Election night was my turn to put our 7yo daughter to bed.
My wife and I trade off, just as we did with our other two daughters until reading, snuggling and (in my case) falling asleep for 20 minutes came to an end.
Tonight was different.
I held our youngest daughter tighter. I was also wide awake. I was thinking of all the benefits my wife and I have had over four decades and worried about what our daughters would have.
And let’s be clear. I’ve benefitted from all the neoliberal, third-way forces of the 1990s and 2000s that are now out of favor. I was a poor, smart kid who won financial aid to prep school, college, and graduate school that launched me on a path to accomplish more than I ever imagined. Was there luck involved in this? For sure. Have I appreciated all this trajectory has given me? Yes, completely.
But I came of age in a world that was focused on a global model of aspiration and personal freedom. It was great for me but not for everyone else.
I could go into a disquisition on behavioral economics and the biases it’s revealed in voters and why people often vote against their own interests. (Tariffs? Are you kidding me??) But for what at this point?
In my daughter’s bed, as the early results came in, I was deeply worried. She’s a honey badger, a fierce, determined girl who has the potential to accomplish whatever she wants in life. Her sisters are vibrant, passionate young women with the whole world in front of them.
And I want them to make the choices at work and at home that they want.
I desperately and enthusiastically want all three of my daughters to be whatever they want to be in life – and have full control over all their healthcare decisions. I want them to become the women they want to be.
That’s high minded. Where the rubber meets the road is with universities and companies that can set a positive agenda.
Whatever the eventual election result is remember this: leaders of universities and companies have power. They can set an agenda to support children, parents, and caregivers. They can be the agents to keep change going, to allow young girls to become whatever they want to be as women.
Please keep this – and my daughters – in mind whatever the election results may be.
