The false pride of perennial celebration, of wearing flag lapel pins while betraying the values that the flag stands for, is like the self-esteem curriculum for toddlers, where everything is praised and no achievement ultimately has meaning.
Anne-Marie SlaughterThe European problem is that it assumes that the minute a woman has a child, the mother identity subsumes the professional identity. Now she's the mother, above all, and we must give her all this time.
Anne-Marie SlaughterBelieve it or not, we will actually be better and happier workers if we are allowed to be better parents. We might even rediscover our capacity for fun.
Anne-Marie SlaughterThere's a tremendous loss of talent to businesses who cannot make room for their employees to attend to family responsibilities. It really amounts to corporate waste: They hire really talented women and then lose them because they can't find ways to keep them productive and content the minute they can't "lean in."
Anne-Marie SlaughterI'm a child of the Cold War. You do not say, "Oh, my God, there are Russian planes, so I'm going to cede the field." I mean, what kind of world would we have had if the United States had done that for 60 years?
Anne-Marie SlaughterYoung men keep telling me they don't 'have it all' either. And they may have a point. But if you define 'having it all' as the opportunity to have a successful career and a family, I'd say this. When a man tells his coworkers he's going to have a child, no one asks him how he'll manage or if he'll be coming back to work.
Anne-Marie Slaughter