Kara Hodge, reacting to the book by Linda Hirshman, wonders why she would be required to be an astrophysicist when she really loves art history?

A fair enough question. But let's flip the gender involved and frame it from a guy's perspective.

A lot of guys would say, sure, if you're free and single and feel comfortable living a life of penury, go right ahead. And many single guys live happily in squalor. But when you join with someone else in creating a household and family, the rules really harden, especially from a guy's view.

While woman with children would love to retain the options of working full time, working part time to care for the children or becoming a full time mother, for guys the choices become --

• Work full time (even if you hate the job)
• Work full time (even if you hate the job)
• Work full time (even if you hate the job)

In a post below physicsgirl remarks that she knows guys who are engineers but hate it, and ascribes that to lack of self-awareness. That may be true in part. But for many guys, the bottom line is not personal fulfillment, but the size of the paycheck.

Why else have/would guys work at jobs that risk life and limb, like steelworkers, coal miners, oil roustabouts, deep sea fishermen, roofers, assembly line workers? Or how about soul-deadening jobs like middle management or used car sales? Because they loved it?

They may learn to take great pride in what they do. But that's far from loving it.

They do it because they want to provide for their families. And so the luxury of choice for women comes at the cost of constricting choice for men.

I actually agree with you that in some sense men seem to have more limited choices in the work/life balance game. But I don't think that these are truly limits, only perceptions.. If men were more active in pressing for making their jobs more compatible with a healthy family life, then those jobs would be more accessible and attractive to women. right now the men are in the positions of power, and more often than not the power comes from simply having the job in the first place...that puts them in a much better position to change their workplace than the women who are pushing from the outside. In some sense, this all comes down to valuing the things that have traditionally been the women's domain...and valuing them so much that the men want to stage demonstrations to get them (like time with their kids). That to me is really how change can happen.

most males work in areas that do not allow flex time, telecommuting, day care, or ANY of the things females and office workers take for granted..

I'd like to meet these women who have all these options of staying home and working part time...

I don't know one single woman, married, single, childfull, or childfree, who doesn't work full time, and the percentage of those who hate their jobs doesn't seem to be any lower.

Problem is that any guy who decides he doesn't want to participate in the ratrace is screwed due to females primarily selecting for guys who pull in six figures and like to use business jargon in casual conversation (or "networking", if you will). The only other strategy is to become a hipster, but the girls they get tend to be sorely lacking in personal hygiene.

Revrick, I also agree with you to a certain extent.

But the fact is that it's the women who carry the babies and then birth them and then have to recover from that for 6 to 8 weeks. Then, if they make the choice, they breastfeed.

That's just biology.

However, if more and more men want to be able to make the choice to become "stay at home dads" (and I'm sure many many women would be happy if they did), then YOU MEN HAVE TO FIGHT FOR IT. Just like we women are trying to fight for better work/life balance in the workplace.

I mean, some men do make the choice because their wives happen to make more than they do and also because their wives may be more career-minded than they are.

Men and women can certainly negotiate that in a marriage - figure out who's going to stay home or not stay home and how it's going to work BEFORE they have kids.

However, I do get that society has probably placed some pressure on men to choose the well-paying jobs because many will get married and you have no idea who you are going to marry in the future and what their situation is going to be.

But that's where men and women can join the fight for more work/life balance from employers because it benefits EVERYBODY, married, single, children or childless.

Also, for now, while we are working hard on that change (:slight sarcasm:), men and women, while also trying to be a bit practical, should not necessarily choose careers based on some future thing that may or may not happen. They should just pick what they are good at and what they like and honestly, I think it all works out in the end.

We are too hyped up over the McMansions and SUVs and luxury vacations, etc. Success is more than monetary (and mind you, this is not coming from someone who has money and therefore can sound like it's not a big deal; I'm "middle middle class").

Perhaps that's the more important lesson we can be teaching our children. Wanting to be successful at work and make big money is not necessarily bad. To me, it's bad when that's what you want to the exclusion of all else. You lose your humanity then, IMHO.

BortimusPrime:

Problem is that any guy who decides he doesn't want to participate in the ratrace is screwed due to females primarily selecting for guys who pull in six figures and like to use business jargon in casual conversation (or "networking", if you will). The only other strategy is to become a hipster, but the girls they get tend to be sorely lacking in personal hygiene.

I'd also like to meet these girls who reject everyone not making 6 figures (I always HEAR about them from guys, but never actually had the opportunity to meet one...hmmm...interesting). I dunno, I've made more than every guy I've ever dated...

did you pay?

Buggie, I've met ALOT of them. I had a buddy who graduated with a degree in education and had just started teaching math in high school. Going out to bars with him was an education. He would meet lots of women because he was good looking and charming but once they found out what he did their faces locked in a smile and they found a way to exit the conversation quickly. He met several women who taught at his school who told him directly that altough they love teaching, they could NEVER marry a teacher because they need someone who makes enough money to compensate for the fact that they don't make much. Believe me, it is a very real element in the dating world and it weighs heavily on men's minds from an early age.

Apparently I need to raise my standards, because I've never turned down a guy because of his income or his lack of business jargon. Honestly, business jargon is a turnoff, and I'd actually be uncomfortable dating someone who made significantly more than me. Pride and all that.

Or maybe *you* need to *lower* your standards and stop going after high-maintenance entitlement prissfaces whose main goal is to marry rich. Women like me may not look like Paris Hilton, but we don't have her personality, either.

oicuateonetwo:

did you pay?

I believe in splitting the check on dates and evening-out in relationships (last summer I was unemployed after grad school and even though my boyfriend offered to pay for more stuff, I wouldn't let him, that's just not fair). It is 2008, you know.

and I LOVE male teachers. I seek them out.

Corporations won't change unless they are forced to do so, either by unions or government. To put the onus on individuals is to insure that it won't happen. Very few men opt for family leave even when it's available, because they perceive it's a career killer.

As for valuing women's domain...

When I was six I went to my 'girl' friend's house. There were two other girls there and they had a doll. I was instructed, "You be the daddy and we'll be the mommy," and was promptly shunted aside. There's an article on the MSNBC website which tells about how much power women have in determining the involvement of father's in childcare.

When my daughter was six I came home for lunch to find her and her girlfriend swooning into each other's arms, pretending they were being kissed by Superman (Christopher Reeve).

Girls rehearse relationships and childcare endlessly; boys almost never. What boys do rehearse is achievement.

How many boys babysit as teens? How many girls? How many parents would even think to ask a boy to babysit one of their children?

My point -- the performance pressures exerted upon each sex respectively are reinforced in so many ways.

buggie,

You're right.... tons of women have been forced into the job market. But there has to exist some stay-at-home moms. How else could there be a fight amongst women about who is the better mother?

lovelyrita:

Or maybe *you* need to *lower* your standards and stop going after high-maintenance entitlement prissfaces whose main goal is to marry rich.

I would argue that that's raising your standards.

ladykrystyna,

We can get into endless chicken-and egg arguments until the cows come home. I fully understand and concur with your argument about losing one's humanity in pursuit of money/power/etc.

Don't kid yourself about how much pressure men feel. Every guy I know feels the pressure that he may be called upon to shoulder the entire responsibility for mortgage, car, food, heat and college.