What really bothers me is not that women are planning to be stay at
home parents, but that so few men are. I think it's good that the
pendulum has swung back this way, and I think we'll see a generation of
better, smarter, happier, more responsible children because of it. I
think we need more change in that direction, convincing men how
critical they are to good child rearing. Ideally both parents should
cut back on their careers significantly to raise children.
If you have two kids spaced two years apart and stay at home until they
get into school, that's 8 years, or less than 10% of your life. Not a
big sacrifice compared to the payoff, certainly not a reason not to get
an excellent degree and plan a high powered career. Granted it's not
like you can go back to working 60 hours a week after the kid starts
1st grade, but the problem becomes more tractable then, especially if
you can balance child-rearing time with your spouse. I hate it when
they make it sound like you've chosen to throw away your professional
life because you've had children. It's an impediment, but it's not a
binary switch, it's not nearly as bad as they make it out to be.
In fact it should be a law in this country that you should be able to
work down to 50% time and they're not allowed to fire you for it if you
have kids, regardless of your gender. That would really help.
Dave
On Sep 26, 2005, at 5:27 PM, Bethany Soule wrote:
> If you're interested in the current state of feminism/equality of the
> sexes:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html?
> pagewanted=1&ex=3D1128225600
>
> I'm including the article below so you can read it without having to
> actually go to the NYTimes site, but it's going to make this e-mail
> hugely
> long. Sorry.
>
> Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood
>
> By LOUISE STORY
> Published: September 20, 2005
>
> Cynthia Liu is precisely the kind of high achiever Yale wants: smart
> (1510
> SAT), disciplined (4.0 grade point average), competitive (finalist in
> Texas oratory competition), musical (pianist), athletic (runner) and
> altruistic (hospital volunteer). And at the start of her sophomore
> year at
> Yale, Ms. Liu is full of ambition, planning to go to law school.
>
> Emily Lechner, at home in North Potomac, Md., with her mother, Carol,
> is a
> student at Yale who plans to become a lawyer, but who says her career
> will
> take a back seat once she starts having children.
>
> So will she join the long tradition of famous Ivy League graduates? Not
> likely. By the time she is 30, this accomplished 19-year-old expects
> to be
> a stay-at-home mom.
>
> "My mother's always told me you can't be the best career woman and the
> best mother at the same time," Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. "You
> always
> have to choose one over the other."
>
> At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their
> place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken
> for
> granted that, just as they make up half the students at these
> institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis
> with
> their male classmates.
>
> There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say
> that
> is not what they want.
>
> Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already
> decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising
> children. Though some of these students are not planning to have
> children
> and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like
> Ms.
> Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with
> motherhood
> their main commitment.
>
> [Some readers have asked about the reporting that went into this
> article.
> The reporter, Louise Story, explains in a separate article published
> Sept.
> 23.]
>
> Much attention has been focused on career women who leave the work
> force
> to rear children. What seems to be changing is that while many women in
> college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers,
> their
> daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to
> suspend or end their careers when they have children.
>
> "At the height of the women's movement and shortly thereafter, women
> were
> much more firm in their expectation that they could somehow combine
> full-time work with child rearing," said Cynthia E. Russett, a
> professor
> of American history who has taught at Yale since 1967. "The women today
> are, in effect, turning realistic."
>
> Dr. Russett is among more than a dozen faculty members and
> administrators
> at the most exclusive institutions who have been on campus for decades
> and
> who said in interviews that they had noticed the changing attitude.
>
> Many students say staying home is not a shocking idea among their
> friends.
> Shannon Flynn, an 18-year-old from Guilford, Conn., who is a freshman
> at
> Harvard, says many of her girlfriends do not want to work full time.
>
> "Most probably do feel like me, maybe even tending toward wanting to
> not
> work at all," said Ms. Flynn, who plans to work part time after having
> children, though she is torn because she has worked so hard in school.
>
> "Men really aren't put in that position," she said.
>
> Uzezi Abugo, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania who hopes to
> become a lawyer, says she, too, wants to be home with her children at
> least until they are in school.
>
> "I've seen the difference between kids who did have their mother stay
> at
> home and kids who didn't, and it's kind of like an obvious difference
> when
> you look at it," said Ms. Abugo, whose mother, a nurse, stayed home
> until
> Ms. Abugo was in first grade.
>
> While the changing attitudes are difficult to quantify, the shift
> emerges
> repeatedly in interviews with Ivy League students, including 138
> freshman
> and senior females at Yale who replied to e-mail questions sent to
> members
> of two residential colleges over the last school year.
>
> The interviews found that 85 of the students, or roughly 60 percent,
> said
> that when they had children, they planned to cut back on work or stop
> working entirely. About half of those women said they planned to work
> part
> time, and about half wanted to stop work for at least a few years.
>
> Two of the women interviewed said they expected their husbands to stay
> home with the children while they pursued their careers. Two others
> said
> either they or their husbands would stay home, depending on whose
> career
> was furthest along.
>
> The women said that pursuing a rigorous college education was worth the
> time and money because it would help position them to work in
> meaningful
> part-time jobs when their children are young or to attain good jobs
> when
> their children leave home.
>
> In recent years, elite colleges have emphasized the important roles
> they
> expect their alumni - both men and women - to play in society.
>
> (Page 2 of 3)
>
> For example, earlier this month, Shirley M. Tilghman, the president of
> Princeton University, welcomed new freshmen, saying: "The goal of a
> Princeton education is to prepare young men and women to take up
> positions
> of leadership in the 21st century. Of course, the word 'leadership'
> conjures up images of presidents and C.E.O.'s, but I want to stress
> that
> my idea of a leader is much broader than that."
>
> She listed education, medicine and engineering as other areas where
> students could become leaders.
>
> In an e-mail response to a question, Dr. Tilghman added: "There is
> nothing
> inconsistent with being a leader and a stay-at-home parent. Some women
> (and a handful of men) whom I have known who have done this have had a
> powerful impact on their communities."
>
> Yet the likelihood that so many young women plan to opt out of
> high-powered careers presents a conundrum.
>
> "It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country:
> when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for
> women,
> what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" said Marlyn McGrath
> Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as
> dean
> for coeducation in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
>
> It is a complicated issue and one that most schools have not addressed.
> The women they are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men
> who
> will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be
> full-time mothers, unlike those women who must work out of economic
> necessity.
>
> It is less than clear what universities should, or could, do about it.
> For
> one, a person's expectations at age 18 are less than perfect
> predictors of
> their life choices 10 years later. And in any case, admissions officers
> are not likely to ask applicants whether they plan to become
> stay-at-home
> moms.
>
> University officials said that success meant different things to
> different
> people and that universities were trying to broaden students' minds,
> not
> simply prepare them for jobs.
>
> "What does concern me," said Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College,
> "is
> that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few
> students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't
> constructed along traditional gender roles."
>
> There is, of course, nothing new about women being more likely than
> men to
> stay home to rear children.
>
> According to a 2000 survey of Yale alumni from the classes of 1979,
> 1984,
> 1989 and 1994, conducted by the Yale Office of Institutional Research,
> more men from each of those classes than women said that work was their
> primary activity - a gap that was small among alumni in their 20's but
> widened as women moved into their prime child-rearing years. Among the
> alumni surveyed who had reached their 40's, only 56 percent of the
> women
> still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men.
>
> A 2005 study of comparable Yale alumni classes found that the pattern
> had
> not changed. Among the alumni who had reached their early 40's, just
> over
> half said work was their primary activity, compared with 90 percent of
> the
> men. Among the women who had reached their late 40's, some said they
> had
> returned to work, but the percentage of women working was still far
> behind
> the percentage of men.
>
> A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31
> percent
> of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the
> survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did
> not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the
> Yale
> students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home or work part
> time in their 30's and 40's.
>
> What seems new is that while many of their mothers expected to have
> hard-charging careers, then scaled back their professional plans only
> after having children, the women of this generation expect their
> careers
> to take second place to child rearing.
>
> "It never occurred to me," Rebecca W. Bushnell, dean of the School of
> Arts
> and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, said about working
> versus
> raising children. "Thirty years ago when I was heading out, I guess I
> was
> just taking it one step at a time."
>
> Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood
>
> (Page 3 of 3)
>
> Dr. Bushnell said young women today, in contrast, are thinking and
> talking
> about part-time or flexible work options for when they have children.
> "People have a heightened awareness of trying to get the right balance
> between work and family."
>
> Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard, said many of the men in her American
> Family class last fall approved of women's plans to stay home with
> their
> children.
>
> "A lot of the guys were like, 'I think that's really great,' " Ms.
> Currie
> said. "One of the guys was like, 'I think that's sexy.' Staying at home
> with your children isn't as polarizing of an issue as I envision it is
> for
> women who are in their 30's now."
>
> For most of the young women who responded to e-mail questions, a major
> factor shaping their attitudes seemed to be their experience with their
> own mothers, about three out of five of whom did not work at all, took
> several years off or worked only part time.
>
> "My stepmom's very proud of my choice because it makes her feel more
> valuable," said Kellie Zesch, a Texan who graduated from the
> University of
> North Carolina two years ago and who said that once she had children,
> she
> intended to stay home for at least five years and then consider working
> part time. "It justified it to her, that I don't look down on her for
> not
> having a career."
>
> Similarly, students who are committed to full-time careers, without
> breaks, also cited their mothers as influences. Laura Sullivan, a
> sophomore at Yale who wants to be a lawyer, called her mother's choice
> to
> work full time the "greatest gift."
>
> "She showed me what it meant to be an amazing mother and maintain a
> career," Ms. Sullivan said.
>
> Some of these women's mothers, who said they did not think about these
> issues so early in their lives, said they were surprised to hear that
> their college-age daughters had already formed their plans.
>
> Emily Lechner, one of Ms. Liu's roommates, hopes to stay home a few
> years,
> then work part time as a lawyer once her children are in school.
>
> Her mother, Carol, who once thought she would have a full-time career
> but
> gave it up when her children were born, was pleasantly surprised to
> hear
> that. "I do have this bias that the parents can do it best," she said.
> "I
> see a lot of women in their 30's who have full-time nannies, and I just
> question if their kids are getting the best."
>
> For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many
> young women at the nation's top schools are by the strictures of
> traditional roles.
>
> "They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they're accepting
> it," said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and
> gender studies at Yale. "Women have been given full-time working career
> opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.
>
> "I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be
> solved by now."
>
> Angie Ku, another of Ms. Liu's roommates who had a stay-at-home mom,
> talks
> nonchalantly about attending law or business school, having perhaps a
> 10-year career and then staying home with her children.
>
> "Parents have such an influence on their children," Ms. Ku said. "I
> want
> to have that influence. Me!"
>
> She said she did not mind if that limited her career potential.
>
> "I'll have a career until I have two kids," she said. "It doesn't
> necessarily matter how far you get. It's kind of like the experience: I
> have tried what I wanted to do."
>
> Ms. Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women
> usually do
> most of the work raising kids.
>
> "I accept things how they are," she said. "I don't mind the status
> quo. I
> don't see why I have to go against it."
>
> After all, she added, those roles got her where she is.
>
> "It worked so well for me," she said, "and I don't see in my life why
> it
> wouldn't work."
>
>
>
>
David P. Morris, PhD
aka thecat Æ umich.edu, aka KB8PWY
home: 734-995-5525 UofM (2104 SPRL): 734-763-5357 fax: 734-763-5567
ElectroDynamic Applications Inc.
phone: (734) 786-1434 fax: (734) 786-3235
morris Æ edapplications.com
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