Redstate

I remember a study done some years ago among college women. 70-odd percent said they expected to make as much as a man. 80-odd per cent said they would not marry a man who made less than they did. Apparently, they didn't do the math.

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

journalists simply cannot or are unwilling to actually understand the conclusion of a scientific (sadly, even when it comes to social sciences) writing. The actual study's results are that unhappy wives are more likely to get a full time job following the event of becomming unhappy, not that wives who become employed full time are more likely to become unhappy as a result. Don't believe me, well, you got Google Scholar, go read the study if you want.

found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

Wow. You mean people are happier when someone else has to bust their hump making the money?

Could have fooled me.

I think we will see a generational shift on this issue. The first-generation "I am woman hear me roar" types--and I'm thinking here of women of Hillary Clinton's ilk and vintage--had a storm the barricades mentality to which the admission that creating and nurturing a family would reqire professional sacrifices on their part was an admission of defeat by the forces of evil that had kept them down so long. I don't want to be judgemental since I really don't know what it's like to be discriminated against as a woman, but it seems to me this has turned out to be an affirmative-attitude-like stance that has tried to artificially reshape society instantaneously and had unforeseen but nonetheless disastrous consequences. I think you will find more and more women of subsequent generations who were raised by such women and so know their frustrations and felt its effect on the family first-hand will make different choices, and encourage their daughters to make different choices. This might not be the choice to revert to a purely traditional role as you might like, but it will be a shift from what we can call "generation one." To realize that the choice to rear a family of creative, responsible, tax-paying citizens is just that--a choice, not an entitlement, which will take work every bit as real (if not more so) than the work done at the office. And that while there are certainly exceptions to this rule, in general the partner in the family-producing pair who is best-suited to do this work tends to be female. In the end, this comes down to biology. It isn't particularly fair per se, but it is what it is. The result? An altered or reduced career path, a couple of corners cut and a few things held together with duct tape for a little longer than originally planned, and a very different kind of recompense.

So I think it's not surprising that Bob's study was done a number of years ago, because my experience is that more and more couples are arranging their lives so that it is possible for women to take on a child-rearing role that's somewhere between June Cleaver and Gloria Steinam. I know I'm typical of many in my generation in that I've worked very hard for the professional life I built before I had my children, and I'm not prepared to abandon it wholesale because they're arrived. I want them to see both their parents as ambitious, productive people, but also want them to know--we both want them to know--that Mommy (and sometimes Daddy) will pick them up at school and at least have a fighting shot at getting to the major events in their lives. What's interesting to me as I try to carve out such a role for myself is that the world really isn't set up for it yet--people (by which I mean schools, committees, etc.) understand "working moms" and "stay-at-home moms," but they tend to be a little non-plussed by the in-betweens. But for what it's worth, I think this will be the wave of the future.

"I'm kind of old-fashioned. I like to engage my brain before my mouth." Donald Rumsfeld

hit on professional women. Go with the percentages.

Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.

So if one expects the perfect life with the perfect mate with the perfect job and the perfect kids and the perfect home in the perfect neighborhood, one may be a tad disappointed.

I think the 70's/80's feminists wildly overidealized careers and the workplace. And the boomers and Gen-Xers, to put it mildly, have a rock-solid sense of entitlement that can generate disappointments.

Nonetheless, there are many women who are sensible and realistic about tradeoffs. They do just fine, whether they have power careers or are homemakers or juggle careers & family.

professional career working with, supervising, and at times supervising professional women - and being married to one. A few observations:

Twenty or so years ago, they tried to "out-macho" the men; they worked harder or at least more, drank or drugged harder, and screwed around more than the men, though not necessarily as much as the men talked about.

Over time, it seemed that they became more balanced about it, though they consistently tried harder; men, especially men with law degrees have that entitlement thing down.

One of the finest professionals I've ever worked with and for had it down; ruthless PhD. by day, June Cleaver by night. Don't know how, but she pulled it off seamlessly.

The one thing that has never changed is sex in the workplace. Stress and proximity or alcohol and proximity are a lethal combination. "Horizontal career moves" are just a fact of life and in the professional world, women can control that. In today's world, a man with a professional reputation at stake isn't likely to push too hard, but a woman seeing an opportunity can do what she thinks will work. Most don't play it that way, but enough do, and enough men are stupid enough to fall in to it.

In the later days of my career, I usually chose to hire women; they worked harder and didn't have the delicate egos that the men did. I learned that often their priorities were different, and if they said they needed to go do something with their kid, they went, no questions asked.

And the other thing, and I'll admit that I never really figured this out, is that you can never show a woman that you might have clay feet; it seems almost a genetic predisposition to exploit any foibles that a man might have.

Vino Veritas

in general don't come in contact with as many potential sex partners during the course of their day as women who work.

When I was at home-there just weren't that many places I went where I would come in contact with either single men or men looking to cheat.

I think you could argue that a woman who works full time has more opportunity for tempatation and more ability to follow through on it-especially if she is in a long lunch or "sorry have to stay late at the office" situation.

One thing that would be interesting to see controlled for in the studies is they type of workplace the cheaters worked in and what the ratio of men to women was. I work in an elementary school-there are three men total out of about 50 or so people who work at my school. There are 4 men total at the other elementary school with about 50 employees.

This article could have been explosive but it wasn't. Nice work.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.