what about the men!?

There has been a spat of articles, columns and discussions in the last month or so over the supposed growing tendency of American women who have the option of high-level professional careers leaning instead toward becoming stay-at-home mothers. First, of course, was the New York Times piece about women at Yale, which was subsequently attacked for its recycled and statistically fuzzy nature by Slate Magazine. On campus, there was first a piece much discussed here in the Crimson about wealthy white girls choosing boat shoes and matching children’s polo shirts over pants suits and big offices, and then today a more thoughtful rumination on this difficult choice.

The only problem has been that there has really been no mention of the fact that the fundamental reason that women have to make this choice is that their husbands and society at large continue to view child-rearing and running a household as a female-only role. As far as we’ve supposedly come in redefining and understanding gender roles in this country, we continually forget to ask: what about the men? (more in expanded post)

(note: please forgive the assumption of heterosexuality in this thought, I am commenting on one aspect and would be thrilled to be enlightened as to how these types of issues affect queer people)

I know a lot of men who believe that they have progressive, liberal views of women. They go out of their way to counteract the common objectification of women, they are political feminists who believe that women should have an equal role in all facets of public life, they even support feminist activism. But not one of them, that I know of, is willing to carry this principle into their personal lives. Not one of them has ever expressed to me the belief that if women are ever going to be able to truly have an equal role in the public, men have to have an equal role in the private.

It is, after all, a zero-sum game. If women are expected to be responsible for children and the home, they will either have to give up their other roles or do two jobs at once. That much the discussion has already made clear. But that is an IF. If men shared these responsibilities of the “private sphere”, women would be more able to share the responsibilities of the “public sphere.” Men, however, are almost uniformly not so inclined. The only other option that removes this zero-sum aspect is if we outsource child-raising and running a home to professionals, something that we’ve partially done with daycare and housekeepers. However, this is still only a partial outsourcing, and comes with a price tag not all can afford. It also has pros and cons of its own.

Now, I’m fairly used to students at Harvard claiming publicly progressive beliefs and making personal regressive decisions. However, if we men really do claim to believe in equality of opportunity for the sexes, if we believe that our wives should have the opportunity to be just as publicly accomplished as we are if they so choose, it’s time for us to start asking ourselves: how will we balance a career and a family?

The Movement

This past weekend in Washington, D.C., the Millions More Movement attempted to address the needs of the U.S. and world’s overwhelming underclass iregardless of race, religious background, gender, etc. Many thoughts of mine abound in this subject but instead of issuing a diatribe on this myself, I would like to highlight a few different media sources and their coverage of the event:(more in expanded post)

TIME Magazine’s interview before the event with Louis Farrakhan was a blatant display of media bias. The interviewer proceeded to ask him a number of controversial questions in succession most likely in hopes of inspiring opposition to whatever he would say from some sector of the population. These ranged from asking Farrakhan whether or not he agreed with Kanye West’s statement about Bush not caring about Black people to his role as a Muslim leader in standing up to terrorists who manipulate Islamic teachings for political gain.

CNN’s coverage was cursory at best and dismissive at worst spending only a fraction of the piece discussing actual occurrences during the event.

The Boston Globe’s coverage of the event painted it in more glowing terms and included information about tangible steps for change that the event inspired. There is to be a public policy group made of “specialists” who will also collaborate on authoring a book titled “The Black Agenda” that is, well, self-explanatory. Farrakhan is from Boston (and attended the prestigious Boston Latin exam school, although there are conflicting reports of whether he graduated or dropped out) so the hometown media love was there.

The Washington Post published a number of articles on the event seeing as how it took place on their home turf. These articles largely highlighted the importance of positive action and communitiy change over raw numbers of attendees as being the focus of many leaders at the march. Thankfully, there were NO ARRESTS and all police did was “give out information and directions”. THAT’S wassup. There’s also a good Op-Ed by Colbert King that deserves a read.

Read and give me your thoughts on the betterment of the global or national underclass. What is the road to success? Must it be through political inclusion and the legislative process? Or do desperate times call for desperate measures? I’d love to hear from some people who attended the BSA’s (Black Student Association’s) recent discussion on these issues.