Women should not view professional success and loving motherhood as at odds with each other.

Authentic Feminine Excellence

by Angela Miceli

Women should not view professional success and loving motherhood as at odds with each other. Instead, women ought to cultivate an authentic and creative form of excellence that engages the whole person, with all her talents, in relation with others.

In her recent First Things article, Elizabeth Corey makes a bold critique of contemporary feminism. She argues that we contemporary women, as inheritors of feminism, have been told that we can “have it all,” that we ought to pursue excellence in the same manner as men—that is, in our education and in our careers. But, we have discovered, these pursuits come at a high cost.

“Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” the 2012 Atlantic article by tenured Princeton Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, illustrates this cost. Even though Slaughter was director of policy planning at the State Department, her dream job, she found herself more concerned with the day-to-day issues of her son’s life than with her high-profile government work. Her achievement of professional excellence, she realized, came at the cost of her family relationships.

Are women willing to sacrifice family and relationships to pursue and achieve such excellence? Is such a sacrifice worth it? And can we women really have it all?

For Corey, there is simply “no happy harmony” for women. Women cannot have it all, and they will never reconcile the pursuit of personal excellence in a profession and family life. She argues that the virtues required for pursuing excellence are antithetical to the virtues required for family life. Excellence in the development of one’s talents and career requires a focus solely on oneself, a “self-culture.” Family life requires an opposite disposition, a sacrificial gift of self that cannot be reconciled with what is necessary for personal achievement. There is no possible balance between these two radically different “orientations of the self,” Corey concludes.

Corey’s article assumes that there is simply no way for a woman to participate in the workplace, in the public sphere, in the pursuit of any excellence while also engaging the kind of self-gift necessary for the flourishing of her family. Perhaps she is right. According to a recent Forbes poll, a majority of women, even among those with advanced degrees from top universities, would prefer to stay at home with their children.

But even the ones who stay at home don’t “have it all” either. The author of the prominent Harvard Homemaker blog writes of being harshly criticized by some readers for “wasting” her top-quality education on childrearing and homemaking. Educated women who choose to stay at home are often scorned for purportedly refusing to develop their talents or to contribute their gifts to the world.

Admittedly, Corey’s analysis resonates with the experience of many. Although she may be right in arguing that there is no perfect work/life balance for women, I am less certain of Corey’s premise that there exist two radically opposed and ultimately irreconcilable ways of being. Why does Corey assume that the pursuit of a woman’s excellences and talents is limited to the office or the university? She assumes that excellence requires a radical focus on self. But is it even possible for us to pursue excellence outside our relationships?

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