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Syndicated New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd sounded
the alarm 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. Yet there
are many reasons for the "baby bust" besides male perfidy.
Reason #1: Women often do not adjust their preferences in a mate
to their career goals.
High-powered career women need men who will support their
careers by scaling back their careers to become the children's
primary caregivers or even househusbands. Studies have shown
that under the right conditions, many men would be happy to
exchange their long work hours for the primary role at home.
Yet, paradoxically, women rarely choose these men as mates.
Reason #2: Even successful women still usually choose to "marry
up."
Obviously the pool of available candidates for women becomes
smaller the more successful they become.
Reason #3: Some men prefer to marry women who are not as
career-oriented as they are out of
legitimate concern for their future children.
Men believe, with justification, that even successful women
still want men to be the primary breadwinner. Thus they know
that if they marry a career-oriented woman, both of them
will be tied to their careers, to the possible detriment of
their children.
Reason #4: Having kids is not for everyone, and many women have
made an intelligent choice to remain childless.
Feminism has spent 30 years teaching women to rebel against
compulsory motherhood and domesticity and to focus on their
careers. Many women have done it 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, the highly educated modern woman has been taught that
any career sacrifices or accommodations made for men and/or
children constitutes an unfair limitation on her freedom.
As a result, the accommodations which all people, male
or female, make when they marry and have children are resented.
This resentment is often unfairly deflected onto men.
Reason #6: Educated modern women have been misinformed on men
and marriage by the Women's Studies programs in their
universities.
As a new report by the Independent Women's Forum notes, these
programs focus on convincing young women that women are under
siege and oppressed and that 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 earn more money than women, because they work the longest
hours at the most hazardous and demanding jobs, is dressed up as
"wage discrimination."
The problem with Dowd and the many modern women who think like
her is that it never seems to occur to them that they, not men,
are often 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 them. But how many women
want to marry a man who is critical? 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 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?
This column first appeared on
Cybercast News Service (4/18/02).
Glenn Sacks is a men's and fathers' issues columnist and
radio talk show host. His columns have appeared in dozens of
America's largest newspapers. His radio show,
His Side with Glenn Sacks,
can be heard every Sunday on KRLA 870 AM in Los Angeles.
Glenn can be reached via his website,
at
www.GlennSacks.com
or by e-mail at
Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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