Here's an interesting piece from Forbes.com making the case that men shouldn't marry "CAREER WOMEN".
Apparently "career women" just don't make the best wives. They aren't as happy. They cheat more and have fewer children. They don't darn socks.
The reason women with demanding jobs maybe don't make the happy, sweet, easygoing wives their husbands covet is that their husbands aren't pulling their weight at home. I will agree that it's really hard to have a happy household when both partners are working at demanding jobs. In that case, you need to hire signifigant household help to keep things running smoothly. But in these cases cited by Forbes where men find their busy, employed wives to be less-than-excellent wives/mothers is because the husband wants her to act like June Cleaver while at the same time keeping up with her responsibilities at work.
As I wrote in this essay, "THE CASE AGAINST OPTING OUT", I, myself am awfully glad that I kept one foot in my career while married and raising my young children or else I would have been seriously screwed when my marriage ended. Women shouldn't assume they will always have a husband with a good job to take care of them, no matter how good their marriage currently seems. Things can change suddenly.
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I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
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8 comments:
*BASHING SKULL AGAINST DESK*
Where do I start, where do I start?
First of all, once again, the popular media assumes that marriage = having children. Every single article written by a man assumes that every single woman in the world is just DYING to have his babies. *BZZZZT!* Sorry, wrong answer. Thanks for playing.
Second, I resent the implication throughout the article that a "career woman" has her priorities all screwed up. Indeed, that a June Cleaver type is a "real" woman who knows her place in the home and in the marital pecking order. Again, this is a fucked-up theory even when kids are in the picture. But where does it leave women like me, who have skipped having children all together? It doesn't even take a woman like me, or a marriage like mine, into account.
You know, if you marry a "career woman," chances are you can hire someone to come in and clean your goddamned house a couple of times each month. Dirty House? Problem solved. Get over it, you stupid man, and stop having wet dreams about a bimbette wearing a French maid costume and pearls sweeping the carpets while she suckles a tot at each breast. It's just perverse, all of this.
I also retched at the swipe at career women who supposedly have affairs. Well, here is a newsflash for the writer: they aren't having those affairs with their vibrators. There's a male half to that equation, and if the situation in Phoenix is typical of that in any American city, most of those men are married with kids. Indeed, it takes two to tango. Here's something that apparently never crossed the writer's mind: maybe she screws around because you are a boring whiny loser who is a dud in bed.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!
Everyone wants a wife.
Fine. Go get your career and I'll stay at home and iron your bras after making a grilled cheese sandwich.
Everyone should have a Plan B, but I'm not convinced that opting out is really the problem here. The lack of decent, widespread maternity leave, basic health insurance for all citizens, flexible hours and respect for parenting is what really hurts women financially. We're forced into choices that most of the time are not as b+w as "opting out."
On the note of personal responsibily, all SAHPs should have a retirement fund and credit in their own name only. That is just common sense, and will go a long way towards protecting yourself in the event of an untimely end to a marriage from death or divorce.
Oh, and speaking as a social scientist in training, the Forbes article stinks of faulty methodology and manipulation of research. It would be comical, were it not so sexist and offensive.
If women are more willing to get divorced because they can support themselves, then all it means is that they stayed trapped in bad marriages before.
I always tell my kids that life can change in an instant and you need to keep your options open. I chose to work part time and often at home while my kids were small and as a s/w engineer, I'm glad I kept my foot in the door.
To me, this article reads "keep them barefoot and pregnant and hide the car keys, then they can't leave you". Pfffffffft to him.
Check out this even MORE offensive article written by the same author. Let's just say, the guy's got issues.
[you may need to fix the hard line breaks]
http://www.forbes.com/
entrepreneurs/2006/02/11/
economics-prostitution-marriage_cx_mn_money06_0214
prostitution.html
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