I wonder how much of a factor this is in the much-vaunted Bush job shrinkage. The liberal pundits keep telling us that unemployment is low while the total workforce shrinks because people have become discouraged and are leaving the workforce for that reason.

One piece of anecdotal evidence (for what it is worth). My wife and I fit the description in the article above, right age, just completed graduate school, one child, with more coming soon (hopefully). I am working full time while my wife just took a part time job which she fully intends to drop as soon as we can swing it.

Most of our friends from graduate school are doing the same thing. I know at least a half dozen girls our age who possess advanced degrees, but are either not working, or are doing part-time or sporadic consulting work so that they can be home while their children are young. Many of our friends are Mormons like ourselves, which may be a cultural factor in favor of staying home, but not all are. Are the percentages higher than in our parent's generation? I don't know.

Our own mothers worked part time while our fathers completed graduate school. Both parents comlpleting graduate degrees is a new thing in our families.

One funny note: Many of our professors, who are from the baby boom generation, are horrified by all the women taking their MS and PhD degrees and putting them on the shelf for a few years. Kids these days!

Can a generation be only twelve years long ?
I thought that the traditional measure was twenty years.

I'm not at all surprised by the Boomer's bitterness. The Boomers, and to some extent their mothers, worked hard to bring about a society in which the Xers and Y's, (or Millennials, if you prefer), had complete freedom to work in any field they wanted. It wasn't easy, and some people sacrificed quite a bit.

The fact that the Xers would rather not work must feel like betrayal. Rather like one's daughter announcing that she won't be joining the family business, after all.

Well, the family business in this case was wrecking society.

"Changing", oj, not "wrecking". You're the one who exalts freedom over security; You can't be too dour when those who gain freedom use it in ways you don't approve of.

"You can't be too dour when those who gain freedom use it in ways you don't approve of."

Right. So there's no call for the previous generation to feel bitter or resentful if many women of the current generation choose to work half-time or not at all.

"there's no call for the previous generation to feel bitter or resentful if many women of the current generation choose to work half-time or not at all."

And nor if the men choose to stay at home and look after the kids while their wives go out and earn the money, presumably...

Poofy metrosexual men, obviously. Neandersexuals are too busy talking about Darwinism on the superhighway interweb.

Michael:

Freedom is a means, not an end.

Mr. Herdegen: You are confusing freedom while abdicating your responsibilities with freedom while living up to your responsibilities. I'm one of those women with a degree who stays home for 3 kids (hopefully 4 soon). I'm taking care of the responsibility of raising children I helped bring into the world. My mother and mother-in-law cannot understand why I would want to do it. But remembering my childhood and my husband's childhood is all the reason we need.

And, sure some have sacrificed quite a bit, but they are very unwilling to acknowledge that 1. they don't want us to choose as we would choose (they know what's good for us better than we do, and where is the freedom in that?) and 2. they left women and children in a far more precarious position than when they started.

Some day we'll all be able to look back at the 20th century and laugh.

I completely agee with Buttercup. My mother never got to complete college and there was never any question that I would not only be going, but that I was to be a "career woman." It makes my mother absolutely nuts that I actually enjoy my time with my children and resent that I have to work as much as I do (they forget to explain the part that the career comes with a lot of educational loans that must be paid back!) And when I mentioned the possibility of a 4th child, I think her head actually spun around! I'm also reminded of a conversation I had with one of my Ph.D. neighbors who had only 1 child because she wanted to get tenure and having more.kids would have set her back.
There has to be some acceptable middle ground between women being uneducated and wholly at the mercy of men and women "educated" to the point that it becomes to inconvenient to their career so that they stop having children.
And I'm getting my daughter that Easy-Bake oven that I was never allowed to have (although not because it wasn't educational; my parents thought it wasn't safe!)

What alternative is there to allowing women to make their own decisions?

I think we are seeing the middle ground now. A great many women have seen an alternative, and aren't all that thrilled with it.

Better to be doing something because you want to, not because you are forced to.

Letting their children decide?

oj:

True, but you don't get to determine everyone's end, only your own and anyone you can convince.

Buttercup:

Freedom is freedom. It's up to the individual to decide whether they'll accept responsibility, or not.

1. True.
2. No, the responsibility for that must fall squarely on those who decided to have kids, and then get divorced.

Michael:

Do we need to start listing the ends that society denies you a right to?

As if that list constitutes a reason for society to deny anything in particular?

We don't need a reason but we do reserve the right.