Détente
4/30/2026
With being a young adult woman in the 21st century, we are met with a plethora of choices. Name brand or great value? Dior or Chanel? Community college or state school? Career or…. Family? It seems as though in recent years women have been forced to choose between being career minded and family oriented. Being career minded would risk not experiencing the “great loves” all the rom-com girls gush about. Being family oriented would mean not taking the opportunities that countless woman have fought for the last 2,000 years. Doing both would mean reverting back to the 1990s where woman were expected to make half the money and still manage to pick the children up from daycare. So, as we settle into our 20s, we are met with a new question, how do we put a fresh, new-age spin on dedicating pieces of our hearts to both again?
Unfortunately, I’ve found disappointing rhetoric on either side of this debate. The degrading “trad-wife” narrative where women are expected to drink raw milk and pump out children at the speed of light sounds about as appetizing as the milk itself. The demanding “girl-boss” narrative where women are expected to do it all and be it all by the age of 28 feels like that box full of emails, we’ve all avoided at one point. In what world is there a détente, a neutral perspective, an appreciation for both the heart of the art piece and its composition?
I feel like this might be my niche, the little spot between the heart and the head that I fit. In my later teen years and early 20s, my focus was completely on my education and career. I got my B.A., then my M.A., became a published researcher, dug up ancient possessions in many a location, and learned that I can suffer through long days in the field and late nights at my desk drinking too many Red Bulls. As we can see from this short sentence, there were amazing accomplishments and true dread in the realm of being career minded. While I felt a sense of importance in my field and to myself, I also learned that reading research books for 10 hours a day is a lonely endeavor. Now after finishing this most recent degree a few months ago, I have had plenty of time to dedicate to my family. It’s truly a special thing to wake up, sip my coffee slowly in the morning rain, take my afternoon walk in my beat-up cowboy boots in the garden I’ve recently started cultivating, and know that I get to lay with the same person (and pets) every single night. But just like the career life, there is another side to this family life coin. After some time, my little house on the lake can become too routine, monotonous. Wake up, clean, pet care, dinner, dishes, repeat.
With all this being said, I somehow (I hope) become a good example of the mix, the new détente. But instead of doing both at once, there is a natural alternating of focus. I believe that with the right passion pushing you towards a career that fulfills you and the right partner that pulls you back into the home that warms you, us women do not have to make a choice. For once, if done smart, we can have our cake and eat it too. But this time around, instead of trying to shove the cake in our mouths as we run out the door to the next task of our boss calling or our children crying, we get to sit, eat, enjoy it, savor it. Maybe a part of the ever so important right to choose, is the right to not have to. For thousands of years, women have fought, clawed, scraped to get to where they want to be, and perhaps this one woman (and perhaps a few others reading this) wants to be right in the middle, choosing not forbid herself from any certain type of pleasure in any aspect of her life.
Blog by Chloe Trinka