Kitchen sinks and term papers

This last week, I spent all of Wednesday and much of Thursday in the kitchen, making pies and potatoes and whatever else we included in Thanksgiving dinner at my house. Seriously, I barely left the kitchen. I was ensnared among the ranks of women rushing from stove to sink, anxiously checking the oven timer and eyeing any male member of my family who offered their help with a mix of suspicion and fear. I even wore an apron. And I loved it.

Right now, sitting down at my computer, I am thinking about the term papers I'm going to have to write in the next two weeks, the years of education to go and the "career" I will eventually pursue. And there's a little voice, way in the back of my mind, saying, I'd rather be a housewife. Granted it's the same tiny voice that wonders if absinthe might be fun. But the voice is there nonetheless. But let's just keep that between me and everyone reading this column.

Because I'm really, really not supposed to be thinking these things. I should be whining about how I spent my Thanksgiving and the gender imbalance that is so pronounced when it comes to major cooking endeavors in my household. After all, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan raised hell so that I wouldn't have to peel potatoes or get chocolate butter cream splattered all over my face by a Cuisinart.

As a student at Duke University, I am one among many women given a spectacular opportunity for education and independence. Not so long ago, most women didn't even dare to dream of this. The idea that a woman can be educated and have a career just like a man is reasonably new in the context of history. The idea that she should pursue these achievements in lieu of, or before, she marries and has a family, is even newer. There is still progress to be made in terms of respect and wage gaps, but these chances at success, chances which my grandmother's generation did not have, are wonderful. I wouldn't have it any other way.

The problem is, with equality of status and opportunity, also comes a single-mindedness about what a woman can and should do with her life. Here, if a female student has inclinations toward marrying young, toward staying home and having a family, she keeps it to herself. For Duke and other college women across the country, it is a dirty little secret. Because we are educated and, as a gender, have such fantastic potential for success, it is viewed as a betrayal of the female sex, a backward and archaic attraction. At Duke, today, saying "I'd really just like to get married and forget the career after college," is like saying, "In the near future, I'd like to be subjugated, enslaved and treated like less than a human being."

In 2005, a questionnaire of 138 undergraduate women at Yale University revealed that 60 percent thought they would stop working after having children and might take up part-time work once their children started school. The resulting outcry from across the country was astounding. No one, especially those who had lived through the struggle and push for women's equality in education and the work place, wanted to hear that some female students might not take advantage of all the possibilities presented to them. The fact that this was mere speculation on the part of Yale women didn't matter: It was the very thought that hurt, that seemed to betray the world of empowered women.

Yes, graduating Duke only to get married and keep house does seem like a staggering waste of an education. But, currently, the median age of marriage for women is 25, which suggests that many are getting married pretty soon after graduation. And, while most of these women are probably pursuing a career at the time of their marriage, there are statistics that show that, generally, life isn't as great when both spouses are working. Social Forces, a UNC sociology journal, recently published a study that suggests marriages suffer when the wife has a career and that women are, in fact, happier when their husband is the primary earner for the household. It's food for thought. Going on studies like this, it might be easier on your happiness and future marriage if you forgot the career. (I am aware that, reading these words, a feminist, somewhere, just died inside.)

Even knowing this, I'm not going to fudge my term papers and go husband-hunting. I think it's our responsibility, being presented with this education, to do justice to it. But it is important to realize that just because so many women are choosing to go one way, all women do no have to follow suit. Part of the beauty of the choices we have been given is the ability to turn the other way, while recognizing and appreciating these choices. One day, I'd like to stop working and take care of a house and a family. By saying this, I haven't single-handedly undone a hundred years of progress.