Editor’s note: Linda Hirshman is a retired professor of philosophy and the author of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World and occasional commentator in forums such as The New York Times and the Washington Post. Starting this spring, she will be a political columnist for Double X, the women’s political online magazine.

"The work-life balance is something I think about a lot," Michelle Obama told a convention of female bloggers gathered in Chicago last summer. I do not doubt that the new First Lady — and self-proclaimed "mom-in-chief" — is thinking about something a lot. But I hope it isn’t work on the one hand and life on the other. Because, as much as any other human undertaking, work is a part of life.

I don’t know when women (men, note well, never talk about work being outside of life) started the self-destructive notion that their work was not worthy of being included in the undertaking we call "life." But I do know that language matters. You name it, you own it. When women use language that separates their work from their very existence, their life, they are guaranteeing they will never get what they need from either.

I don’t think it’s overstating to assert that when women talk about work versus life, or balancing work and life, what they mean is private life, or family life. There was a time in history when, for certain middle-class, mostly white women, their families were their whole lives. They did not work in the public sphere, they did not work in the market economy. That time is long past in the United States. For many women, it was never the case.

Why, then, do people use language that is both false and harmful? When did family life expand to fill all of life? Don’t they care about what they do at work? Is work a burdensome load they have to tote because they cannot afford to pay the bills if they do not drag themselves out of their "life" to work every day? Many stay-at-home moms have written books explaining how, if you are willing to give up consumer luxuries like TVs and restaurant meals, women can afford to lay down that weary load and stay in "life." Yet, few do it.

I suspect that is because public or market work is a part of most women’s lives. Women are people (they have this in common with men). Sometimes work allows people to use their capacities — for creativity, problem solving, heroic accomplishment, power, service and, yes, even making lots of money. Even if not lots, enough to be independent and have some measure of security. If these "work/life" women would think about it, they would surely realize that creativity, problem solving, heroism, power, service, independence and security are very important parts of life. Sometimes work sucks, but it allows people to socialize with other adults in orderly and quiet surroundings, and to control their daily agenda in a way that informal family circumstances do not often allow.