An embarrassment to intelligence
Yale alumnae are still buzzing. Two years ago in Time was a report that a good percentage of Ivy League/Seven Sisters female students hoped to go to school, get a J.D./M.B.A./equivalent, work full time for a few years, then take time off to be stay at home moms -- and work part-time when the kids were older.
It was obvious then and continues to be that in the so-called halls of higher learning, there are huge gaps in understanding the repercussions of different choices. They say those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it, and if these Yalies and their ilk are any example, they are doomed.
Guess what, girls? Donna Reed doesn't live here anymore. She got a job in 1973, the last year it was possible to raise a middle-class family on one paycheck.
Per last week's New York Times, these soon-to-be-well-and-expensively-educated women have "Set Career Path to Motherhood." They think they can come and go in the working-for-money environment, but take time out of the workplace to raise their children (and have their husbands pay for it) and thereby have a balanced life. Would that it were true.
Even Ward and June are rolling over in their graves.
Are these women sure that they can marry rich and afford to stay home with a child, full time? What happened to participatory fatherhood? I was brought up in the 1960s; my dad never changed a diaper, but I'll bet these girls' fathers did.
My dad, the provider, hardly saw his children until they were in junior high school. Oh, there was the occasional weekend, and the vacations that left my brother and me confused: if this is Daddy, why can't he be as much fun at home?
Do these women have any idea of what motherhood entails, particularly if you're married to a partner who is working six days a week so you can be a mom, even if that also means you get socked with all the capital-W Wifey chores that no one of either gender is fond of?
Motherhood is 24/7; on the other hand, you can leave the office after a day that might include some stimulating adult conversation, but more importantly to the concept of work, you leave with a paycheck.
When the divorce rate is 50% and it's not one's degree but experience that determines whether you will have the qualifications an employer is seeking, who will get preference in hiring? Who can be so cavalier as to choose to be a stay-at-home mom when she isn't also trying to change the social structure that forces her -- and not her husband -- to choose?
Sure, the discrimination will be so subtle that no firm breaks the EEOC rules. But if this is the backlash against what feminists fought for so many years, these Yalies are an embarrassment verging on the delusional.
I must honestly say that I will not go to a female doctor of child-bearing age unless those kids are already in a picture frame, or the doctor is peripheral to my life. Eye doctors are a lot more replaceable than gynecologists -- the patient-doctor relationship is at a completely different level.
I have had two internists give up their practices for motherhood, and I would have a hard time -- backed up by this New York Times piece -- choosing another doctor whom I suspect might go this route. Continuity of care isn't what it used to be. Granted, this is completely an upper-middle-class issue, but it is the truth in which Wonderland operates.
Until the economic value of motherhood can be perceived to change, the choice these 19-year-olds imagine will be theirs will lead to less affluence and fewer life choices later on. History is a great teacher; unfortunately, few listen to its lessons.
These women seem to have no concept of women's economic history, and what progress women have made in what are still male-dominated professional environments. We may have come a long way, baby, but it seems we are headed backward.
We couldn't vote until less than 100 years ago. Married women could legally be denied credit in their own names until 1964. Married women couldn't hold property in their own names until a New York State act in 1848 that was considered revolutionary in conceding ownership to those possessed of two X chromosomes.
These women also seem unwilling to ask important social questions, such as, why does the work environment continue to follow a path that is satisfactory and balanced for few of either gender?
I'm not saying the work-world is such a wonderful place to be. Work is highly overrated. But the women I know who have stayed home with their children have told me that the first year, they are in "baby jail." At the same time, every woman I know from age 25 to 55 who was raised by hired help has tried to raise her own children with very little outside assistance.
From what I see, the kids with stay-at-home mommies who double as chief cook and bottle washer are not any happier than those whose mommies delegate cook and bottle washing. Among those that delegate the scut work of staying at home, if these women didn't have maids and nannies, they would be none too happy at home either. (One lawyer-friend told her husband, I choose to take care of the children, not scrub toilets.)
My generation never found Prince Charming, and I doubt there are any such creatures waiting for the next. My mother's generation, indelibly stamped by the 1950s, seemed unhappy parents regardless of how charming their prince, if he stuck around, happened to be.
These Yalies have made one truly unfortunate choice thus far. They have chosen to share their dreams, minus any effort to effect the social change required to make them a reality in the 9 to 5 work world, in a place that is known as the newspaper of record. If they were smart, they would have avoided this.
It was obvious then and continues to be that in the so-called halls of higher learning, there are huge gaps in understanding the repercussions of different choices. They say those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it, and if these Yalies and their ilk are any example, they are doomed.
Guess what, girls? Donna Reed doesn't live here anymore. She got a job in 1973, the last year it was possible to raise a middle-class family on one paycheck.
Per last week's New York Times, these soon-to-be-well-and-expensively-educated women have "Set Career Path to Motherhood." They think they can come and go in the working-for-money environment, but take time out of the workplace to raise their children (and have their husbands pay for it) and thereby have a balanced life. Would that it were true.
Even Ward and June are rolling over in their graves.
Are these women sure that they can marry rich and afford to stay home with a child, full time? What happened to participatory fatherhood? I was brought up in the 1960s; my dad never changed a diaper, but I'll bet these girls' fathers did.
My dad, the provider, hardly saw his children until they were in junior high school. Oh, there was the occasional weekend, and the vacations that left my brother and me confused: if this is Daddy, why can't he be as much fun at home?
Do these women have any idea of what motherhood entails, particularly if you're married to a partner who is working six days a week so you can be a mom, even if that also means you get socked with all the capital-W Wifey chores that no one of either gender is fond of?
Motherhood is 24/7; on the other hand, you can leave the office after a day that might include some stimulating adult conversation, but more importantly to the concept of work, you leave with a paycheck.
When the divorce rate is 50% and it's not one's degree but experience that determines whether you will have the qualifications an employer is seeking, who will get preference in hiring? Who can be so cavalier as to choose to be a stay-at-home mom when she isn't also trying to change the social structure that forces her -- and not her husband -- to choose?
Sure, the discrimination will be so subtle that no firm breaks the EEOC rules. But if this is the backlash against what feminists fought for so many years, these Yalies are an embarrassment verging on the delusional.
I must honestly say that I will not go to a female doctor of child-bearing age unless those kids are already in a picture frame, or the doctor is peripheral to my life. Eye doctors are a lot more replaceable than gynecologists -- the patient-doctor relationship is at a completely different level.
I have had two internists give up their practices for motherhood, and I would have a hard time -- backed up by this New York Times piece -- choosing another doctor whom I suspect might go this route. Continuity of care isn't what it used to be. Granted, this is completely an upper-middle-class issue, but it is the truth in which Wonderland operates.
Until the economic value of motherhood can be perceived to change, the choice these 19-year-olds imagine will be theirs will lead to less affluence and fewer life choices later on. History is a great teacher; unfortunately, few listen to its lessons.
These women seem to have no concept of women's economic history, and what progress women have made in what are still male-dominated professional environments. We may have come a long way, baby, but it seems we are headed backward.
We couldn't vote until less than 100 years ago. Married women could legally be denied credit in their own names until 1964. Married women couldn't hold property in their own names until a New York State act in 1848 that was considered revolutionary in conceding ownership to those possessed of two X chromosomes.
These women also seem unwilling to ask important social questions, such as, why does the work environment continue to follow a path that is satisfactory and balanced for few of either gender?
I'm not saying the work-world is such a wonderful place to be. Work is highly overrated. But the women I know who have stayed home with their children have told me that the first year, they are in "baby jail." At the same time, every woman I know from age 25 to 55 who was raised by hired help has tried to raise her own children with very little outside assistance.
From what I see, the kids with stay-at-home mommies who double as chief cook and bottle washer are not any happier than those whose mommies delegate cook and bottle washing. Among those that delegate the scut work of staying at home, if these women didn't have maids and nannies, they would be none too happy at home either. (One lawyer-friend told her husband, I choose to take care of the children, not scrub toilets.)
My generation never found Prince Charming, and I doubt there are any such creatures waiting for the next. My mother's generation, indelibly stamped by the 1950s, seemed unhappy parents regardless of how charming their prince, if he stuck around, happened to be.
These Yalies have made one truly unfortunate choice thus far. They have chosen to share their dreams, minus any effort to effect the social change required to make them a reality in the 9 to 5 work world, in a place that is known as the newspaper of record. If they were smart, they would have avoided this.
posted by alice, uptown at 12:55 PM
2 Comments:
As always, you bring a succint, unique and well-written perspective to the conversation. That's why I always enjoy stopping by.
Around here there are plenty of women who are "stay at home moms" and yet, they still have nannies. Huh?!
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