I’ve been agitating for better childcare pretty much since I realised to stay sane and on top of the rest of my life I needed to look into some daycare for my son. It’s been an interesting issue to wade into, and there are strong emotions involved for most of us, as I know now from the hate mail I received from a stay at home mum. But this article is a refreshing re-read of a strident and controversial book written by Linda Hirschman that argued that women can not be completely fulfilled by staying at home, and that being a working mum is a decision you need to take to be a good member of society. Is all the talk about choice limiting our options?

I can’t really do the article justice, but here are some previews here:

“But—though I almost hate to say it—buried beneath Hirshman’s overblown rhetoric is a useful idea, now set out in a short book titled Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World: namely, that our obsession with choice prevents us from asking tough questions about how to achieve further equality. Deafened by choice, here’s the moral analysis these women never heard,” she says: “Until there is more equity in the cultural norms for child-rearing and household tasks, each time a woman decides to “opt out” she is making a political decision that reinforces an already ingrained social inequality. Women who believe otherwise suffer from a mixture of false consciousness and impractical idealism.”

What do you think? Should women consider the wider social situation in their personal decisions, like this woman did about a very different issue? Do you think it’s important for women to work for complete fulfillment? This article also includes the stat that 93% of well educated and successful American women who opt out of work to have a baby want back in, but can’t. Have you faced discrimination or a lack of options since having a child?