Re: [Phys-l] Women Earn 46% of Undergraduate Math DegreesbutRepresent Only 8% of Math Professors ??

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

At 09:39  -0500 6/3/06, Folkerts, Timothy J wrote:
> This thread is getting a bit off-topic, butI feel compelled to make 
> one comment here.  You seem to have left out one important factor - 
> who is better qualified at child-rearing!  Or for that matter, who 
> WANTS to stay home with the children.  The care & wlefare of the 
> children seems to be at the very bottom of your list of factors to 
> consider, rather than up near (or at) the top.  I expect that wasn't 
> your intent, but that is the way it came out.
>
> Now, certainly women don't hold a monopoly on child-rearing 
> abilities, and the couple should consider a variety of factors when 
> making decisions on childcare.  Still, one of those factors is 
> biology.  It's not a toss up as to which parent can nurse the child. 
> It's not a toss up as to which parent will be getting pregnant 
> (which is a major medical event) if the couple has another child. 
> Call me old-fashioned, but when "everything else" is equal, there is 
> still a logical deciding factor between fathers and mothers staying 
> home. Only when "evertything else" tips a bit toward the father will 
> it be a toss up.
We are talking here about already existing children. After the birth 
of a child, the mother is no longer pregnant and barring 
complications she should be fit to return to work (if she desires) 
within a few weeks at most. Nursing, while recommended, is optional. 
In some cases it is not possible, or possible only with considerable 
inconvenience. Even so, I know of many nursing mothers who are able 
to nurse their child while working, either by storing the milk, or by 
having the child nearby so she can accommodate the child while still 
on the job.

So, in most cases, Tim's concerns are not relevant. If men are not as 
good at child rearing as women, it is most likely because they are 
not socialized in that direction when they are children. I certainly 
wasn't, but ended up a single parent anyway, and had to take on those 
tasks, whether I wanted to or not. I probably wasn't very good at it. 
I had a demanding job (the Navy, which, for obvious reasons, I 
couldn't just up and leave), and minimal skills in the parenting 
area. And, as it happened, both my kids had learning disabilities 
that required more of my time than I had to spare.

Of course, the determining factor here has to be the desires of the 
parents. I will stipulate that in most cases the mother will opt of 
her own free will to be the stay-at-home parent (assuming one parent 
will take that role). But that doesn't justify making the assumption 
at the outset that we are in trouble because *mothers* are not 
staying home to raise their children. In the present day, there are 
any number of quite viable options available to couples (depending, 
of course, on their occupations and economic status--they are much 
restricted at the lower end of the economic spectrum).

It simply is not reasonable to attribute all of the social ills of 
the day to the lack of adequate mother support at home for children. 
Many kids with single parents who work turn out fine. Some kids with 
a caring parent at home full time don't, for any number of reasons.

We need to stop making unwarranted generalizations and assumptions 
about who should be at home and who doesn't have to be, and recognize 
that every situation is different and needs to be dealt with on its 
own merits, and we cannot make assumptions about the role of someone 
we meet based simply on sex or melanin content of their skin.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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