Where's the anger and frustration? Where's the awareness that the lack of corporate day care and shared gender responsibilities regarding parenting is hugely limiting to women? How will we ever achieve a social culture in which men and women don't feel like they have to choose between parenthood and professional careers, unless young women like these get angry about how their choices are being shaped and limited, and demand more sane workplace environments?
Shouldn't everyone who chooses to have children get to work part-time until the kids are in school, not just the mothers? Shouldn't parents be penalized equally for that, across gender lines, if they're going to be penalized at all?
I don't understand what these women are thinking!
I agree, on so many levels. But cheer up: if a woman thinks she can automatically tell whether someone had a mother who stayed at home (as one of these interviewees claims to be able to), her grasp on reality can’t be very good, and she will change her mind soon enough.
I agree with you.
BTW sometimes C does feel he’s on the “Daddy track” in his career. He doesn’t see anything wrong with being penalized for having kids. I think he’s insane, but a lot of Americans feel that way.
Slate.com has an article pointing out the “weasel-words” in that NYT thing:
http://www.slate.com/id/2126636/
“How many “many’s” are too many for one news story?
Like its fellow weasel-wordssome, few, often, seems, likely, moremany serves writers who haven’t found the data to support their argument. A light splash of weasel-words in a news story is acceptable if only because journalism is not an exact science and deadlines must be observed. But when a reporter pours a whole jug of weasel-words into a piece, as Louise Story does on Page One of today’s (Sept. 20) New York Times in “Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood,” she needlessly exposes one of the trade’s best-kept secrets for all to see. She deserves a week in the stockades. And her editor deserves a month.”