Suzanne Venker has posted a very good piece at NRO about why careers will naturally be negatively impacted by decisions that prioritise family. It's the nature of reality.
What we never talk about is where this feminist utopia [of balancing work and family] leaves employers. Employers can not — they must not — be responsible for helping parents manage their family lives. If employers can afford to offer part-time employment, fine. If they can afford to allow their employees to take off an endless string of days and still make money in the meantime, more power to ’em. But come on: such businesses are few and far between. Employers are in business to make money. They may be sympathetic to the The Problem, but they cannot solve it.
This piece is similar to what I found in her new book, The Flipside of Feminism. While I promised a review, I'm not usually in the habit of doing negative reviews (at least not for the "good guys"). The book was good -- as far as it went. It was hard-hitting, enjoyable and completely conservative, but also entirely secular. There was a thin veil of Protestant virtue about it, but that veil hasn't sufficed to keep the country on track thus far, and it wasn't enough to recommend the book (though as a gift to non-religious recovering feminists, it would be great).
We know how America is supposed to work, and we know what rules should govern the workplace. All of that was covered very well, but Catholics know that there's more to life than a secular work-life dichotomy, and that secular paradigm never attempts to factor in vocation, a family wage, the hidden cost of vice, and the priorities that faith demands, etc. Apart from realigning the public sphere along Godly principles (which isn't going to happen any time soon) we will have to settle for these secular guidelines -- while providing a witness for something transcendent in our own lives. A challenge, indeed, but this wasn't the book to help with that quest.
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