Balancing Work and Family: Just Use Your Penis

Well here’s a totally insightful analysis of social trends that is not at all merely applauding the reinforcement of gender norms:

“My mother’s always told me you can’t be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time,” Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. “You always have to choose one over the other.”
[...]
While the changing attitudes are difficult to quantify, the shift emerges repeatedly in interviews with Ivy League students, including 138 freshman and senior females at Yale who replied to e-mail questions sent to members of two residential colleges over the last school year.

The interviews found that 85 of the students, or roughly 60 percent, said that when they had children, they planned to cut back on work or stop working entirely. About half of those women said they planned to work part time, and about half wanted to stop work for at least a few years.

Yes, it’s true: without the vital life-balancing tool that is the penis, we women just can’t expect to have both children and a career. Penises are essential tools for a busy life – they function as hat racks, for one thing. Everyone knows how important this is, so there’s really no sense interviewing young men to see how they plan to balance work and family; their hat racks make the task utterly trivial.

It’s not commonly known, but in addition to functioning as a hat rack, donut storage device, and emergency doorjamb, the penis has capillary vessels which actually carry stress particles away from the body, allowing them to be stored harmlessly until disposal in urine or semen. This is why campus women’s advocacy groups always offer stress-reduction workshops and free massages instead of anti-patriarchy ass-kicking.

See also larger, steamier heaps of scorn at Rebel Dad, Echidne of the Snakes, and Crooked Timber.

Comments

  1. Jo wrote:

    Well, I’m not convinced that 2 people working full time really do have time for a child but if we ever have one it’ll be my partner who gives up/cuts back on work. Apart from anything else, I’ve got the bigger income so it would make sense. Perhaps if there was actually equal pay we’d see more equality in childcare?

  2. yami wrote:

    Jo, I think you’re spot on – there’s lots of reasons to want a stay-at-home parent, or a working-part-time-parent, or whatever, and I don’t mean to denigrate that.
    But it was only 4 of 138 women surveyed who were open to the possibility of their male partners being the primary career-sacrificin’ caretaker, even at the most starry-eyed stage of life. I meant to pull more “oh the status quo works for me” quotes to yell about, but got interrupted by the hot tub in the middle of ranting, and was feeling too mellow when I got back…
    Mostly what bothers me is that I never, ever see these types of articles written about men. Why must it always be women who grapple in public with the hard choices?

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