Jill Berry, head of the Girls School Association of the U.K. caused some excitement last week when she told secondary school girls to be realistic.  Read about it here (Guardian, 11/13/09).  She told girls in private schools that, as they mature, they will face "an unprecedented amount of pressure to be a 'perfect woman.'"  By that, Berry referred to pressure to be both a career woman and a "perfect mother."

Her advice to deal with this pressure was that women should be content to either work part-time or drop out of the workforce altogether for a few years when their children are young.  The fact that few young women have the choice to spend years off the job seems not to have occurred to the 'realist' Berry.

I'm all for realism regardless of who's practicing it.  And adults giving sound advice to kids is also a good idea.  I do wonder, though, just how unrealistic Berry believes women are.  Certainly teenage girls may dream of "having it all," whatever that may mean to them.  That's what young people do before they actually start trying to do what adults do.  Then they tend to get realistic pretty quickly.  Believe me on this; I used to think I could be a shortstop in the big leagues.  Now I can't believe I ever imagined such a thing.

The point being that it's natural to mature from pie-in-the-sky teen to stable, realistic adult.  It usually takes about 15 years.  So why does Berry think these girls won't go through the same process?

What's more important is that, while calling for the girls to choose their marital partners carefully, Berry seems to believe that the girls will live their lives alone.  She tells the girls that life is all about balance but seems not to notice that men should be part of that.  She tells the girls to work part-time or not at all when the kids arrive, but never mentions the idea of negotiating a work-life balance with their husbands.

And she utters nary a peep about how laws, customs and social constructs of male behavior might contribute to - or tend to thwart - a balanced life for her students.  The notion that gender balance in parental leave laws, custody laws, adoption laws, etc. together with a wholesale swearing off of misandric, anti-dad popular culture might help women feel less stressed, never seems to occur to Berry.

In short, Berry continues down exactly the same road that's brought us to where we find ourselves.  For several decades, denigrating of men and telling women that they can have it all have gone hand in hand.  Predictably, they've driven men and women apart.  Telling girls that they can have a balanced life, while ignoring the male half of it is more of the same.  That message may have its virtues, but realistic it's not.

Thanks to Malcolm for the heads-up.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Men, Women and Work. You can trackback from your own site.