, to tell me what’s going on in the world, to read me a book or watch a tv program with me so we can talk about it. This is a value choice and I don’t shame the people who choose differently, but the advice for people who choose like me isn’t “lean in.” It’s more what Laura said in this post, choose work that will let you do other things too. And it’s a choice men have, and deserve to exercise, as much as women.
LikeLike
I’m sort of fed up with both the economy and the family, so I’m drinking more.
LikeLike
Telling people to “think smaller” and become teachers doesn’t do teaching any service–that’s how we ended up with thousands of dissatisfied unhappy teachers back when smart women were told to become teachers, not doctors or lawyers.
LikeLike
“I also don’t see a lot of lazy guys right now, who are watching TV while the women do the dishes.”
Yes, we’re making progress, certainly. But still, honestly, I look around me and wonder who carries the mental load at home? Who makes the children’s dental appointments? Who buys the kids’ birthday presents and RSVPs to the parties? Who refills the soap dispenser? So much of the work women do in the home is rendered invisible, and is in practice still very much unequal.
How many married women with kids do you know who earn over $250k a year? How many have time for hobbies? Funny, I know loads of men who get to do both. Like the orthopedic surgeon who has 3 kids and ran 8 marathons last year (his wife gave up her career). Look, I went to good schools, full of high-achieveing women, many of whom are MDs, and I’m shocked at how many of them are not practicing medicine, and/or who chose low-paying pediatrics or family medicine and work part time while their husbands run with the big dogs as cardiologists and surgeons – and have time for cool hobbies on top of that. Now please show me where the married woman are who get to have that life. Yep, this is right where Sandberg’s advice comes in.
LikeLike
There is a finite number of hours in a day. If you are a CEO of a major company and putting in 60-80 hours per week at work, then you’re not doing other things. One person cannot be in two places at the same time.
I love that Sheryl Sandberg is CEO of Facebook. I hope that women who have the same drive and ambition also become the CEOs of other companies. But you could not pay me enough money to do that job. No way. I like making dinner for my kids. I’m happy to say that. I’m glad that someone is around to help Jonah get through this rough patch of life. I suppose I would feel okay about things, if Steve and I switched positions. (If you include his commute time, Steve puts in an 11 hour day.) And Steve would be perfectly happy to switch positions. Sadly, nobody is offering me any job that will cover the mortgage at the moment, so that isn’t a viable option.
[deleted]
LikeLike
(will Sandberg think on her death bed “I should have spent more time at the office?”)
I really don’t like sentiments like this for the reasons Hush touches on. Lots and lots of men work high-powered careers, don’t spend tons of time caring for their sick relatives, and die pretty damn happy (and rich). Now, maybe that isn’t the way it should be and isn’t that way for a lot of women, but it often feels as if women that do take on a lot of caring responsibility are projecting their dissatisfaction with it on very successful women.
I am not a high-powered woman at all but I do have a career that is important to me that I have worked at since prior to having kids. Although Sandberg’s advice isn’t applicable to all Working Women is useful to me, personally, as a working woman.
I also agreed with a lot of what Slaughter had so say so I don’t think it’s either/or.
LikeLike
I do see their very miserable children getting off the school bus every day.
If you never talk to them, how do you know that their children are miserable? The consensus seems to be that, of course, the children of high-powered couples must be miserable but I’m not seeing much evidence of it beyond assumptions.
Your neighbors’ kids and Sandberg’s kids will turn out just fine. More than fine, probably. They’ll go on to Harvard or Yale and will get the big time jobs that will allow them to hire two nannies to tend to their own children.
LikeLike
I’ve also never liked the cliche about the deathbed lament, ’cause I think there are plenty of people whose lament is “I could have been a contender”, too.
Regarding miserable children — I suspect that happiness depends on the core of whether the children feel cherished that matters, and that there might well be children who feel cherished even when they’re parents aren’t there a lot. In my own family, though, I know that my being available has been a contributor to the happiness of my elder (I’m less sure about the younger one, though, there, the fact that I’m less stressed might make a difference). I’ve been able to do things for my daughter that I wouldn’t have had the energy to do if I worked, including just a lot of time for listening. Now, another person might well be able to do both, but not me.
My husband plays a different role, and wouldn’t ever want to trade with me.
LikeLike
[deleted]
LikeLike
I think our kids would be fine if my husband and I both had high power jobs. We have plenty of friends and relatives who chose that path – and the kids turned out great. They make it work fabulously.
It’s *me* who would not be fine. It turns out that I really like hanging out and learning and experiencing life with my kids. It turns out that the family dinner hour is the best hour of my day. It turns out that coaching the soccer team is all the leadership I really need.
I work a 30 hour/week flexible job in communications at an accounting firm. I love it. It’s not the career path I imagined. (I started out at the World Bank after getting a masters in econ and if you had asked 20 years ago, I would have told you I was going to be the USTR. Just try and stop me.)
But, first comes love and then comes marriage…and then comes a completely different set of life goals. ((For me))
I’m not sorry that I got advanced degrees and a really expensive education. I will always encourage my daughter and son to aim high. But, I will also demonstrate through my own choices that sometimes intense life satisfaction comes from a path you didn’t plan. I never want them to feel like I regret my choices – I love the choices I’ve made.
They may become neuroscientists and doctors and make different choices. (….and hopefully, they’ll let me babysit the grandkids!)
LikeLike
“The consensus seems to be that, of course, the children of high-powered couples must be miserable but I’m not seeing much evidence of it beyond assumptions.”
Amen. The illusion that other people’s children are miserable because they’re not being nurtured properly apparently makes some feel better about their lives (aka Schadenfreude.) News flash: even kids from these vaunted “Perfectly Nurturing Homes” where only one parent has a career may still occasionally suffer from depression and anxiety in their lives. They might even look sad getting off a school bus from time to time. But unless you’re their long-time therapist, you really know nothing about them.
Let’s reserve the “failed parent” label for parents who have actually abused and neglected their kids.
“I really hope that my kids aren’t so successful that have two nannies.”
Heaven forbid our kids grow up to be gainfully-employed job creators! But this view is pretty typical of members of the American lower and middle classes, as in people who have never been cared for by a nanny, nor actually employed one – but who nonetheless can’t stand the idea of them.
LikeLike
Two nannies is really out there, especially past infancy. If they are hiring above the board and paying reasonable wages and benefits*, that’s got to be $100,000. You can’t deduct that, so you’d need to earn something like $140,000 just to pay the help. That’s something like 1% of the households, which includes lots of households without children. My point is that by the time you’ve got the second nanny, you’ve crossed out of any kind of general relevance. We’re not talking about “job creators” but rather aristocrats.
*If you aren’t, you’re teaching the kids how to exploit people.
LikeLike
MH is right that families with two nannies are such a tiny part of the population of all families that it doesn’t really tell us much about the lives of even the slighter larger sliver of families that could be described as high-powered, dual-career. I worked as a nanny for a two doctor couple during college and their relationships with their children are very similar to my relationships with my own children. Yes, they probably did see their children a bit less than I see mine but not by a huge amount.
We want to think that our life decisions have some greater meaning, that they haven’t just been for nothing, but this doesn’t translate well to parenting when, like hush said, even children from “perfect” homes can suffer from depression and drug addiction. That’s not to say that parenting isn’t important, it’s hugely important, but it’s more of a threshold effect rather than more is better.
Probably the best reason to lean-in (or lean back or lean to the side) is because it makes you happy and fulfilled. If you are lucky enough to find something that does that for you even in a small way and you are able to meet some of the basic parenting thresholds, you’re probably doing the best you can for your kids.
LikeLike
If I’m fortunate enough to be conscious on my deathbed, I have every intention of saying “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” Just to falsify the saying that “no man ever said…”
Slightly more seriously, whenever I hear that saying I think to myself “maybe no man ever said that, but plenty of women probably thought that.” bj is correct: how many people of both sexes lead lives of perpetual frustration and resentment that they didn’t fulfill their professional goals? Quite a few.
LikeLike
I have to question the suggestion that paying anyone less than $50,000 a year is “exploitation.” $50,000 is the median household income in America, and that includes two-earner households. Put another way, $50,000 is $25 per hour. Most of the businesses in America could not exist if every single employee made $25 or more per hour.
When we had a full-time housekeeper, we paid her about $40,000, and now she works part-time for about the same wage. She is very happy to be employed at that rate, owns her own apartment, and would not consider her life better if two-earner American couples stopped offering jobs to Jamaican immigrants because it amounted to “exploitation.”
LikeLike
So, two nannies at 80K doesn’t sound like exploitation, either. And, one needs two nannies if 1) both parents travel, entertain, etc, requiring evening/nighttime care and 2) kids have busy social/activity schedules.
In addition, it doesn’t have to make economic sense during the period when the two nannies are necessary (or the one) in order to make long term economic sense. You need to be able to afford the employee, but if you can, it might be an investment in future economic (or non-economic) rewards.
LikeLike
I included benefits for a reason and for completeness sake I should have included SS taxes. If you paid somebody $40,000 in wages, paid SS taxes on them, and they had benefits, you’d be out far more than $50,000.
LikeLike
I wonder why these conversations almost always assume that marriage and kids are in everyone’s future. From the stats I recall, about 20 percent of women over 40 don’t have kids, so making plans at age 20 to structure your life so that you have a flexible kid-friendly job might be a big mistake. And I don’t think the childless people decided to prioritize their careers; I just don’t believe most people know where their life is headed. Maybe you’ll never get married, or maybe you’ll get married and have several special needs kids. Most people don’t have the slightest idea what will happen to them.
LikeLike
Most people don’t have the slightest idea what will happen to them.
I did, then I found beer that was 10% alcohol.
LikeLike
both my husband and I have recently been given promotions without raises — a sign of the ‘new economy’, I guess. In my husband’s case, his boss got another job and they gave my husband the bosses job but no salary increase and with the layoffs and all, he didn’t feel like he could refuse. I am being given a huge new chunk of responsibility in my job with no salary increase — although I have asked and asked and asked. Not really in a position to refuse the responsibilities, however, seeing as there are practically no jobs in my field in our area of the country
This all makes me think that a lot of Sandberg’s advice might go over better in a more robust economy. I’m thinking the NYT or somebody should write about this new phenomenon of promotions without pay increases. more hours, more work.
Not sure what I want for my kids — except that they don’t end up like a hamster on a wheel, running for all they’re worth, always wondering if their position is going to get cut. But I have no idea how you teach them that — in ‘this economy’.
LikeLike
Louisa. Yes.
Actually, everyone, yes. Good comments, all.
LikeLike
I have to agree with Louisa, my husband has been given a promotion in title and responsibility only with no increase in income. It is the new reality of this economy.
Its really going to depend on where you live in terms of child care. Major Metro, expensive child care, Medium metro (the triangle, nc where I live) not so much. But corporate salaries here are still very competitive and we have lots of wealth. I manage an attorney’s business and I pay her nanny. She makes 2k a month. SO not every nanny is making even close to 40k. And that is the going rate here for a full time nanny.
LikeLike
Some years back, my brother’s white, native English-speaker ex-girlfriend was making something like $300 a month as a live-in nanny in Florida.
What makes me most queasy with nanny situations is the ones where the nanny has an infant of her own and the employer doesn’t allow her to bring the baby to work with her.
LikeLike
So Sandberg’s advice that Women Must Be More Assertive and Negotiate applies not only to women with privilege, but also to Nannies Who Aren’t Getting Their Due.
@AmyP’s brother’s ex-gf, the English-speaking nanny, could have negotiated (in her native tongue even) for a higher salary and more benefits, in addition to what one assumes was the job perk of free rent. And if $300/mo was not FL minimum wage for the actual hours she worked, and/or payroll taxes were not paid, then that should have been reported to the authorities.
Comments like these make it seem like we’re all living in this odd “The Help”-esque dystopia where there never was a nanny who worked anywhere in the US without being exploited, which is utter nonsense. But hey, that false belief sure works well if our goal is to guilt/scare women from their rightful places in public life.
LikeLike
Group care isn’t a reasonable option?
LikeLike
I have a nanny! I am neither high-powered nor particularly well-paid but I do have a spouse with a career of his own so there’s that. We have a nanny-sharing arrangement so there are three children in all (sometimes four but that is only for about 5 hours a week). Our nanny makes about $30k a year. She has a high-school diploma and has said that this is best job she’s ever had. We don’t pay her health care or retirement but we do pay all the required taxes, give her paid vacation and sick leave, pay her mileage.
That’s my tale of grievous nanny exploitation. It feels good to finally have it out in the open.
LikeLike
I have a nanny!
…for my kids. I would love it if I made enough to pay someone to take care of me but, alas, with my current career trajectory that seems unlikely.
LikeLike
No need to get all jumpy. That sounds very reasonable. I’m aware that in most places the salaries are lower than in the areas where the families earning $500,000 or whatever tend to live. I’m also aware that it is actually impossible to buy insurance for just one person in nearly every state.
LikeLike
“@AmyP’s brother’s ex-gf, the English-speaking nanny, could have negotiated (in her native tongue even) for a higher salary and more benefits, in addition to what one assumes was the job perk of free rent. And if $300/mo was not FL minimum wage for the actual hours she worked, and/or payroll taxes were not paid, then that should have been reported to the authorities.”
It might have even been $200–definitely either $200 or $300. She would have been getting board, too. Her total compensation package would have been worth something just north of $1,000 a month.
I believe there are laws governing how much the employer is able to charge the live-in employee for board and room out of their salary before running into problems with the minimum wage.
A lot depends on the stuff I don’t know about the situation. For instance, what were her working hours? Two days a week and weekday evenings off would make things start sounding better, but there would be the risk for a live-in employee of being regarded as on-call 24/7.
We are from rainy, damp small town Western Washington, so working in Florida would sound unbelievably glamorous. For a year or two (for instance to gain Florida residency for school) it might be fun as a lark. It’s long-term that it starts sounding like 21st century slavery.
LikeLike
I agree that talk of exploitation is to wild a word to use in a free and fair society (unlike that in the Help and other worlds). We can discuss how free and fair even our society is, though. In the case of the Florida nanny (and in many other locations), my guess is that the value of the labor is suppressed by the availability of undocumented workers (who do not have access to our free society in the same way).
But it’s not slavery if you can walk away, even if your opportunities are limited.
LikeLike
Yes, our system is certainly rigged against the working poor and I’m with Barbara Ehrenreich to the extent I wonder how anyone can support a family on, say, $7 an hour. However, I think the appropriate target for our ire should not be household employers (who may or may not engage in unfair labor practices), but rather on employers like Wal-Mart, who screw over the working poor en masse, reducing workers’ hours to avoid paying benefits, etc.
In the last several years, I’ve employed 2 part-time nannies (not at the same time, though I don’t see anything at all wrong/overly luxurious having 2 concurrent nannies where a family has, say, a special needs kid, and/or 3 or more kids and/or multiples). Like @scantee, I went about employing each nanny the legal way: paying Social Security and Medicare taxes (against the first nanny’s own objections I might add), reimbursing transportation costs, giving paid vacations/sick/personal days, giving them excellent job references and helping them find future employment, letting their preschool-aged kid to be cared for by them in our home, too, and so on. All of the nannies I interviewed were making well above minimum wage (which was just over $9/hr in my state): I was told that the going rate in Chicago was $500 a week, with a guarantee of 40 to 45 hours wither you needed that many hours or not, which works out to $10 to $12 an hour. Chicago seemed to be cheaper than a lot of other cities. In Houston, the going rate was closer to $15. What’s more, every nanny I interviewed stated, flat out, that they didn’t do housework.
So, I ask: Is this so bad? Nannies work in a safe, clean environment for an employer who has the best possible incentive for treating them well: they’re taking care of the boss’s precious kids. I don’t believe that a nanny job is inherently demeaning. Yes, $10 or even $15 an hour, no benefits, is probably the bare minimum necessary to survive. But it’s not a sweatshop, either, and it is certainly not “slavery.”
I guess the real question is: is there a way for a progressive family in the professional classes to hire a nanny and allow the wife to work (because let’s be honest, we’re not talking about husbands not being able to work because they don’t have adequate childcare – remember the female DC Big Law associate who recently quit with a letter to Above The Law because, inter alia, she would not hire a nanny and insisted on doing daycare drop offs herself) without joining the ranks of exploitive employers? And what else beside paying Social Security and Medicare taxes should women do or be doing to help their less fortunate sisters?
LikeLike
“But it’s not slavery if you can walk away, even if your opportunities are limited.”
On $200 a month, how do you save to leave, if you’re from far away? The next place you’d be walking would be a homeless shelter, if you didn’t have local friends.
LikeLike
“how do you save to leave?”
Well, if you have a boyfriend, I presume you could stay with him for at least a few days, and borrow money for a bus ticket home. If home is on another continent, the consulate can probably help (or the ICE might deport you for free). I am a little puzzled about how a white, English-speaking person ended up in a situation with no savings, no credit, no friends, no family, and no job opportunities.
LikeLike
It happens more often to non-white, non-English speaking people, if that makes you feel better.
LikeLike
A digression (slightly): Laura, do you have any readers at all in your community? You’ve posted specific information about your neighbors, their profession,their childcare choices, their kids’ mental state, and the fact that you talk about their mental state with your son (the classmate of at least one of these kids). Are you concerned that this could get back to the actual people involved here?
LikeLike
They don’t even know my name. Honestly. But I probably should delete that comment anyway. thanks.
LikeLike
Yes, but someone else reading it might know you, know them, etc, and boom…”why were you telling your mom I’m miserable, and why did she post it on the internet?”
LikeLike