Common Sense

Started by zarby, Jan 11, 2006, 05:37 AM

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zarby

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ROSS IN RANGE
Feminism's Terrible Blunder, or
Want to "Have It All"?  Then Don't Do It Backwards
By John Ross

Copyright 2005 by John Ross.  Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given

Note: I've been exchanging emails and participating in discussions about marriage a lot lately.  The columns on guns and politics will be back soon, but this one needs to get out there.

   There's been a fair amount of discussion on "career women," and the value of educating our daughters so that they can succeed in the fields that were once populated only by men.  I don't fall into the "Women should just stay home and have babies" camp, because a woman shouldn't do that if she doesn't want to. I have no problem at all with women who want to climb the corporate ladder, pursue careers in traditionally male fields, etc.

   I also agree with something a woman friend said in a discussion of men and women, that an intelligent and educated woman is a better choice for a wife, both for the genes that she splits with her husband and passes along to their children, as well as being a more interesting mate to talk to and be with.

   What I see as the fundamental problem with women pursuing careers is the near-universal assumption these women make: That they will be able to "pencil in" a suitable husband at whatever point that they decide it's time to marry and have kids.  That is a very dangerous assumption, because it's seldom true, and I'll explain why.

   Some time ago (15 years?) the Wall Street Journal had one of those human interest stories they run regularly. I wish I could dig it up to get the details exactly right, but I well remember the salient points:

   The story was about a woman, never married, who had risen to the top of some fairly big company. As I recall, it wasn't Fortune 500 size, but it was big and she had done a great job at directing the company's growth and making it successful. In the process, she herself had amassed a seven-figure net worth, with an annual income of a half-million or so.

   She was 46, as I recall, and couldn't find a suitable man to date and marry. The article chronicled her attempts to rectify this situation, including her hiring an expensive service in NYC that specialized in matching up busy executives with suitable mates.

   The service matched her up with some men, but none were much interested. This woman seemed amazed (and despondent) that the male executives the service fixed her up with (and that she was attracted to) weren't much interested in seeing her a second time. There had been a couple of men that wanted to see her again, but their incomes were a small fraction of hers and she didn't want much to do with them as she viewed them as not being successful.

   The lady theorized that the men who weren't interested were "intimidated by a strong woman," and lamented that male executives had fragile egos, and needed doormats for mates, etc. It was a fairly detailed article.

   Shortly thereafter, the letters section printed reader's responses to this article, and one guy nailed the situation dead-center.

   He said the woman was failing to see the basic economic principle of comparative advantage, on which all successful trade, commerce, and business is based. He wrote that he was surprised such a financially savvy person was apparently oblivious to what was so obvious to him.

   Comparative advantage means you are most valuable to someone who needs what you have, because without you, they can't have it. Florida can sell oranges and orange juice at a profit to people here in Missouri, even after paying shipping costs, because orange trees won't grow here, and so if we want orange juice with breakfast, we have to get it from them.

   Comparative advantage also says that you should concentrate your time and energy on that which rewards you the most highly, to the point of hiring others to do work that you may even be better at than they are.

   Example: A neurosurgeon who happens to be a world-record typist that can type 200 words per minute is still better off hiring a 60 wpm stenographer to transcribe his notes, because there are lots of stenographers who'll work for less than $20 an hour, and his time is better spent doing more neurosurgeries which pay hundreds of times that rate.

   The letter-writer's point was that the woman executive in the article was failing to grasp this economic fact. The male executives weren't "afraid of strong women," they weren't interested because this woman didn't offer them anything they didn't already have.  They already had lots of money. They already had financial and business success.

   The letter-writer pointed out that the men who had shown interest were the ones that were younger and hadn't had the business success that she had. They were attracted to her because she offered what they didn't have. Unfortunately, the woman executive didn't grasp this, and for some reason didn't see that her situation made her much more attractive to pool boys than to Lee Iacocca.

   This is the great tragedy of feminism: The so-called women's movement has encouraged women to get specialized education and pursue careers right out of school. Feminists have said over and over that women can succeed at any business endeavor a man can.  THIS IS TRUE.  But what makes this message so damaging:  Saying it over and over to young women has distracted them from remembering (or realizing) that they have a tremendous comparative advantage over men. This comparative advantage is their ability to have children, and it exists for only part of their lives.

   If a woman doesn't particularly want to bear children, fine. But almost all of the young women I meet do have a strong maternal instinct and say they definitely want kids. Why don't they realize that their youth and ability to bear children are expiring assets? Why are they doing what you can do at any time (work in a business) during the only time they possess those valuable assets?

   What if a recent college graduate who was the star pitcher for his college baseball team told you that he intended to play Major League professional baseball, but not until after he'd gotten his law degree and had established a successful law practice? You'd think he was crazy, yet women do the equivalent every day.

   Here's a radical idea for the women who want to "have it all": Do it in the logical order, which is the reverse of what you've been doing.

   Whether or not a woman's youth and fertility are her most valuable assets, they are inarguably expiring assets. They are like a $200 voucher for a private eating establishment that declines by $10 every month you don't use it. If you don't ever want to eat at that place, fine, let the voucher expire.

   But if one of your life's goals is to fully experience that eating establishment, use your voucher early.

   There are women I know personally who do "have it all," in both my and their opinion. In all cases, these women married and had their children early, i.e. youngest child born when the mother was 25 or younger. Once all the children were in school, these women entered the work force, at least part-time. When the kids were old enough to start looking out for themselves, i.e. in college or at least driving, the mothers became serious about a career.

   In one case, the woman went to law school and is now a successful lawyer. Because she had her kids early, her body recovered easily, and at age 49 she has two grandchildren and looks like one of those hot 30-year-old woman lawyers on a TV series. Getting her law degree at a later age didn't hurt her skill level or ability to find work: she was my lawyer in my divorce and she couldn't have been better. I think her husband is one of the luckiest men alive.

   Another woman had her first child at age 19 and then twins two or three years later. When the kids were all in school, she started working part-time. At one point she worked in a consignment shop, and felt the owner was making some bad business decisions. At around age 45, with the kids out of college, she opened her own consignment shop. Now, a little over a decade later, she's making almost $200,000 a year and looks great.

   A third had two children by age 24.  After they were in high school, when she was 38 or so, she got her real estate agent's license.  Now she's about 55 or so and making well over $100,000 a year.  Do I need to tell you she is great-looking?

Which of the career paths listed below makes more sense?:

1.  Focus on career right out of school, have recreational sex with pleasant male companions your own age, be on the success track for 10-15 years, then panic when you realize you want children but you don't want to derail your career, your looks are starting to fade compared to the twentysomethings, there aren't any men that seem interested in marrying you, and in any event, you're running out of time,

or

2.  After high school or during college, focus on finding a man about 10 years older who has established himself in the last decade and who wants a family.  Use your youth, looks, and fertility to find the best possible man for the role of Husband and Father.  Have children at a young age, soon after you finish your schooling, while you have lots of energy and your body will recover quickly.  Be there for the kids when they need you, and let your husband do the financial lifting.  Be good to both the kids and your husband, and be thinking about what your career dreams are while caring for your family.  Talk to your husband about these dreams.  Tell him you don't want to just sit around the house at age 40-45.  Then go after your dream, once the kids are of majority age.  You've still got a few good decades left, plenty of time for career success.

   Many women who pursue careers find they don't like it nearly as much as they expected.  Far fewer women have children and then wish they hadn't.  Why not do the kid thing first, while your body is primed for it, and start a career later in life?  

   You can start a new business at any age.  I started a new venture at age 46--I set up a shooting school.  Now, two years later, it's very successful and continues to grow, showing every indication of becoming the major force in my regional market.  

   Think a shooting school doesn't count, because it's not going to be big enough to be a real "career"?  Then try this one: A 65-year-old man living on Social Security with a used car and a love of cooking drove around the Southeast in the 1950s, cooking samples of food to persuade restaurant owners to buy his special blend of seasonings.  When he made enough money from spice sales and found a financial backer, he opened his own little restaurant, selling one kind of food made with his blend of seasonings.  It was successful, so he licensed others to open similar establishments.  When he died 25 years later at age 90, Colonel Harlan Sanders left behind his legacy: Kentucky Fried Chicken, now KFC.

   A man who wants a family can't have it without a woman.  He would prefer a young, fertile one.  She will have the energy to keep up with kids, and her body will recover quickly from pregnancy and childbirth.  Men know that a woman's sex drive and looks decline.  We'd like to start with one where the decline hasn't already gone on for a couple decades.

   A woman who wants both a career and children faces a number of problems if she gets on the career track first, and intends to marry and have kids later.  First, since men are good at earning money, we don't much care about your income level--that old comparative advantage thing.  We want your youth, looks, and fertility--we've already got the money thing covered.  Get to be 35 and still single and you'll find that the men who want to get married want to do so because they want to have kids.  Thus, they want someone in the peak of her reproductive years, not the end of them.  Second, if you do find a husband, becoming a mother around age 40 means being an old woman for most of your children's adult life.  When your kids grow up, wouldn't it be nice to be young enough to still do active things with them for a decade or two?  And what if after 12-15 years of the career track, you realize you're burnt out?  Now what?  Quit work to get married?  What sane man wants a 35-year-old woman who has decided she doesn't like working?

   Last of all, if you marry a man 10-15 years older, and start your career after the kids are grown or at least able to drive, your husband is likely to be very supportive of your dreams.  Men are very loyal to those who are good to us.  If you've been a great wife and mother, we are going to applaud your wanting to get out of the house and bring in some income.  We're going to be thrilled if you replace some or all of the family savings that were drained when the tuition bills came due.  We're going to be proud of you making a financial success of yourself, so that you now truly "have it all."  We'd love to retire and play golf or whatever, and admire your success.

   And if you decide the career track isn't for you after a few years (or a decade), we won't be upset.  You can quit at age 45 or 50 and do something part-time and your husband will never have any complaints.  You let him have a wonderful family, were a great wife, and a wonderful mother to his children.

   But going the career track first is very dangerous in that it completely wastes much or all of a woman's major asset of fertility and youth.

   Angela Fiori put it succinctly in her excellent piece Feminism's Third Wave:

Feminism proclaimed that for women to be fulfilled, they had to adopt the career ambitions of workaholic men, the sexual promiscuity of John F. Kennedy, and the cynicism of Gloria Steinem (the pre-married one, that is).

Can you think of any demographic group other than women who would have bought into this prescription for complete disaster and then cried "victim" when the Bunker Buster of Inevitable Biology crashed through the roof and blew up in their faces? Think Wile E. Coyote. No, think of someone much dumber.

   It's obviously too late for any childless career women out there in their 30s.  The people that need to understand are today's high school- and college-age women who want a career and a family.  

   If you have multiple goals, and achieving one of them requires that you do it before a certain expiration date, work on that one first.  Duh.



This very well written and logical. It is good common sense.

There is one thing about it I don't like. I agree that motherhood
can be a life enriching activity. I hate to see it viewed as an
economic activity though because I think many women do it now to
make money not because they want to be a mother (childsupport)
and I hate to encourage viewing motherhood in economic terms.

The fact is that having children is a blessing. It should be done
for reasons other than economics (the same with being a father).

dr e

Excellent article.
Contact dr e  Lifeboats for the ladies and children, icy waters for the men.  Women have rights and men have responsibilties.

Sir Percy

Nice essay Zarby. But you don't like the idea of making economic decisions in regard to family and life planning. I don't see those decisions as 'just' economic or even principally. Whilst love is grand, trying to excise the economic aspects would be a recipe for later problems.  Economics needs to have its place. As it seems Ross is eliciting. Perhaps see the lessons of the approach taken by Ross as a recipe for a good life. Certainly one that would suit many more women a lot better than the recipe they have so far chosen. Its a Col Sanders' mix as opposed to flooding everything with feminist oregano by the bucket load.

What he doesn't address is the age and mortality issue. He talks of a 10 to 15 year age gap at the outset. Couple that with an average 7 year mortality age difference and a woman is likely to be on her own for 17 to 22 years. Albeit quite well off!
vil, like misery, is Protean, and never greater than when committed in the name of 'right'. To commit evil when they are convinced they are doing 'good', is one of the greatest of pleasures known to a feminist.

Quentin0352

If men looked at children from an economic viewpoint instead of as a blessing, then we wouldn't have children. For men it becomes an economic burden costing us a fortune that we could have spent on things like fancy electronics, cars, motorcycles, sports and etc instead. Much less the loss of household income from the wife not working.

SIAM

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Its a Col Sanders' mix as opposed to flooding everything with feminist oregano by the bucket load.


I just like that line :D, Sir Percy!!

Great article too.  I think there is a lot of common sense there. Yes, as Sir Percy points out, the man will inevitably croak it long before his wife if he is 10-15 years older than her - but if it gets to that point, then obviously it's been a successful marriage anyway (we're looking at 40+ year marriage for this situation to occur).  Nowadays a marriage that lasts more than 10 years is a minor miracle.  

When I see a 35 year old childless career woman, I see potential danger.  I see bad things - she may be single, so she needs to rush into a relationship, rush into pregnancy, and most likely rush into single motherhood a few years down the line.  I just don't see loyalty from such a woman - her whole being is saying "me, me, me".  How to accommadate such a woman? The only way is to be a doormat and a "yes, dear" man.  And still you'll be looking at a quickie divorce a few years down the line simply because the relationship was founded upon her obsession with her body clock.  Nah, I'll leave that well alone.

ggreen67

I certainly agree this woman has brought her misery upon herself.

The fact that she had several men interested in her but didn't prusue it proves that. With everything she has obtained (enough to last most people a lifetime) she is still looking to "marry up".

I don't really agree with his solution however; at least as far as my male perspective is concerned. Using this woman as example, if she were to have married and had children early and started a carrer later she would have divorced the husband for the same reasons as she did not want to prusue the men who were not as sucessful as she.

I think any woman with BIG career goals is going to end up alone. Her own ego will see to that.

GregA

I'd like to know, where are these jobs making 200k a year?  At age 33, and about 110k a year I am easily the highest paid person in my peer group.  My doctor complains that he went into the wrong line of business (during a consultation about pre-hypertension).  Everybody I know who makes more than me, is much older.

Out of curiosity, I looked through match.com (one is more than enough thankyou, I wanted to see what the fuss was all about) I felt totally intimidated by women with even lesser levels of success.  Yah, I got here with lots of hard work, but also a healthy dose of old fashioned good luck (knocks on wood).  Reading through those profiles, I felt inadequate that I like to sit around and watch movies from time to time.  The fact that I detest the bar scene disqualifed just about everyone else.  The fact that I am nearly bald finished off anyone else.

To the woman of match.com (at least) the only quality I have that they wanted is fat wads of cash (and some even had temerity to say thats all they cared about).  Nevermind that just about everyone I looked at would give me the same sort of grief my current wife gives me (never mind looking at the computer 8-10 hours a day is how i earn my money, oh and a server went down today so I will be up all night fixing it, man i hope its just the powersupply or a virus).

I think if I ever wind of single again my plan is to get a vasectomy, and have lots of short term relationships with the obvious gene burgulars.  And for those of you wondering about my current situation, I have an appointment with an urologist feb 1st.

aknapp1112

Greg
What do u do for a living if you dont mind me asking

FP

Good article but something caught my eye.

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Talk to your husband about these dreams. Tell him you don't want to just sit around the house at age 40-45. Then go after your dream, once the kids are of majority age. You've still got a few good decades left, plenty of time for career success.


True. But, how often does one hear of marriages that fail after the wife goes back to work? This can be true for men somewhat but I generally noticed it was women who would leave. There is a noticable trend in which those who say, get a masters or phd often feel they are "ready to start anew" and I've heard of many horror stories in that vein.

GregA

Quote from: "aknapp1112"
Greg
What do u do for a living if you dont mind me asking


Mostly right now, I have been maintaining computers/registers/web site (1.2 mil sales last year) for mid sized company(factiry, 8 stores about 120 employees) .    Over the years however, I figured out how to really make the company tick.  I basically automated all the production and sales of our products.

We make soy fragrance candles.  I designed and worked with engineers to finalize designes for our material handling processes.  Starting with the raw soy wax, to jar filling and molding, and labeling and packaging automation.

I also had a major role in the process of opening more stores.  I pioneered the idea in company that...  We have one store that makes money, to increase sales, we should just start opening more stores.  So I was the one who started that project as well.

10 years ago when I started, there were reams of paper all over the place in the office...  Well there are still the same piles of paper all over the office, but we do about 20x more sales...

At some point in there, I was made a partner.  Simply becaues, when I started they had about 500k sales annually, and this last year it was just under 10 million.

That was possible (the luck part) because when I started, the skills I possesed and my way of thinking about things was absent in the company.  Because of my contributions over the years, company is poised to grow to probably 30-40 million year sales, over the next 5 years.

I am uncertain what my actual title is, it seems a cary a new one whenever there is a new hat to wear.

Sir Percy

I think you should make up your own title Greg. I heard of a company quite some years ago where a sense of fun ran from top to bottom, amid the serious day to day business of creating wealth. The CEO called himself the Great Grand Poobah or something of that ilk.  The Accountant was the Grand Vizir. They had these titles on their office doors and business cards. You could be the Rainmaker, The Fragrance of Electrons, the Shaman of Good Medicine or the Summer Shower of Even Better Crops to Come or the Candle in the Wind, whatever takes your fancy.

Do Good, Have fun, Make money.
vil, like misery, is Protean, and never greater than when committed in the name of 'right'. To commit evil when they are convinced they are doing 'good', is one of the greatest of pleasures known to a feminist.

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