Tempered Praise

Sharon Lerner at The Nation appreciates Mother’s Day but laments the illusion that women’s generosity is infinite; generosity without support—real support—is unsustainable. “There are plenty of reasonable theories as to why women’s progress might be stalling, but my personal favorite is—ahem—my own. I call it the bursting of the gender-equity bubble, for lack of a better term. By this I mean that women, in aggregate, are running up against the limits of what they can achieve given the lack of institutional and public support for families.”