Sometimes, in spite of every attempt to stop it, anecdotal evidence and plain old fashioned common sense will align with statistics and arrive at a logical conclusion.
This appears to be one of those rare occasions.
Obviously any relationship with BOTH parties focusing on their careers is not going to be one that puts the relationship FIRST. As let’s face it a career (not just a job as the author points out) but a career is not just a time consuming enterprise, but it’s a life-defining one as well. As in: I am a doctor (not a mom or dad who happened to work in medicine; or I am a police officer (not a husband or wife in law enforcement).
Generally you are what your career is.
AND I think that’s the way it should be.
As frankly, I don’t want someone in medicine or law enforcement who is just putting in their 8 hours until they can get home to do what they are really interested in. I want that doctor taking care of me when I’m sick to be obsessed with his specialty since about the age of 10 or so, when he or she was probably dissecting their Barbie dolls or a dead frog or something to see what makes living beings tick. The same thing with anyone working in law or the enforcement end of it.
So by definition a professional and/or careerist (and btw, anyone who thinks a blue collar police officer, fireman or even a corrections officer is NOT a careerist has never been involved in a household with one of them as a member of it) inevitably has a bad case of divided loyalty. In the past this wasn’t as big a problem, as the spouse who didn’t take on a career made up for this ‘divided loyalty’ of the careerist/professional spouse by spending the bulk of their time focused on the home and children, so that neither suffered from the divided loyalty of the careerist.
Generally this was a mother for the most obvious reason as she is the one who had already been chosen by God, evolution or nature to bring forth life. Thus she naturally had the most initially invested in the children. This spilled over into the ancillary interest in the home environment and everything connected with it.
Over time this ‘specialization’ by women made life pleasant for everybody, including the male professional/careerist. Since at least then when they did happen to be home (in between rescuing people from terrorists, carelessly started house fires and discovering the cure for cancer) they could relax in a pleasant clean house with a good home-cooked meal and well-adjusted kids around them.
Today the house is frequently a mess, if they want to eat they have to prepare it themselves or order take-out and the kids are generally being dumped off with total strangers for about 80% of their waking hours (with all the resulting problems associated with that situation) as their wife is now as deeply involved in her career as he, the husband, is with his.
So what was the point of the marriage????
As if most men wanted to have to work 10 hour days and then come home to cook and clean for themselves while a stranger is raising their kids, they could pay that stranger out of their own paycheck and cut out the middle-man entirely, namely the professional/careerist wife and mother.
So this article sums up the situation quite eloquently and has resultant research studies attached to back it up.
It’s nothing for ordinary women to get angry about, actually it can be used by us to plan our lives accordingly, particularly if we wish to marry and/or have children. If it cuts down on the divorce rate and millions of mothers losing custody of their children (which happens very frequently today) then it will be a good thing for women to know these things.
The only ones legitimately angry about these findings are gender-neutralized feminists and others like them (such as mens’ rights nuts) as the studies are another roadblock on the path to their ultimate goal of a totally androgynous society.
AND I could care LESS about what any of these gender-neutralized idiots think.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/21/careers-marriage-dating_cx_mn_0821women_print.html
Forbes.com
Don't Marry Career Women
Michael Noer 08.22.06, 6:00 AM ET
Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.
Why? Because if many social scientists are to be believed, you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage. While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.
Not a happy conclusion, especially given that many men, particularly successful men, are attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations.
To be clear, we're not talking about a high-school dropout minding a cash register. For our purposes, a "career girl" has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year.
If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003). They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006). You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001). You will be more likely to fall ill (American Journal of Sociology). Even your house will be dirtier (Institute for Social Research).
Why?
Well, despite the fact that the link between work, women and divorce rates is complex and controversial, much of the reasoning is based on a lot of economic theory and a bit of common sense. In classic economics, a marriage is, at least in part, an exercise in labor specialization. Traditionally men have tended to do "market" or paid work outside the home and women have tended to do "non-market" or household work, including raising children. All of the work must get done by somebody, and this pairing, regardless of who is in the home and who is outside the home, accomplishes that goal. Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker argued that when the labor specialization in a marriage decreases--if, for example, both spouses have careers--the overall value of the marriage is lower for both partners because less of the total needed work is getting done, making life harder for both partners and divorce more likely. And, indeed, empirical studies have concluded just that.
8 comments:
I'm surprised to see you comment on this and even more that I ardently *agree* with everything you wrote on this piece.
It is the same opinion most MRA's seem to have of it. When MRA's say they will remain single, it is because of situations like that explained in this article so presumably would not remain so if the traditional roles were in place. BTW MRA's are not "gender neutral" right? I generally find that acknowledging differences is a good thing as long as those acknowledgements don't lead to privilege. For example, in cases of domestic violence legislation I *am* gender neutral, but in cases of marriage I am not...
You cannot pick and chose which issues to be gender neutral about...you either accept the basic premise that we are all alike with NO essential differences between men and women, or you do NOT.
It's a basic misunderstanding about what gender neutral means to say you only support it for certain issues.
AND yes, I feel many of the leaders of the MRA movement are gender neutral just like many feminists are. Even all this focus on violence and aggression between men and women is an example of this. Any understanding of biology, history and just plain common sense would demonstrate that the male is the larger, stronger, and more aggressive of every species as well as our own.
So this focus on how women are just as aggressive as men, commit as many rapes as men, should be drafted since they are as strong as men, etc. plays into the gender neutralized feminist playbook...
So MRAs really need to think about these issues a little bit before deciding who legitimately speaks for you.
That's how mothers really got into the mess we're in today...by not delving deeper into the feminists philosophy before passively accepting them as spokesmen for women. They are not true advocates for all women, but advocates for a certain group of women. Probably the professional/careerist women who don't marry and/or have any kids like Maureen Dowd or Condi Rice. They are good advocates for them. Gender neutral feminism ensures that women cannot be discriminated against in the educational and professional fields they enter into...or in credit, mortgages, all that sort of stuff which really is gender neutral and should be...
But regarding children, marriage, family issues, gender neutralized feminists are not really good advocates for mothers or children. Quite simply, their refusal to accept the differences between men and women in the question of investment in children, for instance, opens them up to being used as pawns against mothers.
Just wanting to point out that your comment about nature is a bit off the mark. In a very large number of animals the females are bigger, and in some, such as lions, the females do all the work, like hunting and bringing food for the pride.
MOST males however are larger.
Okay.
We cannot keep running to the edge of the bell-shaped curve and dragging back some rare bird or spider and then using that as an example to overturn what 99.9% of the rest of us conform with.
Okay.
Female lionesses, like many females, hunt and provide food for the young. Male lions perform two functions, one sex to produce the next generation and the other keeping the only predators out of the pride's terroritory that could kill a lioness and her cubs: other male lions.
Something even human males oftentimes do...
So it's not true that male lions aren't useful, just like male humans they can be.
do u even realize its not so simple today as women tending to kids and men earning and everyone living happily ever after? today money rules..the one who's earning tends to dictate the household's functioning..and im not talking about the general day2day life..im talking about how houseives have to depend for their spending money on their husbands, getting monitored, saving a little on the side for themselves..andf god forbid if the guy loses his job/turns out to be an alcoholic/has an affair somewhere cos his wife at home seems too boring for him, then what will this poor woman -- who willingly adopted the role of the 'mother hen' after getting in touch with her inner female tendencies like u suggested -- do? she will be forced to carry on, compromise with the situation, since she's so dependent on the DH that she cant go out in the world later and do anything on her own...so here she is, apparently trying to do what according to some of u "mother nature" intended her to do..and yet suffering...
guys, this is not NatGeo where we can go by what nature wanted us to do..its a human world..its complex, chaotic..and women have long suffered the brunt of being at home and wiping up everyone's shit and cleaning the house while the husband went outside and was made to feel imp...so plz dont talk such regressive stuff from the B.C. times now!!
First of all, I have nothing against women who wish to focus on their careers. It's up to each individual how they live their lives.
What I have a problem with is when these same professional women then try to force their personal decisions and life-style choices onto the backs of every other woman on the planet.
That's my problem.
Our legal system and government is full of these women who have placed their careers first and their families second. Furthermore they have no problem passing public policies and laws that discriminate against women who chose to place their children first. This new Family Medical Leave Policy is a good example of this. It's nothing but an underhanded attempt to subvert mothers' maternity leave policy.
Probably professional women don't care as they are rushing back to work anyway a week or so after their baby is born. But many mothers do NOT wish to do that and replacing maternity leave with the gender neutral family leave is only something a gender neutralized feminist careerist would do...
I predict that we will see within two years or so after family leave is implemented custody fights BEFORE your child is even out of your womb...
That's where gender neutral female professionals are leading the rest of us.
The problem here isn't the "gender neutral idiots" or women having careers. I think it's men's unwillingness to be in an equal relationship and do their fair share of the work. A two career marriage still has value if both partners are sharing 50% of the childcare and housework. It is better than doing 100% of it alone and there is increased financial security. Men need to put aside their ego and sense of entitlement if they want to be with someone who is intellectually stimulating and has the same goals and values as they do. Or maybe if they think having someone at home is so important, they can choose to stay home and support their wife's career.
You're right it is men's unwillingness to accept this.
So unless and until men change their minds on this women need to realistically plan their lives. Not plan around some crazy gender neutral feminist's idea of what should happen. But what actually does go on in the real world we live within...
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