Child-rearing disrespected

I appreciated Mona Charen’s March 12 column on Sheryl Sandberg’s book, “Lean In.” The exhausted argument that women are dropping out to stay home and raise children is contrasted with the corner office and gobs of money as life’s Holy Grail. The antithesis to this standard of success is raising one’s own children as a full- or part-time choice. The disparaging language says it all: child-rearing is default mode for nothing better to do.

The conundrum: hire others to do cooking, housekeeping, child care, chauffeuring, etc., and all those people have real jobs. Do it yourself and you’re a slacker who’s exiled yourself to a gulag even if you planned to approach some of life’s challenges – like raising children – sequentially.

In the exquisite calculus of children, it’s really about your time. Even a billionaire can’t hire enough substitutes for that.

Penelope Rundle

Mead