The Telegraph again, this time on children versus career:
Women who have children earlier in life forgo hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost earnings and “seriously harm” their career prospects, a new report warns today.
The survey, by the Institute for Public Policy Research, claims that British women face a rising “fertility penalty” the earlier they have their first baby. After giving birth, almost one third return to a less well-paid job. The report states, however, that the trend of putting off having children until the late thirties is bad for the economy because falling fertility rates mean that taxes will have to go up.
I find it interesting that the mainstream media – at least in the UK – is beginning to wake up to the fact that the child-career tradeoff faced by women is not only real, but that there are detrimental societal effects when a woman chooses a career. I’ve yet to see anyone follow my lead on the negative effect on wages, however, even though that is far more obvious and easily provable than the positive effect on taxes.
I don’t know why women have such a hard time accepting the obvious. Life is about nothing so much as opportunity costs. When a man marries, he gives up your opportunity to live the care-free life of the hedonistic bachelor. When a man becomes a father, he almost always has to trade in the Porsche or the Miata, whatever, for the minivan. But since women insist that men who refuse to embrace the idea of marriage, family and paternal responsibility as being pathetic, immature Peter Pans, why do they not likewise view career women as similarly pathetic, immature creatures clinging to their vanishing girlhood?
Aside from the one-third of women who work out of pure necessity, I tend to view career women as neutered worker-ants, but then, I don’t share the view that a man has to be immature in order to wish to avoid the lion’s mouth that is government-granted “marriage” in modern America.