DE tells a tale of one woman’s woe:
Your views are simplistic. I am a 55 year old woman. When I was 20, I married an articulate, intelligent medical student with a good background and a promising future. Twelve years later, he was a drug addict, had literally shot me in the back, abandoned me with two children, and eventually went to prison. I had delayed my own career. I married again: this time a college-educated oil and cattle baron. 21 years later, he turned out to have a preference for little boys and embezzlement, injured me to the point of hospitalization, and fled the country to avoid a financial obligation of the divorce settlement. I am now permanently disabled and cannot “return to an education or career”. While I love my son, I would trade it all for a chance to make another choice: a career, dignity, and financial independence.
Until society provides dignity to motherhood, more women will choose to be barren. The arabs and others, who have enslaved women and turned them into baby machines, will win the war by outproducing us in their beds.
My views may be simplistic. Of course, demographics and mathematics are equally so.And while it may be equally simplistic to point this out, the evidence would appear to suggest that DE is an impressively bad judge of character. Clearly she has never worked in an office, or she would not think there is any dignity to be found there. Still, unlike many women who have had careers, she has contributed materially to the continued existence of the human race even if she now regrets doing so.
Nevertheless, DE manages to pinpoint the fundamental flaw with the Equalitarian Society. If too many women choose to be barren, eventually the choice will be taken away from them.
TW’s experience, on the other hand, is rather enlightening:
I’m 29 and just had my second child. Your article hit a nerve that’s been vibrating since I conceived #2.
As an engineer, I found it amazing that my male coworkers were in general supportive when I had my daughter 3 years ago. My female coworkers, however, tended to say I was too young; shouldn’t I get more established in my career first? I retorted that they were 5-15 years older and didn’t have children. I would be working for another 50 years given our Social Security mess. I wanted children. I had 1-2 decades for childbearing and 5-6 decades left for career goals.
When I switched to a technical documentation position while pregnant with my second child, the “gender divergence” became even more pronounced. Men understood taking a less demanding position while expecting (no more calls on weekends when the production line had problems) and were typically accepting of the pregnancy. When I said it was my second child, they thought, “It’s nice that someone is giving their child a sibling.”
Women asked if this was my first child. When I said it was my second, they asked if it was planned or an accident. Or they asked how I could afford it. When I admitted that we hadn’t planned on number two quite so soon, more than one woman actually said, “You know, you can get that fixed.” Given that attitude, it is no wonder they drove away both potential spouses and the opportunity to have children away.
The only comfort is that those with such attitudes are not the ones who are breeding.
JW hopes others can learn from her example:
You are so right in this article. I keep trying to say this to younger women who think that they have all the time in the world. I’m 50 and never married–and it is doubtful that I ever will be because I squandered my chances thinking I had time. I also had this stupid idea that, before I could become interested, the guy had to be like Mel Gibson or John Wayne. You’ll notice that neither of those guys was ever interested in a female lawyer.
You should also add to your list that they not become obsessed with acitivities that don’t advance their plans to become wives and mothers. I became obsessed with law, soccer and sailboat racing–all of which, at the time, seemed more fun than dating and looking for Mr. Right.