No, the problem is that a career as we've defined it is required in the first place (desired is a different animal). Why can't a mother co-work with other mothers? Or consult while her partner watches the kid/s? Or choose to do only mothering? Or find some other way to combine career and motherhood in proportions that aren't 90/10? "Well, if she isn't in the office from 9-6 she won't get promoted, or she'll get caught in the next round of downsizing, or we can't collaborate as well", congratulations, you're now part of the problem.
Some offices do reduce the friction with on-premise daycare, breastfeeding/pumping rooms, flexible schedules, work from home, etc. It's not an insurmountable problem.
> society is telling mothers that if they want to be good mothers then they cannot take advantage of those things.
Looking at US society I can't agree with that. Daycare is pervasive. Walking down the halls here I see many women, many of them with pictures of their young children in their cubes. Perhaps it's different here in SV, but I don't think so.
What I do see is a lot of this kind of talk on the part of young professional mothers, and this makes me think it is a defense mechanism -- that the mothers actually would like to spend more time with their kids, maybe not breastfeed or maybe so, but in any case, the current proportion of career and motherhood is not fulfilling to them.
[Since I mentioned the office, I will add the standard disclaimer that this opinion is my own and not that of my employer's. I don't talk about this stuff at work.]
Desired is what we are talking about. It seems you would have women choose between their career and their child. Your attitude towards working mothers is an exemplification of the problem.
Mothers can do all of the things you have said... all of those things except continue their careers as other adults without society judging them for it.
Calls of "Or choose to do only mothering?" are the problem, not the solution.
You have no way of knowing that, and even if you did it's uninteresting to talk about because 'doing what you desire to do' is the universal struggle of humanity. Yawn.
> It seems you would have women choose between their career and their child.
I thought you were getting it and now I see the point has missed you completely. Listen carefully, this is important: women should be free to choose the proportions they desire, whether that's 90% work 10% mothering, 70/30, 50/50, 0/100, x/y. But they can't, because while you can be a 10% mother fairly successfully by using daycare and public school, you can't be a 20% "career woman". Your choices are either to be full-bore into your career at the expense of everything else, part-time somewhere in which case your paycheck doesn't cover daycare so why bother (oh and now you can't afford a house, sorry), or abandon your career aspirations altogether. Actually, some women manage to get pretty close to 90/90, but if you can show me someone who's done that for 18 years I'll be impressed, I can't find any. Having extended family around helps.
> Calls of "Or choose to do only mothering?" are the problem, not the solution.
Completely wrong, but you might have misunderstood what I said above which was that women should feel free to choose only mothering, if that's what they want to do. Surely advocating that women be able to do as they choose isn't the problem?
Note that this doesn't apply exclusively to women, men have the same battle but it's of course socially acceptable (expected) for men to sacrifice family for career, sorry champ, not gonna make it to the big game, daddy's got to bring home the bacon. We did it to ourselves, though. If you still don't get it reread my comment and substitute "women" with "everyone".
Some offices do reduce the friction with on-premise daycare, breastfeeding/pumping rooms, flexible schedules, work from home, etc. It's not an insurmountable problem.
> society is telling mothers that if they want to be good mothers then they cannot take advantage of those things.
Looking at US society I can't agree with that. Daycare is pervasive. Walking down the halls here I see many women, many of them with pictures of their young children in their cubes. Perhaps it's different here in SV, but I don't think so.
What I do see is a lot of this kind of talk on the part of young professional mothers, and this makes me think it is a defense mechanism -- that the mothers actually would like to spend more time with their kids, maybe not breastfeed or maybe so, but in any case, the current proportion of career and motherhood is not fulfilling to them.
[Since I mentioned the office, I will add the standard disclaimer that this opinion is my own and not that of my employer's. I don't talk about this stuff at work.]