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Jordan Green

Stacey Percival

English 1302

29 February 2020

Who Can Really Have it All?

The articles “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” by Anne-Marie Slaughter and “Why

Men Still Can’t Have it All” by Richard Dorment bring up the difficulties of balancing work and

family in modern society. Both articles acknowledge the challenges both women and men face

when wanting to be there for family, but also needing to support the family by working longer

hours. They showed two interesting and somewhat conflicting points of view on how we

currently view and judge gender in the office. While women may have a little more trouble

working their way up in a company, men and women both have difficulties balancing work and

family and no one can really have it all.

Women historically have been discriminated against for our weak demeanors and

sensitivity. In recent years however, we have proven to be as tough if not tougher than a lot of

men. As Slaughter heavily focuses on, one of the biggest challenges of being a woman in a

higher position of the work place is raising a family. Slaughter has her own story of being a hard

working mom and having to rush out from Washington to New Jersey to help her son and

husband with what had gone wrong at school. After her two year tenure is up she decides that

being at home more is what is best for her and her family. Not only was it best but after being in

the workforce she found herself actually wanting to go back home. She goes on to mention that

“leaving to spend time with family” is often taken as a euphemism for being fired. In Slaughters

view “this standard Washington excuse implies: it is so unthinkable that an official would
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actually step down to spend time with his or her family that it must be a cover for something

else” (540). Her point in saying this is to get us to realize that a woman or man for that matter

can choose their family over work. It does not make them weaker and family can most definitely

be more important than work. Slaughter explains that women can enlist the help of their spouse

to help with things at home. In the last few decades men have been asking how to incorporate

parenthood into their work lives more than ever. They are thinking about sacrificing things in a

similar way that women do in order for women to be in the work force.

While women have been facing dilemmas in the work place due to family care for ages, it

is somewhat new for men. Maybe it isn’t new but rather only recently talked about. Richard

Dorment makes the argument that men have the same problems in the work force as women but

in reverse. Men are expected to work long hours slaving over paperwork and the desktop in the

same way women are expected to do the grueling work of taking care of a child. He then shows

shows statistics that both men and women work roughly the same amount of hours including

both paid jobs and unpaid house work. Women had only an hour advancement on men. He uses

this to say that men do pull their load of work in and out of the house. Dorment mentions another

study in which sixty percent of men said they were unhappy with their work life balance

compared to only forty-seven percent of women. He goes on to say that more men are wanting to

spend time at home with their family than ever. They want to be more involved in their

children’s lives than just showing up for dinner and sports games and recitals. Men want a real

relationship with their children like the ones that mothers get. Dorment explains that “there are

expectations, even among men whose wives bring in forty five percent of family income, that

they were still responsible for the family”(567). By saying this he is trying to convey that men

feel the same stress and responsibility to care for the household that women do about raising
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children and taking care of the house. Men may not have struggled in the past with work life

balance but in our modern society men and women’s troubles are becoming equal.

Both articles talk about the difficulties of balancing a full time job and spending time

with their families. Slaughter tends to focus more on the difficulties women have such as having

to take time off from work and how that affects their professional life, while Dorment is trying to

explain his view that men are also experiencing these difficulties because of the changing

gender-work culture. Dorment and Slaughter actually agree on quite a bit despite the conflicting

sound of the titles. They both mention in their essays that men and women have certain roles and

they can be hard to escape from. Men are the bread winners, the ones that work and support the

household. Women take care of the children and do the household chores even if they have a job

that provides a significant part of the household’s income. It is also important to realize that the

people and households’ they are referring to are mainly double income homes of heterosexual

couples with children or contemplating having children. They agree that these gender roles can

be changed. It is possible for the dad to spend more time at home taking care of the kids and the

mother to be the one working long hours in or out of the home. They also both made sure to

mention that they don’t think either gender works harder. It can be tough to compare work loads

and both authors are only trying to raise awareness.

When reading Slaughters it wasn’t surprising so much as refreshing to hear someone put

into words the things I have always thought. My generation has grown up watching women work

to the top and politely resign when they are satisfied with their work and ready to focus on their

families. It has always been apparent that no one can have everything they want all at once in

one lifetime, there simply isn’t enough daylight to make it work. What I find hard to understand

however is why women try to single out their gender in these problems. In current times we have
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come a long way, almost all the way, to our goals for working women. It isn’t a matter of

whether or not someone is male, female, or identifies as something else, it is a matter of how

suitable you are for the position. In our times it is not uncommon for a male to want a flexible

schedule for the same reasons a woman does. The next step for women is not putting themselves

above or below men but on the same level. While women who are in positions of power may

believe we already do this because that’s how we got to having all these woman CEOs and

managers, we really aren’t there yet. In the back of their heads women still feel inferior to men in

one way or another whether it be pay, or the way we get treated about our family life. By placing

men and women on the same level in our own minds we can spread this mindset to other people

making sure both women and men see each other as equals.

A big concern among dual income parents is who will take care of the kids. They can’t

quite take care of themselves from new born to around eight or nine, and for most one parent

taking several years off isn’t a valid financial option. Why aren’t nannies and daycares an

option? They provide the care for children while the parents are at work and they are most likely

home by seven or eight o’clock and home on the weekends giving them plenty of time to spend

with their kids. Many elementary schools also provide free or reduced price after school daycare

services so for those who are skeptical about cost, there is little to none. The problem being work

life balance, many may think these afternoons and weekends aren’t enough to supplement the

bond with their children, but you can’t have everything. Another argument presented by parents

is that there is too much to do on weekends to have time to spend with the kids. Why not include

the kids in these things? Make cleaning up into a game or have a reward at the end, take them to

the store with you they might tell you about whats going on at school. This may not seem like
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much time but once the children grow older they will look back and realize how much effort was

put into spending time with them and caring for them and appreciate it all the same.

At this point you may be wondering why should I care about this? this an issue that

affects almost everyone from parents to people who don’t even have kids. For people who want

or have kids it’s quite obvious, they need to understand that they can’t have everything and there

will be some sacrifices. For big companies it may help them to understand that parents need a

few accomodations and that working from home may be valid. Those who don’t have or don’t

want kids may have to think about how they could have to pick up some of the slack if parents

decide to take some time off.

Dorment and Slaughter bring up many modern parental problems but don’t completely

provide reasonable solutions. While work life balance has been a known problem for women it

has also increased in men and not much is being done about it. The solutions are rather simple

whether it be childcare or leveling out the stigma about gender roles. With everything we have

accomplished in the last century, isn’t society where feminists and equalists asked it to be? After

all, it’s impossible to have everything all at once without any sacrifices.
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Works Cited

Dorment, Richard “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All” They Say, I Say With Readings. 4th ed.,

edited by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst, W.W. Norton & Company.

Inc, pp 555-575.

Slaughter, Anne-Marie “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” They Say, I Say With Readings.

4th ed., edited by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst, W.W. Norton &

Company. Inc, pp 534-554.