Posted on 03/22/2014 8:48:53 AM PDT by servo1969
Susan Patton, aka “The Princeton Mom” has finally released her book, Marry Smart, based on the controversial letter she published last year in The Daily Princetonian, which advised young women to focus on finding a husband while in college.
Liberal feminists hate the book. I mean, they just hate it.
Which makes me want to read it, actually.
Anyway, Patton generates so much wrath because she points out one of the big lies behind modern feminism. The lie is this: that to be successful and happy you need to focus on your career and not marriage or children throughout your twenties and early thirties. In other words, the lie is that you can delay, and delay, and delay and still have it all.
Susan Patton has news for you–the biological clock is not a fiction cooked up by the conspiratorial patriarchy. It’s a reality.
In fact, if you are a woman and haven’t started having children by the time you are 35–you are very unlikely to have a successful pregnancy without serious medical intervention–IVF, surrogate pregnancy, etc–and the risk of birth defects increases dramatically as a woman approaches 40.
Those facts often come as quite a surprise to talented, highly-educated women–the kind of women who go to Princeton. They’ve been led to believe that they won’t have to sacrifice anything in the way of their professional careers in order to also be a wife and a mother. Just Lean In a little harder and it can all be yours.
Well, there’s no law that says any young woman should have to want to be a wife or a mother. But if a young woman does want such things, especially, the mother thing, it does require sacrifice on the career front.
Not fair? Well, maybe not. But men aren’t born with wombs–so there you go. And men will never, on average, be as interested in or as willing to do the work of childcare. They just won’t.
It’s called gender difference. It’s real, it’s biological, and it’s not a social construct, regardless of what your freshman year women’s studies professor might have told you.
Patton’s argument, as I understand it, has less to do with the motherhood issue, and more to do with the “wife” issue. She advises young women who want husbands to stop drinking so much and hanging out in bars and stop having sex with men who aren’t committed.
She advises them to treat their hunt for a husband as they would a hunt for a great job–with intention and planning. She advises them to dress well and put on makeup. Close their legs. “If you offer men sex without commitment, you eliminate the incentive for them to commit,” she says, plainly.
Sound old fashioned to you? If so, you may be well on your way to being single, middle-aged, and childless–no matter how smart or attractive, or worthy you are. Has nothing to do with those things. The fact is, the average man these days isn’t exactly rushing into marriage. The average age of first marriage for both sexes continues to climb every year. Meanwhile, the pool of marriageable men diminishes as a woman ages. It’s just simple math. So if a smart young woman wants to get married–why wouldn’t Patton’s advice make sense?
The fact that Patton’s advice doesn’t mesh with the feminist narratives of put-your-career-first and you-don’t-need-a-husband, doesn’t make her advice wrong for those women to whom marriage is a goal and top priority.
In truth, young men would do well to heed most of her advice as well–except for the part about wearing makeup.
It’s all a matter of what you want. No one says you have to want marriage. But if you are a young woman and you do want to get married, then you ignore her advice at your own peril.
Anecdotal evidence. Just because you know some people doesn’t mean much.
And she said if a woman waits to have her FIRST child at 35 or older. It’s easier to have children at 35 or older if the mother already gave birth before that.
“But I appreciate your confidence in my super powers.”
In your previous post, you alluded to that. :)
By the way, are you aware that Sinead O’Connor (who’s has proven to be a strong, principled person) has in fact sent several letters to Cyrus stating that she would “expect” more of her. So far the “demand of higher expectations” therapy hasn’t worked.
https://www.facebook.com/sineadoconnor/posts/600729603299365
Regarding your diagnosis of the problem - i.e. that young girls acting like slus and boys calling them on it is due to “the bigotry of low expectation” totally lost me.
Can you elaborate - it sounds like psycho babble.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/05/the_soft_bigotry_of_low_expectations
The term was originally coined by Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson in regards to affirmative action.
If you like Christ, He alluded to the same concept in James 4:2-3, “you have not not because you ask not”. Mind you, it’s way more complex than that, so don’t go wandering off into prosperity theology.
But interpersonal expectations can generate behavior. Men can treat women with respect irrespective of dress or uncouth behavior and ask them to wear more around them and often get positive results. Women can behave and dress more respectfully around uncouth men and expect and demand more chivalrous behavior. It’s not 100%, but it is surprisingly effective at the basic interpersonal level.
People will often be their better selves when you are also being your better self. There are many sayings for the concept. The golden rule comes to mind, or that real character is how you treat others when they can do nothing for you.
So your comment that girls in slutwear deserve no respect is a form of bigotry based on your dislike and lack of respect for them. But perhaps if men treated them with respect and forbearance regarding their dress, perhaps they might begin to respect themselves and dress better.
Sadly, most men prefer women to act and dress like sluts so they can have irresponsible uncommitted sex with them, and women have no trouble meeting those low expectations.
It doesn’t really matter which side changes first, in the great dance, if one leads, the other will follow.
I seem to remember a study a while back that concluded that when a single woman reaches age 35, she has a higher probability of being killed by terrorists than getting married.
I would like to see a study that compares pregnancy results for women who remain childless into their late 30s/early 40s and use birth control and/or have had abortions and those who have been celibate and not used any birth control. I wander if such factors may have a greater effect than just age.
The study was on a large population that never used birth control. The investigators measured the relationship between the age of the female partner and fertility. Infertility rates are now higher in the general population than for the population in this study from the 1950s.
This study found:
By age 30, 7% of couples were infertile
By age 35, 11% of couples were infertile
By age 40, 33% of couples were infertile
At age 45, 87% of couples were infertile
Reference: Tietze C: Reproductive span and rate of conception among Hutterite women. Fertility and Sterility 1957;8:89-97.
http://www.advancedfertility.com/age.htm
I don't think birth control is a direct contributor to infertility, but it is an indirect contributor in that it is a factor in multiple sex partners which can lead to both STD's and abortions which have a known negative effect on fertility.
(p.s. I don't think you meant to use the word celibate in your comparative question since celibate people have a 0% fertility rate which moots any comparison as all non-celibate women would have higher fertility rates than celibates regardless of lifestyle. Perhaps you meant monogamous?)
“e - young men need to be taught responsibility.”
Yeah; they need to learn from Travis Alexander that these days a good romp and dismissal does not mean that the woman is going to just nonchalantly walk away on orders.
They also need to learn that if they want to know decent women, they need to stop sleeping with everything that walks and stop trying to get every single woman in the world into bed.
to me, as I’ve learned, being secure financially is a must and thing is that young men are showing themselves to be increasingly unreliable. They might enjoy being married for a while, but the time sometimes comes when they might realize that it ‘just doesn’t work’ and then they bail out. So the woman is on her own with no job skills and a kid and struggles.
Or, the woman in the marriage marries a man to escape and then leaves him for a richer man in the future. People in their twenties are too volatile and I’ve seen too much in mine to want to marry before I have my own security.
Truth be told, women need to learn that the men are the ones who have to be in agreement to get married. Short of genuine blackmail, if the man doesn’t propose, there won’t be a marriage.
This is why I am a “Corporate Stepsister,” I intend on not just sitting around doing nothing waiting for an invitation.
You are pinged to this thread solely by virtue of academic connections, not on account of substantive content. No comment is hereby solicited.
You can’t do it by reason and math. Women who can’t form a strong relationship and get married didn’t get enough love growing up. It’s too late for lectures and timetables. Don’t they teach stuff like that at Princeton?
I’m sorry but I fail to see how not respecting someone who knowingly dresses like a slut is a sign of low expectation. As I see it it’s just the opposite.
Disapproving of how someone dresses or talks or acts is basically telling them that they do not meet your expectation of how a decent human being should behave. In other words you’re telling them that you expect more of them. Doing what you suggest, RESPECTING them WHILE they’re behaving like floozies just tells them that you’re OK with their behaviour, or that there are no consequences to that behaviour. You’re shouting to them - be a slut I’ll still respect you. With that feedback, what incentive do they have to change??
What Rush was referring to in his comments about low expectation was that liberals avoid criticizing people of certain groups (say unwed women who have kids that they can’t support) and that that is the “bigotry of low expectations”. It is the LACK of criticism that constitutes a bigotry of low expectations (in other words they avoid criticizing because they feel that those people are incapable of doing better, they have a low opinion of them). Whereas one that criticizes expects a better behaviour.
You can criticize while being respectful. It’s done all the time in interpersonal relationships. Parent/child, teacher/student, husband/wife. They are not mutually exclusive actions.
When you are disrespectful in your criticism you are saying that you don’t think they are capable of being decent and therefore not worth being decent to. Your bigotry of low expectation is just you giving yourself permission to be disrespectful and indecent to them based on your judgement of their worth.
But their worth is exactly the same as yours.
(although I’m wondering if we have the same definition or understanding of the word respect).
“Your bigotry of low expectation is just you giving yourself permission to be disrespectful and indecent to them based on your judgement of their worth.”
No, as I pointed out in my previous post, bigotry of low expectation results in one being more respectful and laudatory than merited.
That is exactly what Rush was pointing out when he was canned as sports commentator with regards to Donovan McNabb, the black quarterback who was just mediocre but the press was constantly elevating him into superstar status, so it was the press that was guilty of bigotry of low expectations, not Rush.
“But their worth is exactly the same as yours.”
I take it you come from the school of thought that we’re all worth the same in the eyes of god. I don’t know god that well so I can’t speak for him, but as for me, no I don’t think a Hitler is worth the same as say mother Theresa or just about any other human being. How about you?
“(although I’m wondering if we have the same definition or understanding of the word respect).”
Possibly - my guess is you make a very sharp distinction between behavior and the individual that perpetrates the behavior, so you respect the individual but not the behavior. I don’t make as sharp a distinction, because it is the individual that chooses the behavior, and I realize there may be extenuating circumstances and I will consider them and am more than willing to initially give the individual the benefit of the doubt and one, two, and even three chances to change, but even god has it’s limits - right?
At the end of the day, experience shows that the best teacher, the best way to improve behavior, is consequences not unearned respect and coddling.
I strive for that ideal, taking my cues from Christ who was not disrespectful to either Mary Magdalene or the woman taken in adultery.
However, it is my firm philosophical belief based in natural rights of the intrinsic value of the individual as a human being. If I cannot respect that intrinsic value (and rights) in other humans even if I disagree or disapprove of their dress or behavior (as long as they aren't transgressing my rights) then how can I expect them to respect my intrinsic human value and rights?
It is never okay for men to degrade and disrespect women as b*tches and hoes regardless of their manner of dress. That is the slippery slope to Islamic style of oppression of women. Because it doesn't matter what the dress code is or how hard women try to conform to it, brutish men will always find some petty deviation or error in order to justify their aggression against women.
That the countries with the highest rates of violence against women are also the ones with the strictest dress and social codes should be a clue. There is no safety in those codes. Women are only safe from men when men decide to respect their intrinsic human value. Children are only safe from adults when adults decide to respect their intrinsic value as humans. The disabled are only safe from the able bodied when the able bodied decide to respect their intrinsic value. Citizens are only safe from their government when those running the government respect the intrinsic rights of the citizens.
This is why I ascribe to chivalry. All should be treated with courtesy regardless of station.
At the end of the day, experience shows that the best teacher, the best way to improve behavior, is consequences not unearned respect and coddling.
Not entirely true. While negative consequences will naturally tend to extinguish undesired behavior, there must also be rewards for desired behavior.
It is also true that society is not a laboratory and we are not lab rats.
So disrespecting an individual based on appearances may not be viewed as a negative consequence, but may in fact be the desired response that affirms whatever twisted thinking forms the basis of said individual's chosen dress or lifestyle.
“If I cannot respect that intrinsic value (and rights) in other humans even if I disagree or disapprove of their dress or behavior (as long as they aren’t transgressing my rights) then how can I expect them to respect my intrinsic human value and rights?”
You shouldn’t - I don’t believe respect is earned simply by the act of being alive. At most that might earn some neutral notice that you’re alive, but respect? Respect comes from doing something or behaving in a way that is examplary. Respect is not a “human right”. By the way, you didn’t answer my question as to whether you would respect Hitler.
Personally I’m not that concerned with what most people think of me, unless they are people who are dear to me (iow people whom I value, and whose relationship I don’t want to jeopardize by behaving in a way that would result in me alienating them.) What’s important to me is that I can respect myself, that I try to behave in a way that is true to my values (even though I may not always succeed).
“That is the slippery slope to Islamic style of oppression of women. Because it doesn’t matter what the dress code is or how hard women try to conform to it, brutish men will always find some petty deviation or error in order to justify their aggression against women. “
But based on everything you said, you would respect those brutish men that attack women!! Sounds a bit warped to me, why would you respect them?
As to the slippery slope that you fear might result if certain clothing or behavior is criticized, it is worthwhile to consider the source of the bounds for clothing and behavior. I’m sure you’ll agree it is culture and more specifically the values of the culture. Although cultures change, they do rather slowly, thus the bounds of acceptable behavior remains reasonably stable. And it is exactly the departure from those cultural norms that are frowned upon and results in slutty (or other out of bound) behavior being called out by the citizens of that culture. So the thing that you criticize ( ie kids calling slutty girls sluts for example) is exactly the force that fights the slippery slope that you’re afraid of. (As I’m sure you’re well aware, it is the same force that is keeping the islamic dress code at bay.)
“That the countries with the highest rates of violence against women are also the ones with the strictest dress and social codes should be a clue.”
The dress code has nothing to do with the violence - the dress code is a byproduct not a cause. Violence and subhuman treatment of women in those cultures is the result of a belief in a book and a prophet that declares that women are subhumans (or worth less than men). By the way, would you respect Mohammed or islamists? (There are plenty of cultures where women dress much more modestly than our own and the women are treated well.)
“Not entirely true. While negative consequences will naturally tend to extinguish undesired behavior, there must also be rewards for desired behavior.”
Who said that consequences are just negative?. Consequences can be positive or negative. Rewards are just as effective as punishments in changing behavior.
” It is also true that society is not a laboratory and we are not lab rats.”
That’s right,I was talking about reality, about life, like when you touch a hot stove and you get burned and then you won’t do it again, or like when you give someone a hand and you get a big smile and gratitude back, or like when you dress like a slut and people call you a slut - those type of consequences.
Yes, I would respect Hitler as a human and execute him quickly and courteously and bury him at sea so that his grave would be unknown and unmarked forever.
It’s wrong to abuse the abusers and become just like them in order to punish them. Which is what you do when you call poorly dressed women and girls sluts, b*tches and hoes.
Good manners are always appropriate in all situations. I prefer the Golden Rule to all the puffed up snarky judgmental cynicism of modern culture.
From your statement it would appear you have no respect for the unborn since they have done nothing to deserve it. I think that respect for human life is the cornerstone of the social contract.
“Yes, I would respect Hitler as a human and execute him quickly and courteously and bury him at sea so that his grave would be unknown and unmarked forever.”
Val, you sure have a strange definition for “respect”.
I respect you. BANG - you’re dead, because I despise everything you do or stand for.
Aristotle once said that any argument or discussion can be put to bed in 10 minutes if the terms are defined first.
The reason we can’t agree is because we’re speaking different languages. We pronounce respect the same way, but we mean very different things.
I cannot imagine that I would ever want to kill someone I respected.
Do you see what totally illogical, insane things your definition of respect makes you do?
Why don’t you try this instead...
“Respect - a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.”
...I think your world will make a lot more sense, and you would never want to kill someone you respected.
“From your statement it would appear you have no respect for the unborn since they have done nothing to deserve it. I think that respect for human life is the cornerstone of the social contract.”
My feeling toward the unborn is the same as that toward a stranger. Just like I have no reason to want to kill a stranger neither do I have reason to want to kill an unborn baby. It has nothing to do with “respect”, it has all to do with accepting that just as I have a right to live, so do other humans. Which, if you think about it, the reason one takes that position is for self preservation. It has nothing to do with respect (per my definition).
And you, who claim to “respect” life, I have a feeling (based on your answer about Hitler) that you’re all in favor of the death penalty, and I’m sure of war and the killing of life that takes place there. How do you square that with your supposed “respect” for life?
I have a basic respect for human life and the natural rights that accrue to the individual because they are human.
That means even Hitler gets due process and a quick and humane execution. No torture, abuse or cruelty needs to be a part of that due process.
No matter how evil another member of our species may be, they should be accorded that basic respect.
It’s that lack of respect that has our culture filled with chaos, envy and murder.
I once did support the death penalty, but no longer do because of the corruption in law enforcement and the courts. I no longer trust those institutions to do justice.
I do believe that war, like self defense is an ugly necessity, but recognize that many wars have been the result of naked aggression to appropriate the property of others.
Val, I think we’ve beaten this poor horse to death.... mainly because we’re not following Aristotle’s admonition.
Unless we can agree on what we mean by respect, I’m not sure we’re going to get anywhere.
I gave you my definition of “respect” in my previous post (which is right out of the dictionary).
Before we end this conversation, maybe you can tell me your definition.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.