"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
The decline of the two-parent family, for instance, is almost certainly depressing life satisfaction for the women stuck raising kids alone. But this can’t be the only explanation, since the trend toward greater female discontent cuts across lines of class and race. A working-class Hispanic woman is far more likely to be a single mother than her white and wealthy counterpart, yet the male-female happiness gap holds in East Hampton and East L.A. alike.
Again, maybe the happiness numbers are being tipped downward by a mounting female workload — the famous “second shift,” in which women continue to do the lion’s share of household chores even as they’re handed more and more workplace responsibility. It’s certainly possible — but as Wolfers and Stevenson point out, recent surveys actually show similar workload patterns for men and women over all.
Or perhaps the problem is political — maybe women prefer egalitarian, low-risk societies, and the cowboy capitalism of the Reagan era had an anxiety-inducing effect on the American female. But even in the warm, nurturing, egalitarian European Union, female happiness has fallen relative to men’s across the last three decades.
All this ambiguity lends itself to broad-brush readings. A strict feminist and a stringent gender-role traditionalist alike will probably find vindication of their premises between the lines of Wolfers and Stevenson’s careful prose. The feminist will see evidence of a revolution interrupted, in which rising expectations are bumping against glass ceilings, breeding entirely justified resentments. The traditionalist will see evidence of a revolution gone awry, in which women have been pressured into lifestyles that run counter to their biological imperatives, and men have been liberated to embrace a piggish irresponsibility.
There’s evidence to fit each of these narratives. But there’s also room for both.
[snip]
They should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women. Here the public-policy options are limited; some kind of social stigma is a necessity. But a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.
No reason, of course, save the fact that contemporary America doesn’t seem willing to accept sexual stigma, period. We simply don’t have the stomach for permanently ostracizing the sexually irresponsible — be they a pregnant starlet, a thrice-divorced tycoon, or even a prostitute-hiring politician.
Economists say this recession is reshaping the financial roles of millions of women whose husbands have lost jobs. Since the recession began in December 2007, about 5.7 million jobs have disappeared in the United States. About 4 out of 5 of those jobs were held by men. That's because the heaviest employment cuts have been concentrated in construction, manufacturing and financial services, where male workers predominate.
The uneven impact of the recession shows up in the unemployment data. On Friday, the Labor Department said the overall jobless rate in April was 8.9 percent. But for adult men, the rate was 9.4 percent; for adult women, it was just 7.1 percent.
[snip]
To help their families through the recession, more working women are taking second jobs, according to CareerBuilder's annual Mother's Day survey taken by among women who work full time and have children under 18. The job-search company found that 14 percent of working mothers have taken on second jobs in the last year to beef up household income
Since its enactment, the G.I. Bill has been lauded as the law that "made modern America," rewarding veterans, democratizing higher education, expanding home ownership and laying the foundation for the economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s. The bill relieved pressure on the labor market by sending former soldiers, mostly men, to college or vocational training, and by allowing them to start businesses. Moreover, by expanding home ownership, the bill fueled a boom in home construction, infrastructure spending and consumer purchases.
But the bill also had other, less positive effects: Women, most of whom were not veterans and who entered the labor market during the war to fill jobs vacated by mobilizing men, found their postwar prospects limited. By law, they had to relinquish their jobs to the returning veterans.
[snip]
But the bailouts and other stimulus measures aim to bolster the economy by bolstering men. This is perhaps unsurprising. Those most imperiled by the recent economic downturn have been men, who have lost their jobs as the markets plunged. The two flagging industries targeted for bailouts are ones in which men play an outsize role - the automotive and financial services industries. The slump in construction has directly affected men, who make up the bulk of workers in this sector.
Women, who tend to be employed in education and health care, have weathered the downturn better. Indeed, statistics show that, because of the crisis and its effects on men and "male" industries, women will likely surpass men in the workforce, becoming the majority of workers for the first time in our history. If these trends continue, there may be more women working (although they continue to earn less than men) and more families dependent on a female breadwinner.
Labels: conservative gasbags, economic death watch, feminism, idiocy
And her story is the rule rather than the exception: the pressures of this society - particularly on the working poor - are so great that it's amazing any marriage survives.
Ross Douthat and his doppleganger in stupidity, David Brooks, are fortunate enough to live on a planet where such pressures are a mere unhappy dream, rather than a grinding daily reality.
Amy has triumphed over adversity in marvelous fashion, but she has above-average intellectual gifts and a fierce drive to make a better life for her boys. She also has the benefit of being white.
Too many others are not so fortunate.