Homeward Bound (the real glass ceiling is at home)

[Thom Little]

I. The Truth About Elite Women

Half the wealthiest, most-privileged, best-educated females in the country stay home with their babies rather than work in the market economy. When in September The New York Times featured an article exploring a piece of this story, “Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood,” the blogosphere went ballistic, countering with anecdotes and sarcasm. Slate’s Jack Shafer accused the Times of “weasel-words” and of publishing the same story -- essentially, “The Opt-Out Revolution” -- every few years, and, recently, every few weeks. (A month after the flap, the Times’ only female columnist, Maureen Dowd, invoked the elite-college article in her contribution to the Times’ running soap, “What’s a Modern Girl to Do?” about how women must forgo feminism even to get laid.) The colleges article provoked such fury that the Times had to post an explanation of the then–student journalist’s methodology on its Web site.

There’s only one problem: There is important truth in the dropout story. Even though it appeared in The New York Times.

I stumbled across the news three years ago when researching a book on marriage after feminism. I found that among the educated elite, who are the logical heirs of the agenda of empowering women, feminism has largely failed in its goals. There are few women in the corridors of power, and marriage is essentially unchanged. The number of women at universities exceeds the number of men. But, more than a generation after feminism, the number of women in elite jobs doesn’t come close.

Why did this happen? The answer I discovered -- an answer neither feminist leaders nor women themselves want to face -- is that while the public world has changed, albeit imperfectly, to accommodate women among the elite, private lives have hardly budged. The real glass ceiling is at home.


http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10659

[Porcupine]

1. My sister: BS Computer Science, MBA......soccer mom, kid taxi

her "peer group" consists of a bunch of women equally talented who have dot.com $$$. Hubbies work and they have hobbies and/or hobby jobs. These women DO NOT date men below their status when they find themselves single. Many stay single rather than date down.

To contrast, I was a househusband for a time due to a disabling back injury that just preceded the birth of my second daughter. So I stayed home with the baby while my ex worked. She "traded up."

Until feminism frees men as well as women from workplace and home role stereotypes it's a have a cake and eat it game. As such it deserves ridicule.




p.s. both my kids are girls. I want them to have opportunities. I also want them to treat men as people rather than paychecks.

[Robert Cooper]

2. Here here...

...as the primary care-giver for my son, I've run into the stereo-type against men in the household more than a few times, like my in-laws thinking me a parasite while having no trouble imagining my wife doing what I'm doing.

Unlike your story, we made a deliberate decision to keep one parent free to raise our son before he was born. My wife tele-commutes from an office in the basement, her career allowing her that option and paying enough for us to do this.

The problem with 'the problem' is the innate assumption that somehow raising children or making a home is less valuable or important than striding the 'halls of power'. And perhaps the stereo-type is fostered by (some of) those who don't have kids looking at those who do. For me there is nothing more important than raising my son in a loving, warm environment and I can well-understand anyone who makes that choice.

Perhaps 'the cure' to 'the problem' is teaching more women at earlier ages to hate kids. I don't see how anyone who loves them will fail to go domestic eventually.

[Porcupine]

4. Keep your job skills current and hit the gym often.....

While raising your kid may seem to be a mutual priority today the weight of societal pressures is still there. My personal opinion is that we should return to a society where raising kids is everybodies priority.

We should also all have access to health and dental care. That said, good luck.

[Robert Cooper]

7. I oppose strangers telling me how to raise my child...

...for that matter, I oppose anyone presuming that my child means anything to them that even remotely resembles what he means to me. Having and raising a child is a very personal committment to the future, not a public resource to be controlled by democratic process like the public airwaves. I'm not a sperm donor for the state, my wife isn't an incubator for the state. We're not the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany where children were dedicated to the state and/or corporate machinery. I don't want my son taught to love authority in whatever form it manifests. I want him suspicious of authority, willing to challenge it and when necessary stand up to it. I really doubt socialized child-rearing will intentionally do that for him.

As for keeping my skills current, you're seeing me do it. I'm a writer. And between keeping up with my son and splitting wood for the woodstoves I'll be getting plenty of exercise this winter ;-)

And thanks for the good luck. No parent should be without it :-)

[cap]

3. we need a revolution in the workplace

and a return to the days when people had evenings and weekends...especially successful ones. When you have a 40 hr workweek, you can have time for your kids. We need a male revolution where men wish to be full fathers... they cant do it with an 80 hr work week and think that they spend "quality time" with the kids.

We need women to outfit themselves for careers and to wish to assume power. We need first line supervisors not track women into subordinate positions.

We need a feminism that accepts a soft side of a woman as well ... nurturing children is laudable, wearing pink is nice...

Women are complex ... there needs to be a balance between mental, spiritual, intellectual, emotional and social needs.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I think some of the current epidemic of spoiled brats comes from

parents who spend so little time with their children that they don't want to "ruin" what time they do have by enforcing rules of behavior. Deep down they're afraid that their children won't love them if they forbid them to ransack the world.

[Blue Meany]

5. The Uncomfortable Truth for "Feminists"

is that many women, who are in a position to afford to, stay at home with children. I remember an African-American women I dated years ago used to say that feminism was all about white middle-class women. She said black women had always had to work and hoping to have the freedom not to work while their children were young. She insisted that when she married, she would stay at home with children even if it meant her family lived in poverty.

My wife also made the choice to stay at home, but it was not a choice available to me.I have offered to switch roles, as I would like to spend more time with out daughter, but she is not in a position now, with so many years out of the work place, to make enough to support the family. Our ideal would have been some kind of job-sharing, in which we each worked half a day and split the child care (which would have prevented either of us from reaching the end of our rope from the stress), but the economy is not structured to support such options.

My own take on this is that as a society we undervalue what women have traditionally done and overvalue what men have traditionally done. Getting women into elite jobs doesn't represent a revolution, though gender equity in the workplace is essential. Truly valuing child rearing, parenting, and family over earning money--in actions and choices not just in words--would be a much greater change. One small thing that the government could do to contribute to this would be to institute a "parent's allowance," like they have in some European countries for stay-at-home parents.

[shrike]

8. That's an important point

That I have made many times in threads like these -- women of color have ALWAYS worked outside the home.

And I agree with you totally -- there should be a rethinking of work, and success, and how work should be done. This job-sharing notion of yours sounds perfect -- putting it into practice into today's marketplace would be daunting, though.

[shrike]

9. Wonder how many of these women have nannies?

The stay-at-home ones, I mean. I would guess that none of them do.

It used to be that every woman who could afford it hired a governess or nanny -- freed her up to do other things, and I don't mean a career.

BTW, I liked one point the author made: men did not change For the most part) and society did not change; ergo, the life and work of a mother was still limited.