For any parent - stay-at-home, working, or something in between - issues of work-life balance loom large. This can be especially true for women, who may feel pressured towards "traditional" duties of homemaking and child care while simultaneously yearning to pursue a career as modern society encourages. As everyone tries to find their individual recipe for harmonizing employment with domestic life, discussions about the family-vs.-career dilemma loom large in the media as well.
A few weeks ago, I came across an opinion piece by CNN's Kyra Phillips, which lauds the advent of egg-freezing and other reproductive technology as empowering career-focused women. The overall message of her essay is inarguable - scientific medical advancements make it easier for women to bear children later in life, enabling them to use their 20s and 30s to advance their workplace goals. However, she displays an unnecessary level of condescension towards others who've decided to start families at the expense of promotions. Further, she insinuates that any woman who practices work-life balance is personally responsible for holding back workplace equality for women in general.
Contrary to her opinion, some women welcome the chance to bear children in their late-20s or early 30s, and enjoy taking time away from work in order to raise those kids. Others need to work to support their households, but effort tirelessly to make time for their families instead of devoting every possible moment to their jobs. This blogger refuses to view such choices as "blowing it" with respect to an individual career, nor somehow stunting the progress of female career paths at large.
There are plenty of good reasons to freeze one's eggs, utilize other means of assistive reproductive technology, or simply decide not to have children at all. But any such decision involves reasoning unique to the individual. The world is best served when people make choices that fit their specific circumstances, instead of simply running to freeze their eggs because some TV reporter is concerned about setbacks to feminism in the workplace. In this blogger's opinion, the most feminist path a woman can choose is her own - whether or not it includes the corporate ladder.
