Henry, William. In Defense of Elitism . New York: Anchor, 1994: 109-10

The overt goal of these feminists is to change ground rules of working life so that wives and mothers can, as the boast runs, "have it all." They argue that society benefits by giving special privileges to mothers in the marketplace. Is that so? Let me admit here that I think children are better off when their mothers (or fathers) stay home full-time, at least until the children enter school. I believe that much of the perceived educational decline of children has very little to do with the favorite whipping boy, television, and a great deal to do with a phenomenon that more closely fits the time frame of the decline the two-income household, which in practice generally means employment for the mothers of young children. If this causal relationship holds true (and I readily concede that it is opinion rather than fact-if shared, albeit reluctantly, by virtually every working mother I know), then any benefit to society from the mother's working has to be weighed against the developmental loss to the next generation. Day care, the common solution, is usually merely custodial. The yuppie alternative, a live-in nanny, clearly represents an intellectual step down for the child. Of the ten parental couples to whom my wife and I are closest, eight have used live-ins, of whom not one had attended college (although the biological parents were mostly Ivy Leaguers) and only three were native speakers of English. If we have swamped the schools by asking them to carry too many social burdens, might we not do the same to the economy? We have already made our businesses less free, and perhaps less competitive, by imposing the obligations of affirmative action for blacks, women, and assorted other minorities. If we add the necessity of being flexible in scheduling, pay, and promotion on behalf of mothers-plus the inevitable ill will that this is bound to cause among at least some nonmothers, male and female the likely result is less efficiency, not more. There is, further, a question of fairness. Changing rules to accommodate those who try to combine parenthood and the workplace inevitably imposes a disadvantage if only by taking away a competitive advantage on those who don't. Why, pray, should an employee with divided loyalties be treated the same as one who will give his or her all to the job? And on the philosophical plane, how can the very people most apt to say that childbearing is a private matter when the subject is abortion then reverse themselves and insist that it is a societal matter when the subject is their personal need and convenience in the workplace?

Carl Gutierrez-Jones,

Department of English

University of California

Santa Barbara, CA 93106

E-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu