Below, Fanman brought up a NY Times article about high powered Yale graduates planning to stay at home when they have children. Heat commented that a man who does not economically dominate his home is screwed. Today the same paper published some comments to a editorial on that article.
Here is one,
To the Editor:
Re "Changing the Rules for the Team Sport of Bread-Winning," by Nicholas Kulish (Editorial Observer, Sept. 23):
Mr. Kulish begs the Yale undergraduate women who said in a survey that they would stop working or work only part time after they had children to reconsider.
He says, "I thought we had a deal."
We did have a deal - you guys broke it!
These young Yale women grew up watching their mothers do both jobs, since most of us working women still do most of the work at home.
Like Mr. Kulish, I hope that those Yale women reconsider. We saw what happened to our economically insecure stay-at-home mothers, who were sometimes let down by husbands who decided not to stay home - or at least, not with our mothers.
I would not want my daughter to be economically dependent on a man.
Still, at least these Yale women understand one thing: the deal needs to be renegotiated. Maybe their reluctance to work under the current deal will force their men to do that.
Julie E. Maybee
Wayne, N.J., Sept. 23, 2005
I am pasting only part of the other letter.
One very logical reason some women shrink from combining work and motherhood is that men do not share the work equally at home, leading to an exhausting and unfair double shift for their wives.
It's time for men to acknowledge that they are a big part of the work-life balance problem for women.
Tiana Norgren
New York, Sept. 23, 2005
I would love to hear these ladies' reactions to the prospect that rather than "renegociate" said contract under duress, we men withdrew from the AW "market" and entered the Latina (or Asian or East European) market.
