Executive Women and the Myth of Having It All

This article from 2002 describes the way things were in the 1990s. It is much worse now.

Women: Just focus on getting married. Forget about the rest.

The article ends, naturally, with a long list of demands that will supposedly make it possible to combine motherhood with a demanding career. Rather than understanding the implications of the whole content of the article — that a woman who is out of the house 13 hours a day to work cannot serve as a mother in any meaningful capacity, or indeed have the time or energy to manage to get married in the first place — instead, the whole world must change so that women can get their Feminist merit badge. Actually, even if all these requests were met, it would still be impossible; and then we would have a long list of new demands.

This is why Matriarchy Does Not Exist. For men, the problem and solution are obvious. Women can’t connect the dots — even dots as obvious as this. Even when they break down in tears after dropping off their infants at daycare each morning. Even when the title of the damn book is: Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children.

What women do is, they Do What They Are Told. They were told to be “strong, independent” careerist women, so that is what they try to do, even though it makes no sense. This is why I say: Tell the Bitches What To Do. You have to displace what they are being told by whatever authority figures they have aligned themselves with, commonly from media, schools, corporations and governments.

Instead, the article should be taken as definitive proof that women of the upper-middle classes, who have options, should opt to be a stay-at-home Wife and Mother. For the most part, the natural husbands for women of the upper-middle class are men of the upper-middle class. So, these women already will normally marry men who are completely capable of supporting a single-income household. It’s true that a man may wish to marry a better-looking or otherwise charming woman of a lower socioeconomic stratum. However, when looking for a wife, a man must consider who will be the mother of his children — and the women of the upper-middle class know how to raise their children well, in the manner to which such a man is accustomed. They have high standards, and self-discipline. This is why these men often marry the 7/10 girl from a better family. (Unfortunately, these women today are using their high standards and self-discipline to, effectively, take the jobs of their brothers, leaving them not only with no time or energy, but also, nobody to marry.)

The statistics in this article were disturbing even to me. This was 2002, when about 92% of White women eventually married. If we are coming into an environment where perhaps only 50% of women will marry at all, then what will the statistics be for careerist upper-income women? Maybe 20%.

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There is a secret out there—a painful, well-kept secret: At midlife, between a third and a half of all successful career women in the United States do not have children. In fact, 33% of such women (business executives, doctors, lawyers, academics, and the like) in the 41-to-55 age bracket are childless—and that figure rises to 42% in corporate America. These women have not chosen to remain childless. The vast majority, in fact, yearn for children. Indeed, some have gone to extraordinary lengths to bring a baby into their lives. They subject themselves to complex medical procedures, shell out tens of thousands of dollars, and derail their careers—mostly to no avail, because these efforts come too late. In the words of one senior manager, the typical high-achieving woman childless at midlife has not made a choice but a “creeping nonchoice.”

Why has the age-old business of having babies become so difficult for today’s high-achieving women? In January 2001, in partnership with the market research company Harris Interactive and the National Parenting Association, I conducted a nationwide survey designed to explore the professional and private lives of highly educated, high-earning women. The survey results are featured in my new book, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children.

In this survey, I target the top 10% of women—measured in terms of earning power—and focus on two age groups: an older generation, ages 41 to 55, and their younger peers, ages 28 to 40, as defined for survey purposes. I distinguish between high achievers (those who are earning more than $55,000 in the younger group, $65,000 in the older one) and ultra-achievers (those who are earning more than $100,000). I include a sample of high-potential women—highly qualified women who have left their careers, mainly for family reasons. In addition, I include a small sample of men.

The findings are startling—and troubling. They make it clear that, for many women, the brutal demands of ambitious careers, the asymmetries of male-female relationships, and the difficulties of bearing children late in life conspire to crowd out the possibility of having children. In this article, I lay out the issues underlying this state of affairs, identify the heavy costs involved, and suggest some remedies, however preliminary and modest. The facts and figures I relate are bleak. But I think that they can also be liberating, if they spur action. My hope is that this information will generate workplace policies that recognize the huge costs to businesses of losing highly educated women when they start their families. I also hope that it will galvanize young women to make newly urgent demands of their partners, employers, and policy makers and thus create more generous life choices for themselves.

When it comes to career and fatherhood, high-achieving men don’t have to deal with difficult trade-offs: 79% of the men I surveyed report wanting children—and 75% have them. The research shows that, generally speaking, the more successful the man, the more likely he will find a spouse and become a father. The opposite holds true for women, and the disparity is particularly striking among corporate ultra-achievers. In fact, 49% of these women are childless. But a mere 19% of their male colleagues are. These figures underscore the depth and scope of the persisting, painful inequities between the sexes. Women face all the challenges that men do in working long hours and withstanding the up-or-out pressures of high-altitude careers. But they also face challenges all their own.

Let’s start with the fact that professional women find it challenging even to be married—for most, a necessary precondition for childbearing. Only 60% of high-achieving women in the older age group are married, and this figure falls to 57% in corporate America. By contrast, 76% of older men are married, and this figure rises to 83% among ultra-achievers.

Consider Tamara Adler, 43, a former managing director of Deutsche Bank in London. She gave her take on these disturbing realities when I interviewed her for the study. Adler was the bank’s most senior woman, and her highly successful career had left no room for family. She mentioned the obvious reasons—long hours and travel—but she also spoke eloquently about how ambitious careers discriminate against women: “In the rarified upper reaches of high-altitude careers where the air is thin…men have a much easier time finding oxygen. They find oxygen in the form of younger, less driven women who will coddle their egos.” She went on to conclude, “The hard fact is that most successful men are not interested in acquiring an ambitious peer as a partner.”

It’s a conclusion backed up by my data: Only 39% of high-achieving men are married to women who are employed full time, and 40% of these spouses earn less than $35,000 a year. Meanwhile, nine out of ten married women in the high-achieving category have husbands who are employed full time or self-employed, and a quarter are married to men who earn more than $100,000 a year. Clearly, successful women professionals have slim pickings in the marriage department—particularly as they age. Professional men seeking to marry typically reach into a large pool of younger women, while professional women are limited to a shrinking pool of eligible peers. According to U. S. Census Bureau data, at age 28 there are four college-educated, single men for every three college-educated, single women. A decade later, the situation is radically changed. At age 38, there is one man for every three women.

Maybe less than 50% of women born in the 1990s will marry.

Here’s a Twitter thread (yes I know….) with a ton of interesting information.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1557880297244459010.html

Young Mom Wears a Dress Every Day For a Month

In Evie Magazine, Alicia Bittle, married for seven years and a mother, wrote about what happened when she wore a dress every day for a month.

What started out as a little experiment with a few dresses and a handful of days, has completely transformed my approach to marriage, motherhood, and femininity. What started out as a way to make myself feel better, has improved the lives of every single member of my family, myself included. This has been such a drastic, delightful, and unexpected change, that I am never going back to the way things were before. Not in attitude or in fashion choices. I truly hope that more women try this challenge with me, as I believe there is something unique and valuable to be gained by all. 

Why I Now Drive New Cars

For a long time, I drove cheap old cars. Old, anyway. I thought they were cheap, but they weren’t. I drove two cars over 200,000 miles, in snow country which rusts them out.

The New Car/Old Car question rests largely on Depreciation vs. Maintenance and Repair Costs. And, these are not much different. Let me show you what I mean.

Here are the True Costs to Own a new 2022 Subaru Outback, over five years, according to Edmunds.com:

And, here are Edmunds’ estimates of the costs of buying a used 2016 Subaru Outback today.

According to this, it actually costs more to drive a six-year-old car than it does to drive a new one!

This is due to the rather distorted used car market today. With a normal market, depreciation on the new car would be about $1000/yr higher, and about $500/yr lower on the used car. That would make the new car about $1000/yr more expensive to own, which is about what it should be.

But, that is not very much. $1000 a year, out of a total cost of about $8000 a year. Or, about $80 a month. Plus, you get a variety of non-financial advantages from a new car, including people’s perceptions of you, your own enjoyment and self-esteem, and also, time and worry saved from not having a lot of breakdowns and repairs. Perceptions are important. Or, we would all be driving Kia Optimas.

So, even for young people, I recommend buying new cars. Whether you pay a monthly car loan, or you set aside monthly savings to eventually buy a new car, it works out about the same, especially with today’s still-low finance rates. If a new car seems like a stretch, then buy a cheap new car, like a base model Honda Civic.

I might make an exception for a second car that doesn’t get much use. You can have a daily driver, and then a ten-year-old sports or luxury car, that gets about 2000 miles a year. But here too, you might be better off just getting a more expensive new car, than having a separate “fun” car.

Ballet Moms

Of all the forms of exercise that a woman can choose from — and she should choose at least one — dance, and specifically ballet, is near the top. From dance, a woman learns poise, grace and beauty, which does not happen to women to do Crossfit, or play ice hockey. Mary Helen Bowers has made a business of dance-inspired workouts. She spent ten years dancing with the New York Ballet, so she is a serious dancer. (If she was a baseball player, she would have played for the New York Yankees.)

There are Fitness Moms, but Ballet Moms are on a different level. The grace and poise that they learned as girls stays with them. Here is Mary Helen Bowers, now age about 43, and a mother.

If you look like this at Age 43,

You Win.

You do not have to ever become a very good ballet dancer. For every ten thousand people who play baseball in their youth, only one joins a Major League team, but all benefit from their time playing sports. So, too, for every one dancer that becomes a professional at a top company, ten thousand girls practice a little ballet, and benefit from it.

Here, from major Russian dance academy Vaganova, is a compilation of professional dancers and their children.

The Transformed Wife

Lori Alexander, the “Transformed Wife,” today reaches a rare pinnacle of feminine virtue. This has not earned her many friends. I was expecting to find some fault or disagreement, over time, with her somewhat churchy, Bible-inspired approach, but that has not happened. Rather, I find that I am a quiet ally with her, against most other Christian women, who want to be Christians and Feminists too.

As a young woman, she was all the things that more serious men today have decided that they want, but can’t find. She got married at 21 or 22, and had children a couple years later. Before marriage, it is perhaps needless to say that she herself was a Debt-Free (or, mostly so) Virgin Without Tattoos, and also, from a healthy intact family. Also: slim, long hair of a natural color, not too much makeup, no weird piercings, and pretty, feminine clothes that aren’t slutty. Although no great beauty, with her natural youthful charm, and cheerful attitude, she was pretty enough for any reasonable man not specifically on the lookout for a Trophy Wife. In the first years of her marriage, she says that she had a lot of sex.

Her husband Ken was a similar sort of character, a 7/10 for looks and a 10/10 for virtue.

Nevertheless, she struggled for over twenty years of marriage, which deteriorated into a grim march of “we’re doing it for the children.” She read a number of books on marriage, and consulted with her pastor and friends, but without much results. She says that she was put on the right path by the book Created to Be His Helpmeet, by Debi Pearl. The basic problem seems to have been a sort of latent proto-feminism, which resulted in a constant state of rebelliousness, or, lack of submission.

The first thing you need to do in order to have a good marriage is to let it go. You must no longer try to control or criticize your husband in any way.

There is a lot more in her book The Power of a Transformed Wife, which also aligns with other worthwhile efforts like The Surrendered Wife. So, I would read it, if you are a married woman, or you want to be. Obviously, men should read it too, because if you are going to be the leader, you want to be well informed. Too many men are taught to “surrender” to their wives (simping, basically), and put her on a pedestal/leadership role. Obviously, this is going to make things difficult even if you do have that rare woman who aspires to do things the right way.

After a few changes, things worked out for Lori Alexander and her marriage with Ken. Now she teaches other women what she discovered.

For me, I am a little alarmed that even a woman in the Top 1% of feminine virtue, would have so many problems. For men, it means that even if we start with the best raw materials, we still have to form them up into something workable. The feminist atmosphere in the US is really toxic. I have a Japanese wife, and although she was not extraordinarily virtuous as a young woman, nevertheless she and all her friends (except one) have made good wives and mothers. Probably, in the past, American women were about the same. Bad wives were outliers. Today, even the very best American women might need some fixing; and, men will have to do this, or at the very least, make it easy for her to do.

eGirls

Unfortunately, there seems to be a population now of “eGirls” age 18-24 or so, who do all the Wifey stuff, but do not seem to actually want to become wives. The exchange seems to go something like this:

“I don’t want to work at some email job. I want to get married, have children, and have some guy pay for all my stuff. Plus, I am beautiful, a good cook, traditional, unvaxxed, no tattoos, and saving myself for my future husband.”

“Well, I am a 30yo guy who looks pretty good, has a good job, and I’m looking for an unvaxxed wife to have a bunch of children with, who wants to stay at home, raise the children, homeschool, and bake bread.”

“What are you bothering us eGirls for? Grow up already! Go get married and have children!”

Basically, they are social media attention whores.

Breastfeeding Failure

Helen Roy writes that 75% of women in the US try to breastfeed, but give it up somewhere along the line. This is a little weird. All the other mammals breastfeed, and they do not “fail.” Today, at six months of age, only 13% of babies are exclusively breastfed.

My wife breastfed our son exclusively. He never tasted “baby formula.” He even refused, as an infant, real breast milk in a bottle. This was, not very long ago, the norm. “Baby formula” only became common in the 1960s, although there were various home recipes before then. It coincides, not surprisingly, with the spread of working mothers.

Breastfeeding is very time consuming. A mother of an infant, especially in the first few months, may have to breastfeed about every two hours, including through the night. This, in itself, is no big deal. It is what human mothers have done for millions of years. Commonly, this and other basic babycare tasks can become so demanding that basic housekeeping and cooking may be neglected. Often, family and friends may help out around the house for the first few months.

Obviously, breastfeeding and working outside the home do not go together very well — or, even working in the home, or working from home. The solution, that we promote around here, is: Don’t work. Be a stay-at-home Mom. This might mean giving up some material comforts. Women in the prehistoric past lived in tiny huts made of twigs and leaves, but they stayed home and breastfed their infants.

Are you really going to find some other, better solution? In the last fifty years of working mothers, nobody has. We have the Feminist types begging for state-funded daycare, mandatory postnatal work leave, and all the other things to make a dysfunctional system less dysfunctional. But, even if they got all their wishes, these women would soon find out that abandoning their children to be raised by the State, and depending ever more on The Corporation to be their provider, instead of a husband, has dire consequences. Why bother to have children at all. Women themselves are coming to the same conclusion, which is one reason we see fertility rates plummet far below replacement levels wherever mothers work full time.

Be a Barren Whore if you like. But, if you have children, get married first, and be a stay-at-home Mom. And, breastfeed. If you are already a stay-at-home Mom, why not?