By PATSY KAM, The Star, August 7 2007
Women should work and earn a living rather than heap unnecessary financial burdens upon themselves
AFTER a 24-hour flight from New York, the last thing you’d want to do is give a breakfast interview. But reporter, mother-of-two and author of the book The Feminine Mistake, Leslie Bennetts, kindly obliged and so the stage was set for conversation over coffee.Her book seems to have sparked a debate around the globe and women have aligned themselves with two camps: those who agree with Bennetts – some have come up to her sobbing, thanking her for taking off their blinkers and lifting them from their depressive rut – and the stay-at-home mums who feel the attack on their decision to give up their careers for their families is personal.
Bennetts says most of the people who slammed her book didn’t even read it.
“It’s not about choice feminism or how everyone’s choice should be respected. That’s what annoys me.
“If you choose not to work, it’s equivalent to going to Las Vegas and staking your family’s welfare and your own welfare on one roll of the dice. Are you willing to take risks? If that’s what you want to do, then it’s your choice. As a reporter, I simply wanted to document what these risks were. The only way women in the modern world in a Western society can protect themselves and their children’s future is to earn a living,” insists Bennetts.
It’s not that she doesn’t know this firsthand. She’s been married for 20 years and, in the midst of writing the book, her husband, also a journalist, lost his job when the magazine he worked for shut down a week before last Christmas.
“I became Exhibit A. For six months, I was the sole provider,” she says. Her grandmother was saddled with a lifetime of financial problems after her husband left her, and the family ended up depending on Bennett’s mother to be the primary breadwinner.
Bennetts grew up in a wealthy suburb of New York, graduated early and attended an Ivy League college. She wrote for the New York Times for 10 years and was the first woman to cover a presidential campaign for the paper. Now, as a contributing writer for Vanity Fair magazine, Bennetts’s career is still flourishing. She aced the story on Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt getting together, and later, the painful split. Desperate Housewives’ Teri Hatcher revealed to Bennetts how she was sexually abused as a child.
Her book has ruffled more than a few feathers and Bennetts doesn’t understand why.
“All I’m saying is make a plan so that you won’t be stranded. Many women have this false sense of security when they drop off the work force. They think they can quit, raise their kids and then go back when the children are older. They have not been adequately informed of the difficulties of going back to work in the United States. Many are shocked and unprepared. They say giving up their careers was their biggest mistake. The media has glossed over the issue and made choosing to stay at home sound like it was a lifestyle decision. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’” they ask.
“My research shows that many didn’t know what they were doing. They have this misplaced optimism that they can go back to work easily. They don’t realise the discrimination society has against mothers and returning mothers, and how sexism and ageism work against them.”
The trend shows 30% of women in the United States opt out of the workforce to look after their children, with not much thought given to financial security in the long haul.
“Everyone is focusing on choice. But I’m just pointing out it (not working) doesn’t work out well for most people if you follow the traditional role of depending on the husband.
“When it comes to women’s role, everyone talks about choice rather than outcome – it’s a stupid way to analyse things.
“They’re free to choose economic jeopardy. But it’s not about rights, it’s about outcome.”
There’s also a softer side to Bennetts, who showed me pictures of her daughter, 18, and her son, 15. She’s a doting mother, cooks dinner every night and says, for the most part, she’s tried to be there for her family. She shares how she spent a decade feeling guilty about missing her daughter’s fourth grade play. When she finally asked her daughter recently, it turns out she doesn’t even remember Bennetts not being there.
“My only regret is that I wasted so much energy feeling guilty about stupid things that just aren’t important in the long run.”
Her take-home message is clear: make long-term plans; don’t focus on the present.
Women have to stop depending on men to provide for them and to learn to be independent. Bennetts says it’s high time women raised girls differently. Boys are traditionally raised to understand that they have to take responsibility for their lives so there’s no escape clause, whereas women can always have kids and quit.
“Marriage is not going to protect them because women now have longer lifespans, divorce rates are increasing and you have to make smarter choices about which career to go into. Most women quit because they never liked what they were doing in the first place. Having children was a convenient excuse,” she adds.
“Wake up from the fairy tale. People think, ‘Oh, but it’s not going to happen to me.’ There’s an enormous amount of denial out there. We need to encourage women to plan better, have meaningful careers that are well-suited to their talents.”
It’s true that working women don’t have a good support system and, ideally, society should be restructured so that women can be caretakers and earn an income.
“But that won’t change if women drop out of the workforce. You can only become a change agent if you stay on and get reform going.”
Bennetts believes that working women are more optimistic about the future compared with stay-at-home mothers who end up depressed and afraid when children leave the nest. And that working women make just as good mothers, are basically happier and healthier.
“My book got a lot of attention in the States, Canada and Britain, and the issue really resonated.”
The ramifications may be different in Malaysia as there are different factors to consider, for example, good childcare is hard to come by and expensive, divorce rates lower (but increasing), and salaries are much lower.
Although Bennetts qualifies that her book was only applicable to the United States, much of it can also be relevant here. Although there is insufficient data to accurately document how many women in Malaysia are left in the lurch – either through divorce, death or loss of income because of unexpected illness – it’s a disturbing problem, nonetheless.
At worst, Bennetts is only guilty of laying bare the cold, hard facts. And, let’s face it, the truth sometimes hurts.