Living like a Kantian

I thought you all might enjoy this article, written by Ryan Park, a former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Park details the birth of his daughter and a transition from clerking to homemaking back to practicing law. He writes about how his wife took time off from medical school to support him during his clerkship, then he did the same to support her during her residency.

It was in this spirit that I decided to take a short break from my career and experience life as a stay-at-home dad. My wife, without really even considering doing otherwise, had already taken almost a year off from medical school after Caitlyn was born, partly to support me during a challenging clerkship, and partly because she believed it would be good for Caitlyn’s development. But mostly it was for my wife herself. She valued motherhood and wanted to experience it fully, for as long as she could without jeopardizing her professional goals. I felt exactly the same way. My deepest fear is that, decades from now, I will look back at the heart of my life and realize I made the wrong choices in favor of work.

 The passage above also illustrates the importance Park places on spending time with his daughter. In more ways than one, I immediately connected Park's life choices with those advocated by Hampton. The relationship he has with his wife is one in which equal "sacrifices" (although he would probably contend that taking time off was not a sacrifice) are taken by both parties within their marriage. It is also one in which the relationship with his daughter is certainly one in which he takes care of her, but he gets just as much, if not more, out of the relationship. Nothing earth-shattering here, but I thought it was a nice illustration of something along the lines of Hampton's philosophy in practice.