Don't Know Much About History: Elite Future Mommies

By Pepper of the Daily Pepper

The New York Times profiled young women with bright futures, all going to Ivy League colleges. Normally, college freshmen have no idea what they want to do with their lives, but these women know exactly what they want.

They want to be full-time mothers.

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Not that there's anything wrong with that (said with a dash of "Seinfeld"). Being a parent is rewarding for many people, but these women are making dangerous assumptions that are limiting their options AND the options of their children. List of said assumptions after the jump ...

1. Stay-at-home parenting is a hard job that wins my utmost respect, but I don't see any future male students saying, "I'll work at a prestigious law firm until I'm 30, and then after I have a child, I'll return to the home." In fact, one young man in the article said, "I think that's sexy." Yeah, it's real sexy if you don't have to deal with the diapers. Why are these women assuming that they have to be the stay-at-home parent? Maybe it's just California, but stay-at-home dads are common, and their children are just as well-adjusted.

2. These women carry a sense of entitlement as big as the moon. One woman in the article said, ""I accept things how they are," she said. "I don't mind the status quo. I don't see why I have to go against it." I thought that people in the Ivy League were supposed to ask questions, to at least wonder why things are the way they are. They learned nothing from the hard work of feminists before them, nothing at all. And they are our best and brightest. Even more important, they shouldn't take the choices feminism gave them for granted. Women weren't always allowed into the Ivies, and they have no sense of tradition or even the realization that they have added responsibility for the generations of women who follow them into the Ivy League.

3. These women are assuming that they will be able to quit their jobs - this is a luxury for women who were raised in wealthy households and who are accustomed to a certain standard of living. Most families with children struggle enough to get by on two salaries, and, given the current condition of the economy, one spouse with a good salary isn't always enough to keep the family going. What about illness? Divorce? Accidents?

I also feel that it is a matter of social class. Instead of going to a state school, they are going to Yale because a) their families expect it of them and b) they think they will meet a higher class of male in the Ivy League. Both reasons have nothing to do with education - and many poor young women would kill for an Ivy education.

When I was 17, I was one of those women. I went to a well-known private institution on scholarship. I take having a good education very, very seriously because where I grew up intelligence in women was seen as freakish. A woman who wanted a career had something wrong with her. I couldn't have afforded college if generous members of a scholarship board hadn't seen potential in me. My education opened doors for me, and it was the key to a better life. To see women who have had such amazing opportunities without really having to work for them announce that they will throw it away without waiting to see how their lives turns out dismays me. It makes me worry about the next wave of feminism.