MO VS. EVOLUTION :

The Baby Bust (MAUREEN DOWD, April 10, 2002, NY Times)

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist, conducted a survey and found that 55 percent of 35-year-old career women are childless. Between a third and half of 40-year-old professional women are childless. The number of childless women age 40 to 44 has doubled in the past 20 years. And among corporate executives who earn $100,000 or more, she says, 49 percent of the women did not have children, compared with only 10 percent of the men.

Ms. Hewlett, the author of "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children," observes, yet again, that men have an unfair advantage.

"Nowadays," she says, "the rule of thumb seems to be that the more successful the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child. For men, the reverse is true."

[...]

Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women.

The girls said they hid the fact that they go to Harvard from guys they meet, because it's the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they call it.

"As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said. "As soon as the guys say, 'Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,' all the girls start falling into them."

So the moral of the story is, the more women accomplish, the more they have to sacrifice?

The problem here is not only that women are procrastinating too long; it is that men veer away from "challenging" women because they have an atavistic desire to be the superior force in a relationship.

In the immortal words of Cher: Snap out of it, guys.

I doubt it is possible to misunderstand the import of human behavior any more completely than Ms Dowd has done here. Men dominated women, even "strong" ones like Ms Dowd, for thousands of years with little or no problem. It's naught but hubris on her part to think we're afraid of them now.

Men reject careerist women because they want the mother of their children to stay home and mother them, while the husband provides for the family. That is men who aren't supremely lazy--they on the other hand marry careerists who will go out and be the breadwinners while their husbands stay home and run a website, instead of working for a living. Ah, life is sweet...

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 10, 2002 2:33 PM