Column“Lean In” continues to divide women on issues related to work, privilege and balance. Is my decision to go freelance leaning in or leaning out?

Sheryl Sandberg and the Lean In brand have suffered a few blows recently.

Sandberg threw her big name behind Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a congressional candidate who has a consistent record of voting against women’s rights.

Then there’s the Makers Conference. What started as a documentary about the history of women’s equality is now its own fancy-schmancy entity — and Sandberg is at the center of the controversy. Makers’ three-day (invite-only) conference where she and other powerhouses plan to “reset the agenda for women in the workplace in the 21st century” is under fire for its obvious elitism.

But, I mean, Chelsea Handler will be there, so at least it should be a good time.

With this renewed interest in — albeit criticism, of “Lean In” — I’m looking at my own recent choice to leave my full-time job and go out on my own and wondering: Which way am I leaning?

Some might say the decision to leave a career where I was on the team of strategic decision-makers for a company is leaning out. But, I am building my own business, which is a definite lean in. I’m incorporating, you guys!

That said, the path to Libby, Inc. may not impress Sandberg. I spent a lot of time chasing the dream job until I realized that the magical ‘90s office (with work-life balance built into the culture in the form of a ping pong table and a keg) didn’t exist anymore — if it ever did.

I have quit 13 full-time jobs since graduating from college. Yet I have managed to advance in my field and learn new things. In fact, I have learned enough stuff to feel good about my ability to make a living working for myself. That brings me to work-life balance — or, the lean.

I’m working way more hours than I did as a full-time employee and I’m making less money. But, I went to yoga this morning, regularly wear yoga pants all day and take breaks to cuddle with my dog.

I work from home nearly every day, and if you know anything about the weather in Chicago this winter, this is a perk that cannot be underestimated. And I’d say this to the queen of working from the office, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer: I can prove that I get more done out of an office.

While I’m not Makers Conference invite privileged, I don’t take it for granted that even thinking about work-life balance is a privilege. I’m extremely lucky to have a choice in how I make a living, and to have had access to an education that enabled me to get the jobs that have taken me this far.

My goal isn’t to lean in or lean out. My goal is to stay centered and recognize that balance and success are intertwined, not different sides of a coin.

Related on EcoSalon

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Image: Giorgio Montersino

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

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ColumnAre you meant to be a mother? That’s a question many women don’t truly ask before they plunge into the world of nappies and sore nipples. Lots of us do it because after all – isn’t it just what we do after we graduate from college, spend a few years having fun, and eventually get married? Not so fast — childfree women have a lot to teach the rest of us about consciously choosing our path to parenthood.

People always say that having a kid is the best thing they’ve ever done, and I’m sure that’s true. But it’s not a given that all women want to be mothers.

Much of today’s column is adapted from a piece I wrote a few years ago called “My Uterus is Officially Closed for Business and I Have No Regrets”. Since I wrote it, we’ve collectively deconstructed “Leaning In” and “Why Women Can’t Still Have it All.” During the debates about each of these books/articles, childfree women were mostly ignored and overlooked. Let’s look at them them now.

When I first started the research for “Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable” (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press, 2010), I was still planning to have 2.0 kids, au naturel. I have always cried at the sight of infants and love crawling on the floor with my friend’s toddlers: having at least one biological baby seemed like an inevitable step. But then I wrapped my brain around the relationship of overpopulation to climate change, especially in the West, and made a big decision: my body won’t bring more kids into the world. I learned that even if I spent the rest of my life recycling, having even one biological child would increase my carbon legacy by 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide. My uterus is officially closed for business. I’ll probably be adopting kids when the time, money, and living space is right. But if I don’t, it certainly won’t be the end of my world.

As a freelance writer and sex columnist who makes her living in New York City, my life doesn’t exactly suck. I’ve got family, friends and endless culture at my fingertips. I can travel, go to dinner parties and parties that end long after dinner is finished. I can take a yoga class when I want to, dance till the wee hours, or just cuddle up in front of the TV. I have the time to be passionate about my various causes. I make my own hours and live a life built on my own needs and inspirations. Ain’t bad at all. In fact, childfree couples may be happier than couples with children, at least according to a recent study in the UK.

But if you hold my life up to the lens of our baby-bump-obsessed culture, there’ s a planet-sized chasm in my world: the lack of a child. Some parents seem to hold me simultaneously in contempt and awe, something few are willing to verbalize. One friend with two kids once let it slip that he believes choosing not to have children is “selfish.” Even though I’m not a traditional childfree woman (because I plan to adopt or foster a child someday), I still get constant questions from people of every age: “But when?” and, “Why wouldn’t you want your own kids?” as if adopted children are somehow less lovable than one’s “own” kids. “You’ll change your mind,” is a classic comment, usually from older people with teenagers or grown children.

So what about women who’ve decided that child-rearing, both biological and otherwise, is not on their agenda at all? Imagine how they they feel every time someone says, “But don’t you want kids?” or, “Don’t worry, you’ll change your mind.” People react to the idea of women not having children with total incredulity, shock, and worst of all, pity. They assume it’s a case of infertility in disguise, a lack of a relationship, or that women without kids “hate children.” In the majority of cases, it’s none of the above. I’m in a weird in-between category because I do plan to bring kids into my life one day. Still, I feel like it’s incredibly important to defend my sisters who are childfree or childless by choice, depending on your preferred parlance.

Lisa Hymas, Grist writer and coiner of the acronym GINK (green inclinations, no kids) has written an enlightening post: “Say it Loud: I’m Child-free and I’m Proud,” one in a series all about living child-free. Laura S. Scott, the author of “Two Is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice” (Seal Press, 2009) does a wonderful job of profiling this burgeoning movement of women (and men) who are loud and proud about their child-free status. Especially in a political climate like the current one, where a woman’s right to choose is under the most serious threat in history, women who have chosen not to have children need to come out of the childfree closet. Worldwide population will hit the nine-billion mark by the middle of the century, and the GOP is fighting the war on women with unmitigated zeal. They’re especially hard on Planned Parenthood, the organization that does the most to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Hello, outrageous hypocrisy.

It should be acknowledged that there are plenty of people who desperately want kids but can’t have them easily — infertile couples, gay couples, singles who don’t want to do it alone, etc. This isn’t to diminish their very real emotions about having children. At the same time, we shouldn’t be afraid to look at how unhealthy our obsession with children has become. Children are, of course, precious; however, in our society, they are deeply fetishized. Isn’t it possible that the massive sadness and mourning that infertile women experience is built, in part, on society’s view of them as “barren” women? Why do they think their lives will be empty without biological kids? This is something we should talk about openly and often, especially with young women.

Take a group of girls between three and five, playing house. Inevitably, one girl will always want to be the mother. Another will dig the “older sister” role. Another will prefer to be the baby. Some even want to be the dad. None of these choices are wrong — they just are. But as young girls grow into tweens and teens and then young women, our roles are constantly defined in smaller and smaller terms by a society that insists that we’re probably not of much value unless we have children. And this socialization is so deeply built into our understanding of our self-worth that it’s almost impossible for women to know where they end and being a mother begins. Having a child is a deeply personal decision and no cultural standard or cycle of shame should have any part in determining it.

Plenty of us are probably not meant  to have children — maybe our art is our baby, something to be nurtured and then sent off into the world. Maybe we have a house of rescued pets. Maybe we’re off in a developing nation helping people to lead healthy, sustainable lives. We need to be conscious first — to know ourselves, our values, our deeply felt, real wants and needs — not those that have been constructed by the culture we’re immersed in. Compulsory motherhood makes every woman feel that choosing NOT to give birth is exceptional — or worse — something to feel guilty for. Choosing to be a mother (or not) is complicated — but it needs to be a choice, not something women do because it’s the thing that everyone else does.

Think about all the abused children whose parents’ baggage has become their baggage — simply because there was no consciousness around having kids. They just did what they thought they were put here to do. Babies and young children are wildly intuitive in ways that we can’t even imagine. If they’re not exactly treasured — or worse, seen as a burden — it’s a good bet that they can feel that in their tiny bodies. And even though they can’t process it intellectually, just wait until they’re grown up.

After a deliberate, conscious period of grappling with whether or not we truly want them, the children we do bring into the world will be happier and more psychologically sound — because they’ll know we weren’t ambivalent about having them.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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The post Compulsory Motherhood vs. Being Childfree: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThese are the feminist books you really want to read.

Did you already read, love and then learn to hate Lean In? Is the Feminine Mystique too mysterious for you? Here are 14 feminist books I wish someone would write. Note: many of these dream book titles are meant to be tongue-in-cheek–and reflect that feminists can be into non-stereotypically feminist stuff (yes, I’m looking at you, Connie Britton’s hair!).

14 Feminist Books Someone Should Write

1. I’m Not a Feminist, But… Yes You Are
2. Connie Britton’s Hair: A Tell-All Scratch and Sniff
3. 10 Ways to Win Against the Office Mean Girl
4. Jersey Girl: Why No One, Ever, Should Wear a Pink Red Sox/Bears/Whatever Shirt
5. Ramona Quimby: Age 38
6. Lean Out, Way Out: Feminist Living Off the Grid
7. Being a Short-Hair In a Long-Hair World
8. How to be Awesome at Stuff: By Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
9. The Top 25 Jobs for Feminists
10. Infusing Feminist Ideas: How to Feminist-ize All Aspects of Your Life
11. Raising a Feminist Dog
12. Tongue Tricks, Twerking and Other Disasters: By Miley Cyrus (publication date: 2025)
13. Pantsuits: A Collection of Photos
14. Shut Your Legs: Men, the Subway and Getting a Damn Seat

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Navigating Girl World: Advice to My 2nd Grade Self

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Image: Liz Henry

The post 14 Feminist Books Someone Should Write: That Happened appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column Until we remove the stigma around feminism and stop creating barriers between each other, we’re not going to achieve equality, no matter how far in we may lean.

The first act of feminism I witnessed was mortifying. I was at my Brownie Fly-Up ceremony, the celebration of our troop graduating from Brownies to Girl Scouts. There we were. On stage. And the leaders of all of the local troops were supposed to sing us a song before we walked the ceremonial bridge over a mirror, which is actually a little creepy when you think about it, to become Girl Scouts. I watched in horror as our leaders—one of whom was my own mother—stood silently staring into the crowd. Not singing.

Suddenly, Troop 310 was walking the plank. I glared at my mom and asked why she had done that to me. She replied, “Did you listen to the words of the song?” I had not.

It was a cheery rhyming number, the gist of which was that while we failed at everything from tent-pitching to sports, they were letting us graduate anyway. I looked for this song in the official Girl Scout songbook and came up empty. It was probably a local specialty.

At the time, I cared very little about the words and just wanted my mom to have sung and shut up about it. On the way home, we had a long talk about what it would have meant. I lived in a house where Ms. Magazine sat comfortably on the table with an assortment of novels, the New Yorker and newspapers. I distinctly remember an intimidatingly heavy-looking book called Backlash on the table for a while. When my mom explained why the song was wrong, I got it. I was still pissed because, at eight, being embarrassed is about the worst thing possible. But I got it: As a feminist, you don’t belittle yourself and your friends. This is a lesson I have had to relearn many, many times.

And it’s a lesson that seems to be getting lost with this new generation of feminism. This wave (I forget how many waves we’ve had at this point) started last year with Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic: Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. Talk about backlash.

Cut to today. Marissa Mayer doesn’t identify as a feminist and is, I think, just trying to do her job. But she has been repeatedly criticized for not being a role model for real women, especially the working kind. Then we have Sheryl Sandberg a self-defined feminist starting a deliberate movement.

The criticism of Sandberg has been severe. She doesn’t understand real women. She’s judging us for not working hard enough. She doesn’t get what it takes to make it when you’re not the COO of Facebook (though I would argue that getting to that point in her own career means that she most certainly does get it). We’re picking her apart.

These new voices in mainstream conversations about feminism have a lot in common, which they talk openly about: they are wealthy, straight, attractive, white women. This is the same problem Gloria Steinem faced in the ’70s. Despite the progress Steinem made, she was accused of not understanding the plight of everyone else, of creating an elitist, exclusive movement dedicated to the advancement of a few. Sounds a lot like what people are saying about Sandberg’s book and social campaign, Lean In. Have we not progressed at all?

Once again, we are undermining ourselves because we don’t see ourselves directly reflected in Sandberg’s mirror. But, while our finances might look different, Sandberg argues that we all face the same struggle. In her recent 60 Minutes interview, she says that as women we all learned to downplay our accomplishments from a young age (hell, some of us were even encouraged to celebrate our alleged failures in song). Girls who displayed leadership skills were deemed bossy; as we get older bossy becomes bitchy. She notes that women hold themselves back to avoid these negative stereotypes. While we hold ourselves back, we also take down those women who don’t.

Sandberg is not saying, “Lean in and be me,” but she only has her own life experience to draw from. She’s saying, lean into your own life and ask for whatever it is that you want or need. And yes, it will be easier for women with supportive partners and good jobs. The best response, I think, to her advice about work is Jody Greenstone Miller’s piece in the Wall Street Journal: It’s about changing the structure of the American workday so that all people—parents and singles alike—can have a fulfilling life outside of work. Figure out a way to let people who don’t have Sandberg’s advantages leave work at 5:30, too.

There are many women (and men) just struggling to get by who might look at all of this and say, this isn’t about me. But it is. Feminism has long been about giving a voice to those who are silenced, and Sandberg has the stage. She acknowledges her status and said during the 60 Minutes interview, “Yes, it’s easier for me to say this, and that’s why I am saying it.”

It’s time we stop shooting the messenger and listen to her message. It’s time to stop saying, “I’m not a feminist, but of course I believe I deserve to have a place at whatever table I’m sitting at. I’m not a feminist, but I should be paid as much as my male counterpart. I’m not a feminist, but I think women are equal to men.” It’s long-past time to remove the stigma around feminism, stop creating barriers between each other, and get down to the real conversations about equality at work and at home. As long as we separate ourselves because of a word, we’re not going to achieve equality no matter how far in we may lean.

Image: Lean In

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