This week’s Time magazine’s cover is Making Time for a Baby: “For years, women have been told they could wait until 40 or later to have babies. But a new book argues that’s way too late.” Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the author of Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, says: “Nowadays the rule of thumb seems to be that the more successful the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child. For men, the reverse is true.”
NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd surmises:
“Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. On a “60 Minutes” report on the book Sunday, Lesley Stahl talked to two young women who go to Harvard Business School. They agreed that while they are the perfect age to start families, it was not so easy to find the right mates. The girls said they hid the fact that they go to Harvard from guys they meet, because it’s the kiss of death. “The H-bomb,” they call it. “As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that’s the end of the conversation,” Ani Vartanian said. “As soon as the guys say, ‘Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,’ all the girls start falling into them.” So the moral of the story is, the more women accomplish, the more they have to sacrifice?”
Dowd doesn’t acknowledge that this troublesome condition of our species is complementary. Sure, it’s a truism to say that in general, men are threatened by high-achieving women. But another truism is that in general, women are attracted to dominant and prosperous men. Everywhere. Remember high school? The freshmen girls were more attracted to sophomore boys. The junior and senior girls were ga-ga over the jocks or college boys. In college, it was whoever was the BMOC type. Even feminist women are drawn to the guy with the big wallet, eg, Jane Fonda & Ted Turner.
In Michael Segell’s book Stand up Guy he interviews three guys in their late twenties who express frustration over being constantly dismissed by women in their workplace who are similar in age, education, and social status. One says, “There’s an imbalance in how attractive we are. Women our age are in their physical prime, this is their greatest moment. But financially, we have nowhere to go but up. As promising as that is, they couldn’t care less. They’re interested in older guys with the salary or boy toys. Anyone but us.”
So who’s the good and who’s the bad? Neither. It’s mainly instinct that’s still operating, going back to the Stone Age but clothed now in feelings of insecurity for both sexes. We’ve both got a long way to go, baby, but let’s do it without demonizing each other.