The Opt-Out Myth

We've nearly beaten to death the media myth of moms who "opt out", but a recent recap of skewed coverage of working and stay-at-home moms in the January/February Columbia Journalism Review --The Opt-Out Myth-- was so succinct and clearly thought-out that I just had to call it to everyone's attention.

The author is E.J. Graff, Senior Researcher at the Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism and head of the Gender and Justice Project, where she investigates "serious inequities, injustices and human rights issues that confront many women."

The Opt-Out Myth mentions an interesting analysis of 119 newspaper articles from 1980 to 2006 showing how undue prominence is placed on "the opt-out storyline," conducted by Joan C. Williams, director of the University of California Hastings Center for WorkLife Law. It goes on to cite New York Times articles from the last 50 years that repeatedly highlight how much women looove to stay home with kids: in 1953 ("Case History of an Ex-Working Mother"), 1961 ("Career Women Discover Satisfactions in the Home"), 1980 ("Many Young Women Now Say They'd Pick Family Over Career"), 1998 ("The Stay-At-Home Mother"), 2003 ("The Opt-Out Revolution") and 2005 ("Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood"). Here's quantifiable evidence of how our society returns, again and again, to the message that women's inner peace is found at home, not at work, and certainly not juggling both -- despite the fact that evidence shows repeatedly that the happiest women are ones who balance multiple meaningful roles.

The writer's interpretations of the facts are smart and sensible: "The moms-go-home story keeps coming back, in part, because it's based on some kernels of truth. Women do feel forced to choose between work and family. Women do face a sharp conflict between cultural expectations and economic realities. The workplace is still demonstrably more hostile to mothers than to fathers. Faced with the "choice" of feeling that they've failed to be either good mothers or good workers, many women wish they could -- or worry that they should -- abandon the struggle and stay home with the kids."

I am all for women staying home with kids -- if that's what they want. But E.J. Graff rightly points out the salient fact that most mothers can only dream of not working and that the newspaper articles glorifying moms at home don't present the full reality of American women's lives: "The vast majority of contemporary families cannot get by without women's income--especially now, when upwards of 70 percent of American families with children have all adults in the work force, when 51 percent of American women live without a husband, and when many women can expect to live into their 80s and beyond."

The article's argument as to why the proliferation of lopsided stories is destructive also rings true: "Here's why [it] matters: If journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution."

Compared to this even-handed, sympathetic, cogent article, my earlier arguments trying to make the same point were pretty much me foaming at the mouth. Thank you, E.J. Graff. Keep it coming.

To see more of E.J. Graff's research on this subject, click here.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  March 19, 2007; 7:45 AM ET  | Category:  Conflicts
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