Hillary Clinton, who recently stepped down as Secretary of the U.S. State Department, spoke in October to a gathering that explored work/life balance. She talked of the time her child was born in 1980, and she demanded and received a four-month leave to be with her new daughter.

During her tenure as Secretary of State, Ms. Clinton advocated worldwide rights for women at the same time she mandated family-friendly policies for the State Department.

Current articles often cite the percentage of women in particular roles, such as CEO’s, or the percentage of women choosing certain courses of study, like the much-publicized STEM courses (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).

Women have long been stereotyped. We now understand that women’s talents are needed as much as men’s, but does that mean the days of the “full-time” wife and mother are over?

If some women choose not to enter the paid labor force (provided they can afford to opt out), their actions will skew the numbers to less than fifty percent of women in it. Is that a tragedy? Should we provide day care so that a mother has no excuse not to work outside the home even if she’d rather stay there with her young child?

Will the choice of staying “at home” lead to frustrated empty nesters later in life, as they, perhaps, search for a career they can no longer have because they are beginning too late? Or is there such a person who enjoys taking care of others, not only children but also the hungry who come to food kitchens, the disadvantaged who need tutoring, and so on. Do some men gravitate toward this calling?

Many of our programs, like one that nurtures at-risk mothers for the first two years of her child’s life, are necessary because we lack natural “nurturers.” Nurturing, it seems, is needed as much as engineering and computer networking.

How shall we work out this dilemma? Where will our nurturers come from?