This airy claim to competitive advantages, special bargaining rights, and unspecified tax benefits for those who make the private decision to have children is a blatant form of special pleading. Further, these women claim to be different from men in tone or temperament-and, by implication, better. In fairness to Keohane, there is a solid elitist argument to be made for reintegrating mothers into the work force as soon as possible. It is also the rationale for the family leave bill, vetoed by President Bush but signed by Clinton, that compels employers to rehire staff who take extended leaves to fulfill emergency family responsibilities. While there is a more airtight case to be made for the optional mommy track than for the obligatory preservation of jobs during family leave, both are premised on the real world in which we live-a world in which women voluntarily take on a disproportionate share of domestic worries.
Feminists object to such arrangements on three grounds.
First, they do not wish to validate what they see as an unequal sharing of the household burden, based on what they reject as stereotypical views of the roles of the sexes. Second, they see compromise as a betrayal of feminism's promise of unlimited options. The choice between career and family is so painful that women would rather not make it-and feminist activists are offering the illusory promise that they will not have to. The truth is, however, that in our culture most of the jobs truly worth having, those that are stimulating and demanding and full of intellectual peril, cannot be confined to forty hours a week or anything remotely like it. Working mothers of young children can hardly accommodate themselves to the minimum demands, let alone the maximum and erratically scheduled demands of the best jobs.