(I still have backlogs of articles I’d like to address, so hopefully I can start posting and writing my critiques, comments, etc. soon!)

Madeline sent me this link last week and I thought I’d share the article with you.

Before you read it, know this: I’m a huge believer in the idea that there can be successful co-parenting, or successful relationships, or marriages full of good sex (or all of those things combined with monetary comfort!).

While I don’t think I’d last too long as a stay-at-home mom, I also don’t imagine my future to be full of trying to work 60 hour weeks and then awesome parenting while my husband just hangs out.

Note to readers: this is all coming from my childhood. My extreme paranoia about terrible husbands stems from my past experiences. My mom worked her ass off trying to support us all financially (and put my brother and I through private schools) while my dad didn’t take on the additional burden of stay-at-home dad (including, but not limited to: laundry, cooking, dishes, cleaning, childcare, etc.) even though it would have been well within his means and skill set and would have drastically improved the parental-contribution-to-the-family-via-work balance that did not exist.

Admittedly, my memories have been lost to my own subconscious erasure as well as the emotional tints that seem to color our own recollections of the past. Therefore, I can claim no exact memory validity yet still claim personal memory legitimacy. Whatever. You try to recollect and see for yourself how difficult it can be.

Regardless, as a young, twenty-something woman, I do feel pressure. Tons of pressure. Some of it is self-inflicted and some of it stems from a whole host of other influences. That pressure to succeed drives my work ethic, my independence, my stubborn sense of self, and my panic about the future. (Always panic, that’d be my motto.)

I always read the comments, too. Sometimes they’re far more enlightening than the content of the article itself. Since this one only has three, it wasn’t difficult to get through them. Here’s the lengthiest (is that a word?) one:

BRYANROBB
I expected more from you, Good. This is terribly one sided reporting, and borderline misandristic to the likes of Jezebel. No wonder men don’t want to marry, every which way we turn we’re getting boxed and blamed. Did you ever stop to consider that the older men who make more than their women counterparts are the last vestiges of a bygone era? Soon they will retire, and as the women age through the system it is very likely that these young women will make more than their male counterparts. Also, give me the kids over cut throat corporate America any day. The two earner model is the cause of our failures as decent parents, all so we can afford more stuff? I don’t care who works and who doesn’t, but someone needs to be home with the kids in the formative years. And sure, I’m definitely for subsidizing child care. For single MOMs and DADs. Too bad almost all low income entitlements go to girls and men are exempt. Stop waging war on men for Pete’s sake.

I don’t disagree that this article is very one-sided. But then again, there’s not enough space in the world to give equal time to discuss women’s ambitions while simultaneously deconstructing the reasons that men may feel maligned by the media and neglected about the social pressures they face.

This article isn’t about men.

The only time that the author (whose posts I generally adore, by the way) could REALLY use some more statistical reference is when she says,

And while women are consumed with the problems of “work-life balance”—trying to maintain a successful career while raising a family—men seldom feel as much pressure or face as much doubt about their ability to “do it all.”

Why Are Young Women More Ambitious? They Have to Be