Lifting My Voice by Barbara Hendricks

Author:Barbara Hendricks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

A woman is free when she can organize her life with or without an outside career or job just as men do with or without children. This is what I was fighting for as a student feminist. I did not want to wear a uniform or fit into a mold that had been determined or dictated by someone else, whether it be my parents, society, or my own government. But women are often asked to pay a higher price for the choices that they make.

On more occasions than I can count I was asked during a reception or a dinner after a concert: “You are so often on tour; do you ever see your children?” What could I answer? “No, in fact I only had them because it looks good on my CV,” or “No, I do not care to see them at all. They just serve as good tax deductions.” However, I just answered, politely, “Yes, I see them more than you might imagine.” Of course I never heard any of my male colleagues being asked such questions, and some of them had left a trail of offspring all over the world. At a fund-raising dinner for the Verbier Festival I was asked by the director of a very big Swiss bank, “Don’t your children miss you terribly when you are out on tour?” I answered, “Probably not more than yours miss you when you are away on business trips.” He retorted, “But I have a wife at home.” I looked in the direction of his wife as I answered, “And I also have a husband at home.” She could not resist chuckling quietly and that ended that line of questioning.

I know that most professional women who try to juggle a career with the responsibility of motherhood are also confronted with this double standard, especially women in the public arena. The fantasy about the glamour of public figures incites all kinds of ridiculous remarks. I have met so many mothers all over the world, from refugee women to heads of state, and these working mothers are confronted with some of the same problems as they attend to their responsibility to raise their children and they share similar hopes and fears concerning their children’s well-being. All mothers are working all the time either at their workplace or in the home and most are doing both.

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