The above image, simplified and adapted from Boushey’s analysis, gets the central point across. Although all women have been less likely to be working in recent years (due to the job market’s slow recovery from the last recession), the labor force participation rate (LFPR) of women with children hasn’t gone down any faster than the LFPR for women in general. And although it’s true that mothers are less likely to work than non-mothers, that difference has become smaller over the years - just the opposite of what “opt-out revolution” articles claim.

How about those highly-educated thirtysomething moms the media has been so focused on (even though such moms are only 3.2% of all U.S. moms)? According to Boushey, these folks are the most likely to work of all American mothers; and, contrary to media claims, their LFPR has been steady or rising, not dropping.

(However, Boushey also made the interesting finding that among women who don’t work, highly-educated thirtysomething women are especially likely to have children at home. Part of the reason for this is that women with more education are more likely to have put off having children until their thirties. Another reason may be that for women with really good job prospects, nothing short of children at home is enough to convince them to “opt out.”)

I wonder if the media will give the empirical evidence the same coverage they gave the opt-out myth? I won’t hold my breath. Boushey’s full report can be read here.

UPDATE: The New York Times business section has a decent story on it.

But Trey’s blog is not yet back up. Currently, every page on Trey’s site either goes to a page saying ‘hacked by hatsa’ or to a “The requested URL was not found on this server” page. This happens despite the fact that the files are there; Trey, and Trey’s ISP tech folks, cannot figure out what’s causing the redirection.

If anyone might have expertise with hacker attacks and security, or has ideas how Trey could fix the damage, Trey would welcome any advice or assistance. He’d even give ftp/telnet access to any long-term readers (i.e., people we know are trustworthy!) of his blog or of “Alas.” Leave suggestions and comments on this thread, and I’ll make sure Trey sees them.

Trey also wants everyone to know that “I WILL be back even if I have to move hosts and go through all that hassle! I’m not going to let a malicious hacker end my blog.”

The entire article is worth reading.

But as I said in my original post about this article, and I’ve said about the others in this genre, the idea that there is some sort of “trend” whereby significant numbers of professional class women (and it’s always only the professional class women we are talking about, in NewYorkTimesLand, anyway) are suddenly deciding to dump their careers because they find true happiness only in caring for families, is a crock. I know of no evidence, no research, no numbers that support this idea. And none of these articles have ever pointed to any good evidence that it is a trend.

The survey that the bogus Yale article was based on contained leading questions and was based on a response rate of well under 30%. My survey research prof says that any time you have a response rate of 50% or under, the results are highly questionable because there’s a strong likelihood of selection bias.

Aside from my political objections, this kind of thing is just amazingly shoddy journalism. Anecdotes do not equal a trend, and I would have hoped that New York Times reporters and editors, of all people, would understand that.

Yes, many women experience intense work/family conflict, and some of them drop out of the workforce because of it. But I have yet to see any evidence that more women are doing this than in the past. And I’ve seen tons of evidence that more women than ever before are becoming highly educated and entering the professions.

What I hate about these stories, besides the bullshit “trend” aspect, is that they are always framed as being purely about women’s personal “choices.” The context is completely depoliticized. In terms of elderly parents, for example, no one asks why the sons and brothers are not doing more. Or why our society doesn’t provide more publically funded care for the elderly, or why we don’t have more family-friendly work policies.

This kind of coverage provides plenty of grist for employers who want an excuse to discrminate against women. It also creates a climate in which ambitious young women may feel fearful and discouraged about pursuing a professional career. I’ll end with this quote from Echidne of the Snakes:

A new ICM opinion poll commissioned by Amnesty International indicates that a third (34%) of people in the UK believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner.

The poll, ‘Sexual Assault Research’, published today (21 November) as part of Amnesty International’s ‘Stop Violence Against Women’ campaign, shows that similar “blame culture” attitudes exist over clothing, drinking, perceived promiscuity, personal safety and whether a woman has clearly said “no” to the man.

For instance, more than a quarter (26%) of those asked said that they thought a women was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was wearing sexy or revealing clothing, and more than one in five (22%) held the same view if a woman had had many sexual partners.

Around one in 12 people (8%) believed that a woman was totally responsible for being raped if she’d had many sexual partners.

Similarly, more than a quarter of people (30%) said that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk, and more than a third (37%) held the same view if the woman had failed to clearly say “no” to the man.

More.

UPDATE: See also Volsunga’s post.

UPDATE 2: And The F Word.

UPDATE 3: Mind the Gap has a list of links.

Without a youthful population, the costs of supporting retirees are unsustainable, and the innovation and entrepreneurial zeal that make America the world’s economic leader will slowly wither. Yet the decision to raise children continues to be treated as something akin to the decision to buy an expensive automobile–a perfectly fine thing to do, but don’t expect any sympathy or support when you can’t afford a tune-up or an oil change.

I read this going “where have I heard this before?” I mean, this sounded very familiar.

And then I remembered - Nancy Folbre, one of the nation’s leading feminist economists, makes virtually the same argument in The Invisible Heart, except that she calls it “children as pets” rather than “children as expensive automobiles.” Compare the above-quoted paragraph to this paragraph by Folbre:

It is sometimes popular to argue that the decision to raise a child is nothing more than a discretionary form of consumption, like raising a kelpie. Why then, should taxpayers be asked to support it? “You propagate, you pay!” Perfect market-based reasoning. But most pets do not grow up to become taxpayers, workers or citizens. And market goods are subsidised by mothers and fathers who do the non-market work of raising children. Every time you hire a wage earner, or buy a product that was produced by a wage earner, you are benefiting from the altruistic contributions of the parents, other family members, and poorly paid care workers who developed that worker’s capabilities.

Although I’m sure it’s innocent - I doubt the Weekly Standard writers have even heard of Folbre - the similarity is striking, isn’t it? The Standard writers go on to say:

The trouble is that the contemporary workplace demands that women follow the male career track, which assumes a seamless transition from school to full-time employment, and a career path that begins in the early twenties and continues in unbroken ascent until retirement. For many women, this is an appealing model–but many more find themselves losing their best childbearing years to the workplace, and then scrambling to squeeze in a child or two before middle-age arrives.

A better way to approach the division between work and family life might be what sociologist Neil Gilbert calls a “life-course perspective,” with measures that would allow a mother (or father, for that matter) to provide child care full-time for several years before entering, or reentering, the workforce. For instance, the government could offer subsidies to those who provide child care in the home, and pension credits that reflect the economic value of years spent in household labor. Or again, Republicans might consider offering tuition credits for years spent rearing children, which could be exchanged for post-graduate or vocational education. These would be modeled on veterans’ benefits–and that would be entirely appropriate. Both military service and parenthood are crucial to the country’s long-term survival. It’s about time we recognize that fact.

Nothing there that feminist economists like Folbre haven’t been suggesting for years. (The military service analogy is another one Folbre has made, by the way.) If this were standard Republican thinking, there’d be many more Republican feminists.

Frankly, I’d love it if the Republicans would co-op more feminist ideas (Bitch PhD has posted another example - creating structures to enable young single parents to combine raising children with going to college). I’m all about policy, not party - if the Republicans want to put some good feminist ideas into action, then good for them.

From the November 4 issue of Chronicle of Higher Education:

The more often men give flowers to their lovers, or engage in other “mate-retention behaviors” such as vigilance or emotional manipulation, the more often they hit them.

That is the chilling finding of a study by Todd K. Shackelford, an associate professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University, and five colleagues. They found that the more men do things to dissuade their partners from leaving them, the more likely they are to be violent. “Although many mate-retention behaviors appear to be innocuous romantic gestures (e.g., displaying resources, giving flowers), some may be harbingers of violence,” the authors write.

The researchers surveyed 461 men, 560 women, and 107 couples about their use or experience of mate-retention behaviors and violence toward women. In each group, the researchers found greater violence in men who engaged in more of the retention behaviors.

The authors also found that acts of vigilance — such as dropping by unexpectedly to see what partners were doing, and calling to make sure a partner was where she said she would be — were the clearest predictors of violence, followed by acts of emotional manipulation. Vigilant acts, they note, are examples of “autonomy-limiting behaviors” that are “motivated by male sexual proprietariness and designed to restrict women’s sexual autonomy.” Earlier research, they say, showed that 40 percent of women with highly vigilant partners also reported being seriously assaulted by their partners.

Emotional manipulation included things such as ”He told her he would die
if she ever left” and ”He pleaded that he could not live without her.”

Another predictive factor was when a man tried to dominate all of a woman’s time:

Monopolization of Time also was a highly ranked predictor of violence across the three studies. Example acts included in this tactic are ”He spent all his free time with her so that she could not meet anyone else” and ”He would not let her go out without him.”

So, basically, if your boyfriend wants to monopolize your time, constantly checks up on you to know where you are, and says he’ll die without you - then maybe you should run.

UPDATE: From the comments, Bean writes:

As many of you reading this blog know, I work in a DV shelter. So, today I was with a woman and her 2 children, taking them on an errand. While we were out, her youngest son got angry. He started kicking, hitting, biting, scratching and yelling … all directed at his mom. I took him outside and had a talk with him about how it’s ok to be angry, but not ok to hurt people.

Eventually, he calmed down and I asked him if he would apologize to his mom. He said ok, and ran over to the grass and picked some dandelions. He walked over to his mom and said he was sorry and handed her the flowers.

Thinking about this thread, it took all of my will power not to start laughing right then and there.

The Swiss recently switched to a vote-by-mail system - and they did it gradually, district by district, enabling social scientists to get a good measure of how such a system changes voting behavior.

Never again would any Swiss voter have to tromp to the polls during a rainstorm; the cost of casting a ballot had been lowered significantly. An economic model would therefore predict voter turnout to increase substantially. Is that what happened?

Not at all. In fact, voter turnout often decreased, especially in smaller cantons and in the smaller communities within cantons. This finding may have serious implications for advocates of Internet voting - which, it has long been argued, would make voting easier and therefore increase turnout. But the Swiss model indicates that the exact opposite might hold true.

The theory the article suggests is that in countries in which there’s a strong belief that voting is a civic obligation, people vote so that other people can see them voting. So a vote-by-mail option, by making it less necessary for people to be seen voting to get social credit for voting, actually reduces the reason for people to vote.

If that theory is correct, then what policy - short of manditory voting, which I think is a good idea that will never happen here (if we can make taxpaying and jury duty manditory duties of citizens, why not voting?) - should we use to encourage voting? Perhaps the “I voted” stickers should be made of nicer material and be more prominent.

Pretty clearly there is a difference between using single issues or groups of people suffering similar types of discrimination as an organizing principle to address grievances and the incidents Jeff and I are discussing. [...]

Those who choose to pretend that the broad-based coalition that helped to enact Civil Rights legislation (and other similar acts) is the same exact thing as a group of people who say that whites are forbidden to comment when a black man dresses up another black man in ’sambo’ outfits are free to hold their opinions, but I don’t have to take them seriously.

Okay, now John’s distinguishing between different types of identity politics, and saying it’s only a certain specific type he’s against. That’s a position I don’t think John made sufficiently clear in his original post.

I’d also point out that the position John now says he objects to, was not a position found in the post John originally objected to. That post never said or implied “whites are forbidden to comment” - it didn’t even say that whites should be forbidden to comment. (I’d certainly disagree with any such view; I think everyone, whites included. should be free to comment on whatever they want to comment on. Kinda like how, although I think the US would be a better country if whites didn’t vote, I nonetheless think whites should have the right to vote.)

So what did the original post John responded to say? Well, a lot of dross and sarcasm aside, it said “the difference between Caucasians doing these things to African-Americans, and AfAms doing them to other AfAms” is essential. And I agree. Whites aren’t forbidden to comment about black-and-black racism; but the vast majority of the time, I think it’s a better use of time to worry about large-scale, institutional anti-black racism. Blacks being racist to blacks is something that blacks are capable of handling without white assistance; on the other hand, the large-scale problems will never be solved if whites don’t take an interest.

Another of my fave bloggers, David at The Debate Link, writes: