As the new term begins we pause to reflect on the year past
GUEST BLOG—By
Anne-Marie Slaughter, New America President and CEO.
Editor's Note: Anne-Marie Slaughter delivered Tufts University’s commencement speech May 18, 2014, touching on the themes of the breadwinning and caregiving program. Below is that address. Reprinted by permission of the article’s source New America Foundation, www.Newamerica.net.
Editor's Note: Anne-Marie Slaughter delivered Tufts University’s commencement speech May 18, 2014, touching on the themes of the breadwinning and caregiving program. Below is that address. Reprinted by permission of the article’s source New America Foundation, www.Newamerica.net.
Oh Happy Day! To all members of the graduating classes, look around you.
This day is ostensibly about you, but it is equally about your families, all
those you love, whether they are biologically related to you or not, who come
together to celebrate the milestones of your life with you. They are with you
for birthdays, coming of age ceremonies, graduations, weddings, births, and
anniversaries. And they are with you in the darker moments of life, supporting
you in disappointments, depression, and the loss of those you love. Indeed,
part of what defines a milestone is that family members gather to share it.
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Anne-Marie Slaughter |
TO THE YOUNG MEN IN THE
AUDIENCE: Graduates and your brothers, cousins, and friends. You are still in
your early to mid 20s. Too soon, at least for most of you, to be thinking about
families of your own. But as you begin to plot your careers, you should be
thinking about how you will combine your work lives with your family lives. If
you imagine yourself as a father, how will you adapt your career to accommodate
caring for those you love in what is one of the most rewarding phases of your
life?
Think hard about your
fathers and grandfathers. Have they had enough time to spend with you? Have
they been able to be whole men, developing their caring sides as well as their
competitive sides? Have they been able to love and give fully, not only as
fathers but also as sons themselves, as husbands, brothers, uncles and friends?
What will they say at the end of their lives in terms of what they wish they
had done differently or had more time for? Ask them now and plan your lives
accordingly.
Part of what defines a
milestone is that family members gather to share it.
Think about the different
phases of your career. How will you be able to be an equal partner with the
person you choose to spend your life with? 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? 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?
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.
TO THE YOUNG WOMEN IN THE
AUDIENCE: graduates, sisters, cousins, and friends. As our society is currently
structured, you are much more likely to have begun thinking about these issues
than your male peers, which is our first mistake. But as you think about your
careers, do not automatically assume that it is principally up to YOU to
balance career and family. Do not choose a career or a specialty within a
career on the grounds that it has the flexibility to allow you do both. Choose
a career on the basis of what you are passionate about doing. And then choose a
husband or a wife on the assumption that you will be genuinely equal partners:
that you will both be breadwinners but also caregivers: perhaps for children,
for those family members who took care of you, or for each other.
But then plan for the likelihood
that it will NOT be possible for you both to be breadwinners and caregivers
without compromises, no matter how much you lean in. Not only because life
throws you curveballs, with children who need more time or care than others,
marriages that crumble, loved ones who get sick. But also because even when you
are making it work, cramming every minute of every day with the frenzy of
fitting work schedules and care schedules together, you may find that is simply
not how you want to live.
Choose a career on the basis
of what you are passionate about doing.
Plan for the possibility
that it will be your spouse who slows down or stops working to support your
career, at least for a while. But for that to work, you must rethink what you
value in your spouse. If you marry a man, you must see his caring side as every
bit as masculine as his competitive side. Depending on your own ambitions, you
may out earn him, and your children may call for him first when they are hurt
or wake in the middle of the night. He may be the greatest logistician your
household has ever seen, even if it looks and runs like a sports camp or a
fraternity.
Look for a man who thinks
Don Draper has missed out on what is most important in life. Who is secure
enough to be able to support you differently than your father or grandfather
supported your mother or grandmother. Who is confident and competent enough to
provide the flexibility and foundation to allow you to reach for the stars.
TO THE PARENTS AND
GRANDPARENTS IN THE AUDIENCE: You play a critical role here. Those of you who
are here to celebrate the achievements of your sons and grandsons may be
thinking that you did not pay for a Tufts degree – and all of you have paid in
at least some way – for your boy to be anything other than a primary
breadwinner through his career. But if you want him to be able to have a family
of his own – a healthy, happy family – and you want him someday to be able to
take care of YOU, you must support him in any role he chooses.
And for those of you who are
here to celebrate the achievements of your daughters and granddaughters, if
they marry a man who makes compromises in his own career to support them, do
NOT question what kind of a husband or provider he is. He will be providing
what your daughter needs most.
Look for a man who thinks
Don Draper has missed out on what is most important in life. Who is secure
enough to be able to support you differently than your father or grandfather
supported your mother or grandmother.
TO THE PRESIDENT, TRUSTEES,
FACULTY AND STAFF OF THIS GREAT UNIVERSITY: Make a commitment, as you teach and
nurture the classes that come after the ones before you, to model and support
healthier, happier lives. Push back against your students’ impulses, honed by
their high school efforts to get into top institutions like this one, to fill
every minute of every day. Remind them that time spent “hanging out’ with their
friends – talking, laughing, eating and playing – is every bit as valuable as
one more course or extra-curricular activity.
Celebrate idleness. Yes,
idleness. The students of creativity have long known what neuroscientists can
now actually prove: that our greatest insights and discoveries come not when we
are doubling down staring at a computer screen or into a microscope, but when
we sit back, rub our eyes, go for a walk, read a book, or give our children a
bath. Isaac Newton did not discover gravity in a laboratory. He was sitting
under a tree. The physicist Richard Feynman did his Nobel Prize winning work
when he was watching students spinning plates in the cafeteria. Often you must
slow down for your mind to speed up.
TO THE GRADUATES: That you
are graduating from this institution on this day in this country at this time
in history means that you are privileged. You are positioned to make a
difference in the world. USE THAT POSITION TO CLAIM AND DEFEND YOUR HUMANITY.
Do not accept the workplace
that sees you as a human replacement for an automaton, someone who can work
24/7 and is always able to jump on a plane. Reject time macho. Refuse to be a
facetime warrior. When your coworkers and later your employees compete as to
who can put in the most hours in a day, suggest to them that they must be very
inefficient workers. Pity them for not having enough depth and breadth to get a
life. Judge work by the quality of what they produce, not by the number of hours
that they put in.
Do not accept the workplace
that sees you as a human replacement for an automaton, someone who can work
24/7 and is always able to jump on a plane.
Stand up for what will
increasingly separate you from the robots that will threaten to replace
you. Stand up for play, for the leisure
that will renew you and recharge you. Stand up for love. Stand up for each
other and equally importantly for all those who do not have the privilege that
you do. Stand up for their right to have a life of meaningful work that earns
them a living and the time and resources to enjoy their lives.
Let me end as I began.
Remember this day. A day of leaving and beginning, of letting go and holding
fast. Remember this world: your teachers, mentors, coaches, and all the people
who took care of you here, from the groundskeepers to the food servers to the
janitors. (And don’t worry, should you
show any signs of forgetting, the alumni office will come and find you!)
Remember not only this ceremony but all the celebrations around it: the
lunches, brunches, dinners and drinks with the people you love who have come to
toast your success.
Today is a day that weaves
you all together, that strengthens the very fabric of family. So remember that
if that family comes first throughout your life, your work will not come
second. Your life will come together.
Thank you.
http://weeklywonk.newamerica.net/editions/big-ideas-big-data-warfare/#article-9
About Anne-Marie Slaughter
The president and CEO of the New America Foundation,
Anne-Marie also hosts the magazine's weekly podcast, writes a monthly column
for Project Syndicate, has written or edited six books, and contributes to the
The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy.
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