Kim Clijsters and Harvard Women
Yesterday we talked about whether women who have kids are forced off the tenure track, or choose to step off it, or some combination of both.
In today's Times,
Selena Roberts writes about the decision of tennis player Kim Clijsters to retire at age 23.
Clijsters explained her reasons on her website.
(Tennis players blog! Curt Schilling blogs! Harvard profs...don't!)
Quitting tennis at an age of nearly 24 is pretty young still. I could have easily gone on and still reel in the four major big earners (three Grand Slams and the Masters). Money is important, but not the most important in my life. Health and happiness are so much more key to life.
...it is time for a new life. Time for marrying. Children? Time for cooking and playing with the dogs.
Systemic discrimination?
Roberts certainly doesn't think so. She suggests that the only thing wrong with this situation is that not every woman can afford to do it.
...
what women’s tennis may reveal is the same socially sanctioned element that ribbons through every Starbucks, where mommies with M.B.A.’s prefer to run play dates instead of boardroom meetings. In this circle, it’s O.K. to jump off the fast track for the mommy track or laugh track. Whatever makes a woman of means happy.
Let's just repeat that line, shall we?
...
mommies with M.B.A.’s prefer to run play dates instead of boardroom meetings....
In Manhattan, I see women like this all the time—women who can afford to jump out of the rat race because of their husbands' earning power, and happily, happily do
. Some of them have even gone to Harvard. I suspect there are many women whose husbands aren't rich who choose to do the same, either to be with their kids more or just because they're tired of working.
It's a choice that men really don't have
.....
