The Good Wife No Longer

The hot new CBS series The Good Wife tells the story of a political wife who returns to practicing law after her husband gets caught toe-sucking and stealing. The show is one of several recent cultural nods of approval to women going back to work. Old-time comeback broads have been making a sneaky return on the big screen, what with the incomparable Meryl Streep as both Anna Wintour and Julia Child in two terrific movies. In the New York Times, we read stories [2] about the struggling sippy cup crowd trading their sandals for stilettos; compare them to Lisa Belkin’s famed “Opt Out Revolution [3]” article six years ago. And on reality TV, iconic supermom Kate Gosselin tries to support the family by filming a pilot for “The View for working moms.”

For more than two decades, educated American women (who are the only ones with a real choice about whether to work or not) were fed a pretty steady diet of tales of the joys of hearth and home. Remember Newsweek’s announcement [4] that (all together now) a 40-year-old woman was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to find a husband, and by extension a family? In the 1987 movie Baby Boom [5], Diane Keaton left her job as an advertising executive and went home to Vermont to tend to her dead cousin’s baby. To be sure, no trend is perfectly consistent—1992, after all, was the “Year of the Woman” election in which we stood in solidarity with Anita Hill. But most of the time, the stay-at-home hits kept on coming. Pepsi’s female CEO quits to stay home with her family [6]. She has baby hunger [7]. Other reasons not to work: Toxic nannies [8]. Saintly husbands [9]. Diaper-free toilet training [10]. It was probably predictable that someone would suggest, as Belkin did in 2003, that all this quitting and mothering was actually a new version of feminism—a revolution, no less.

But now back to work looks like a candidate for the new black. What happened?

The economic downturn is a candidate. The American Prospect’s Dana Goldstein reads [11] The Good Wife as an object lesson in the danger of separating one’s self from secure paid work. As labor economist Heather Boushey told me recently, the recession’s impact on families highlights the importance of women’s wages. And there is some statistical evidence [12] that since the economy tanked, women are staying at or going back to work after a period of reduced labor force participation.

Still and all, personally, I blame (or credit) John Edwards’ love child. Somehow, the stay-at-home moms digested without a burp the 2001 downturn, the vulgar infidelities of Bill Clinton, a small parade of Republican congressmen, and the ex- and current governors of New York. Despite this evidence of risk, women kept right on tucking their futures into their husbands’ distended pants pockets. But when Rielle Hunter, New Age videographer, showed up with an actual baby on the doorstep of the presidential contender and his cancer-ridden wife, you could almost see the camel’s back give way. The doubts about dependency had begun to surface a bit earlier, in the form of questions about Silda Wall Spitzer’s shell-shocked appearance [13] at her husband’s first press conference. But they bubbled over when media heavyweights started criticizing Elizabeth [14]for staying and reminding the public [15] that the formerly demonized Hillary Clinton had admirably gone back to work!

It’s about time. As The Good Wife harrowingly reveals, big-success husbands sometimes whore around and good jobs are hard to find, especially when you’re 40 and trying to scoot back in the door. Statistics show that if a woman stays out of work for three years—just three—she loses about 40 percent of her earning power. Forever. And if her husband’s errant ways end in divorce, her financial resources, from all sources, go down by about 20 percent on average [16]. Forever.

If this sounds familiar coming from me, that’s because it is [17]. But it was hard to get my message through when the targets were all woman-ing the barricades of the opt-out revolution.

The real lesson here is not that women should follow what the culture says this minute but that they need to stop heeding ever-changing cultural signals. Periodically, the culture produces a new life plan for elite women, treating them like the rats in an experiment in human flourishing. “Let’s try having it all.” “No, let’s try nesting!” “No, going back to work.” Meanwhile, elite men don’t suffer from the same whiplash. Their marching orders stay the same: Get educated, get to work, earn a lot, spend time with your kids (OK, that part’s new), but don’t let it interfere with your professional prospects (old). In other words, as a human, you live best if you preserve your autonomy, use your capacities to the fullest, and stay in the realm where you can have the greatest impact. Women are human. Why aren’t those time-tested life lessons always good for us, too?