Phi Beta Mama
A recent article in the NY Times (also available here with a fun new title) introduces several young women getting degrees at elite colleges, but with hopes to some day forego their careers to raise children. It has kicked off a real debate in the blogsphere. I can't add much (I'll leave that my college-educated, child-raising wife). But I would like to point out the most ridiculously ironic comment I've seen this week. It's from the Dean of Yale College, Peter Salovey:
"What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't constructed along traditional gender roles."
His own thinking is so boxed in, he can't see that these intelligent, successful women have considered his ideal and found it lacking. He is condescending, insulting, and just plain wrong. Like the worst paternalists of the past, he thinks the women have a "place" and they should stay in it.
The director of undergrad admissions at Harvard, Marlyn McGrath Lewis, asks "when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" To her, these aren't real women with their own ambitions, desires, and wills, worthy of a fine education in their own right. They are just resources. She doesn't provide all this opportunity for their sake, but for the economic or political "return" they must now provide. If she really thought about what she said, I hope she would cringe with shame. But there's no danger of that while she's stuck in the box with the dean of Yale.
All this from schools once steeped in the liberal arts. How sad.
The article also uses (repeatedly) my favorite American oxymoron: "stay-at-home mom". Whoever coined that phrase never met my wife (or any other vivacious, accomplished, warm-blooded full-time mom).
"What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't constructed along traditional gender roles."
His own thinking is so boxed in, he can't see that these intelligent, successful women have considered his ideal and found it lacking. He is condescending, insulting, and just plain wrong. Like the worst paternalists of the past, he thinks the women have a "place" and they should stay in it.
The director of undergrad admissions at Harvard, Marlyn McGrath Lewis, asks "when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" To her, these aren't real women with their own ambitions, desires, and wills, worthy of a fine education in their own right. They are just resources. She doesn't provide all this opportunity for their sake, but for the economic or political "return" they must now provide. If she really thought about what she said, I hope she would cringe with shame. But there's no danger of that while she's stuck in the box with the dean of Yale.
All this from schools once steeped in the liberal arts. How sad.
The article also uses (repeatedly) my favorite American oxymoron: "stay-at-home mom". Whoever coined that phrase never met my wife (or any other vivacious, accomplished, warm-blooded full-time mom).
posted by BigKC at
5:46 PM
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