‘It’s Like You Have to Have Career to Validate Yourself’

Donna Saltarelli is 35 years old, a wife, mother, energetic volunteer and, she says, a dinosaur. That’s how those around her sometimes make her feel. Like a relic, a curious throwback to another time.

She doesn’t have a paying job, by choice.

“I think why I get angry is because of this cultural imperative that says you are not valid if you don’t have a job,” she says. “It’s that paycheck. When you live in a materialistic society like we do, producing money is what it’s all about.”

And there is more to this dilemma. It’s about prestige and self-esteem, the division of labor between the sexes and even among those of the same sex. It cuts to the core of who we are and what we value.

“A friend of mine, a judge’s wife, went to a dinner the other night,” says Eileen Ford, a temporarily employed wife and mother who is 35 years old.

“The table was full of female attorneys and one of them turned to her and said, ‘What do you do?’ and she said, ‘I stay at home.’ No one talked to her after that.”

Denice Jones, 42, was a regional sales manager for a yacht manufacturer when she gave up her career 10 years ago to raise her son. She would do so again, she says, but still there are clues that her feelings about that choice remain in flux.

“Three years ago--I can picture the exact moment--this man came up to me at a cocktail party,” she says. “Then he says, ‘What do you do?’ and I didn’t have a response. I just stood there, and then he was embarrassed and started apologizing. Then I was embarrassed. . . . It’s like you almost have to have a career to validate yourself as a human being.”

I don’t believe that I would be having this particular conversation with these women, all of them college-educated and quick with their thoughts, if the time machine were turned back to, say, the year 1950.

The rules back then were more rigid, more unfair, but simpler. Women were primarily in the home. That was where they derived their worth.

Today, of course, most women are in the workplace, some of them more willingly than others. And standards, for mothers in particular, are more exacting, certainly more exhausting.

Five years ago, Barbara Hodgson, 39, quit her job as a benefits manager in Minnesota, with a salary of $50,000 a year, to follow her husband to a sales position out here. Now she works part time, by choice, in the library of her son’s elementary school.

“At first,” she says, “I really felt that I had let down the movement, that I was doing just what all those men had said. . . . But I had actually achieved what I wanted to achieve. I got there and said, ‘This is it?’

“In the end, you have to live for yourself. It wasn’t so much my son I quit for; he was doing great. It was me. I was the one who was missing out.”

Women with careers are guilty about not spending more time in the home, nurturing their kids. Women in the home are guilty about “wasting” their minds.

These are rough stereotypes--and I know many exceptions--but I believe they are founded on truths. Often women, and a growing number of men, are not completely satisfied with choosing between the extremes.

Choose, however, most of us must. Then we often find ourselves on the defensive.

Donna Saltarelli mentions the three boards that she sits on, the charities she helps, the books she reads, her ability to stump her husband, an attorney, at Trivial Pursuit. The oft-repeated phrase, “You don’t work,” sets her on edge.

“I find that in some settings, I’ll say, ‘I work, but I don’t get paid,’ ” adds Eileen Ford. “I feel that need.”

Denice Jones, who has a degree in economics, talks about the budget that she managed for the PTA--it was comparable to that of a small business--and the volunteer activities that take up so much of her time.

“It’s like that bumper sticker for the Girl Scouts, ‘Proud to be a Volunteer!’ ” she says. “My husband always encouraged me to work. He still does. . . . I think even for him, it’s difficult to believe that I like what I’m doing.”

Then one of the women says that sometimes, when she gets together with her friends, they talk about career women who never seem to have enough time for their kids. Maids take them here, friends pick them up there. These are the children who always seem to be the last to leave the playground yards.

“I worry about the fiber of our kids,” says Denice. “So many of them are in day care.”

Then I hear myself putting up my own defense. I wanted to stay for the Valentine Day’s party at my daughter’s preschool, but I didn’t have the time. I had to be here.

I worry that my neighbor, who has just started a part-time job, will move away. Then who will pick up my daughter from school? I wish it could be me.

“I’m real sensitive about making people who are working feel guilty,” adds Barbara Hodgson. “I don’t know that we can just sit back and feel superior. . . . I think what is so important to stress is that we have a choice. So many people don’t.”

“I don’t think it does any good to have one side pointing fingers at the other,” Eileen Ford agrees. “We all make choices. We have to respect ones that are different from our own.”