All women are different, and those who "want to their brains intensively" are free to do so. But the comment above betrays an endearing ignorance about men's psyches. When we are married to a woman we love, we don't find home stuff boring or our wives insipid just because they're not an attache case-toting career gals. Yin and yang, Venus and Mars.

Honestly, i think the "home stuff" gets boring coming from a man or a woman. I'm assuming you're a man, do you talk about home stuff with your male friends and colleagues? Frankly, if my boyfriend became a homemaker, i would find the home stuff boring coming from him, even though i'm a woman, and he's a man. There's some thing very strange about your tone -- like a condescending indulgence of "home stuff" when coming from a doting wife.

That might change when you fall in love and meet the man you definitely want to marry.

What an odd thing to say. I guess for starters it assumes that my bf is not the man i want to marry. Secondly, it assumes that being in love can make home stuff not boring, even after many years of marriage. I live with my boyfriend now, it's very much like being married, and home stuff is really boring, imho.

And when you get tired of working. Or when/if you feel the desirte to have a child.

Well, i guess it assumes that having children = staying at home. And that women can just "stop working" when they tire of it, the poor little dears, overtaxing their limited capacities. Do men get to just "go home" when they tire of working?

The commenter below is probably a young girl, maybe a grad student. Real life tip: most people don't "use their brains intensively" for a living. Very few do. Even those in exciting jobs typically deal with day-to-day drudgery (not that they mind beinbg employed and thus having a stable life).

Well, my friend, trust me, law school is more than full of its day to day drugery, and it makes me use my brain very intensively for very long periods of time to decipher very boring things. Which is what i imagine working as a lawyer is going to be like. But it's better, imho, than becoming a person whose most important concerns are diapers and vacuuming.

Sorry, I copied and pasted just the passages I cited in my previous post, and forgot/missed the part about law school. And of course, my original point still stands.

>> men, don't let your wives stay at home -- they will turn into people who can only talk about boring home stuff instead of interesting stuff like what they did during the day while using their brains intensively, or what they read in the news, or funny things that happened to them at work, etc.<<

All women are different, and those who "want to their brains intensively" are free to do so. But the comment above betrays an endearing ignorance about men's psyches. When we are married to a woman we love, we don't find home stuff boring or our wives insipid just because they're not an attache case-toting career gals. Yin and yang, Venus and Mars.

>> I definitely don't want to become a homemaker. two days of it scared the shit out of me <<

That might change when you fall in love and meet the man you definitely want to marry. And when you get tired of working. Or when/if you feel the desirte to have a child.

The commenter below is probably a young girl, maybe a grad student. Real life tip: most people don't "use their brains intensively" for a living. Very few do. Even those in exciting jobs typically deal with day-to-day drudgery (not that they mind beinbg employed and thus having a stable life).

Cheers!

So i finally finished my law school exams and the writing competition, so i had two days to just do nothing. it was great to give my brain a break and not have to use it 24/7 at 100% capacity. so i went food-shopping, and then cleaned the house all day yesterday.

then yesterday evening, my bf and i went out to dinner. and i noticed that instead of talking about this or that case or soemthing interesting, i started talking about vacuuming behind the couch and what kind of chutney i bought at the store.

men, don't let your wives stay at home -- they will turn into people who can only talk about boring home stuff instead of interesting stuff like what they did during the day while using their brains intensively, or what they read in the news, or funny things that happened to them at work, etc.

i definitely don't want to become a homemaker. two days of it scared the shit out of me.

Rosa Brooks makes as many questionable assumptions as Fukuyama.

As a stay at home dad, I can testify that many men think women have had the better deal for centuries. Will we jump into changing diapers? As soon as women let us we will do so with a happy chuckle, and leave running the world to whoever is foolish enough to want to.

Unfortunately for most men, most women aren't going to relinquish the cushier option anytime soon. Even though they are earning more degrees, women are still much more likely to want to stay home, and pack hubby off to be a wage slave.

Nor do most women seem remotely eager to pursue political careers. It's not that they are being marginalized, they just aren't that keen on the idea. (With a few notable exceptions.) You can lead a horse to water, but you still can't make it drink.

if males usually keep females from sharing power that is a differing leadership result based on gender. I don't see how you can categorically rule out that there could be other differences, or that none of them would apply to women.

could hardly be characterized as feminized nations under Thatcher, Meir and Gandhi. And while she might not number among the greatest leaders in the politial world, Corazon Aquino certainly didn't make as much of a hash of things as Ferdinanc Marcos or his shoe whore wife.

Power is neither masculine nor feminine. Same with intelligent wielding of it. Good leadership is an amalgam of traits of a person, not a gender.

I posted this on another thread:

Here's a quote from Sex in History by Reay Tannehil:

"When the frockcoated and increasingly bewhiskered gentlemen of the Victorian era, in the grip of this strange medieval nostalgia, cultivated the stilted and excessive courtesy toward "the ladies" that they fondly believe reflected the chivalric ideal, they also -- though without malice aforethought -- reduced them once more to the status of spectators at the tournament of life. What Harrient Martineau said of American men in the 1830's was equally true of Europeans -- they gave women indulgence as a substitutte for justice. And regrettably, women encouraged them, finding it pleasant to be worshiped, cherished, and deferred to, flattering to be considered vulnerable, virginal and remote; pure angels to whom a man might turn for respite from the rought, cruel world of business realities."