New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote recently about the "scary" statistics on women, careers, and childlessness. "Fifty-five percent of 35-year-old career women are childless," she writes. "The number of childless women age 40 to 44 has doubled in the past 20 years," and "among [female] corporate executives who earn $100,000 or more...49 percent..did not have children." Dowd observes that "yet again...men have an unfair advantage...the more women accomplish, the more they have to sacrifice.." And, of course, she knows exactly where to place the blame. Men, she explains, "protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women." In the marriage market, female achievement is the "kiss of death for women" because "men veer away from 'challenging' women." Dowd even implies that her own childlessness is the result of this "male" problem.
WOW ! I really get tired of reading all the men bashing, blaming, and crying by these so-called professional women. None of them are happy. They say they want kids but seem to prefer money, power, and false prestige. In my book, my respect is reserved for the mothers and homemakers raising their children alongside their husbands and fathers of their children despite the economic hardships and sacrifices required. They are the real heroines and true feminists.
There are lots of reasons for the "baby bust" besides male perfidy.
Reason #1: Women don't always adjust their mate preferences to their career goals. High-powered career women want men who will support their careers by scaling back their own careers to become the children's primary care givers or even house husbands. Studies show that, under the right conditions, many men would be happy to exchange their long work hours for the primary role at home. , Of course, few women actually choose these type men as mates.
Reason #2: Even successful women usually choose to "marry upward" when they can. This makes the pool of available candidates for women ever smaller the more successful they become.
Reason #3: Some men prefer less career-oriented and more family women out of legitimate concerns for their future children. Men justifiably believe even successful women want men to be the primary breadwinner. Thus, they also know if they marry a career-oriented woman, both of them may be tied to their careers, to the possible detriment of their children.
Reason #4: Having kids is not for everyone and many women have fortunately made an intelligent choice to remain childless. Militant Feminism has spent 30 years teaching women to rebel against compulsory motherhood and domesticity and to focus on their own careers. Many women have done so and are content with the choices they have made. For them, there is no ~crisis."
Reason #5: Modern women's overreaction to the strict gender roles of the past. As dissident feminist Danielle Crittenden points out in What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, highly educated modern women are being taught that any career sacrifice or accommodation made for men and/or children constitutes a patriarchal limitation on her freedom. The result of this self-defeating overreaction is that the accommodations which everyone, male or female, makes when they marry and have children are resented and too often unfairly deflected onto men.
Reason #6: Educated modern women are being misinformed on men and marriage by the Women's Studies programs in their universities. A new report by the Independent Women's Forum notes programs focus on convincing young women they are under siege, oppressed, and that all men take advantage of women. While serious researchers and scholars have generally concluded that these programs promulgate discredited research, the programs still imbue educated women with hostility and contempt for men, marriage, and child-rearing. These programs exaggerate the disadvantages and burdens women face, and ignore or misrepresent as ~privilege' the disadvantages and burdens men face. For example, the fact that men as a group earn more money than women because they work the longest hours at the most hazardous and demanding jobs, is dressed up as pro-male "wage discrimination."
The problem with Dowd and feminists who think like her is that it never seems to occur to them that they, not men, are the cause of their own problems. Dowd is a successful career woman who has been endlessly critical of men. Yet, without a trace of irony, she chastises men for being afraid of successful women who, she says, may be critical of their men. But how many women want to marry a man who is critical of themselves? Factually, many domestic violence pamphlets even characterize men who are critical of their wives as "emotional abusers."
A friend of mine recently explained the break-up of his marriage to a "professionally successful" woman along these lines. "My wife said the problem was her career success," he said. "But I was happy for her and her success. The problem wasn't her career. The problem was her negative, critical view of men. In the end, I simply got tired of being wrong all the time."
Who wouldn't?
PL Booth
Blue Eye
April 19, 2002
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