So, I Guess It's Not Really About Choice

Just came across this at the Corner on National Review's website.  Gloria Feldt, former head of Planned Parenthood, wants to let women know that if they choose to leave the professional arena and stay home with their children, then they are hurting the sisterhood:

They make it harder for the rest of us to remedy the inequities that remain. We have to make young women aware of how their choices affect other women. It should be acceptable criticism to point out that, although everyone has the right to make their own life decisions, choosing to “opt out” reinforces stereotypes about women’s priorities that we’ve been working for decades to shatter, so just cut it out. 

What?  I'm an individual.   It's not my responsibility to stay in the workforce in order to help women at large get equal pay.

And then there's this:

If we could see child-rearing as a necessary task and not an identity, and if we could collectively recognize that facilitating it benefits us all, we would go much further in guaranteeing women’s choices than we do when we are expected to uncritically celebrate every individual’s decisions. 

First of all -- she wants us to see being a mom as a task and not an identity.  Okay.  What then is being a "professional" woman?  Is it a task or an identity?  Because most of the professional women I work with (and I work with many) see it as an identity.  And secondly, it's been my experience (again, as someone who works with a lot of professional women) that it's the working women who are more apt to seek celebration and approval of their individual decisions to be working moms (or to have no children period) than it is the stay-at-home moms who are seeking outside validation for their choices.

Again, I refer to the fact that I am an individual and I could give a flying you-know-what if anyone besides me celebrates my individual decisions.  Conclusion:  Gloria Feldt must have some low self-esteem.