What Larry Summers Got Right

Are 80-hour workweeks the only model of success? Isn't there a better way that doesn't leave women who want children--and men who want to see their children--with all-or-nothing propositions? This is not a new problem. The era of World War II, when women were vital to war production, was the first time married women outnumbered single women in the American workplace. It was also one of the first times the issue of child care for working women became part of the public debate. FORTUNE magazine, in 1943, recognized the double duty that women were being asked to perform and suggested that something had to give. "If the present makeshift conditions are not cleared up, the effects can easily be imagined: a rise in absenteeism, worry, lowered morale--all of which means less production--not to mention permanent scars on the bodies and minds of American children." That was in 1943. You'd think we would have arrived at better solutions by 2005.

Now that Summers has stumbled onto the problem, his university could lead the way out. Just listening to some of its own graduates would be a good start. Joan Williams, head of the Program on WorkLife Law at American University, wrote in a Harvard Law School alumni bulletin, "Defining your 'ideal worker' as someone who works 60 hours a week is not good business. You are choosing whom to keep based on the schedule they can keep, not based on the quality of their work." Some solutions to this aren't exactly new ideas: flextime, for example, and restructuring career tracks to accommodate instead of punish parenthood and caregiving to elderly family members. But actually getting society to embrace those as acceptable for both genders is where the challenge lies.

Chloe has told me she wants to run her own film-production company some day. I look forward to hearing all about it when we can resume our Sunday chats on the phone. I just hope Larry Summers waits until she leaves Harvard (or he does) before he questions whether genetics explains why most heads of film-production companies are men.

Emily Yellin is the author of Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II