When it comes to the phrase relating to “women having it all,” I think it’s one of the most misunderstood phrases thrown around with feminism. It doesn’t literally mean she can HAVE it all, anything she wants, without compromises and sacrifices and tough choices. It means that she can have it all in terms of her destiny. If she wants to go to college, she can. If she wants to stay home and be a wife, she can. If she wants a partner she has been with for 10 years and will spend the rest of her life with and not marry, she can. It’s up to her and she is not by virtue of her gender funneled into a preset destiny by virtue of her gender. She’s not married away by her father at 18 to have babies and stay home to raise another generation of future 18 year old wives and the men that marry them. She has a choice.
It’s like going to a buffet... When the server tells you at the table you can have it all, they don’t literally mean that you can load up your plate with every food and eat it and skip the bill and not make yourself so full you vomit. They mean you can have anything that’s up there, so choose what you like, pay the bill, and deal with the indigestion or the food coma or whatever comes with it.
I’m not unsympathetic to the issue that historically men themselves are largely relegated to working to support their family with no choices with quitting to live the life they want at home or traveling or whatever they do, and no, it’s not fair. As time has gone on things have changed and shifted a bit easier than it did for women initially simply because it’s a male-dominated society where they make and set the rules. A man who rebelled against constructs still has options. If a man was destroyed financially/career wise during the Great Depression he could adjust his sails, land in that Rockafeller-created social philanthropy field, head to a bank to try for a loan to start a business, enter into the arts... But in such a situation, women were just kind of stuck. If her husband failed, she failed along with him and had no means to help her, her husband, or her kids out.
Society right now isn’t fair for men in all ways, it’s not fair for women in all ways. I think the scales are evening out more than they have ever been, so with time I think we will see even more balance. I certainly don’t see, nor have I ever, how allowing women the ability to choose what’s best for their own lives is something that’s bad and despite all the huffing and puffing about the evils of feminism, the simple fact is most people in the US, including some of the people who rail against feminism here, are feminists. Almost 100% of the time I’ve seen people complain about feminism, how it’s bad, how it has ruined families, who throw around buzz phrases like feminism waves, who think feminism is about marginalizing men, they’re simply parroting misinformation without any true understanding of what feminism is or what it means. That’s why it’s hard to take some of these arguments seriously.
Ultimately, if you woke up this morning with a wife you chose who chose you too, and she goes about her day as she chooses in the life she constructs, who has an education and the ability to further it, or you have daughters you send to school or have homeschooled, and they work or dream of working, have chosen a career of their own without consideration of of its a field they’re allowed in, and you encourage them to marry a man who they love who treats them well and build the life they want for themselves... Congrats. You’re a feminist. Feminism is simply women being allowed the same choices in life as anybody else. Nothing more or less.
Secondly, I’m in a unique position where I’ve been the work at home Mom, the Mom who used sitters, the stay at home Mom, and pretty much every variable in between. I had one who started late to school and used almost no sitters ever, another who started school earlier and was at sitters 20ish hours a week, and a third who was at sitters off and on until he was 1.5 years old and then with me almost full time after that with no preschool. They all present their own unique challenges, they all have benefits, they all have pitfalls, and none of them mark one as a better parent than the other. And it’s not like you spend time with one and say “clearly that’s the one who was at daycare when he was 3...”
Ultimately, it’s better to make the choices that’s best for your family than to have your gender have your choices dictated for you. You’re a woman or man who works full time and had daycare because your family needs it? Woo-hoo! You stay home with your kids and take care of the house? Woo-hoo! You do you.