This Is 2006, Isn’t It?

I generally don’t pay attention to the news headlines Google gives me at the top of my Gmail page. Usually there’s something about someone winning a hot dog eating contest, or that oil companies are the next big investment (gee, you think?), or some other useless topic. But it’s hard to miss a news headline when it has the title “Reasons NOT to Marry a Career Woman“. Oh yeah, gotta go check that one out.

I expected something that was going to be far less sensational than the headline clearly designed to lure readers in. Instead, I was even more shocked at the content. The link, if you haven’t clicked it already in curiosity, is a slide show, put together by Forbes.com, counting the reasons why you, as a man, should run screaming from any woman who says her career is very important to her.

I’ll wait while you now rush to click the link. I understand, I did the same thing. I couldn’t believe this to be a real story, complete with research to back up the author’s position. While some of the points have validity, such as research showing that women who are focused on their careers and have higher earnings are less likely to get married (makes sense, right?), other points are simply sexist and insulting.

Case in point? How about this reason not to marry a career woman: your house will be messier. Apparently women who earn more than $15 an hour devote 1.9 hours less a week to housework as compared to their close-to-minimum wage sisters.

So clearly if you want a spotless house, (and of course you don’t want to do any housework yourself, for heaven’s sake) you need to marry a girl who won’t work, or who will only work some poorly-paying job (you know, to give her a sense of accomplishment). Otherwise your house will be dirty and you’ll just have to beat your wife for not doing her job of keeping house.

But wait, this isn’t a lone sexist reason in a group of perfectly sane ones. How about the reason: she’ll be more unhappy if she makes more than you do. Hear that, ladies? If we make more than our husbands, we’ll certainly be miserable, because even if we hold feminist views, deep down we know that our husbands should be the breadwinner. And if he’s the breadwinner, we can be free of that burden to instead pursue our part-time, “meaningful but not particularly remunerative job”. So they’re just doing us a favor, for our own happiness, and here we are not being nearly thankful enough. Geez, aren’t we just bitches?

My favorite reason (to hate) has to be this one: men are more likely to fall ill if they have a wife who works more than 40 hours a week. A woman who works more than 40 hours a week has “substantial, statistically significant, negative effects on changes in her husband’s health over that time span”. Translation: we’re killing our husbands because we work. The author goes on to explain that “wives working longer hours not do not have adequate time to monitor their husband’s health and healthy behavior, to manage their husband’s emotional well-being or buffer his workplace stress.”

Now, maybe I’m just being a little too modern here, but I had no idea that my husband was an extra child. Last I checked, he can take care of himself, make his own doctor’s appointments, and has the sense of mind to know when he’s sick or needs help. While I can express concern over his health, just as he can do for me, my role as wife does not include the duties of nurse and mental health practitioner. I’m pretty sure that requires some extra training.

Are men really still searching for women who will be their nurse, their housekeeper, their sex toy, their baby producer, and their mother rolled up into one? And I’m not just talking about people stuck in the 50’s – I’m talking about educated, intelligent men who read Forbes Magazine. (Well, I thought they were well-educated and intelligent. I’m doubting that now.) I guess I’m just baffled that in 2006 a woman can be thought of in such diminutive, sexist ways as soon as her status is converted to “wife”. It creates an entirely new warning for parents to tell their sons. In the 50’s, it was “Party girls make great dates, but you should never marry them.” Now will they tell them, “Career girls make great dates, but you should never marry them”?

Is it OK in today’s world to think of women as equals in the workplace and in society, until one of them becomes your wife, at which point she should take her proper role in the marriage of taking care of the husband, his castle, and the kids? Are some trying to create a new dichotomy for feminism, of being equal but only where marriage isn’t concerned?

Now, I’ll admit I’m not a career woman. I had aspirations of that at one time, but I gave up graduate school and my ideas of being a college professor because I decided it wasn’t for me, not because I was married and planning to have a child. And in not being a career woman, I can’t say for sure one way or another that this author pulled random statistics out of the air and the reality of American marriages looks nothing like this.

However, I just can’t see that a woman who chooses to pursue her own career goals is destined to wreck her marriage simply because of those career aspirations. I think it is possible for two people to be happily married, to each have a successful career, and to possibly have kids or no kids. Of course, the author infers that nearly all women want to have kids, so it’s a problem if they’re not having kids. The key, I think, is in how you approach your marriage. If you approach it as a power struggle, where one person must have control of the other, then you’ve got much bigger problems than a woman who chooses to work. And I think it is those problems in perception that will lead to divorce, not because the wife has a career.

Maybe instead of crafting a list of reasons not to marry a career woman, Forbes should write an article warning career woman how to spot and avoid sexist, spineless, controlling men who are actually looking for a servant and not a partner in marriage.

Edited to add: After a lot of digging through Forbes.com’s (poorly organized) website, I did finally find the intro to the slideshow. While it confirms that the slideshow is dead serious, it also acknowledges that the author is simply pulling together a lot of recent research. However, just because the intro isn’t (as) offensive doesn’t excuse the overall tone of the article, in my opinion.

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Comments

  1. OH.MY.GOD.

  2. Even as I was reading it I was trying to figure out if it was a joke.

  3. It has to be a joke, right?

    “Maybe instead of crafting a list of reasons not to marry a career woman, Forbes should write an article warning career woman how to spot and avoid sexist, spineless, controlling men who are actually looking for a servant and not a partner in marriage.”

    I agree. Write to them sister.

  4. That is a horrible article. Not to mention quite shocking.

    I found it humorous that highly educated people are more likely to have had extra-marital sex. Additionally individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat. It is safe to assume that the not so intelligent and not so well off are SO LUCKY not to have to deal with these pitfalls.

  5. daundelyon says

    “Because the vast majority of women want to have kids”
    Says who??? And might I add I know lots of women who have kids and careers, my own mother among them!

  6. I was laughing at first. Then, I realized. It is serious!
    As a SAHM by choice, I find that totally rediculous.
    Thanks for posting that!

  7. I can’t even believe that was real. HOLY CRAP!

    I used to make more than Daren, nearly double. He irons his own shirts, packs his own lunch, and *gasp!* wipes his own ass.

    We have always been happy. Whatever the situation. Great post on YOUR part though!

  8. Oh wow. I am really just laughing at this because while it is unbelievable, it’s funny to think that there are men out there who think that way still! Good thing my husband didn’t want a wife that like! Not only would I not be in the picture, he probably wouldn’t have a wife at all!

  9. seriously – what is up with the ‘news’ lately?

    if we’re bored being mothers and no man wants a career woman, what’s left? oh right, sex kitten.

    p.s. thanks for stopping by my place. glad I stopped by yours.

  10. “Are men really still searching for women who will be their nurse, their housekeeper, their sex toy, their baby producer, and their mother rolled up into one?”

    I think, in most modern and upwardly intelligent men, the thought does drift through their minds on occasion…but then most thank their lucky stars that they have us instead!…their EQUALS!!

    But with stuff like this, the constant onslaught of music videos and tv and movies all projecting slut/whore images ….teaching our daughters GREAT examples of what to aspire to….and the whole mommywar thing going on….

    There seems to be a bit of a backlash going on against ‘modern’ women.

    There seems to be a big of smugness and gloating about women having a hard time ‘having it all’….like we are being a taught a lesson little lady….now get back in the kitchen!

    It is worrisome..because now ‘serious’ magazines are stooping to the attides seen in things like Maxim.

  11. I can’t believe how disgusting this was. I wrote to Forbes(which I never do) and I wrote about it on my blog. Of course I granted you some linky love!

  12. this is mind-numbing. I REALLY hope that there isn’t a woman on the Forbes editorial review board. I would be VERY sad if any self- respecting woman allowed that to be printed.

    However..the part about being educated and being a shitty housekeeper…hmmm… that just might be true….maybe

  13. No. Way. Let’s sit back and see how much hate mail Forbes gets.

  14. OMG. Is it 1954? This makes me want to go back to work, just to prove a point.

  15. Can’t talk. Calling Forbes now.

  16. JavaJabber says

    Some of the research is dated 1981 (as noted in one of the footnotes).

    I’m with you, time to spread the word about this sexist, disgusting article and bombard them with caustic emails!

  17. That article is just plain stupid…

    I like your idea…

  18. OMG….that is the most absurd thing I have read in a long time. It is so absurd, it sounds like a joke.

  19. The picture of the glum-looking man whose wife earns more than he does is just hilarious. I’m also amused by the assumption that the bachelor readers of Forbes are looking for advice on how to avoid hooking up with women who don’t want children.

  20. me/myself/I says

    That wasn`t a joke?!.. Can`t believe it…sigh… Oh, and by the way – my paycheck came today, and I just started crying! I earn more than my man (maybe that`s the reason we`re not married…)!

  21. Ugh. Seriously, let these stupid sexist pigs clean up their own messes. And just FYI for them- I don’t work full time- and my house is STILL a mess. So THERE!

  22. My word, I was pissed just reading that Forbes article. Ugh. So we take two steps forward only to be pushed two steps back?

    What a crock!

  23. Holy shit. AWESOME post and kudos to you for finding this and jumping on it.

    Funny how they just assume that all men are career driven. And value things like clean houses. Clearly they haven’t met Nate.

  24. Ok so here’s what else is pissing me off. They’re confusing correlation with causality.

    Perhaps “ultra achieving women” have fewer kids because they’re not in relationships in the first place. Perhaps “less successful working women” have children because marriage is their escape from their lives.

    ARGH

  25. What utter bullshit.

  26. Heh heh. They took it down!

  27. That is outrageous! But brava to you for wading through all the crap to write this post!

  28. That is so irresponsible and outrageous of them. If I had a subscription I’d cancel immediately. Idiots..

    Good for you for sounding off on the article. Well said

  29. Mrs. Davis says

    Did you see Forbes has added an opposing viewpoint piece from a woman? I guess they got lots of hatemail. Her column is on there now, right next to this moron’s piece….it’s called something like “Women, Don’t Marry a Lazy Man.” Ha.

  30. Her rebuttal is kind of weak though. Its very “Golly gee, you’re wrong Dear Colleague!” when it should have been fierce and ripped him to shreds.

    Not that I run to the mailbox to check for the latest issue of Forbes, but talk about biased and disturbing content.

  31. Mommy off the Record says

    Lordy! I can’t believe this! I thought we were way past all this b-sh*t.

  32. I am glad that I chose my husband. He shares parenting and household chores. He even rubs my feet.

    I feel sorry for any woman who chooses to marry someone who believes this rhetoric.

    I hope this was a tongue in cheek type article. I can’t imagine it actually being serious.

  33. This is my first time visiting this blog, and I’m so thrilled to see this Forbes article being ripped apart! I love how these sexists think women are too stupid to challenge an article of this nature, so they decide to go ahead and publish it anyway. There have always been countless “studies” that distorted the truth in order to scare women out of the workplace. It’s just scary to know this still occurs in the year 2006. Forbes also published an article recently about “how to marry a rich man.” I thought it was not only degrading to working women, and women married to men who aren’t rich, but also to men in general who are trying to avoid gold diggers. I’m thrilled to know that this world has women like you all who believe in female empowerment!