Jill Filipovic makes an important point that "When your school system runs in some substantial part on the free labor of parents (and let’s be real, it’s almost entirely the free labor of mothers), you have a big problem." There's that, and then I can't help goggling at this crap:
IT was last spring, somewhere between overseeing Teacher Appreciation Week and planning the fifth-grade graduation party, when Jamie Lentzner, mother of two in Foster City, Calif., reached her breaking point.
She had already designed the fifth-grade T-shirt, taught art twice monthly to three different classes, and organized movie night, restaurant night and beach night fund-raisers. She was overscheduled and exhausted. She had scant time to help her children with their school projects because — coincidentally — she was always working on projects for their school. "You’ve got to stop," said her husband, Darin, who worried that the constant stress she seemed to feel was damaging to her health.
Maybe you looked at that case and thought "hey, it's nice that her husband is all concerned about her health, but would it kill him to organize a movie night?" If so, keep reading. Because it turns out that, in this article, having a husband who's concerned that maybe working, taking care of the kids that are also his, and volunteering untold hours is a lot to take on is the most a woman can hope for.
Because the work is unpaid, some volunteers say, few realize the toll it can take on people. "I know a woman — the work she did for the public schools was so critical — she made me look like a loafer," Ms. Auerswald said. "Then her husband left her because she was never home."
That news was startling to Ms. Auerswald. "Not that my husband was leaving, luckily," she said, "but he was not happy about how much I was doing."
The article does talk about the male president of an elementary school PTA and his struggles to find adequate volunteers, but he's not presented as a parent with a home life to balance. In fact, his kids, assuming he has some, don't even figure in the story. No, he's all presidential and executive and delegating other people.
All I can think is that this week the Times is on an undeclared campaign to lower women's expectations of their lives. Not only might your marriage be endangered by working too much for free, but female empowerment may be killing romance, according to another piece of crap in the Times.
There is a growing army of successful women in their 30s who have trouble finding a mate and have been immortalized in S.A.T.C. and the Bridget Jones novels. There are the alpha-women who end up with alpha-men but then decide to put career second when the babies come. But there is also a third group: a small but growing number of women who out-earn their partners, giving rise to an assortment of behavioral contortions aimed at keeping the appearance of traditional gender roles intact.
Anne-Laure Kiechel is an investment banker in Paris who makes more than five times more than her boyfriend, a communications consultant. She keeps watch on their finances and pays for all big invisible expenses, like vacations.
But in public, it is he who insists on pulling out his credit card to avoid, he said, looking like a "gigolo."
Successful women of the world, these are your choices, sayeth The Paper of Record. Die alone (and be eaten by your cat, since they're using Sex and the City as a map to women's fears), give up the career you are successful at, or spend your life pretending your boyfriend or husband out-earns you. And don't forget, even if you're working for free by volunteering at your kids' school, he might still leave you.
One striking aspect is the portrayal of men here: apparently they are, as a gender, insecure and in need of constant attention and coddling. But while that's the inescapable conclusion of these pictures of gender and relationships today, it is, of course, always presented as the woman's problem. He can't deal with your higher income? Pay for the big stuff behind the scenes and blush demurely and thank him as he pays for the small stuff in public. He resents the time you spend volunteering in the schools but won't lift a finger to reduce the load? Just cut back on your commitments, or he might leave you.
Of course, these portrayals aren't fair to the men who do their share -- the man who volunteers, who understands that he is equally responsible for the care of his household and children, the man who is pleased if high income is one sign the woman he loves is respected and successful, the man who doesn't expect extra credit for any of these things.
To be fair to the Times, in the aggregate these are ways men fall short. Take the recent study showing that women whose husbands are diagnosed with brain cancer or multiple sclerosis are less likely to divorce while men whose wives are so diagnosed are more likely to divorce.
These stories point to significant problems in our culture. But in the Times they're presented as unfortunate facts of life for women to deal with individually, not as problems with broader solutions.
Is it good -- or even acceptable -- reporting to focus these trend stories on women, as women's problems, rather than considering men's responsibility? The Times isn't a feminist outlet that you'd expect to make the case for change, but not to even point out that the problems they're identifying for women are built in significant part on male privilege? That's plain lousy reporting.