Thanks so much for posting this video! I am so sick of the "mommy wars!" Conservatives attack liberals for not having "family values;" women attack each other for being childfree/having children/working/not working ... and on and on! Not to sound Pollyanna about it, but why do we have to fight with each other so much about this issue? I don't have children but I feel for the mothers I know whether they stay at home, go to work or do some combination of that. It's never easy to be a mother. Let's ease up off them a little!

I made the mistake of talking to my boss before my hubby & I started trying to conceive, because I needed to know my options about working from home. Since then, I feel that I've been passed over for promotions because they think I'm going to leave to raise a child. (Meanwhile, a man in my dept recently had a child, and he's been promoted twice.) I have no proof of this, but this is making me not feel very inclined to return to work after we do have a baby.

This is probably not a very uncommon experience - that businesses expect women to leave or be unreliable after they have a child and start passing her over the minute she starts down the path to babydom, even despite the protections of Family & Medical Leave Act and Title VII.

There are more factors to "opting out" than just the "mommy wars". I may end up "opting out" simply because of this subtle discrimination.

I think the issue is the workplace, not women 'opting out.' As Pam Stone says, there can be no "opting" when there isn't a range of options. 2nd wave feminists (like me) hoped the workplace would change to integrate life and work (I brought my baby into my office where he slept in a basket and I could breast feed him on demand. Instead professional hours are longer than ever, mothers are assumed to be the only or the 'primary' caregiver and the workplace hasn't changed a whit, other than that there are more of us in it (which is good!).

As I understand it, 3rd wavers stress difference and want the world of work to accommodate those differences. I agree. There will never be equality until this revolution is achieved.

penguinlady, I don't think that discrimination you're experiencing is subtle at all, and I think it is very common among other women too. I recall a recent story on feministing about this very phenomenon, and a lot of the reader's comments shared very similar stories. Certainly not surprising that the MSM sells it as a 'choice' that women are making...

I wouldn't call it opting out. More like pushed out. I have seen it happen to co-workers many many times. I have experienced it myself through unbending workplaces that would make a single person without committments break.

What burns me though is the employers that will tell people they are oh so family friendly when looking for potential employees and then don't walk the walk in the workplace.

It is poor journalism if she cannot get to why massive prefabbed workweeks get any credibility at all. Also was there no editor at all when she said 'not fair to women' in the context of this one; as if Stone were unprepared or merely stumping for Congress?

Thank you for posting the video. It is so true that women are forced to choose or the choice is made for them. My friend was "let go" from her job when she told them she was pregnant. But she didn't fight back because at the time she wanted to focus on having a healthy pregnancy and didn't want the stress of going through courts. Plus, she didn't have the resources at the time to hire a lawyer. Her situation was blatant while others may not be. But the fact remains that women are still in a predicament when it comes to "having it all." As a yound woman who does want to "have it all" I am troubled by this and it makes me ponder my own future and the choices that I will have to make one day.

Thank you for posting the video. It is so true that women are forced to choose or the choice is made for them. My friend was "let go" from her job when she told them she was pregnant. But she didn't fight back because at the time she wanted to focus on having a healthy pregnancy and didn't want the stress of going through courts. Plus, she didn't have the resources to hire a lawyer. Her situation was blatant while others may not be. But the fact remains that women are still in a predicament when it comes to "having it all." As a young woman who does want to "have it all" I am troubled by this and it makes me ponder my own future and the choices that I will have to make one day.

NPR's "On the Media" did a story this weekend on the media narrative of "opting out" and "mommy wars." Nothing really earth-shatteringly new (to us), but nice to see NPR analyzing this as media hype instead of a new sociological trend.

I think, Mangotown, that the interview was pared down into soundbites. For more details, you'd probably have to check out her book.

Pamela's book is great - I recommend! (For more about the book, there's a review up on Girl with Pen...)