8.25.2006

Thoughts on Women

The Today show featured a segment this morning on which I just cannot resist commenting. I don't have much time right now but you all must immediately checkout this article on forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html. The first paragraph gives you an idea of the subject of this article: "Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career." And women with careers are defined according to this standard: "a 'career girl' has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year...We're not talking about a high-school dropout minding a cash register."

Yikes! I have many, MANY comments about the above and this entire article but for now I'll just say 3 things:
1 - I am a "career girl" based on the standard above and I have a wonderful marriage.

2 - My husband finds my job and my success outside the home fascinating, stimulating and he is proud of me. He is equally proud of my accomplishments at home and is eternally grateful for my caretaking of our home and our son.

3 - I have respect for the women who are not fortunate enough to have blue collar jobs yet still take pride in their work, their careers, if you will. And I find it offensive that this author so demeaned these women.

OK, I lied. I have 4 things to say... :)

4 - This author does not take one important factor into consideration: Christ. As Christian women, we have an anchor stronger than workplace temptations, ego factors or "falling out of love." We are committed to our marriages and our homes because our God has called us to our men, our children and our homes. And no matter what we do in our free time, we know with whom our allegiance ultimately lies and by whom our priorities and subsequent actions are dictated. I tried to copy some relevant versions from Proverbs 31 the Godly woman working diligently inside and outside the home…and being praised by her husband for both but blogger didn’t like it. But do read Proverbs 31 again, even if you’ve read it may times before. http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=proverbs+31

Praise the Lord that our successes in our marriages and our work in our homes (or outside our homes for that matter) is not dependent upon us NOT having the opportunity to meet other men, earn a salary or take pride in a skill learned or job well-done!

[Now for the stay-at-home moms reading this post - I am not in any way saying that career is more important than our tasks at home. I 100% believe that a woman's primary responsibility is to her family so let's not even "go there." :)]

6 comments:

Andrew McAllister said...

I also have a wonderful marriage and my wife is definitely a career girl. I once had a colleague tell me: "I don't have that problem." Well my "problem" just happens to be the nicest thing to ever happen to me.

Andrew
To Love, Honor and Dismay

WASPy Girl said...

Amen, Sister.

WASPy Girl said...

Just read the article. Reading it as a social scientist, after reading the first two paragraphs, my first thought was about the difference between causation and correlation. That is, just because one variable is related to another does not mean that it causes the particular phenomenon to occur. That is, say is the case that the the more frequently an individual reads the newspaper, the greater number of shoes he/she owns...But it is probably not the case that newspaper reading is the thing that actually causes an individual to owm more or less shoes.

Therefore, when I got to the end of the article, I found it interesting that the author brought up the issue of causation v. correlation but only to apply it to the one positive statistic about marriage he cited. He says, "A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married."

The causation v. correlation can be just as easily applied to the findings of the main study. OR, to use the author's reasoning: Just because working women are more likely to have rocky marriages, it does not mean that working is what is causing the rockiness. It could just be that working women are more likely to have rocky marriages.

ejm said...

Good point, Jill. Overall, the article wasn't particularly "socially scientific" but it is interesting that he started pulling that out at the end.

And to your point: I've seen many a marriage between a non-career "girl" and a working man crumble! The "girl" not working is not a guarantee of a happy, fulfilling marriage!

Anonymous said...

Wow- you work more than 35 hrs. a week for Lexis Nexis- is it all from home? Well, it must be if you haven't dressed for work since he was born. Nevermind....
I'm so mixed on the topic of career moms but I agree wholeheartedly with what you said. Especially the difference being Christian families vs. non.
Marriage is hard work whether you throw the other factors in there or not. Two humans living right underneath each other are going to rub each other the wrong way some times about something- the biggest thing with work is that for many it CAN take away from a woman's responsibilities at home and perhaps that is where the biggest rub comes in. (But not that it has to- or that all marriages suffer because of those issues.)
And Jill does make an excellent point about the fallacies of the author's approach here.

ejm said...

Yep, I sure do work completely from home. I do have to do some travelling but thankfully I haven't had to do that since Charlie was born. I usually average around 40/45 hours/week including nights and week-ends.