From the 1964 Playboy Interview: Work, Women, and Family (comments)

[Leif Martyn]

following on, in historical sequence, from "The obligations of parents and children." (1962)

a note on sources:

The Playboy Interview, conducted by Alvin Toffler and published in the March 1964 issue, includes remarks by Ayn Rand illuminating her ideas about the individual's life purpose, creative work, and gender roles.

The text of the interview is available in print, but at this point (2022) I have been able to find only one online source. This is located on a personal webpage and consists of a PDF copy of the original Playboy article, provided by the publisher (at the time it was downloaded). The page shows a link to the location of the article on the Playboy website, but this is now inaccessible.

In 2004 Don Hauptman posted a note at the Atlas Society entitled The "Lost" Parts of Ayn Rand's Playboy Interview, describing an acquisition of material edited by Ayn Rand as she reviewed the interview text prior to publication. This note does not include the final copy as published, but does include an interesting passage cut in her edit. This is examined briefly below.

Harry Binswanger's "Ayn Rand Lexicon" available online includes a number of quotes from the 1964 interview, but the Acknowledgements footer for each entry includes this 'boilerplate' statement:
"Excerpts from Alvin Toffler’s interview with Ayn Rand, which first appeared in Playboy magazine. Copyright © 1964. Reprinted by permission of Alvin Toffler. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc."

Enforcement of, or at least respect for, Toffler's copyright may be the main reason why the complete interview is hard to find, although Binswanger's quotations can be considered "fair use."
The notes below are also "fair use" even though the source consulted (the PDF copy) exceeds that.

Toffler: According to your philosophy, work and achievement are the highest goals of life. Do you regard as immoral those who find greater fulfillment in the warmth of friendship and family ties?

Rand: If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man’s life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite; whereas, if he places his work first, there is no conflict between his work and his enjoyment of human relationships.

Toffler:Do you believe that women as well as men should organize their lives around work – and if so, what kind of work?

Rand: Of course. I believe that women are human beings. What is proper for a man is proper for a woman. The basic principles are the same. I would not attempt to prescribe what kind of work a man should do, and I would not attempt it in regard to women. There is no particular work, which is specifically feminine. Women can choose their work according to their own purpose and premises in the same manner as men do.

Toffler: In your opinion, is a woman immoral who chooses to devote herself to home and family instead of a career?

Rand: Not immoral — I would say she is impractical, because a home cannot be a full-time occupation, except when her children are young. However, if she wants a family and wants to make that her career, at least for a while, it would be proper—if she approaches it as a career, that is, if she studies the subject, if she defines the rules and principles by which she wants to bring up her children, if she approaches her task in an intellectual manner. It is a very responsible task and a very important one, but only when treated as a science, not as a mere emotional indulgence.

"There is no particular work, which is specifically feminine."
This is simply not true: as regards specifically feminine work, the dismissal of childbearing is striking. The context, of course, is a discussion of the place of work, especially creative work, in the lives of productive men and women.

In the third reply, she does imply that the decision to undertake a specifically feminine 'career' is primarily the woman's.

Rand's description of the method for preparing for this specific career is often quoted, and is certainly consistent with her principled approach to living rationally. As with the Intellectual Ammunition offered to readers of the Objectivist Newsletter two years earlier, she does not address the logically prior question, "why have children at all?" Implying that such a question may be a "mere emotional indulgence" makes for a sharp rhetorical contrast with her description of the rigorous and systematic thinking required to bring up children, but the opportunity to address it is missed. The simplest reason may be to consider the context of the interview, and the mores of the time.

Don Hauptmann, discussing the "Lost Parts" of the interview, adds:
"After the Q&A on women's roles and careers, the following exchange occurred, which Rand chose to delete in the proof stage. She may have realized that she hadn't fully answered the question, and that to provide a complete explanation briefly would be difficult or impossible.

PLAYBOY: In Atlas Shrugged, you wrote that "one neither asks nor grants the unearned." Did you mean this to include unearned love as well as unearned aid and material support?

RAND: Yes.

PLAYBOY: Well, then, why should a mother love her newborn infant who is still too young to have done anything to earn her love?

RAND: You don't really mean this as a serious question. To begin with, if the mother is a responsible, rational human being, she does not have a baby by accident; she has him by choice. At first, a child has a value to her simply because it is a human being created—physically, at least—by her. The child's parents owe him support until the legal age of 21, which means until such time as he can support himself. This is a chosen obligation that rational parents accept when they decide to have a child. They have to accept the consequences of their own decision. But do they have to love the child? No, not necessarily. That will depend on their evaluation of his character, as he grows up. He has to earn their love—as they have to earn his.

These last remarks recapitulate one of the main points of the Intellectual Ammunition brief essay. But the points about the mother's choice and the value of the child might be what prompted the deletion, as Hauptmann suggests.