![]() ![]() But I routinely got reactions from other women my age or older that ranged from disappointed (“It’s such a pity that you had to leave Washington”) to condescending (“I wouldn’t generalize from your experience. I have not exactly left the ranks of full-time career women: I teach a full course load write regular print and online columns on foreign policy give 40 to 50 speeches a year appear regularly on TV and radio and am working on a new academic book. When people asked why I had left government, I explained that I’d come home not only because of Princeton’s rules (after two years of leave, you lose your tenure), but also because of my desire to be with my family and my conclusion that juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible. ![]() But in January 2011, when my two-year public-service leave from Princeton University was up, I hurried home as fast as I could.Ī rude epiphany hit me soon after I got there. I had always assumed that if I could get a foreign-policy job in the State Department or the White House while my party was in power, I would stay the course as long as I had the opportunity to do work I loved. By the end of the evening, she had talked me out of it, but for the remainder of my stint in Washington, I was increasingly aware that the feminist beliefs on which I had built my entire career were shifting under my feet. ![]() “You, of all people.” What she meant was that such a statement, coming from a high-profile career woman-a role model-would be a terrible signal to younger generations of women. Then I said, “When this is over, I’m going to write an op-ed titled ‘Women Can’t Have It All.’” I told her how difficult I was finding it to be away from my son when he clearly needed me. when she got her job, which meant her husband commuted back to California regularly. She has two sons exactly my sons’ ages, but she had chosen to move them from California to D.C. My husband, who has always done everything possible to support my career, took care of him and his 12-year-old brother during the week outside of those midweek emergencies, I came home only on weekends.Ī debate on career and family See full coverageĪs the evening wore on, I ran into a colleague who held a senior position in the White House. And the previous spring I had received several urgent phone calls-invariably on the day of an important meeting-that required me to take the first train from Washington, D.C., where I worked, back to Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived. Over the summer, we had barely spoken to each other-or, more accurately, he had barely spoken to me. But I could not stop thinking about my 14-year-old son, who had started eighth grade three weeks earlier and was already resuming what had become his pattern of skipping homework, disrupting classes, failing math, and tuning out any adult who tried to reach him. I sipped champagne, greeted foreign dignitaries, and mingled. Obama hosted a glamorous reception at the American Museum of Natural History. On a Wednesday evening, President and Mrs. ![]() Eighteen months into my job as the first woman director of policy planning at the State Department, a foreign-policy dream job that traces its origins back to George Kennan, I found myself in New York, at the United Nations’ annual assemblage of every foreign minister and head of state in the world. ![]()
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