Is this progress?

The (NY) Times had the most annoying article in the paper today - and it wasn't even in the Thursday Styles section.

It seems a slew of young women attending the nation's elite colleges are all set to ditch their careers once they start popping out the kids. Cynthia Liu, for example, is a Yale student who plans to go to law school, then be a stay-at-home mom by the time she's 30.

Hope that works out for you, Cindy.

Uzezi Abugo, in her first year at U. of Penn. and showing exactly the kind of breadth of experience I'd expect from a freshman Ivy Leaguer, is quoted as saying:

"I've seen the difference between kids who did have their mother stay at home and kids who didn't, and it's kind of like an obvious difference when you look at it."

Then there's Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard who said a lot of men in her American Family class approved of women staying home with the kids:

"A lot of the guys were like, 'I think that's really great,' " Ms. Currie said. "One of the guys was like, 'I think that's sexy.'"

It's comforting to know that even at the nation's elite colleges, 19-year-olds are still idiots.

The Times interviewd 138 freshman and senior women at Yale via email. More than half of these women plan to work part time or quit work entirely when they have children, but said that "pursuing a rigorous college education was worth the time and money because it would help position them to work in meaningful part-time jobs when their children are young or to attain good jobs when their children leave home."

Good luck with that, my sisters.

(TWO of the 138 women expected their husbands to stay at home with the kids, and another two expected whoever was furthest along in his or her career to keep working while the other spouse quit.)

Here's what I know: In most fields, especially ones that Ivy-League-educated women enter into, part-time jobs are not easy to come by. And even if you do find an employer who is open to flexible schedules, you are likely to be discriminated against when it comes to work assignments because we live in a culture in which you're considered a slacker if you're not working at least 50 hours a week - and that doesn't include commute time. And if you want to come back to work after taking however many years off until the kids are in school, finding full-time work will be just as hard because you've been out of the game for awhile. You and your dusty credentials will be competing against young, ambitious folk who have been rolling with all the changes your field has undergone during the time you were away.

When people in this country say they think staying home to raise your kids is the most important job you can do, they're just blowing smoke up your ass. If it were true, there'd be more support for it, like paid maternity leave and assurances that you'll be welcomed back into the workforce when the kids are older. If it were true, you'd see a lot more men doing it.

And this is why it drives me crazy to read about young women like Angie Ku, who "talks nonchalantly about attending law or business school, having perhaps a 10-year career and then staying home with her children." According to the Times:

Ms Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most of the work raising kids. "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."

At the very end of this long article, the Times tosses out one lone voice of reason, who sums up for me why this little trend is so horrifying:

"They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they're accepting it," said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale. "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

"I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be solved by now."