TIME.com: What Larry Summers Got Right -- Feb. 28, 2005
Larry Summers and the Gender Gap
I think there is a lot of truth to this article. Personally, although I am probably not the most liberated of women in the eyes of society, I would not want a high pressure job, and I have said so publicly more than once. Why? Because if it came to a choice between my job and my family, I would routinely pick family. And I would not want to face the never-ending conflict such a choice would produce within me. Since I was raised to believe that any job worth doing was worth doing well, I would feel badly no matter what I shorted, no matter whether it was right or not.
I watch my children face this, too. My son wants to work forty hours and be home with his boys. But can he do it and still provide all the material goods he wants to provide? His wife, I think, would like to stay home with the boys, but she comes from a family of working women who look at her as "less"(whatever that means) if she doesn't work. So she has made the choice to work at the moment. One of her sons is two and a half, almost. The other is eight weeks old.
My daughter is in no better shape. Since she is recently divorced, she has to work if she wants her own life. She is thinking about going back to school because she needs to support herself, but she also really wants a family. Will she have time to even look around if she works sixty hours a week and goes to school too?
I do think that, to a certain extent, women are more genetically drawn to childrearing and the care of the family. Having said that, though, I am thankful to see the men of my son's generation who appear to be more in touch with family needs as a group than were their fathers or grandfathers.
In a society as geographically separated as ours, if the family is to be nurtured, someone has to take responsibility. I think that our government is the best to be had on this planet, but I still don't want them to have the final say on what happens with ANY of my family. The government has done fine with issuing edicts about the education of our children without taking into account that lack of parenting will ALWAYS affect performance. Lack of nurture affects everything, really.
If we are all to work sixty-eighty hour weeks, to whom is the nurturing left?
Larry Summers and the Gender Gap
I think there is a lot of truth to this article. Personally, although I am probably not the most liberated of women in the eyes of society, I would not want a high pressure job, and I have said so publicly more than once. Why? Because if it came to a choice between my job and my family, I would routinely pick family. And I would not want to face the never-ending conflict such a choice would produce within me. Since I was raised to believe that any job worth doing was worth doing well, I would feel badly no matter what I shorted, no matter whether it was right or not.
I watch my children face this, too. My son wants to work forty hours and be home with his boys. But can he do it and still provide all the material goods he wants to provide? His wife, I think, would like to stay home with the boys, but she comes from a family of working women who look at her as "less"(whatever that means) if she doesn't work. So she has made the choice to work at the moment. One of her sons is two and a half, almost. The other is eight weeks old.
My daughter is in no better shape. Since she is recently divorced, she has to work if she wants her own life. She is thinking about going back to school because she needs to support herself, but she also really wants a family. Will she have time to even look around if she works sixty hours a week and goes to school too?
I do think that, to a certain extent, women are more genetically drawn to childrearing and the care of the family. Having said that, though, I am thankful to see the men of my son's generation who appear to be more in touch with family needs as a group than were their fathers or grandfathers.
In a society as geographically separated as ours, if the family is to be nurtured, someone has to take responsibility. I think that our government is the best to be had on this planet, but I still don't want them to have the final say on what happens with ANY of my family. The government has done fine with issuing edicts about the education of our children without taking into account that lack of parenting will ALWAYS affect performance. Lack of nurture affects everything, really.
If we are all to work sixty-eighty hour weeks, to whom is the nurturing left?
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