How many of us single, professional women are married to our job or business and have become almost incompatible with the idea of having a life partner? We want to have a love relationship in our life, yet we are so far from it, it seems like a vague dream.
I happened to be watching Turner Classic Movies this past week awaiting an old film to start. They had a short subject on that featured Nancy Sinatra talking about Frank Sinatra, her dad. She said the most interesting thing in reference to her Dad. "Some people are just driven. They have the ambition to succeed and complete their goals or mission. It's not about ego's, it's just drive."
Author Kay Hymowitz has a provocative new book that asks whether the rise of powerful women have turned men into boys. In Manning Up, Hymowitz argues that men today are free from the traditional tests of manhood—marrying and providing for children, and this freedom comes at a price: an increasing number of men are stuck in a state of permanent adolescence.
Since when have men been allowed to turn down sex, we later shriek to our girlfriends. Is there someone else? Is he gay? Am I fat? Too skinny? Something I said? Does my breath smell? The finicky male sex drive has served as fodder to female questioning and hypothesizing since the first time a man told a woman "no." if the UK's Sun is to be believed, the annoying trend of men turning down sex is a straight-up epidemic across the pond. British relationship service Relate has reported a 40% increase in men saying they had "gone off sex" compared to ten years ago, while "anecdotal reports from experts in the field" say, yes, men are turning down sex more than ever. Chicago-based therapist Michele Weiner-Davis. She thinks when women collectively made the shift to grow balls, own their sex drives, and go to work (perhaps making more than their mate) the results made "tears at the fabric of male sexuality." Adding that "Western men feel marginalized."
Several recent studies have surfaced claiming that working women logging long hours means they have kids much later. This effects other issues like population, along with the ethical and economic issues surrounding infertility treatments. Infertility treatments are increasing in popularity all over the world, while population decreases, and families become smaller. Will these discoveries be enough to make women get pregnant, want to have children sooner, and focus on career and family? Fat chance.
According to the Journal of Applied Psychology, in 1979 researchers at the University of Florida asked over 12,000 men and women between the ages of 14 and 22 about their opinions on "traditional" and "untraditional" roles for women. (Of course, middle- and lower-class women have always worked a job or two, in addition to raising kids, but still the idea that it is "tradition" for women to be stay-at-home moms persists.) Researchers checked in with their study subjects three times in the ensuing two decades and found that men, more often then women, held "traditional" ideas about women working outside the home but also that these men tended to earn more. The (slightly) good news? Women with "untraditional" views earn $1,500 more than women with "traditional" views, but that's a small consolation. (That's, like, one new MacBook laptop.)
This video episode: Push presents for your expectant wife, military lets couples live together in Iraq, and college women would put career ahead of family.
