If You Wanna Be Happy For The Rest Of Your Life, Never Make A Career Woman Your Wife
MayorBob.
Posted to Business on Fri Aug 25, 2006 at 11:40:20 AM EST. RSS.
Forbes editor Michael Noer would never be as shallow as Jimmy Soul, who suggested that looks are the predictor for marital success. No, but what Noer did suggest in a recent piece was that, if you're looking to marry and settle down, guys should avoid career women.
Noers' point is that career women are more likely to cheat and divorce. According to him they are less likely to have kids and more likely to resent the kid's existence once burdened with providing for him or her. That, plus marriage is stressful enough, so why should a guy committed to a career opt to strike up a marriage with someone with whom he'll just end up competing with or begrudging meeting her professional demands and needs? He cites social research he claims make his point for him - everything from studies that say most women are happier with the male being the primary breadwinner to husbands made unhappy and threatened by wives who outearn them. He sees one of the major threats to a stable, long-term marriage with a career woman that she might be liable to meet someone else just a bit more interesting than you are. According to one expert Noers quotes in his piece:
"The work environment provides a host of potential partners and individuals frequently find themselves spending a great deal of time with these individuals."To which Elizabeth Corcoran responds, in counterpoint fashion, there may be good reasons why women trade those zeroes in for heroes. She observes that maybe it might be the fact that there are men, who once they get married, opt to vegetate rather than grow in the relationship. She also scoffs at the Noers' notion that there is less specialization in a marriage between persons with separate careers. She points to her 18 years of marriage and says she found things she's good at and likes to do and so did her husband and these made for a more interesting union.
The response to Noers' and Corcoran's pieces on Forbes contains shout outs to Corcoran (primarily from female readers) for pointing out that gleaning facts from a few socially conservative slanted studies does not a solid theory make. One particular response, takes on Noers point-by-point in lucid fashion. There are also responses which characterize Noers as a truth teller and Corcoran as a raving raving Feminazi (primarily from male readers). Slate's Jack Shafer asks what exactly about Noers' piece is so outlandish as to get feminists in an uproar? The one thing Shafer does cite as a central flaw in Noers argument from the standpoint of feminists. Noers defines career women as having the following characteristics: "a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than (US)$30,000 a year." Where feminist critics of Noers see a deep bias against working women, Shafer sees the possibilities of freedom for career women, finding themselves in an unhappy marriage, better able to "afford to get out of an unhappy marriage than their sisters." But, criticism for the piece isn't restricted merely to Noers. There are those who would like to know why Forbes would "print one of the most sexist, chauvinistic articles in the history of respectable periodicals and then republish it, but as a debate?"
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