She may have found that women still can’t have it all, but it seems Anne-Marie Slaughter’s hoping the next generation will be able to challenge her findings.
The former US state department official delivered the 2014 commencement to Tufts university graduates earlier this week, and her advice to the graduating class was to start thinking about their future careers and relationships before they entered the workforce.
The author of the 2012 Atlantic piece which helped rekindle a global conversation about women “having it all”, implored the graduating class to build a life which would find the balance between work and family and reminded them that these ideals were not just for women.
She asked the graduating men to consider whether their fathers and grandfathers were able to spend enough time with them, and advised them to start thinking about family as they plot their career paths.
“If one of you must actually stop working for a while to take care of a child or parent with particular needs, will you be prepared to do that?” Slaughter asked.
“If you choose to marry a woman or a man who has equal career aspirations to your own, how will you adapt to allow him or her to reach as high as you hope to? Will you be prepared to move if your wife gets a promotion? Will you be prepared to defer your own promotion, so that your husband can take his?” she said.
She also encouraged them to start thinking about these things now, before they reached an impasse in their career that made these compromises impossible, and to reassess traditional ideas about being the family “provider”.
“Do not wait until the choice is upon you to establish and plan for your priorities. You will still be a provider. Providing care is every bit as important as providing cash,” she said.
To the graduating women, she encouraged them to choose careers on the basis of what they were passionate about, not the option which would present enough flexibility to allow them to balance work and life. She encouraged them find partners who would encourage that balance, rather than assume that it was their responsibility to balance family and career.
“Choose a career on the basis of what you are passionate about doing, and then choose a husband or wife or life partner on the assumption that you will be genuinely equal partners, that you will both be breadwinners, but both also caregivers, perhaps for children, for those family members who took care of you, or for each other,” she said.
“If you marry a man, you must see his caring side as every bit as masculine as his competitive side,” she said.
“Look for a man who thinks Don Draper has missed out on what is most important in life”.
You can read the full transcript here.