A reader argues that our post was based on “a common misconception” about Lean In:
Sandberg doesn’t champion working over staying home. When she tells women to lean in, she’s not telling them to work: she’s saying that for as long as they choose to work, they shouldn’t have one foot already out the door because of what having a family might demand of them in the future. It’s a carpe diem message, and an argument against approaching your career with a defeatist attitude.
Another isn’t sure what attitude to take:
I’m so glad you’re talking about Lean In and hope that it ends up as a thread. I’m a 36-year-old woman acting as the executive at a small organization with a big budget. I love my work, my peers, the intellectual stimulation, my ability to call on my brain to perform backflips and contortions. But I tell you what: it doesn’t make me happy.
On the contrary, it makes me pretty miserable. Being “on” 24 hours a day, constantly fielding demands and needs from employees and contractors, pushing off needed vacation or personal time because I know work needs my presence, and feeling that I’m doing important work intellectually but not making a tangible difference in the life of another human on any given day.
I don’t have kids and I’m not sure they’re right for me and my partner, but I often find myself thinking I should have them because it’s one of the only socially acceptable ways to “lean out” for today’s talented working women. I’m hungry to see what happens if I unplug from the professional class and its expectations, but I’m terrified to do it out of fear that everyone will think I’m crazy and that if I find I actually prefer my field to whatever “softer” work I might do, there won’t be a pathway for me to reenter with the influence and earnings I currently have. And this sounds weird, but at least I’d be “in good company” if my offramp and reduced earnings involved kids, whereas I’d just be I dummy if I did it to myself in order to try to find some happiness.
Another circles back to the source of the thread:
With regard to the post about Alice Dreger “leaning out,” I think that, at best, she leaned sideways. She may have left a tenured position at MSU, but she did so to work what sounds like close to full-time on the Intersex Society. She now has an academic position at Northwestern and several different platforms for her writing. She has flexibility, which is great, but I am not sure she should be held up as an example of people/women doing the opposite of Sheryl Sandberg. And Dreger was able to do all of this because she is married to a doctor whose income can support her and their family as she pursues her “part-time” and “low-paying” positions. She is pretty darn successful, whether she sees herself as having stepped off the treadmill or not. I don’t imagine that people who don’t have the luxury of choosing to “cost their family money” would be particularly sympathetic.
Another is on the same page:
I read with interest Alice Dreger’s piece on “leaning out,” and think you left out her most important point: “Ironically, leaning out has given me a vastly more interesting career than I would have otherwise had.”
After reviewing her CV, I confess to feeling a shred of the same irritation toward Dreger that I felt in force toward Sheryl Sandberg. Both are superstars in their fields, and have gone far beyond what most of us will ever achieve professionally. I’m very much down with Dreger’s basic point of view – that’s about where I am too, and have negotiated a situation where I can be home most days when my only daughter gets off the bus. Like her, I also value the rewards inherent in having more time for other relationships and interests (which are certainly available to anyone, regardless of professional status). But most of us are not negotiating for earlier, more expensive flights to get home from national talk show appearances, able to negotiate for a part-time professorship, and getting published in the New York Times etc. – just as most career women are not and will never be in Sandberg’s stratosphere.
Please don’t get me wrong – for the most part, I find my life pretty fulfilling, vocationally and at home, and I certainly don’t begrudge Dreger or Sandberg their success and life satisfaction. They’ve earned every bit of it. But I can also see how women in more pedestrian situations might find not find their thoughts on the value of leaning in or out terribly applicable to their own lives.
The Dish 