I’m off very soon for my first overnight away from TheLittleGuy ever. I hope that he and his Dad will have a good time together without Mama! Thankfully, this is not a work trip – just something my local moms group cooked up. There will be wine. Lots and lots of wine. I’m even leaving my laptop at home – going to try to get by with just the iPhone.
Here’s a link for today. I found the notion of the “opt out revolution” essentially unfounded (and problematic in many other dimensions as well) back when it was first promoted in the NYT a few year’s back. There’s been some recent buzz revisiting it. It still feels pretty dubious to me. But to the extent that there are women who opt out, this article about the downsides of “opting out” is pretty sobering.
Most of the women who looked for work couldn’t find it, and those who did were shocked at how little they could earn. One high-powered woman had opted out of her career for a short time but started trying to get back in when her husband left her for a younger woman. Despite years of effort, she has never succeeded. She finally found a teaching job that pays one-eighth of what she was earning 20 years ago. Her ex-husband has long failed to pay the child support he owes her, a six-figure sum she is now trying to chase down with expensive legal help. She has a lot of company; nearly 70 percent of child-support cases in this country have arrears owed to the custodial parents, who are overwhelmingly female—one of several reasons why men’s standard of living rises after divorce while that of women and children typically plummets.
