Bearing in mind that women now work both because they [think they] want to [because they saw it on a TV show] and because most families need two incomes [because they’re buried in consumer debt and their taxes are too high], she said, “That’s the way social norms work: They put pressure on people to
do what they’ve always dreamed of!conform.”
PLUS:
But social engineering is a blunt tool, and some worry that the freedom of working mothers has come at the expense of making outcasts of a minority who want to do things differently.
Jorun Lindell, a mother of three and the wife of a Swedish entrepreneur, tried being a housewife and could not make it work. “Sneered at,” she said, for her conviction that her children should have their mother at home, she learned that she also could not put them into state day care a few hours every day or week because it was reserved for families where both parents are either working, looking for work or studying.
She ended up enrolling at a university without any interest in her course, “wasting resources to get something our taxes already pay for,” she said.
There is no easy way to right the unintended consequences of well-meaning policy.
***
Er, yes there is, genius NYT writers:
Just get rid of that “well meaning policy” and don’t implement any more of them.
