Dear Valentine: You Can Have It All

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Note:  Check out Indian Love Poems and the Kama Sutra.

There’s a reason why the guy in your life comes around with chocolates and/or flowers on Valentine’s Day. This husband/ boyfriend knows he has it good.  He’s trying to divert your attention, sweetheart.  It’s like bosses take their secretaries out for lunch once a year.  Big deal!  The assumption is that we women are stupid and haven’t noticed that the double standard is far from dead.

Sometimes, it's suggested, the bribes should be diamonds—in a heart-shaped setting, of course, and maybe diamonds are better than chocolates. They don’t make you fat.  You can pawn them, too.  But the deal is the same.  Who has the gift-giving purchasing-power, according to the ads and commercials?  It isn’t the lady.  

Sure, there are some female CEOs these days, and many universities enroll more gals than guys, but the conventional wisdom, even for female Ph.Ds, is this: you can’t have it all.  Think very very small.

I want to make this mind-numbing truth clear: the person being advised against dreams that soar is female.  The magazines and op-ed pages are full of it. Preachers preach it.  Psychologists reinforce it.
 
To Wit: a woman can’t have marriage AND children AND a career, they say, and be anything but miserably dissatisfied with her performance all round.  We can’t have it all, dear sisters, and be happy.  It’s an impossible dream, babe. 

Hmmmmm. No one tells the testosterone-empowered: choose between self-fulfillment and fatherhood. No one lays guilt trips on guys who don’t score ten out of ten on every life task every day.  Perfect professional.  Perfect husband.  Perfect father.  Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  Robotic.  Like something made of plastic.

But that’s what women are supposed to be.  Ten out of ten.  24/7.  When some conscientious working woman scores a mere eight or nine in the mothering category or the husband-pleasing category, she’s encouraged to tear herself apart for having allocated a smidgen of her time/energy/creativity/ intelligence/self to her job.  Foolish selfish greedy woman! We told you so. You can’t have everything.

So here’s the cherry-brandy-creme, supper-truffle secret: the game is rigged.  The standards are radically different for men and women. 

And here’s how it works: 

Look at the families you know, the ones featuring full time wives and mothers, women who believe they can’t (or shouldn’t) have it all, the ones totally devoted (they say) to so-called traditional family values.  Are their children sublimely well-adjusted and always happy and never delinquent?  Are their husbands so divinely happy their lustful eyes never wander and divorce is never on the agenda?  Are their meals perfectly nutritious gourmet productions all the time?  Are their houses always neat and fit to be featured in Architectural Digest? 

Of course not.  So why on earth should working women be made to feel selfish, inadequate and deeply guilty and what all, when their realities don’t equate to some unattainable fantasy notion of ideal family life?

They shouldn’t.   That's my valentine to all of us.

So keep your job.  Enjoy your children.  Construct a well-rounded life.  Along with a partner (if you can find one) who understands it's okay for you to be as human and imperfect as he is.  And enjoy those delicious chocolates, in moderation, all year round.

P.S.  It’s not so bad if you’re the one who buys them.