Reply to How far should we "Lean In?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I'm wondering why people never celebrate the marriages of a couple in which one parent is completely supportive of the other parent staying home to take care of their children?  [b]By all accounts, Dave Goldberg did everything possible to facilitate his wife's career[/b] - good for him.  That career is the path she chose.  What about men who support their wives who have chosen the path of leaving the workforce to care for the family's children?  I say good for them as well.  I'm eternally grateful to be married to such a man - a true partner in every sense of the word.[/quote]

By HER accounts. The more I learn (I hadn't really dug deeply into their family when reading Lean In), the more I'm not so convinced that's the case. I think he was supportive, but he was also a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. No way he was taking on the home/family responsibilities to the degree she laid out in the book.

Without his death, I honestly wouldn't have known he was the CEO of SurveyMonkey (or that SurveyMonkey was such a growing company). I wouldn't have read a lot about his life and all the great things he did (he sounds like he was a great guy, truly).

AND... because of her huge popularity around Lean In, it's making me question her message. Because one of the absolutely foundation principles was that you will need a partner who is a "True partner" and will take on at least half the work of the family.

I think the outsourced even more than we knew, more than was speculated... and frankly, that makes me angry. I feel like Lean In was selling a bill of goods that wasn't attainable for most women in the real world. And that's really only become apparent to me now as I've learned more about her husband's career. [/quote]

I haven't read the book so don't know if she addressed this, but I think it really matters that executives at their level have the funds to hire truly *excellent* childcare, and can afford nannies that the majority simply can't afford.  It's a truly different calculus if the nanny for your child is a twenty something ex-teacher with a degree in child development who can focus exclusively on kid stuff because other staff takes care of the household management chores.[/quote]

I'm wondering why a twenty-something ex-teacher with a degree in child development who can focus exclusively on kid stuff is considered excellent childcare and something to celebrate - while a parent with the same credentials (or much better) staying home to "focus exclusively on kid stuff" is sneered at by so many posters.  Having a parent at home is the "truly different calculus".  It's the gold standard.  So why is having the great nanny celebrated, but having the SAHP not?  [/quote]

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