While many women hope to balance a career and child rearing, Lindsay Deane '08 hopes to be a stay-at-home mother, although she remains realistic that she may need to work for financial reasons.
"My goal is to be wealthy enough that I don't have to work, but smart enough or educated enough that I am able to have a job that I would desire" Deane said. "It's about having options. You come to Dartmouth to have options."
Many female students, like Deane, said they plan to put their families before their careers at some point in the future.
When approached by The Dartmouth, women on campus did not seem shocked by the notion that some of their Ivy League peers aspire to be mothers rather than chief executives, and no one saw obtaining degrees before motherhood as a waste of time or resources.
"It's a positive thing to have any Ivy League education and to leave college with choices," Emily Hess '05 said. "You can either stay at home or you can have a career but either way you're educated and don't necessarily need to be dependent on another person."
Dartmouth women said they do not view staying home as anti-feminist. On the contrary, many women see having the option to stay home a benefit of feminism, saying that the purpose of feminism was gaining opportunities and choices.
"I think it's about making your own decisions," Shala Byers '07 said, "having a degree gives you a lot of independence with what you want to do with your life."
Byers, who plans on pursuing a job in marketing and advertising, thinks it is possible to balance a career and a family.
"I wouldn't be opposed to having kids and then working from home, which is what a lot of people are doing," she said.
Other women agreed that a job and a family are not mutually exclusive.
"I definitely would like to be a mother, and I hope I'm in the situation where I can take a few years off to be with my kids, but I certainly have no intentions of abandoning my career, whatever that may be," Laura Pearlstein '07 said.
Pearlstein said it's almost a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. At a her ten-year Ivy League reunion, Pearlstein said she expects women to receive stares from people who cannot relate to their decisions to stay home.
"Factions of society are not going to like either decision," Pearlstein said.
Women said they do not mind the label "stay-at-home mom" because it no longer connotes washing dishes and folding socks.
"I think the definition of 'stay-at-home mom' means you're not going to necessarily have a career in consulting or banking, but you may be a lot more involved in your community or volunteer work," Hess said.
Hess, who is engaged to be married this year, works in Washington D.C. at the National Partnership for Women and Children.
Deane, whose mother has spent her time volunteering and raising two children, said she hopes to follow in her mother's footsteps.
"There's no saying that being a stay-at-home mom is any less important to helping out the future of our country or world for that matter," she said.
Other women hope to establish a career before having children and said they may or may not decide to return to work.
After graduating from Dartmouth one year early, Karen Kramer '06, now Karen Mizell, is married and attending business school at the University of Michigan.
Mizell said she decided to attend business school right out of college partly because she does not want her education or career to conflict with having children.
"I don't want having kids to derail my career," Mizell said. "Having a family is important to me, but I'm certainly not going to let that stop my career at all."
According to College Statistician John Pryor, among seniors graduating in 2005, men and women planned on entering the workforce or attending graduate school in equal numbers, and an equal number of men and women listed raising a family as a life goal.
History and women and gender studies professor Annelise Orleck said she believes most women would like to stay at home given the financial opportunity to do so. She noted that a recent article about the subject in The New York Times skipped over the idea that most men would like to spend more time with their children as well.
"It fits a political agenda without necessarily being accurate in what it reflects," Orleck said.
But Orleck also pointed out that three-fourths of American families must rely on a double income.
"So much of it depends on your financial situation of what you can afford to do and what kind of lifestyle you want to give your kids," Hess said.
Psychology professor Janine Scheiner said some women are hesitant to admit their housewife aspiration, depending on "what messages they get from society and loved ones about electing motherhood."
Scheiner, who is not pursuing a tenure-track position to spend more time with her children, "applauds" women who choose whatever is best.
"The key is for women to be clear about what they want and pursue it," she said. "That's what the women in the Women's Liberation movement wanted for women."
