So I’m reading yet another article (via) telling women to “focus” on getting married and having babies instead of a career, because the career can wait and the babies can’t, and it occurred to me that these routine articles are similar to the pressure-heavy, heavily photoshopped magazine covers and impossibly thin mannequins out there. Which is to say, women are being held to a standard that doesn’t actually exist in the real world, and only exists to make women insecure, wandering around wondering if they should be doing something different, but have no idea what it could be. With the impossible beauty standards, it goes like this: after dieting and exercise and buying a bunch of products, and hair styling, and fashion-buying, you still can’t look like that, because what you really need is to be a two-dimensional image that’s been worked over for hours in Photoshop. With the no-career-have-babies-now mentality, you’re being scolded for either behaving in a way that will save you from dependency, i.e. being scolded for being a full, responsible citizen of the sort Americans are supposed to be, or being scolded for not doing what you’re already doing, but just not enough.
This article is a perfect example.
Women who want to have children should make it a priority in their twenties to find a partner. That’s because one of the most dramatic issues facing Generation X is infertility. No generation of women has had more trouble with fertility than this generation, who received the terrible baby boomer advice, “Wait. You have time. Focus on your career first.”
But in fact, you have your whole life to get a career.
Myth #1: Women don’t need financial means to survive.
I’m entirely sure how women are supposed to get away from “focusing” on our careers and instead “focusing” on getting a man and a baby, when to finance the latter, you need the former. Let’s be honest, “focusing” on the career means going to college and then going out and getting a job and working at it, which are all, interestingly enough, ways that women actually meet the men who can provide the sperm. Your other alternatives are to not go to college and just get a job, which is also the dreaded “focusing on your career”, only probably more stressful because the working class paycheck is generally smaller, especially for women who tend towards pink collar jobs, and it’s not like it’s less hours of working and commuting to be the boss’s secretary rather than be the boss. Women do need shelter and food to survive, so the only other option that occurs to me is living with your parents and not working or only working part-time so you can “focus” all your energies on dating. And since what all the men worth marrying out there really want is a dependent, under-educated wife who doesn’t get out much, you’ll be set.*
How much time does one need in the day to date, anyway? Apparently, enough for women that we need to set aside our careers (read: jobs) in order to accomplish this time-consuming task. Which leads me to the weird myth #2.
Obviously, that’s not true of having a baby. If you are past your early twenties, and you’re single and want to have children, you need to find a partner now. Take that career drive and direct it toward mating - your ovaries will not last longer than your career.
I’m a 30-year-old middle class single straight woman in a city, basically the target audience for this guilt trip. I know a lot of women like me, who have the dreaded “careers” and the college degrees. I don’t know a single one that doesn’t date. Not one. Yes, even though they clock in 40 or more hours a week at the job, they still have time to go on dates. And it’s not just casual dating; a lot of them have long term boyfriends, relationships that work for awhile and then don’t anymore. Going on dates, falling in love, auditioning boyfriends to seek long term compatibility—I do believe that’s what you call “focusing” on mating.
But this article carries with it this odd assumption that middle class working women live as nuns until they hit 30, and then they start dating.
Waiting until your midthirties to start a family, if you want to carry the babies yourself, is a risky endeavor. Which means, of course, you probably want to find a partner by the time you’re 30.
The good news is that psychology research shows you will gain more happiness anyway by finding a partner than by having a good job. While you should not have to choose between a satisfying marriage or a good job, your biological clock does not care. You can control where you spend your time and energy, and you should search for your mate if you don’t want to face fertility problems.
The great irony in all this is what I pointed to above. If you’re a member of the demographic group this article is aimed at, then the worst possible thing you could do if you’re looking to get married is to give up your career. Let’s assume for a moment that the logistical arguments in here are possible—that it’s doable to live as a part-time worker in a go-nowhere job so you free up 20 extra hours a week to cruise Match.com, which is apparently more time-consuming that any job ever could be. While that’s blatant nonsense, even if it were true, it would cripple your “value” on the dating “market” with the kind of men you’re probably interested in. If you go on a date with the kind of guy that you would have a lot in common with if you hadn’t committed to this bizarre plan, he’d drop you like a rock once you revealed that you’d given up your ambitions to spend a lot of time dating. And if he didn’t drop you, you wouldn’t want him, because he’s probably the kind of douchebag who would date a woman who doesn’t pursue a career because it would cut into her time dating. If good men are as hard to find as these articles invariably imply, then why on earth would you make yourself a significantly less attractive person by reducing the amount of positive qualities you have?
It’s clearly a catch-22, like so many other things that are put on women. Most of the target audience for this article knows from experience that we are more attractive, have more dates and better dates with men that we’re far more likely to want as partners if we embody the qualities we’re looking for in men—intelligence, ambition, varied interests, a sense of purpose you get from actually having a career, independence, and confidence. The only purpose in telling us that these things are actually roadblocks is to give up unnecessary doubts and fears to wake us up in the middle of the night. Sick, really.
*This is a joke. If a man thinks that dependence is attractive, then run screaming away.
Gaaaaah! I want to have babies AND get a PhD AND have a fancy job AND spend time with my family! And I want to not feel bad about any of those things!
[Runs around flailing arms in frustration. Collides with sliding glass door she didn’t realize was closed.]
Oh, she is a FIND! Among some of the wonderful gems on her blog:
But then again, why would a straight woman WANT to have a sense of humor? Hard for your man to knock you up if he’s laughing…
Aren’t all the “worthwhile” men — the ones who can support a wife and children on his salary alone — out working during the day, anyway? What good does it do not to work when all the worthwhile dates are busy at their own jobs?
The one good thing she points out in the article is that, career-wise, there isn’t necessarily a better or worse time to have a child.
And like Amanda said, a lot of women are out there working and looking for love. If they aren’t, maybe it is because love isn’t a very high priority. Which might, just might suggest, that they wouldn’t be as happy with a partner as those of us who are looking/have looked.
That said, when I hadn’t bothered with dating for a while because I kept moving, I finally asked myself “when does my life begin, if not now?” And I became open to looking. And in the last of those states that I lived in for 1-2 years each, I found my guy. So, for those women out there who are putting off dating for pragmatic reasons, maybe give it a second thought. But I think there is a difference between being open to finding someone, and being set on finding someone.
Oh, and never mind that this article completely ignores women who don’t have the financial resources to go part-time, eat bon-bons (I love bon-bons!) and peruse match for 20 hours a week.
Reputable social science research - the kind that is published in The Journal of Marriage and Family - informs us that: one, college-educated women are MORE likely to get married than their lesser-educated counterparts (they just get married later); two, they are LESS likely to get divorced; and three, men these days put a high priority on a woman’s education and earning power. Most men want a woman who is going to help make the monthly nut.
Susan Faludi did such a great job debunking all this “mayun shortage ZOMG!” BS in Backlash. Of course, the backlash BS continues because there is so much profit in it.
Um… just read further down on her blog to her experience with PPD. WOW.
I think that’s when the women are supposed to be out getting manicured and pedicured and highlighted and waxed and polished. You know, all those things women are supposed to do to achieve “effortless” beauty.
Of course, all that maintenance is mighty expensive, and I’m not sure how a gal is supposed to pay for it without a career. Damn tricky, that.
I’m confused: the article is all about how women should be in a panic about the quality of their eggs, but the accompanying photo is of a technician analyzing sperm. Huh? Or are we supposed to feel sorry for the technician who, due to her career, only gets to look at sperm without ever getting to actually use any herself?
I love the machine that analyzes sperm, which to judge by the display is a lot like playing an early version of “Missile Command”.
The good news is that psychology research shows you will gain more happiness anyway by finding a partner than by having a good job.
And not one shred of proof to back this up, especially with recent (and actual) studies done to show that this just isn’t true. We’ve been living in this right wing world far too long when all it takes to make a point is to say, “well, there’s psychology research that shows this” and then whomever you’re speaking to is supposed to go, “By joe, did you hear that? Psychology research! She used the word “psychology” therefore it must be true! I shall do no more thinking for myself.”
Oi. It’s too early in the morning for this kind of stupid.
That’s where the woman has already screwed up, Phoebe Fay- had she kept her attention to nailing a guy with good prospects while she was still in college and Daddy was paying for her (giggle) “education”, the gravy train would have just kept on going. She would have gotten the big wedding right after college, lots of babies while still pretty and fertile- but NO.
She had to have a CAREER. Damn those feminists for putting that silly thought in her head!!!
But what if I don’t wanna have babies?
Airu @ #5: Exactly. I should have reiterated that in the post. I’m honestly sitting here and thinking about all the women I’ve known in the targeted demographic, and how the number of men they’ve met that were suitable as boyfriends and potential husbands and baby-daddies went up when they got out into the world to do their career-stuff. A couple feminist bloggers and I have a running joke about how feminism is in fact a dating service—the notion that you’re going to meet less interesting men by getting out of a political career is a joke. That’s like saying that it’s hard to meet eligible men if you have a career in sports.
Heh, Peanutcat, I don’t want babies, either, but many women do, and even more probably do want some kind of relationship, so addressing this fear-mongering is a useful thing to do, I’d think. Even the willfully childless suffer from the stupid childless spinster stereotype.
I like T Rex’s idea of starting a Childless Spinster club.
Of course, all that maintenance is mighty expensive, and I’m not sure how a gal is supposed to pay for it without a career. Damn tricky, that.
Daddy will pay for it!
Hey, all you working, single 20-somethings - try this on your parents: Mom, dad, I’m going to quit my job and move in with you. No, no college. No, I’m not sick. I just want to spend more time dating, and you need to support me in this.
Sheesh.
There are so many unsupported assumtions in the trainwreck that is this “article.” For one thing, it presumes that you will never get divorced, widowed, or your husband suffer some sort of debilitating medical problem. It presumes that the man you find will be wealthy enough to support you while you don’t work (or don’t work full-time). It presumes you can afford to raise children without benefit of a full-time second income. It presumes that work and motherhood are mutually exclusive. I could go on. GAAHHH I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF THESE IDIOTIC ARTICLES ON THE MYTHICAL MOMMY WARS.
Ahem. Pardon me. I just had to get that out of my system.
there is a difference between being open to finding someone, and being set on finding someone.
Exactly, Ismone. Most women–most humans, actually, have a desire to pair (or sometimes otherwise) bond with a romantic and sexual partner (irregardless of a drive to reproduce). The whole article is written on the premise that being a woman with a career (job) is synonymous with MENZ: DO NOT WANT. Which is simply untrue.
Amanda @ 14–
Seeing as how our generation(s) will be the first to have a large contingent of childfree people, I am curious as to how adult socializing will change. Parents often end up making friends with other parents over shared children’s activities. Will there be mixing with childfree folks choosing to hang out at the playground and parents coming to pick-up ultimate games? Or will this further fracture our communities?
Having now read not only that article, but also bits and pieces of what’s on her blog, I want to lock her in a room and make her listen to X-Ray Spex’s Germfree Adolescents and Gang of Four’s Entertainment! on a continuous loop until she comes to her senses.
Biological clock?
I must have missed out on that gene, myself.
Wow, that blog is something else. She certainly is obsessed with fertility, and anxious about women having careers. Hell, she won’t even let us crack a joke.
“Anyway, their point is that fun people are more likable. Which is the problem with women: We are not as funny as men. That is not their point. It is my point.
But my gut tells me it’s right. My gut tells me that most funny women are gay. First of all, Brassler’s research found that men do not think women who are funny are more attractive. Also, Christopher Hitchins has a great piece in Vanity Fair, Why Women Aren’t Funny, where he points out that Jewish women are funny, but only because they have male qualities of humor -angst and self-deprecation.”
I’ve read that Vanity Fair piece, and it was ridiculous. Hitch does not like to hear women making jokes, therefore women just aren’t funny, and if they are funny it means, by definition, that they must be acting male. Yeah, I’m convinced by that.
Since she’s pulling so much out of her ass, I’ll do the same and speculate that some men don’t like funny women because they prefer women to be their audience, to be submissive, to laugh at the men’s jokes, NOT to shake up the status quo.
The key to retaining as much fertility as possible is to avoid getting often silent STDs such as Chlamydia. Infections scar the fallopian tubes. Barrier methods, people, in addition to/instead of whatever hormone method is used.
But I think there is a difference between being open to finding someone, and being set on finding someone.
Yeah I think what I like best about this article is it takes the tiny bit of good advice that is “Don’t stress work so hard, if you’re one of those people that stresses work too hard” and blows it out into HOLYSHITSMCGEENOMANWILLEVERLOVEYOUANDYOULLDIEALONE!!!!!
I am so sick of this talk about how you better have babies NOW or you’ll never be able to, and then won’t you be sorry. Hello, adoption? Surrogate motherhood? Freezing your eggs? Plenty of options besides settling down when you aren’t ready, if you think you might want to in the future.
Penelope Trunk, a/k/a Adrienne Roston (her story about the name change is a howler in and of itself), is a complete and utter trainwreck. Per Wiki, she was a successful businesswoman and a professional volleyball player, but somehow she got hold of the idea that she was a “writer,” and there have been no end of people willing to indulge her in this delusion.
Kate Harding once ripped her a new one for writing this “career advice”:
But that’s nothing when you read about how Trunk has also refashioned her seriously disordered eating into “weight-loss tips.”Her current status as a syndicated columnist says volumes about how far the mainstream media has fallen. Fuck’s sake, even Yahoo! gave her the boot just before Christmas, and “they made her travel to their New York offices at her own expense to learn she was getting axed.” (HA-ha!)
Um, adoption? I intend on being childfree myself, so I’m looking from the outside in on the “biological clock issue” (apparently mine’s on snooze, or the batteries are dead, or something), but I never understood the emphasis on having BIOLOGICAL children as if it’s the end-all, be-all. There are tons of kids who need a stable, loving home and are already born… no labor pains and swollen feet necessary, and if you’re a professional, you’re more likely to be able to successfully navigate the adoption system. Simple answer, problem solved. *shrugs* If you just NEED to have a biological child, I don’t know what to say about that because then it just seems like an exercise in narcissism to me (not that there’s anything wrong with that), as opposed to an earnest desire to be part of a child’s life.
Oh, and completely OT: South African woman wearing a miniskirt assaulted by taxi drivers, who wanted to “teach her a lesson” for wearing such a short skirt.
Hrm, previous comment stuck in moderation limbo?
So, commenting here is nice and all, but how many of you wrote to the author of the article and told her :
A) your opinion of her stance, and/or
B) about the existence of this thread?
Why do we keep seeing this article over and over again?
Because it is about a problem that people are taking notice of, but the papers don’t have the guts to write about how corporate America is messing with people’s natural life cycles by no longer paying college graduates in their twenties enough salary to support a family.
The good news is that psychology research shows you will gain more happiness anyway by finding a partner than by having a good job.
I like how she doesn’t even bother to say “a good partner.” More happiness with any old partner than with a good job? Unlikely.
While the dichotomy she draws is ridiculous (whether they do it early or do it later, most women who have kids also work and the two are not mutually exclusive), I do see an advantage to having your children at a younger age if you want them and want to have a career. My mom, who is in academia, had me and my brother when she was in college. This, obviously, was a lot of work at the time. But by the time she had her PhD and was in a tenure-track position, we were in middle school and high school. That meant we were a lot more independent, and she could focus on her work. Since most people don’t get their PhDs until their early 30s, a lot of her colleagues have their children right in the middle of trying to get tenure, which is much more challenging than having toddlers as an undergrad. Personally, I had my first kid at 28, would like to have another, but I’m kind of apprehensive about balancing that with both of our careers taking off but being at a point where it still takes a lot of work to prove and improve ourselves professionally.
Now, the big buts here, and they are really, really big buts that the writer seems to blithely ignore, are 1) finding someone at 18 or 20 or even 22 who is going to be a good life partner and 2) whether you actually want to give up doing all the fun things you’re doing to be a parent in your 20s. And given how we all change and grow and mature, finding a good partner at such a young age is more a matter of luck than skill or effort. And settling down with someone who is a poor fit just to get the kids part out of the way sounds like a really bad idea. And then you end up divorced with some jackass of an ex, and both your career and your dating life are pretty impinged upon for the next 20 years because you have all that responsibility without a lot of help in sharing the load.
So, moral is, however you can make it work for you financially, emotionally, etc., you just have to make the best of it.
One last aside, I don’t know how many people here read alittlepregnant, but I don’t see too many of the infertile folks over there wishing they had married their high school or even college boyfriends just to avoid fertility treatments, even with all the heartache and expense a lot of those folks have gone through.
Ah, but Anna (#24), freezing eggs is not a realistic option. Surrogate motherhood is costly and legally complex. So is adoption. Plus, some people just crave biological children. If a woman is longing to have a biological child, it’s pragmatic to think about fertility.
One thing a woman can do is get her hormone levels checked (FSH and LH, blood drawn on something like day 3 of the period, I forget exactly) to see if she’s already likely infertile (in which case: proceed directly to alternative methods) or if her ovarian reserve is good. Some young women are infertile, while some women in their 40s are still fertile. It’s a crapshoot, and you won’t know whether you’re fertile until you try or run medical tests.
I didn’t bother reading the article Amanda’s writing about, but let me mention another option: If having babies is important to you and you don’t have a partner (or if your partner is also female), you can also procure some sperm (from a bank or a friend) and become a “single mother by choice.” That removes the biological clock’s time pressure on the search for a male partner.
Fixed that for her.
In most corporate career tracks, you put in a lot of long hours and hard work when you’re establishing yourself, and that usually means doing it during your 20s when you have energy and no dependents. This holds true for men and women, so this she’s making an argument for self-limitation based on gender.
Finally, phraseology like “science magic” and “if you don’t have ethical problems with the technology” give clues to the audience the author is trying to address. Hint: it isn’t a “career columnist” who earlier “was a software executive, and then she founded two companies” who waited more than 10 years after college to have her child. (from http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/about-me/ )
Let’s say that I start out as a Protestant, at least a nominal Protestant, but then convert to Judaism.
Do I suddenly acquire the right to be funny? And is there a ceremony involved?
Mo, it would be great if career counselors and coaches would start to think and write more about the socially-constructed nature of the problem. But as this article, and the writer’s blog illustrate, they almost never do. All the career advice is about dealing with the status quo as is, not about demanding that it change to suit human, not corporate needs.
In the expanded, blog version of this piece, Trunk asserts, “Because women with high-powered jobs don’t take four weeks leave. You don’t get a high-powered career by going on leave.”
Well who the hell made up that rule? And why should we put up with it? And what could we do to change it?
Really, it’s like there’s an entire industry publishing recipes for dogshit (”if you add enought cardamom, it doesn’t taste quite as shitty!”) and it never occurs to them to wonder how they could get their hands on better ingredients.
I can’t imagine that there are many people that this column is relevant to. Really, who wakes up at 40 having spent all their time on their career without having given a thought to marrying? Investment bankers? Corporate lawyers? Professors who spent too much time in graduate school?
Were I female, this would apply to me, because I spent too much time in graduate school and had a round-about career path. However, it’s not as though I ignored the marriage thing– it just happened not to work out due to some failed relationships. And few people take the career path I did: if you graduate college and work 40-50 hours a week developing your career, how does this interfere with finding a spouse, if you decide to make finding a spouse one of your priorities?
Well said. There are, of course, other productive Western industrialised countries where women have the right to take more than four weeks leave, and where there’s paternity leave, too. But those countries aren’t so worried about preserving a vision of a God-fearing, authority-worshipping, whitebread golden age (the 1950s) that never really was. Americans who believe in this delusion are the audience to which Trunk is pandering.
This is something that almost never comes up in these discussions. I don’t know if it’s a fear that it will turn into blaming the victim (”Well, if you hadn’t been such a slutty slut slut and gotten chlamydia you’d have a baby by now!”) but IIRC that is the leading cause of female infertility, so it shouldn’t be overlooked.
You know, I could say that I followed this advice. I married and had my children in my 20s. I didn’t finish college. Neither did my husband.
So, for the last almost 20 yrs now we’ve struggled to put food on the table and roof over our heads. I couldn’t go back to school and neither could he. We had to work. Most of the time, he’s working two jobs so I can’t go to school at night. Who watches the kids? Night care for kids is outrageously expensive and they’ve already spent all day in daycare. Now I’m going to put them in daycare at night too?
The oldest is now old enough to watch the younger but she’ll only be here for a couple more years and she’s working part-time after school. Then, we’ll be paying for HER college. When we get her through, it will be time for HIM to go.
So, if you were to follow this privileged idiot’s advice, chances are good that you won’t be able to go/finish college at all and will forever be trapped in working class jobs that, believe me when I tell you this, are boring beyond belief and do not pay enough to ever allow you to do more than run on the hamster wheel of work to pay bills so you can work so you can pay bills.
Mo, you have it backwards. Women being allowed to graduate from college and have equal pay is relatively new. The change is in blue-collar jobs; unions have been gutted and the economy shifted from manufacturing to service. We’re well past the age where a woman can marry her high-school sweetheart knowing that his union job at the steel plant will be enough to support their family.
Yet another fact from pulledoutofmyass.com. Twits like her were saying the same thing about the Boomers. What they don’t like to talk about is how much of that infertility is caused by untreated STDs.
In other words, you’re better off using condoms and getting checked regularly for STDs than quitting your job at 23 and trying to get knocked up.
I intend on being childfree myself, so I’m looking from the outside in on the “biological clock issue”
Correct, you are. So when you spout off about how infertility is just not a big deal and people who are upset they can’t have biological children are narcissists who should adopt, you should like a fucking morong.
Ok, first Charlotte Allen’s ridiculous bell curve redux, then this piece of crap, and then the NY Post article on how women are lying untrustworthy bitches (see Feministing).
..I would have never dreamed of seeing this kind of out and out virulent misogyny in the mainstream newspapers even ONE year ago, much less five or ten. WTF is happening? Is it a reaction to Hillary? A coordinated campaign?
I dunno, but i’ve never felt more hated.
Oh, and those countries I mentioned in #37 offer all that leave because their governments are as concerned about declining white birth rates as Trunk is. Not a pleasant motivation, to be sure, but at least they’ve adapted to the opportunities available to women in the 21st century.
Her position reminds me of the GOP’s split over the so-called immigration issue. The pro-corporate neoCons want cheap guest-worker labour, while the racist Know-Nothings want the non-citizens kicked out. They can’t have it both ways unless government makes serious changes to the system (e.g. promoting unions, real immigration reform, more regulation of employers, etc.) that both factions are unable to consider because of their love affair with the mythical 1950s.
Oh my god, the backlash has been particularly intense these past couple weeks.
That’s the whole point of this article. The corporate interests who advertise in publications these “writers” write for are getting highly pissed that there is too much upward mobility in US society of late. It is their goal to make sure that they have a captive labor pool and that they labor pool grows to drive labor costs down.
Of course they’re going to encourage people to marry young and have lots of babies. That’s a quick route to poor and desperate, and corporations can exploit poor and desperate workers much better than workers who have independent wealth sources and myriad job opportunities in the labor market.
It’s Marx 101.
Orange, why exactly is it that freezing eggs isn’t a “realistic option”? Supporting evidence for your assertion?
And then there’s this:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/03/women-were-designed-to-multitask-bra.html
Stop the world, I want off.
Mthago, just because someone isn’t blinded in quite the same ways, although certainly blinded in others, doesn’t mean they are “a fucking morong.” I’ve seen infertility and just how crazy it can make people. It may be serious and sad for those involved, but it may also indicate narcissism to insist on biological children. I’m not sure that the two are mutually exclusive.
Why is suggesting adoption such an insult?
Freezing unfertilized eggs is still an experimental procedure. There has been some success with it, but not as much as when they freeze embryos.
(Sperm has less water, so it freezes pretty well, unlike an egg, which can develop ice crystals.)
Wow that is so insulting on so many levels. I had been having menstrual difficulties for years and found out at 22 that I had PCOS. I knew before I got married that getting pregnant would be difficult no matter how old I was when I started trying. By the time I turned 32, a new treatment was being tried for women with my condition. It worked, I had my first at 34 and my second at nearly 37. One thing an older, more financially established woman has is the ability to address many fertility issues that may arise.
The problem here: no matter what any woman personally chooses for her life, someone is going to have a problem with it. And he or she isn’t going to be shy about telling said woman what she’s doing wrong and how he/she would’ve done it differently. We can’t win, they keep moving the goalposts.
“Correct, you are. So when you spout off about how infertility is just not a big deal and people who are upset they can’t have biological children are narcissists who should adopt, you should like a fucking moron”
Didn’t I say “SEEMS like a exercise in narcissism”? I conceded that I couldn’t understand it, and I referenced the lack of understanding by using that word. In the exact same sentence, I said that “I don’t know what to say about that,” not that “biological child or bust” people should adopt. That would be a ridiculous suggestion on my part. It would be a shame for any child to be brought into a home where they are deemed “second best,” and a shame for parents to have to believe that they’re settling.
“people who are upset they can’t have biological children are narcissists”
What? Quote where I said this, Mythago. I referenced those who want a bio child or nothing, not people who are upset about their inability to have a biological child. Then again, you’re fully free to go ahead, fly off the handle and curse me out based on a misinterpretation of what I actually said.
My mother was 39 when she conceived my sister. Why is 30 somehow the magical “past your sell-by date” age? Me, I just turned 33, still childfree and cruising, and looking forward to menopause. Please subscribe me to the Childless Spinster Club newsletter.
Incidentally, no, you do not have “your whole life” to get a career. You can either get in on the ground floor with the rest of the twentysomethings, or you can pretty much forget getting anywhere, at least in the professional arena. Who hasn’t heard horror stories told by former SAHMs about trying to go back to work with an eight-year gap in their resumes, and that’s usually if they had work experience to start with. (Incidentally, even if you’re male you don’t have your whole life to get a career, as I’m slowly teaching my borderline-agoraphobic boyfriend, who’s 30 and only ever held one job — very briefly — in his entire life. If he were to start looking for a non-self-employed type job now, he’d be, in short, fucked.)
Fair enough. I should have said that you SEEM like a fucking moron.
Go back and read your own post. You admit that you have no clue about why anyone would want a biological child when they could go adopt one, unless maybe they have a personality disorder. Suggestion that it’s always a bad idea to project your own feelings about something onto others and wonder what’s wrong with them that they feel differently.
nothip, first, because you’re assuming that infertile women are idiots who would smack their heads and say “God–adoption! Why didn’t I think of that! What a narcissist I’ve been.” Like they’ve never thought of it, or had it suggested to them by 3,294,593 clueless people. Encouraging adoption as a general thing is good. Pointing out that many children need homes is good. That’s not what Dana did. Blithering about the silliness of the infertile for doing something other than saying “No biggie, we’ll adopt” is just more shaming women for their reproductive choices.
The deck is stacked against us either way. I wasnt fortunate enough to attend college. I married, had a child at 28, and divorced at 32.
So…I spent from then on single parenting, working my ass off in IT to build a career so I could take care of that child (child support is a fantasy), and here I sit at 49, with a “successful” career that I hate, and which bores me to death but pays well enough to get my son through a state university if I’m careful. Date? I work 60-80 hours a week or more. Meet men at work? They all have stay-at-home partners, which is the only way to do this job and have an actual life.
I traded in having a partner or more children, or any kind of real life, for supporting the one I had following this kind of advice.
Interrobang - I think you can recognize the career hit from home-with-babies without saying that anyone who does that is “fucked”. (That sounds like something the right wing would encourage. Don’t get any ideas about going out and earning a living now, ladies, you’re fucked. Stay home until your kids are in college and then go volunteer for the Red Cross or something.)
It’s absolutely true that the opposite myth is pushed by the stay-home-and-breed crowd: that Mom can simply step off the track, keep up her skills while effortlessly caring for the kids and running the household. NOT true.
I read my own post. Several times, in fact, because I was worried about what I’d said to raise your ire so.
“I should have said that you SEEM like a fucking moron.”
To your credit, that is just about what you said originally.
Saying that
“(I) admit that I have no clue about why anyone would want a biological child when they could go adopt one, unless maybe they have a personality disorder.”
and my addressing the
“emphasis on having BIOLOGICAL children as if it’s the end-all, be-all.”
just doesn’t seem like the same thing… to me, anyway.
“you’re assuming that infertile women are idiots who would smack their heads and say “God–adoption! Why didn’t I think of that! What a narcissist I’ve been.” Like they’ve never thought of it, or had it suggested to them by 3,294,593 clueless people.”
Now this point, I definitely thought about after your first post to me. I mentioned adoption because it was omitted by the article and seemed like a glaring oversight on her part, not because I didn’t think that the infertile had never heard of it. The author strongly implied that the ways that she suggested were the only options available, hence the desperate measure of quitting your job at 23 and working on getting preggers 40 hrs a week instead.
It may be that most women would like a great life-time partner, multiple perfect kids, and a successful career. But it’s not like the only possible outcomes are (1) that scenario OR AND ONLY OR (2) living in a dark hole being bitten by angry rats.
There is career with no kids, there is serial monogamy, there is getting it on like the Easter Bunny, there is divorce with or without kids, there is marriage with no kids, there is marriage or divorce with kids that are in some way not what you’d hoped for (NASCAR fans? adopted rather than biological? disabled in some way? this last usually being presented as the *worst outcome ever* based on NO research on families that include disabled members), there is “steady job” instead of “career”,
and there is happiness and unhappiness in all of those outcomes, just like the first one, too. And people DON’T KNOW IN ADVANCE which outcome is in fact going to make them happy, they only know what they think will make them happy, which is notoriously unreliable — especially when one particular outcome promises happiness because it is presented as the ONLY alternative to the angry rats/dark hole option.
Freezing eggs is “realistic,” as in, people do it and some people manage to turn those frozen eggs into successful pregnancies, but no one should count on it being successful. It’s not some kind of sure-fire way to protect your fertility. It often is not successful, and in the meantime, you have to pay for the storage on those eggs and hope the clinic doesn’t go out of business.
The folks who have brought up silent STDs are right on, as are those who point out that younger women also have fertility problems. I suspect there are environmental factors as well in some cases. That said, if having biological children is really important to you, there is more risk of having difficulty as you get older. The question is whether that risk is so great you should just ignore everything else you want out of life. I think most feminists and really most women would say no. We are saying no by the way we live our lives.
In the expanded, blog version of this piece, Trunk asserts, “Because women with high-powered jobs don’t take four weeks leave. You don’t get a high-powered career by going on leave.”
Poor, poor Penelope. Stupid through and through.
Women with high-powered are the ONLY ones taking 4 weeks leave. It’s the mere underlings that are busting the bank on stretched vacation/sick leave.
I am soooooo sick of stupid.
Mythago - what’s wrong with calling a spade a spade when Interrobang talks about SAHMs being fucked when they try to get back into the workforce?
I’m not being a smartass, I genuinely want to know what is a better way of explaining that anybody, man or woman, who stops working in order to care for their children (or sick relatives, elderly parents, etc.) is going to experience extreme difficulty and tribulation when it comes time to re-enter the job market because our economy is structured such that every able-bodied adult must work for an employer to survive.
Wish I could find the link again but I only stumbled upon it when reading Trunk’s “stellar” blog this morning.
Sorry but I just can’t trust a woman who tells other women to not have an orgasm if they decide they want a one night stand. Because feeling good is baaaaad.
Nothip-you’ve seen how infertility can make some folks crazy? From someone who has personally experienced infertility let me tell you what is crazy-making. The childless-by-choice and fertile who assume that you should just be able to follow their reasoned advice without regard to what you want. And yes, it is very frustrating when your body simply won’t do what it is designed to do. I was once told by a 17-year old, who naturally knew everything there was to know about everything, that I should just take in foster kids. Try thinking about this: some of us want kids that the foster system won’t remove at some point, or that birth parents can’t demand back, or that we won’t have to travel to China to get. Infertility doesn’t drive us crazy, it those on the outside who have no idea what it is like, that do. I was lucky, my non-invasive fertility treatment finally worked. But I still know what it was like to feel betrayed by my body.
I wouldn’t agree that a career late bloomer is necessarily “fucked.” It really depends on the career track and job market. I have known people who make spectactular careers starting at over 30 - but granted, this was in an area with a diverse and thriving economy. There are certain fields (teaching, nursing, social work - yes, “pink-collar” jobs) and certain companies (smaller ones and nonprofits) where it’s easier to make a comeback than in others (plum jobs in large for-profit companies). Most re-entry SAHMs run into barriers because their skills are out of date. And, of course, the present economy doesn’t help - the tighter the job market, the choosier employers can be. Lots of people take a hiatus from the job market for other reasons than SAHM’ing - they change careers, go back to school, have a disability they recover from, spend their 20’s trying to make it big as a rock star, etc.
In other news, I found this article on the Council on Contemporary Families website:
http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/subtemplate.php?t=briefingPapers&ext=menshousework
Men are doing more housework and child care. Moreover, “Men share more family work if their female partners are employed more hours, earn more money, and have spent more years in education.”
The Council on Contemporary Families website is a great resource for what is really going on with families (as opposed to the backlash BS the mainstream media trafficks in). It appears that if marriage or partnership is a goal of yours as a woman, you are BEST served by getting that degree and having a decent job.
I haven’t read the whole thread yet, so this may have been covered, but I love how this career-baby race disappears all of the women whose careers and childrearing possibilities are sidelined for various/indefinite periods by chronic illness, caring for other pre-existing family members, and other “abnormal” (yet common) situations. I say childrearing, not just childbirth, because chronic health problems are likely to reduce one’s chances of being considered an appropriate adoptive parent (please correct me if I’m wrong–it’s something I worry about myself).
The article chides us that we are worth less if we pursue careers before babies. If we can do neither, well, then we are worthless. Well thanks, ‘cause I really needed that rubbed in.
Oh, and when I refer to “this career-baby race” I am referring to the article, not to anyone’s comments in the thread. Just to be clear
Sorry but I just can’t trust a woman who tells other women to not have an orgasm if they decide they want a one night stand.
But… what would be the point?
Hi Amanda,
I have nothing to add, only that it was nice meeting you and Mark (Marc?) this past weekend. (couldn’t find a “contact” button on the blog). Anyways, thanks for showing me around Austin!
Josh
(Diana’s friend)
Hi Amanda,
I have nothing to add, only that it was nice meeting you and Mark (Marc?) this past weekend. (couldn’t find a “contact” button on the blog). Anyways, thanks for showing me around Austin!
Josh
(Diana’s friend)
I’m still trying to track down the orgasm quote i mentioned earlier but I did find some other interesting things on her blog.
One is her contradiction of herself in blogs just a week apart: “There is a labor shortage in Generation X that no one predicted, and it’s because of increased fertility”
I thought Gen Xers were having problems with INfertity.
The other is the vomit inducing emotions even just her post titles create. The ones on sexual harrassment are especially sickening.
Awww, I found it:
“If you are feeling like you want to have a one-time fling, think about forgoing the orgasm. Because Fisher says that, just like the addict who is hooked the first time, you can fall in love from just one orgasm. ”
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/12/10/what-to-consider-when-considering-a-workplace-hook-up/
This is really about four different catch-22s rolled into one, most of them completely false.
In addition to the whole social construction about building a career being incompatible with having a kid, there’s the “if you have a career and it turns out you don’t have a kid you’re a failure.” And women, of course, have to structure their lives around acquiring and keeping a partner, while men are just out there grazing unconcernedly in the underbrush waiting to be bagged. People have already mentioned that the older you are, the more money and stability you have to take care of children and/or deal with potential fertility issues.
And, of course, all of this hearkens back to the late 40s and early 50s, which were a historic low for age at first marriage and age at first childbirth, pretty much since the industrial revolution. People intending to avoid lives of poverty and high infant mortality have pretty much always waited to get married and have kids until they were in a financial position to do so (with a gender differential in times and places without effective birth control and/or with virginity fetishes).
And, of course, all of this hearkens back to the late 40s and early 50s, which were a historic low for age at first marriage and age at first childbirth, pretty much since the industrial revolution.
Thanks, Paul, for pointing this out. Let me repeat this: From at least the late Middle Ages up to World War II, there existed what was called “The Western European Marriage Pattern.” (John Hajnal was the sociologist who coined this term.) This was characterized by late marriage for both men and women, a comparatively small age gap between spouses (a typical union would be between a 27-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man), and extremely high rates of nonmarriage - as high as one-quarter to one-third. Only the very wealthy and/or aristocratic married in their teens. Finally, women expected to work before and often during marriage, as servants, factory workers, doing piecework out of the home, helping out on the farm, dairying and raising chickens and selling the eggs and butter, and so on. Middle-class women helped out in the family business. Again, only the very rich and aristocratic were “housewives” in the sense that we know it.
The 1950’s with its early and universal marriage pattern was an anomaly. What we are doing now is seeing a return to the real “old-fashioned marriage patterns,” albeit with much better conditions for women.
Non-funny woman–Sarah Silverman
She’s whining about not catching Mr Wallet. Too bad, so sad. Perhaps if she had dated Pool Boy, life would be all roses.
There are only so many really fantastic guys. Many are gay and others are already settled. Suck it up and either adjust to the facts at hand or go without.
Let’s say that I start out as a Protestant, at least a nominal Protestant, but then convert to Judaism.
Do I suddenly acquire the right to be funny? And is there a ceremony involved?
I did convert to Judaism from Protestantism, and yes there is a ceremony. It involves a Torah scroll, some banana peels, and a duck. More than that I cannot say.
Whoa there Prairie. I never told anyone what to do. Merely asked some questions and made an observation. Yes, my best friend literally went crazy for a year when she couldn’t concieve. It was that painful to her and I said it was sad. Why is observing that an insult to you?
When a body “simply won’t do what [a person believes] it is designed to do” it cam make them feel out of control (because they are in this situation) and crazy. My body won’t run an under 6 minute mile, and I believe it was designed to do that. It is a life goal my body won’t let me accomplish. But I don’t blame random blog commentors for that do I? Sheesh
Shorter Mold: There aren’t enough good guys out there for all the good girls. So one of you is just gonna have to suck it up and take me.
I think it would be a good idea to drop this “childfree” stuff. It indicates that a women is defining herself
primarily as a woman without children as if that were an attribute of some sort. Also, it sounds negative. It is a backhanded insult to women with children in that it indicates that they have lost their freedom by having children.
If people don’t have kids it is their business. But as an ideology, it’s not very strong.
Longer Amanda: there’s good, there’s better than no partner, and there’s worse than no partner.
How would you prefer that the childfree address themselves, Hattie? Do you want the antiquated “childless” put back into circulation?
Women are already defined by their relationships to children by society. Childfree women call themselves thusly because the word “childless” connotes a loss, that something is missing.
Rather than projecting and interpreting the word childfree as an insult to women who’ve lost their freedom to childrearing responsibilities, try to understand that the freedom the word is talking about is to be free of the forced-birth crowd who is trying to deny childfree women access to reproductive healthcare and comprehensive sex education.
Also, as an ideology, childfreedom is quite strong. Our percentage of the U.S. population is growing. Childfrees and empty-nesters will comprise almost forty percent of U.S. households by 2050. Some of us are committed to shaping public policy to equalize unfair tax codes and workplace policies that benefit parents at the expense of childfrees. You might want to research the group you’re speaking of before you make such proclaimations about their futures.
I am sorry, but Rabbit Blog (aka Heather Havrilesky) has coined the appropriate term for those who decide not to have children as, ahem:
Childless Whores (TM, R, etc.)
…thereby encapsulating what all the right wing demagogues REALLY think of us. And there are t-shirts, oh yes there are. But as an academic where could I wear one of those without getting some big reactions?
snark
This writer probably has a Kathy mug filled with M&Ms on her desk- just so she can give herself a guilt trip over EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. she eats.
it’s 2008- when will we be done with this SHIT?
In the words of Kathy- “ACK!”
I’m not 100% keen on “childfree”. Of course, it’s better than buying the notion that we’re BARREN and lacking something. But I like children, and just because I don’t want any of my own doesn’t mean I don’t want anything to do with anyone else’s.
I’m going all Twisty and sticking with Spinster Aunt, even if the spinstership is somewhat of a technicality.
Some of us are committed to shaping public policy to equalize unfair tax codes and workplace policies that benefit parents at the expense of childfrees.
Okay, I’m in the mood for a shitstorm. Which workplace policies are those that benefit parents at the expense of the childfree? Because my work life is considerably more challenging since I reproduced (and yes, that was my choice, blah, blah, blah). But I’m not exactly feeling the love from my employer.
[Silverman is] whining about not catching Mr Wallet. Too bad, so sad. Perhaps if she had dated Pool Boy, life would be all roses.
Uh, you do realize it’s an act, don’t you? She’s had a very public boyfriend for quite a few years now.
Either that, or she really is fucking Matt Damon.
By that logic, I should be madly in love with my vibrator. Oddly enough, I’m not, though I am quite fond of it.
Why, of course silliness makes women more attractive! Just listen to Harry Enfeld in “Women, Know Your Limits”. (It’s a short clip, I promise, and VERY funny.)
Because Fisher says that, just like the addict who is hooked the first time, you can fall in love from just one orgasm.
Um, has this person ever had an orgasm? Because they’re great and all, but they’re not easy to confuse with heroin.
the emphasis on having BIOLOGICAL children as if it’s the end-all, be-all. There are tons of kids who need a stable, loving home and are already born… no labor pains and swollen feet necessary, and if you’re a professional, you’re more likely to be able to successfully navigate the adoption system. Simple answer, problem solved. *shrugs*
From what I have seen, adoption is by far the harder route, and on the average requires more patience, resources, and experience. Since the advent of the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion, American would-be parents have gone to the ends of the earth to find one of these “tons of kids”. US orphanages are pretty much closed; in the rare cases of both parents being killed extended families or friends take the kids in. Consider too that you are competing with same-sex couples who cannot produce biological kids without third-party assistance. The kids who are available are those with living parents who can’t take care of the kids, and who have no parents or siblings willing to step in. The kids get bounced around in foster care. One of Hillary’s accomplishments in the White House was terminating parental rights after two years, so basically what’s available are troubled kids that the state has taken away from their unfit parents. Separating siblings is disfavored, so you might end up with several kids at once.
The parents of a friend of mine were in the process of adopting a ten-year-old boy (they had had three daughters, who had started to leave the nest, and they were aware of the need to adopt black males). He robbed from them, stole my friend’s car, and finally set fire to their house. This was a lot more than my friend’s folks could deal with, and so they returned the boy to state custody.
Nothip-suggesting adoption to a person with infertility problems is unnecessary and cruel. It’s similar to saying “don’t worry, you can have more” to a woman who has suffered a miscarriage. the desire for a biological child is not narcisistic. We thought about both IVF and adoption, with IVF you can pay thousands of dollars and still not have a baby. With adoption, you can pay thousands of dollars in legal fees and medical expenses for the mother and still not have a baby, should the birth mother change her mind (as is her right.) foreign adoptions are tricky because there are age limits and a lot are facilitated by religious organizations. None of the choices come easy and each woman has to decide what is the best fit for her family.
Well, there’s the Family Medical Leave Act, for one. Whenever one of our department coworkers were out for having had a kid, the management would just run short-staffed until she came back. (When I was childfree, I loved it as it gave me a chance to pick up ALOT of overtime…)
But that’s the only one I can think of. So no shitstorm material, I’m afraid- I happen to think the FMLA is a good thing.
OK, late to the party, but it has to be said again:
THERE’S NO REASON TO REPRODUCE IN YOUR TWENTIES. It’s all bullshit.
If you have troubloe conceiving in your 30s, you probably would have had trouble in your 20s (excepting endometriosis which is progressive).
The eggs of 30+ women are not “old”. Amniosyntesis is a safe test, but can cause an otherwise healthy fetus to miscarry in about 1 out of 200 cases. Therefore, it is unethical to suggest the test until the chance of some sort of detectable defect is equal to or greater than the risk of terminating a viable healthy fetus.
Eggs don’t suddenly go bad at 35–they simply get to the safety threshold of amnios. I just had a baby at 39, so I’m up on the latest, and at my advanced age I was considered “high risk” but my chances of any genetic defect at all were less than 2%.
I think most people would be happy to roll with those chances–>98% chance of healthy eggs? Or marry young to Mr. Available Now and have 99+% chance of healthy eggs?
Not to diminish anyone who has struggled with infertility, but I am sick to death of the ridiculous “you must breed before 30″ LIES.
OK, back to your regular thread.
Oh–and WTF on choosing NOT to have an orgasm? Why else are you having sex?
How about the proposed FMLA policies that target workers who need to take intermittent leaves for chronic health conditions, but don’t address parents who take their full FMLA allotment, return to work for a few weeks or months, then quit to become stay at home parents? It amounts to the same thing as taking a four-to-twelve week paid time off at the employer’s expense while the employer is forced to hold the worker’s job open for them. That’s just the US, though.
Godless Heathen’s site (who also posts here, if I’m not mistaken) also has an item from the UK about childfrees working more unpaid overtime than other employees because employers assume that they can take on more workloads than their childed counterparts.
I’ve seen several items about healthcare facilities and travel-related businesses with written policies that only employees with children may take holidays off work, because of the importance of spending time with their families, leaving childfree employees to pick up the slack. I suppose those employers don’t count the workers’ parents, siblings, spouses and other extended relations as “family.”
Then there are the special benefits that only parents can use, like the health insurance plans that charge $X amount for a “family” plan, whether the family includes two adults, or one or more adults and any number of dependent children. This is actually a problem that comes from tying healthcare to employment, which could be rectified by having universal public healthcare instead.
Another one is on-site daycare centers or employer credits for childcare, which only workers with dependent children can use. If an employer offers such benefit to one group of workers and not another, it’s a form of de facto discrimination because one group is being compensated more for the same amount of work based on parental status rather than job performance or any other objective measure.
These are just a few examples, and some childfrees think that they’re fair and that employers should show preference in hiring, promotion, compensation and severance to parents because their lives are difficult enough due to their parental responsibilities. I tend to disagree simply from the point of view of equity, however, in that all workers should be compensated equitably for equitable job performance, without respect for gender, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or parental status.
Christ, I hate to even begin to participate in one of these childfree v. pro-parenting debates (I’m a parent who wholly supports any woman’s choice to remain child free and, in fact, to not like children if they don’t want to, just for the record). I hate that every single thread about the forced-pregnancy lobby or parenting or pregnancy gets us here eventually.
But, regarding FMLA (and I get that Louise said she supports it–still, it bears pointing out that…):
…FMLA does not just benefit parents. It’s true that it mandates a (covered) employer to grant (a requested) leave to an (eligible) employee for the birth of a child or adoption. But under FMLA, you can get the same 12 weeks per year unpaid leave to care for a sick spouse or parent, and for yourself if you have a serious health condition.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/fmla/
Employee needs for leave to address those concerns were largely unaddressed by benefit plans prior to FMLA.
Time off to care for sick parents is a huge issue, and becoming larger every year as the population ages and affordable health care resources/ additional extended family support are shrinking or non-existent.
Someone was asking about infertility treatments and the low success rate. Here you go:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention (CDC) collects success rates on ART for some fertility clinics. According to the 2003 CDC report on ART, the average percentage of ART cycles that led to a healthy baby were as follows:
* 37.3% in women under the age of 35
* 30.2% in women aged 35-37
* 20.2% in women aged 37-40
* 11.0% in women aged 41-42
That includes ALL ARTs, most of which don’t include freezing an egg. I imagine that the rate plummets dramatically once you start the damaging egg-freezing process.
Don’t count on it, in other words. If you don’t have your kids before menopause, you’re not going to have them, seriously. Make your decisions with that in mind. Where I get frustrated is these stories bank on people believing that menopause happens at 27.
Oh man, if that were possible (re: menopause at 27) … my ma started menopause at 55, so if she’s any indicator, I’ve got another 13 years. Bleah.
I think “privileged idiot” is a good description of Ms. Trunk.
There are very few cases where her advice would be applicable. The only case I can think of is when you have an already existing couple with brilliant careers (or potential careers) ahead of them - in different cities.
Pursue the career or maintain the relationship? That’s a tough choice for anyone, but that is a low percentage of couples who have to make that choice. And most importantly, these couples never would have met had they not been pursuing a career.
While I support the feminist cause represented here at Pandagon, I have to say that at times the entries here seem to be over-reactive, which is the case with this article.
Notably, I did not see a single sentence in which women were encouraged to quit their jobs or drop their careers.
Instead, the ones who wish to have a family–more specifically, the ones who have a family as a top priority–are encouraged to focus their energies on finding a partner. A woman who throws herself into her career, focusing on a promotion, will not be as likely to find a partner who places a family as his priority.
As a single 30-something male, I can say that while I find professional women attractive, a woman who talks about her ambitions to be a CEO or college dean more than being a mother would not come across as someone really interested in a family, and thus I might not pursue her as much as I would if I knew that having a family was really her first priority, with world domination coming after her children are in school or what have you.
Women can have it all, but to think that you can have it all at once is not realistic, and you should be honest with your readers about that. Well, unless you consider six weeks of bonding and then moving in a nanny to be your ideal of parenting. If your husband/baby daddy/donor agrees–or if you are going it alone–you could be completely happy. But if you want to be a totally involved mother who is in fact the primary caregiver for your child, you cannot work 60 hours a week at the same time.
Women who do place family ahead of career are no less a feminist than anyone here, either. I hope you know that. Feminism is about the woman feeling empowered to set her own priorities, not just rejecting tradition.
The parents of a friend of mine were in the process of adopting a ten-year-old boy (they had had three daughters, who had started to leave the nest, and they were aware of the need to adopt black males). He robbed from them, stole my friend’s car, and finally set fire to their house. This was a lot more than my friend’s folks could deal with, and so they returned the boy to state custody
I love when anectodal evidence is given as a reason not to do something. Like all foster kids are the same and are going to rob you and set fire to your house.
Seriously, I do not understand the OMG MUST HAVE BIOKIDS! obsession. Speaking from personal experience, there isn’t any difference between adopted and biological children. Suggesting adoption isn’t cruel, since adoption is just another way to have children whether or not you’re fertile - as though the only reason to adopt is if you’re infertile.
Um I must have blockquoted poorly, the first paragraph was from upthread.
For those who don’t care, I apologize for the threadjack, but I gotta do this.
My company offers a vision plan. I don’t need glasses. Should I complain of discrimination against those with 20/20 vision? Who would you like to place in your workplace’s on-site day care? For whom would you like to use a day-care credit? Do you object to paying for public schools since you will never have children? Most workplaces don’t offer these things, anyway. The folks who are eligible for them are an elite few who work in companies where talent is very hard to find and retain, and making those things more widespread would do a lot to improve the lives of most women.
As for returning to work and then quitting, I personally would consider that unethical. Do consider, however, that FMLA leave is UNPAID. That’s right - zero pay. While your boss has to hold your job until you get back, nothing stops him or her from firing your ass the day after you get back. I know more than one person that happened to. So in this lovely “right-to-work” country we live in, yes, I can quit whenever I want, even if it leaves other people in the lurch, but the flip side is my boss can fire me whenever he wants, even if it leaves me in the lurch.
At my work, time off during the holidays is related to seniority. Every place I’ve worked, that’s been the policy. I would agree that it’s wrong to reserve time off for those with children - we all have families and lives outside of work - but I’m not convinced such policies are the norm.
Almost all employer-based systems offer self, self+spouse (some include DP here), self+child and then family (which is self, spouse and however many kids). You might as well say this policy discriminates against families with two kids because they pay the same as someone with five kids. However, with what our health insurance costs, if someone with five kids had to pay for each kid, they wouldn’t even have enough money left over to pay taxes. And kids are expensive and time-consuming enough that I, with my one child, am willing to spot them that one.
I agree with you. But as long as women bear the primary responsibility for child-rearing, I see family-friendly work policies as leveling the playing field for women with children, allowing them to perform to the best of their abilities and carry their fair share of the workload. I’ve seen several studies that show the pay-gap is narrowing between men and women, with the big exception being women with children. Men with children tend to do the same or slightly better than men without children, with childfree women doing almost as well as both those groups and women with children way at the bottom.
“I love when anectodal evidence is given as a reason not to do something. Like all foster kids are the same and are going to rob you and set fire to your house.”
Notice that he didn’t forget to add the fact that the kid was black *cue dramatic hamster*
Mesosub, you didn’t read my entire post, right?
Saying “you’re fucked” implies that you might as well not bother, if you dare step off the track for a minute you should give up and stay home and scrub floors for the rest of your life because no employer will touch you. Attacking the myth that one can simply hit the ‘pause’ button on a career is one thing. Pretending that it’s 100% either-or is destructive.
Though I’d note there are a lot of jobs where it doesn’t make a difference in the long run if you take time off.
Seriously, I don’t understand the mentality of “I don’t get it and don’t want it, so if you do, you’re just fucked up.”
Okay, I’m in the mood for a shitstorm. Which workplace policies are those that benefit parents at the expense of the childfree? Because my work life is considerably more challenging since I reproduced (and yes, that was my choice, blah, blah, blah). But I’m not exactly feeling the love from my employer.
I didn’t exactly “feel the love” either, and I worked extra most of the time just to be sure that I wouldn’t get any blowback for being a mom. It wasn’t enough, though. My managers really seemed to like scheduling after hours meetings with managers and customers, involving dinner out or golf or something in the evening. Lots of times I just wouldn’t go to things like this, and it did hurt my career.
And yet, Jason, you think it’s perfectly ideal parenting to take less than six weeks of bonding and then going back to work full-time–but only if it’s Daddy. You clearly can’t imagine a father staying home with his kids; in your mind, if it’s not Mommy, it’s a nanny.
It’s good that you are open about these things, though. A man who says that he thinks his wife should give up or cripple her career so that he can have it all at once is doing a favor to a woman who was under the impression that he thought of her as an equal.
Just for the record, I never told anyone to adopt.
On thread, the idea that Jason promotes, being “realistic” and essentially NOT having it all is offensive. If you want children, then maybe you should stay home and raise them Jason. Let you future partner have her dreams, or you won’t be a very good partner. “World domination” is a silly exaggeration for any women who wants to be a college dean (using your example). If you are not a troll, choose less incendiary words
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Amanda — I think it’s worth clarifying that those CDC statistics are for women having trouble conceiving to begin with — not for women in general. So, yeah, if you have infertility problems to start with things get worse, not better, with time. But for most women, having a baby at 40 is NOT an 11% chance proposition.
Basically, what Caren said. Menopause comes along at 45+: NOT at 35.
What are the advantages to a biological child exactly? Seriously, I am asking.
Nothip - well, some women want to experience pregnancy. It’s not just swollen ankles and the pain at the end when you have to push the little sucker out. You’re also growing another human being, which can be pretty cool.
Plus, some people who are focused on having bio-kids are survivors of or descended from survivors of genocide, so they have that as a reason to want to keep the bio-line going.
This could be solved by a Cafeteria Plan, where all employees are offered a set dollar value of benefits to be used in whatever manner the workers see fit. Some workers might opt for childcare credits and vision insurance, while others will choose to allot the benefit to catastrophic health insurance and a flexible spending account for prescription drugs. Regardless of how they are distributed by the individual workers, each employee receives the same dollar value of benefits regardless of parental status.
Since you mention it, I do object to public schools being paid for via property taxes because students in high-income suburban districts get a better education than students in lower-income inner city districts. Public schools should be financed by state income taxes (I’m in California) or by sales taxes for states that don’t have an income tax, like Texas (where I lived before moving to California). This would equalize the quality of education for all students and conserve county funds for libraries, police and fire protection, and maintenance of county infrastructure like roads and bridges.
As I said before, the insurance benefits situation could be equalized dramatically with national public healthcare, such as the systems used in Canada or Sweden. Tying healthcare coverage to employment is a form of class warfare that government wages against people who work for their incomes, to the benefit of people who live off dividends and wealth accumulated via inheritances. It needs to stop as soon as possible.
You and I may consider it unethical, but it happens too often in business to be anecdotal. The point was that workers who need unpaid time off for chronic conditions must jump through all sorts of procedural hoops with medical certifications, whereas pregnancy leave is pretty much automatic, regardless of the new mother’s intentions toward her employer when the leave is concluded.
Whether or not such policies are widespread doesn’t do anything to mitigate the unfairness to those who are forced to abide by such policies. If even one employer can get away with it, all of them will try to (in order to maximize profits). It is up to labor regulators to root out this practice and stop it where they find it.