When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made

Free to Be Conflicted

146 Free to Be Conflicted Robin Pogrebin As the daughter of one of the contributors to Free to Be . . . You and Me, I absorbed every one of its catchy lyrics as wisdom to live by: When I grow up, I’m gonna be happy and do what I like to do . . . In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman . . . Mommies can be almost anything they want to be . . . Most of it proved true. I weathered the social rejection of my physically awkward adolescence by believing that it was my brains that mattered, not my flat-chested body or metal mouth (braces). I pursued my love of journalism and became a professional newspaper reporter. I married a man who appreciated my independence. I grew up confident that I could be and do anything. But then I became a mother.And that blissfully smiling Free to Be picture of kids riding around on a carousel proved far more complicated. It was the one thing feminism didn’t prepare me for—how wrenching it would be at times to leave my kids at home and go to the office, or how I’d beat myself up about not doing either thing fully: parenting or work. Motherhood was also something my mother, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, never talked about—how she balanced work and home, whether she found it a struggle, how to move between those two worlds. She made “having it all” look easy. And from my childhood perspective, my mother did have it all. A leader of the feminist movement, she had a stellar career and the freedom to work from home as a writer after her office years as a founder of Ms. magazine. She and my father, Bert, had a strong marriage and an active social life. And despite a packed schedule that always included public appearances and political activism, my mother still managed to edit our school essays, make crispy potatoes, Free to Be Conflicted 147 and help my sister, brother, and me conjure homemade Halloween costumes. Strong, busy, accomplished, content—my mother has been a powerful role model for me throughout my life. One that I assumed I would be able to emulate. But when I became a parent, I slammed into the reality that I could not have it all—at least not all at the same time. Yes, I managed to have kids and continue working at a fulfilling job, but along the way, I kept coming to crossroads, crucial junctures where I felt compelled to make a choice. Did I want to raise my hand for a reporting position that would involve constant travel around the country covering a presidential campaign, or did I want to get home to have dinner with my kids and be able to attend parent-teacher conferences in the middle of the day? Did I want to try for a demanding beat like covering City Hall, or did I want the flexibility of being able to occasionally work from home? How ambitious should I be? How successful could I get and still be able to tuck my kids in every night? The way I came to see it, because I wanted to be both an accomplished professional and an involved parent, certain routes were just closed off to me, untenable. I can’t be the Seattle bureau chief if I’m not prepared to fly off to cover an Alaskan oil spill at a moment’s notice. I can’t chase late-breaking news if I don’t want to file stories after hours. So I have grown to accept certain—sometimes painful— limitations. I won’t get on the front page as much as other reporters. I’ll probably never win the Pulitzer. I may never be a bureau chief or a name everybody knows. And I’ve seen my female peers make similar compromises. So many of my friends have left the workforce entirely or opted for part-time jobs. My college roommate said she couldn’t justify leaving her four sons to write advertising copy. I couldn’t blame her. I now get why so few women are CEOs, members of Congress, chief surgeons, managing law partners. It’s hard to reach the pinnacle of your profession if you don’t want to miss the school play. Nobody talked about motherhood in college, and I understand why. Those halcyon days were all about aiming high, pursuing our goals without any consideration of someday raising children...