Marry a Career Woman? This is hilarious.

I stumbled across this only because I happened to be channel-surfing on Friday morning while getting ready for work and found a heated discussion taking place with Matt Lauer and some women.

It's about an article in Forbes by a guy suggesting men should avoid marrying career women. The link is here.

What was so hilarious about the argument on the Today show was the extreme level of outrage shown by the token feminist Matt had on to discuss the article. Even funnier was that he had another woman on who more or less agreed with the basic idea. The problem with the feminist's argument was that she ignored the facts of the studies that formed the thesis of this article (don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument).

So it got even more ridiculous and hilarious when she started to sputter something like, "well, if America was more like Europe, where women can take a whole year off for having children and still draw 60 to 90 percent of their salaries, there wouldn't be the stresses on women that cause all this divorce."

Forbes got so much heat for printing the article that they posted a second article right beside it that purports to refute it. The second article is from a woman who attempts to prove the theory wrong on the basis that she herself is a career woman and has been married for 18 years to the same man. This just adds to the humor, because she completely misses the point.

I just find all this so incredibly funny. The article simply boils down the essence of social science studies which pretty much reach the obvious conclusion that marriage to a career woman is more likely to end in failure. As if that isn't patently obvious to anybody who thinks about it for more than 5 seconds.

Just to add my own little observations, I'd expand the advice to say men should probably avoid marrying militant feminist career women. Because many women obviously come out of college thinking they are career women.

But there are plenty of career women who, after giving birth to their first child, suddenly discover they'd rather be a great mother than a great manager/lawyer/accountant/etc. But I would suggest that the militant feminist career woman may be less likely to allow her maternal instincts to override her chosen life views which for what ever reason drive her to compete with men in the working world.

The bottom line in this whole manufactured controversy is this: If you marry a woman who is focused on her career, then what happens if each of you gets a terrific job offer, but yours is on the west coast and hers is on the east coast. Who sacrifices their career to accomodate the other? And more importantly, if one of you makes that sacrifice, how long will it be before the bitterness sets in as the one making the sacrifice begins to wonder why?

What happens when the husband feels well established in his career and is ready to start a family, but the wife is working long hours toward that promotion she's got her eye on and doesn't want to disrupt her career with a child?

What happens when a child arrives, whether planned or not, and both parents begin to feel some guilt at leaving that child to be raised by somebody else while they're at work? When the child gets sick, who takes time off to care for him or her? Later, which parent leaves work early to drive the child(ren) to their activities (sports, music lessons, birthday parties, etc.)?

See what I mean? It's just common sense. I'm convinced that the worst thing that could happen to a child is to be raised by a minimum-wage day care worker. Somebody's got to stay home with the kids as much as possible. And here's the inescapable fact: men and women are different. Men just aren't good at the whole child care thing. We're just not wired to be nurturing. Women, on the other hand, have the nurturing ability implanted.

Sure, some men may have been successful "stay-at-home dads". But I would make a considerable bet that the vast majority of them would admit privately that they find the Mr. Mom gig demoralizing. They most likely feel they've given up their masculinity to their wife. After all, she's out slaying dragons in the business world while he's home cooking and changing diapers. How could that be good for a marriage?

Anyway, good premarital advice is that all couples should figure out the answers to these critical questions before they tie the knot. And I would suggest that if the woman is adamant that her career will always come first, the man should probably do what's best for both of them and move on.