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Great blog posts from a kindred spirit (Marty Nemko); LONG but worth it
Posted by k-man
k-man
Great blog posts from a kindred spirit (Marty Nemko); LONG but worth it September 29, 2008 |
Marty Nemko is a career counselor who has long had a web site with his past articles. He criticizes, among other things, the push to get all sprogs in university after high school when the benefits are iffy to begin with—and most of the sprogs will never be ready for college-level work.
Last March he started a blog, and in it he touches on topics near and dear to many of us here. I took the liberty of copying some of his more significant commentary as examples of his excellent work. Enjoy.
http://martynemko.blogspot.com
4 April 2008
Should Mommyhood Afford Special Privileges?
Women's advocates from the Left and the Right argue that mommyhood should afford women special privileges:
— The Left fights for the right for women to take years off or half-off (the mommy track) without it hurting their chances for career advancement.
— The Right champions women being a stay-at-home (cynics would say "play-at-home") mom without society viewing them as second-class citizens.
Women's advocates from both the Left and Right argue:
• for more taxpayer- and employer-paid childcare
• for paid leave for new parents (overwhelmingly, it is women who take advantage of this. )
• that parents (again, overwhelmingly women) should have the right to—without consequence—leave work early to, for example, watch their kids' soccer game, even though it may leave the remaining workers in the lurch.
Are such practices in society's best interest?
Environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the environment is overpopulation. The more the taxpayer and employer subsidizes childbearing, the greater the likelihood people will have babies. For example, if women know their careers won't suffer, they'll have free or low-cost childcare, be able to leave work early when desired, etc., additional women will choose to have a child or additional children. It's ironic that the same people who vociferously advocate for the environment are likely to advocate for policies that would contribute to overpopulation.
Many moms argue that they should only work part-time if at all "because it's better for the kids." Fact is, the data is equivocal on that, which isn't surprising because so many factors affect a child's well-being and success that it is very difficult to empirically parse out the effects of being a stay-at-home mom. In such situations, logical reasoning trumps empiricism, and logically, it is clear that, on average, kids are better off if mom works outside the home. Too often, the stay-at-home mom becomes co-dependent and overly protective—the so-called helicopter (hovering) mom. Too, the child of a stay-at-home mom doesn't get to see the role model of a woman who can be productive other than as housewife.
Men suffer because of "family-friendly" policies. Their wives insist on being stay-at-home mothers, forcing the husbands to carry all the family's financial responsibilities. At work, they must pick up the slack for the many women who take extended maternity leave and leave work early so they can pick up their kids from school, etc. They pay tax dollars and increased prices of goods and services to fund the myriad parental subsidies that primarily benefit women: the aforementioned paid family leave, subsidized child care, etc.
Of course, some men want children as much as do women, but that's not the question here. The question is, overall, in a society with so many crying needs, are we best served by allocating so many resources to mommyhood?
27 April 2008
I Truly Believe That Men Need to be Wary of Women
I suspect that some readers will respond to this post with some unjustified put-down like "sexist!" or "misogynist!" but I'm trying, in my blog, to not let fear of excoriation preclude me from writing what I honestly believe.
My guest today on my radio show was Carnell Smith, an expert on paternity fraud. He claimed that 30% of men who went to blood banks for paternity tests found that they were not—as the child's mother claimed—the father. Smith went on to say that in most states, DNA evidence, in many cases, is inadmissible. He estimated that, currently, one million men are paying child support for kids they did not father.
Of course, it's outrageous that 30 states would enact such unfair-to-men laws. But why would a woman falsely claim that a man is the father of her child when he isn't, thereby forcing him to unfairly pay many thousands of dollars in child support, and manipulate him into spending 18 years involved in raising a child he didn't father? Smith says that these are the major reasons:
— He had the deepest pockets among the men she slept with
— She was trying to chain him to the relationship
— She thought he'd make the best father
— She was trying to lash out at the man
Of course, some men do despicable things to women. That's not the point. The media has made us aware (ad nauseam) of the ills men perpetrate on women. In this post, I'm trying to bring to light the much underreported ills that a surprising number of women perpetrate on men so that men can protect themselves.
While most women, like most men, are good people, women are unfairly cruel to men more often than many men think. It needn't be as extreme as paternity fraud. For example, it can simply be your wife or live-in girlfriend dissembling (consciously or not) that she's not viable in the workplace so she can only work part-time on some pleasant job like giving flute lessons, and that you therefore must be the beast of burden, working 40-60 hours a week on a job you might not like, but you're forced to accept to fund her expenditures.
I want to reiterate that I believe that the majority of women, like the majority of men, behave ethically and lovingly to their romantic partner. But many don't. And many guys are naive to that because the media focuses on the ills that men do to women but not vice versa. Men have also been conditioned, unfairly I deeply believe, to think they're oppressors of women.
So, men, be vigilant to being taken advantage of by a woman, and if you believe it likely that you are being treated unfairly, don't—before being convinced you're wrong—cave when she pulls out the ploys: crying, withdrawing, yelling, and yes, playing the gender card by calling you "sexist" or "misogynist."
28 April 2008
The Double Standard Strikes Again
Today, I received a press release from an outfit called Part-Time Pro. Its core assertion: "Women should not have to sacrifice personal desires for professional aspirations."
What?!! Let's say two people aspire to be promoted. The first one doesn't "sacrifice personal desires for professional aspirations" while the other person rarely leaves early to watch their kid's soccer game, in fact often stays late so s/he can answer emails in a timely manner, who reads while on the exercise bike, chose to take difficult statistical modeling classes to improve their work skills, and accepted a transfer to some God-forsaken place so s/he could acquire important experience. In any world other than Alice's wonderland, shouldn't the latter person get the promotion?
Yet women's advocates constantly argue that people who choose to work less (what they term "work/life balance," which is a focus-group tested phrase designed to elicit maximum sympathy) should have an equal right to promotions. And when fewer women are then promoted, feminists blame it on a men-created glass ceiling rather than that women more often make choices to work less and in less demanding areas.
The feminists' intended trump card is to play the "Children need mommy at home" card. As I've stated in earlier posts, the data on that is equivocal and, logically, it is better for children to see a role model of mom who holds a job other than housewife. Too, the stay-at-home mom (cynics would say "play-at-home mom") is more likely to be a helicopter mom (hovering) thereby denying their child opportunities to develop self-efficacy.
Ironically, the people who attribute the low percentage of women in top positions to a glass ceiling are also likely to insist we do more to try to stop global warming. Well, environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the earth is overpopulation, so should we be subsidizing the having of more children by telling women, "You shouldn't have to sacrifice your personal desires for professional aspirations?"
Can we please stop with the double standard and remember that, ultimately, the greatest cure for all that ails us is meritocracy, whether a person has an xy or xx chromosome.
[An excerpt from further comments by Nemko, from the responses to this post:]
Marty Nemko said...
The owner of that outfit I referred to in my initial post emailed me in response to that post. I publish that in full here, interspersing my responses to her statements. Mine are bracketed by **.
[E-mail:] You state that women “choose” to work less. In fact, the United States has one of the highest employment rates among industrialized countries. Women make up almost 50% of the US workforce and around 66% of working-age women today have paid jobs.
[NM's response:]** As in your press release, you mislead with statistics. The fair statistic is "the average number of hours that men vs. women work, also factoring in the difficulty of that work." It's dramatically higher for men. You no doubt, will counter, with the "second shift" argument—that women do more of the housework. Fact is, men are—despite working many more hours in the stresses of the work world, doing a much higher percentage of the housework. In addition, much of that housework is discretionary—e.g., cooking a time-consuming meal vs broiling a salmon and steaming vegetables, or a perfectly picked-up house. Most men, for example, don't care much if the beds are made and the house dusted and vacuumed every few days--many more women choose, yes, choose to do that to accommodate to their own values. Finally, housework is far less stressful on average than most of the jobs men must do: commission-driven sales, competitive, high-pressure work in corporations, not to mention the physically dangerous and debilitating work many men must do to support their family: construction, fire fighting, police work, etc. **
[E-mail:] Women are outperforming men at almost every level of education. 58% of college students are women. Women have earned more bachelor’s degrees than men every year since 1982; more master’s degrees since 1986. By 2011 it is projected that women will outnumber men in both undergraduate and graduate degree programs by 10.2 million to 7.4 million.
[NM's response:]** Precisely. And that is perhaps the most obscene unfairness of all. They take up slots in school, a valuable societal resource bestowed upon them (Tuition minus financial aid only covers a small percentage of the actual cost of education) in expectation they will repay that largesse by assuming important positions in the work world. Yet, on average, they do so far less often than men do. For example, half of medical students are women, yet the majority of female doctors do not practice full-time. Many, after a few years, stop practicing altogether, forever. The result is more deaths--in urban and rural areas, there's a shortage of doctors. So, if such a person takes up a slot in medical school, people die and stay ill longer as a result. ** …
31 July 2008
A Man Who Gives All for Family...Is it Worth It?
I have a male client who's married to a stay-at-home wife. To fund her big-spending ways, he's had to take a job that few people would describe as inordinately rewarding, especially in today's market: He sells real estate. Not surprisingly, he's having a tough time making a living at it, a cause of great stress: His wife is hounding him to make more money lest they lose their suburban mini-mansion. He tries ever harder because "What do you expect? I have to support my family."
His wife had a child from a previous marriage who has "issues:" This 24-year-old sits in an apartment smoking pot all day. waiting for her boyfriend to come home. My client spends large amounts of time trying to help his stepchild. He's a kind, patient man, and his drugged-out stepkid yells at him for "not giving me space, and coming down on me." He continues to try to help. He says, "What do you expect? It's my family."
Now, it appears his sister, who has been a lifelong professional student and hoarder/pack rat has decided to move near my client. He says, "I'll do the best I can for her." I ask him, "Do you really need to do that?" He says, "It's family."
Yesterday, he thought he was having a heart attack. It turned out to be a false alarm, but I'm betting he's at-risk.
What is his wife doing to help reduce his stress? Is she getting a job to help share the financial burden? No: After his heart attack scare, her response was, "I think you should take out more life insurance." Is that what a family member should say?
This client is one of the more extreme examples, but I have found many men who give it all to family, including paying the ultimate price, and derived far too little in exchange. Especially for many, although certainly not all men, I believe family is very overrated.
9 August 2008
More on the Resurgence of Gold Diggers
I've previously discussed [in one of the articles elsewhere on his site] that in the past decade, I've seen a great increase in the number of my female clients and friends who would like to not work and, instead, find a guy who'll support them.
That anecdotal experience has been supported by the spate of recent books on how to find a rich husband, a seminal New York Times article and a more recent Reuters report that even large percentages of women physicians and Stanford MBAs are wanting to not work or to work minimally. Perhaps that is because they saw their first-wave-feminist mothers not find working outside the home to be as pleasurable as they thought it would be.
A recent CNN article explains that the desire to be a stay-at-home woman, extends not just to the women who claim their motivation is to spend more time with their kids, but even to the childless.
Guys, if you don't mind assuming all of the financial burden associated with a live-in woman and perhaps children, fine. Some men don't mind. But many others have unwittingly been manipulated into being beasts of burden by women who use the techniques summarized in the above-referenced books and articles.
Make sure you're making the huge decision to bear all the financial responsibility with fully open eyes.
27 August 2008
A Gross Story with a Point
Last night, my head finally hit the pillow at 1:30 AM, whereupon I smelled feces. The source? A clump had stuck to my dog's behind, and to try to get it off, he had scooted along the quilt and bed sheet. I had to get up and change the quilt and sheet, and get into the shower with Einstein to remove the smeared feces from his backside before I finally, at 2 AM could get back into bed.
That's about as unpleasant as "parenting" gets and yet it was less stressful than many worklife tasks. And I got immediate gratification for my work: In a half hour, all was clean and dry.
Again and again, I see stay-at-home moms having much more pleasant lives than people in the workplace. Sure, they have to change diapers and clean toilets, but also, they're on the phone with their friends while their kid is in the crib. They're strolling in the mall or supermarket, relaxedly picking out things. They're seeing the concrete rewards of unstressful tasks like cleaning up the house or making a yummy dinner. If their kids are in school, they have time to get their nails done, take an art class, etc.
Yet women and women's advocacy groups endlessly complain of the stress and difficulty of being a stay-at-home mom, even claiming that mommyhood is the most difficult job. In fact, as a commenter on a previous post wrote, very few women would trade their job as stay-at-home mom for their husband's job out in the work world. Today, even white-collar careers tend to be stress-packed: landing a job, keeping a job, succeeding in a job, fighting the commute, etc. And blue-collar work is typically even more exhausting if not downright dangerous.
Men and women who work outside the home, you deserve a lot of credit for what you do, moreso than do stay-at-home moms or dads.
[From the comments:]
Anonymous said...
Jeez, it sounds like I wrote this article myself! Thanks for posting something that is so long overdue.
It's funny how people call SAHM the "hardest job in the world." For the hardest job in the world, it requires no experience, no references, no background check, and no job interviews.
Funny how I never see brain surgeons gossiping at Trader Joe's at 11am on weekdays, or getting their hair done at the salon while their husbands slay dragons at work.
And if I needed brain surgery, I'd ask for more qualifications than SAHM's are required to give for their jobs.
SAHM's are pulling off the biggest scams in America today, and gullible men continue to buy it. It seems Peggy Bundy is a much more realistic view of the SAHM lifestyle than anyone wants to admit. After all, why would they want anyone blowing their cover?
Well, back to watching election coverage on the news. Too bad Obama and McCain are applying for such easy jobs. If they wanted the hardest jobs in the world, you know, something really challenging, they should be campaigning to be stay at home moms.
[In response to a poster who asked Nemko why he continues to rail against SAHMs:]
Marty Nemko said...
I rail against them because even if they're just 7% (and I think the percent is higher than that), they often take precious slots in colleges and graduate schools and abdicate the implicit responsibility to, in exchange, give back to society, to simply to what they promised they'd do in their admission essays.
Also, I have become convinced that stay-at home moms are, on average, worse for kids than are working moms: they are more often overprotective, are bad role models (all they do is be a mother), and are more likely to be a bad parent because being with a kid(s) 24/7 leads to intolerant parenting.
Environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the environment is overpopulation. I don't feel we need to excuse people from contributing to society because they decide to have children.
3 September 2008
The Parasite Syndrome
Most of the women and men I know are hardworking. For example, my wife, Dr. Barbara Nemko, Napa County Superintendent of Schools, works 60 hours a week while being a good wife and mother.
However, over my 23 years and 2,900 clients in my career counseling practice, in my out-of-work conversations, and in reading trend pieces in the media, I've observed a dramatic increase in the number of people, capable people, afflicted with what I call the Parasite Syndrome.
Here's how the Parasite Syndrome prototypically plays out:
[[i]I corrected his numeration of points. He had duplicated No. 7.—K-Man[/i]]
1. After graduating from a brand-name college, the parasites in-training go abroad, for example to India or France, to "find themselves." They return a month or year later, no clearer, although perhaps more desirous of a pleasant and fulfilling life.
2. They take a pleasant and/or fulfilling but low-paying job. (Most pleasant and fulfilling jobs pay poorly--supply and demand.) But because of a desire to live a middle-class lifestyle, the person mooches off parents or romantic partner.
3. At this point, many of the female parasites-in-training think guys who don't make good money are losers. Most males don't think that way of educated low-income women, and so are more willing to marry them. And so, many more female than male would-be-parasites find a host.
4. Sometimes, the income-generating spouse prefers that his spouse not work, but that's uncommon except among the wealthy. More often, the income generator (or his or her parent) asks the spouse to try harder to land a professional-level job so she can contribute to the family income she's good at spending.
So, the non-earner makes a half-hearted failed effort after which she or he rails, for example, "You don't understand how tough the job market is, especially for a woman, and especially with a liberal arts degree."
Few husbands or parents have the guts to tell the non-earner, "Then why did you major in art history?! (or French literature, sociology, women's studies, etc.)" They fear the onslaught of fury, tears, or retaliatory accusations likely to follow.
5. Soon after, if a woman, she gets pregnant. Sometimes, the husband subtly or not subtly asks her if she wants to have an abortion, for example, "Do you think we're ready?" Because he can't force her to have an abortion, the baby comes, even if he doesn't want to be a father nor financially support it, let alone become the sole source of income so she can be a stay-at-home mother.
Men, unless you are ready to be a father or have absolute trust that your partner, without fail, uses reliable birth control, you must wear a condom every time or, if you're sure you never want children, have a vasectomy. Why? Because if she gets pregnant, you have no power: No matter how fervently you plead that you don't want a baby, if she decides she wants it, you're stuck with at least 18 years of enormous commitment of time, energy, and money.
Ah, relationships: They can be so rewarding yet so fraught.
6. She (or occasionally, her husband) insists it's important for her to stay home at least until the child is five, although, as I've documented in earlier posts, the research does not support the validity of that assertion. See, for example, the review of the literature I present in the third-from-the-last comment on this post.
7. When the baby reaches school-age, the brand-name-U-grad mother knows it's unseemly to remain a stay-at-home mother, so she gets pregnant again or goes to graduate school.
8. After taking a long time to finish graduate school and after another desultory job search, she fails to find more than an easy, ill-paying, part-time job, claiming, for example, that the job market is tough for stay-at-home moms.
9. The stay-at-home woman or man creates make-work to seem busy, taking longer to do things than necessary: for example, cooking unnecessarily time-consuming meals ("I had to stop at the Indian market for this spice,") searching for the perfect bathroom accessories, and getting overinvolved/overprotective with the kids, often inhibiting the child's self-confidence and self-efficacy.
Here's a less obvious example. After booking a teenager onto my show to talk about the book he wrote, his stay-at-home mother sent me a dozen emails filled with more information about him than I could use in five shows. Despite my saying, "I have more than I need," she kept sending more stuff. That enables her to tell her husband and friends that it takes a lot of time to support her son's efforts to promote his book.
10. If our reluctant worker lands a job, he or she doesn't work hard at it. She or he invokes excuses she's heard from her friends, pop psych or women'smagazines, or therapist, such as "I'm so afraid of failure that I don't try." or "I'm a perfectionist, which is painful, so I avoid tasks."
11. So this person continues as a mediocre worker, or quits, complaining that the boss is a jerk, work is too stressful, that corporate America (or government, or nonprofit employment) sucks, and/or that the workplace isn't family-friendly, or that "It really would be better if I stayed home with our child."
12. Women live much longer than men, in part because of the stress of an out-of-home job, so it is likely that women non-earners will bury a beast-of-burden husband or two and go to her grave having taken far more from family and society than she has given. She has been a parasite.
The saddest part is that these people--both the women and men--who are afflicted with the Parasite Syndrome are so capable; they could so abet society.
Alas, they choose to have hurt the society they could have helped. They take up slots at prestigious colleges having written application essays asserting that they want to do important things to improve society. (I've never known of a successful application essay to Brand-Name U whose admission essay said, "I aspire to be a stay-at-home parent.") They then freeload off parents and spouse, and later, often squander yet more societal resources by going back for another degree without ever making much use of it. They certainly never come close to living up to their potential. You don't need a brand-name degree or two to be a good stay-at-home parent, let alone a stay-at-home childless wife, which, as reported in a recent study, is a growing group.
If you know someone, male or female, who is afflicted with the Parasite Syndrome, consider emailing or showing the person this article. True, their first reaction will likely be defensiveness at being called a parasite, but if their behavior, in fact, fits the syndrome and they are reasonably well-adjusted, their desire to not be thought of as a parasite is more likely to motivate them to change than would a tactful request to put more effort into their career. Why? Because a tactful request rarely disturbs complacency, let alone a parasite.
12 September 2008
Family Is Overrated
Politicians, clerics, and just plain folks extol family as our most important institution.
I believe family is overrated. So many people suffer inordinately from family. Of course, there are the obvious examples:
• Child abuse
• Spousal abuse
• Incest
• Psychological abuse
But much more often, there’s less dramatic but still painful family-induced misery:
• Other than pleasantries, your adult child refuses to speak with you.
• Your spouse has fallen out of love with you, yet fear, inertia, and shared history preclude a dissolution. So you trudge along in your lackluster life.
• Your parent is still trying to control or demean you even though you’re already an adult.
• Your nine-year-old regularly screams, “I hate you, mommy!”
• Your adult child is back on your sofa still trying to “find himself” (with the assistance of drugs or alcohol.)
• You're not capable enough to compete with a sibling or parent, which dispirits you.
• You make major efforts to care for your aging parent, motivated mainly by guilt. Privately, you resent how much time, energy, and money it takes.
• Your spouse doesn’t earn enough income or do enough around the house.
• You suffer the effects of an alcoholic or drug-abusing family member.
Millions of people don't even speak with a family member. Millions more spend years and fortunes on therapists, trying to undo the ills that family perpetrated on them.
All this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, unlike with friends, we are placed in our family of origin at random, with no say in the matter. We do choose our spouse, but hormones seem to preclude our doing a very good job of it—witness the 50% divorce rate.
While it’s unseemly to discuss, money is part of the equation as we evaluate whether family is overrated. It costs a fortune to support kids, let alone a stay-at-home spouse. To pay for it, many people choose lucrative careers that are far less pleasurable than those they’d otherwise choose. Do you think that, if it weren’t for the need to support a family, as many people would choose to sell insurance, be pest control workers, sewer repairers, or bond traders? Wouldn’t many of them choose a career, for example, in the creative arts, in a nonprofit, or as a computer game maker?
Of course, I can envision some readers thinking:
What? Are you advocating a society without children? Encouraging my readers to think more carefully before having children is hardly going to lead to a world without children. I am merely asking people to be more circumspect, not reflexively fulfilling society's expectation. Besides, environmentalists argue that overpopulation is the greatest threat to the environment. A few less children wouldn’t hurt the world and its nearly seven billion people.
Life is even more difficult to live without the support of family. I’m not saying that people don’t need support. I’m arguing against the automatic assumption that you have greater obligation to support family members than others. For example, when your ne’er-do-well sibling asks you for money because he or she is unemployed, rather than succumb to the reflexive guilt that society imposes because “he’s family,” you'd be wise to view the issue in fuller dimension: in terms of the net effects on you, him, your family, and, yes, society. For example, does giving Sammy the Slug the money yield a greater net good than, for example, investing in a startup developing a drug to prevent sudden heart attack, the leading killer?
My main message is to resist automatically succumbing to convention, and instead, to make your choices consciously, based on what will ultimately yield the greatest good en toto: for you, your family, and society.
Last March he started a blog, and in it he touches on topics near and dear to many of us here. I took the liberty of copying some of his more significant commentary as examples of his excellent work. Enjoy.
http://martynemko.blogspot.com
4 April 2008
Should Mommyhood Afford Special Privileges?
Women's advocates from the Left and the Right argue that mommyhood should afford women special privileges:
— The Left fights for the right for women to take years off or half-off (the mommy track) without it hurting their chances for career advancement.
— The Right champions women being a stay-at-home (cynics would say "play-at-home") mom without society viewing them as second-class citizens.
Women's advocates from both the Left and Right argue:
• for more taxpayer- and employer-paid childcare
• for paid leave for new parents (overwhelmingly, it is women who take advantage of this. )
• that parents (again, overwhelmingly women) should have the right to—without consequence—leave work early to, for example, watch their kids' soccer game, even though it may leave the remaining workers in the lurch.
Are such practices in society's best interest?
Environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the environment is overpopulation. The more the taxpayer and employer subsidizes childbearing, the greater the likelihood people will have babies. For example, if women know their careers won't suffer, they'll have free or low-cost childcare, be able to leave work early when desired, etc., additional women will choose to have a child or additional children. It's ironic that the same people who vociferously advocate for the environment are likely to advocate for policies that would contribute to overpopulation.
Many moms argue that they should only work part-time if at all "because it's better for the kids." Fact is, the data is equivocal on that, which isn't surprising because so many factors affect a child's well-being and success that it is very difficult to empirically parse out the effects of being a stay-at-home mom. In such situations, logical reasoning trumps empiricism, and logically, it is clear that, on average, kids are better off if mom works outside the home. Too often, the stay-at-home mom becomes co-dependent and overly protective—the so-called helicopter (hovering) mom. Too, the child of a stay-at-home mom doesn't get to see the role model of a woman who can be productive other than as housewife.
Men suffer because of "family-friendly" policies. Their wives insist on being stay-at-home mothers, forcing the husbands to carry all the family's financial responsibilities. At work, they must pick up the slack for the many women who take extended maternity leave and leave work early so they can pick up their kids from school, etc. They pay tax dollars and increased prices of goods and services to fund the myriad parental subsidies that primarily benefit women: the aforementioned paid family leave, subsidized child care, etc.
Of course, some men want children as much as do women, but that's not the question here. The question is, overall, in a society with so many crying needs, are we best served by allocating so many resources to mommyhood?
27 April 2008
I Truly Believe That Men Need to be Wary of Women
I suspect that some readers will respond to this post with some unjustified put-down like "sexist!" or "misogynist!" but I'm trying, in my blog, to not let fear of excoriation preclude me from writing what I honestly believe.
My guest today on my radio show was Carnell Smith, an expert on paternity fraud. He claimed that 30% of men who went to blood banks for paternity tests found that they were not—as the child's mother claimed—the father. Smith went on to say that in most states, DNA evidence, in many cases, is inadmissible. He estimated that, currently, one million men are paying child support for kids they did not father.
Of course, it's outrageous that 30 states would enact such unfair-to-men laws. But why would a woman falsely claim that a man is the father of her child when he isn't, thereby forcing him to unfairly pay many thousands of dollars in child support, and manipulate him into spending 18 years involved in raising a child he didn't father? Smith says that these are the major reasons:
— He had the deepest pockets among the men she slept with
— She was trying to chain him to the relationship
— She thought he'd make the best father
— She was trying to lash out at the man
Of course, some men do despicable things to women. That's not the point. The media has made us aware (ad nauseam) of the ills men perpetrate on women. In this post, I'm trying to bring to light the much underreported ills that a surprising number of women perpetrate on men so that men can protect themselves.
While most women, like most men, are good people, women are unfairly cruel to men more often than many men think. It needn't be as extreme as paternity fraud. For example, it can simply be your wife or live-in girlfriend dissembling (consciously or not) that she's not viable in the workplace so she can only work part-time on some pleasant job like giving flute lessons, and that you therefore must be the beast of burden, working 40-60 hours a week on a job you might not like, but you're forced to accept to fund her expenditures.
I want to reiterate that I believe that the majority of women, like the majority of men, behave ethically and lovingly to their romantic partner. But many don't. And many guys are naive to that because the media focuses on the ills that men do to women but not vice versa. Men have also been conditioned, unfairly I deeply believe, to think they're oppressors of women.
So, men, be vigilant to being taken advantage of by a woman, and if you believe it likely that you are being treated unfairly, don't—before being convinced you're wrong—cave when she pulls out the ploys: crying, withdrawing, yelling, and yes, playing the gender card by calling you "sexist" or "misogynist."
28 April 2008
The Double Standard Strikes Again
Today, I received a press release from an outfit called Part-Time Pro. Its core assertion: "Women should not have to sacrifice personal desires for professional aspirations."
What?!! Let's say two people aspire to be promoted. The first one doesn't "sacrifice personal desires for professional aspirations" while the other person rarely leaves early to watch their kid's soccer game, in fact often stays late so s/he can answer emails in a timely manner, who reads while on the exercise bike, chose to take difficult statistical modeling classes to improve their work skills, and accepted a transfer to some God-forsaken place so s/he could acquire important experience. In any world other than Alice's wonderland, shouldn't the latter person get the promotion?
Yet women's advocates constantly argue that people who choose to work less (what they term "work/life balance," which is a focus-group tested phrase designed to elicit maximum sympathy) should have an equal right to promotions. And when fewer women are then promoted, feminists blame it on a men-created glass ceiling rather than that women more often make choices to work less and in less demanding areas.
The feminists' intended trump card is to play the "Children need mommy at home" card. As I've stated in earlier posts, the data on that is equivocal and, logically, it is better for children to see a role model of mom who holds a job other than housewife. Too, the stay-at-home mom (cynics would say "play-at-home mom") is more likely to be a helicopter mom (hovering) thereby denying their child opportunities to develop self-efficacy.
Ironically, the people who attribute the low percentage of women in top positions to a glass ceiling are also likely to insist we do more to try to stop global warming. Well, environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the earth is overpopulation, so should we be subsidizing the having of more children by telling women, "You shouldn't have to sacrifice your personal desires for professional aspirations?"
Can we please stop with the double standard and remember that, ultimately, the greatest cure for all that ails us is meritocracy, whether a person has an xy or xx chromosome.
[An excerpt from further comments by Nemko, from the responses to this post:]
Marty Nemko said...
The owner of that outfit I referred to in my initial post emailed me in response to that post. I publish that in full here, interspersing my responses to her statements. Mine are bracketed by **.
[E-mail:] You state that women “choose” to work less. In fact, the United States has one of the highest employment rates among industrialized countries. Women make up almost 50% of the US workforce and around 66% of working-age women today have paid jobs.
[NM's response:]** As in your press release, you mislead with statistics. The fair statistic is "the average number of hours that men vs. women work, also factoring in the difficulty of that work." It's dramatically higher for men. You no doubt, will counter, with the "second shift" argument—that women do more of the housework. Fact is, men are—despite working many more hours in the stresses of the work world, doing a much higher percentage of the housework. In addition, much of that housework is discretionary—e.g., cooking a time-consuming meal vs broiling a salmon and steaming vegetables, or a perfectly picked-up house. Most men, for example, don't care much if the beds are made and the house dusted and vacuumed every few days--many more women choose, yes, choose to do that to accommodate to their own values. Finally, housework is far less stressful on average than most of the jobs men must do: commission-driven sales, competitive, high-pressure work in corporations, not to mention the physically dangerous and debilitating work many men must do to support their family: construction, fire fighting, police work, etc. **
[E-mail:] Women are outperforming men at almost every level of education. 58% of college students are women. Women have earned more bachelor’s degrees than men every year since 1982; more master’s degrees since 1986. By 2011 it is projected that women will outnumber men in both undergraduate and graduate degree programs by 10.2 million to 7.4 million.
[NM's response:]** Precisely. And that is perhaps the most obscene unfairness of all. They take up slots in school, a valuable societal resource bestowed upon them (Tuition minus financial aid only covers a small percentage of the actual cost of education) in expectation they will repay that largesse by assuming important positions in the work world. Yet, on average, they do so far less often than men do. For example, half of medical students are women, yet the majority of female doctors do not practice full-time. Many, after a few years, stop practicing altogether, forever. The result is more deaths--in urban and rural areas, there's a shortage of doctors. So, if such a person takes up a slot in medical school, people die and stay ill longer as a result. ** …
31 July 2008
A Man Who Gives All for Family...Is it Worth It?
I have a male client who's married to a stay-at-home wife. To fund her big-spending ways, he's had to take a job that few people would describe as inordinately rewarding, especially in today's market: He sells real estate. Not surprisingly, he's having a tough time making a living at it, a cause of great stress: His wife is hounding him to make more money lest they lose their suburban mini-mansion. He tries ever harder because "What do you expect? I have to support my family."
His wife had a child from a previous marriage who has "issues:" This 24-year-old sits in an apartment smoking pot all day. waiting for her boyfriend to come home. My client spends large amounts of time trying to help his stepchild. He's a kind, patient man, and his drugged-out stepkid yells at him for "not giving me space, and coming down on me." He continues to try to help. He says, "What do you expect? It's my family."
Now, it appears his sister, who has been a lifelong professional student and hoarder/pack rat has decided to move near my client. He says, "I'll do the best I can for her." I ask him, "Do you really need to do that?" He says, "It's family."
Yesterday, he thought he was having a heart attack. It turned out to be a false alarm, but I'm betting he's at-risk.
What is his wife doing to help reduce his stress? Is she getting a job to help share the financial burden? No: After his heart attack scare, her response was, "I think you should take out more life insurance." Is that what a family member should say?
This client is one of the more extreme examples, but I have found many men who give it all to family, including paying the ultimate price, and derived far too little in exchange. Especially for many, although certainly not all men, I believe family is very overrated.
9 August 2008
More on the Resurgence of Gold Diggers
I've previously discussed [in one of the articles elsewhere on his site] that in the past decade, I've seen a great increase in the number of my female clients and friends who would like to not work and, instead, find a guy who'll support them.
That anecdotal experience has been supported by the spate of recent books on how to find a rich husband, a seminal New York Times article and a more recent Reuters report that even large percentages of women physicians and Stanford MBAs are wanting to not work or to work minimally. Perhaps that is because they saw their first-wave-feminist mothers not find working outside the home to be as pleasurable as they thought it would be.
A recent CNN article explains that the desire to be a stay-at-home woman, extends not just to the women who claim their motivation is to spend more time with their kids, but even to the childless.
Guys, if you don't mind assuming all of the financial burden associated with a live-in woman and perhaps children, fine. Some men don't mind. But many others have unwittingly been manipulated into being beasts of burden by women who use the techniques summarized in the above-referenced books and articles.
Make sure you're making the huge decision to bear all the financial responsibility with fully open eyes.
27 August 2008
A Gross Story with a Point
Last night, my head finally hit the pillow at 1:30 AM, whereupon I smelled feces. The source? A clump had stuck to my dog's behind, and to try to get it off, he had scooted along the quilt and bed sheet. I had to get up and change the quilt and sheet, and get into the shower with Einstein to remove the smeared feces from his backside before I finally, at 2 AM could get back into bed.
That's about as unpleasant as "parenting" gets and yet it was less stressful than many worklife tasks. And I got immediate gratification for my work: In a half hour, all was clean and dry.
Again and again, I see stay-at-home moms having much more pleasant lives than people in the workplace. Sure, they have to change diapers and clean toilets, but also, they're on the phone with their friends while their kid is in the crib. They're strolling in the mall or supermarket, relaxedly picking out things. They're seeing the concrete rewards of unstressful tasks like cleaning up the house or making a yummy dinner. If their kids are in school, they have time to get their nails done, take an art class, etc.
Yet women and women's advocacy groups endlessly complain of the stress and difficulty of being a stay-at-home mom, even claiming that mommyhood is the most difficult job. In fact, as a commenter on a previous post wrote, very few women would trade their job as stay-at-home mom for their husband's job out in the work world. Today, even white-collar careers tend to be stress-packed: landing a job, keeping a job, succeeding in a job, fighting the commute, etc. And blue-collar work is typically even more exhausting if not downright dangerous.
Men and women who work outside the home, you deserve a lot of credit for what you do, moreso than do stay-at-home moms or dads.
[From the comments:]
Anonymous said...
Jeez, it sounds like I wrote this article myself! Thanks for posting something that is so long overdue.
It's funny how people call SAHM the "hardest job in the world." For the hardest job in the world, it requires no experience, no references, no background check, and no job interviews.
Funny how I never see brain surgeons gossiping at Trader Joe's at 11am on weekdays, or getting their hair done at the salon while their husbands slay dragons at work.
And if I needed brain surgery, I'd ask for more qualifications than SAHM's are required to give for their jobs.
SAHM's are pulling off the biggest scams in America today, and gullible men continue to buy it. It seems Peggy Bundy is a much more realistic view of the SAHM lifestyle than anyone wants to admit. After all, why would they want anyone blowing their cover?
Well, back to watching election coverage on the news. Too bad Obama and McCain are applying for such easy jobs. If they wanted the hardest jobs in the world, you know, something really challenging, they should be campaigning to be stay at home moms.
[In response to a poster who asked Nemko why he continues to rail against SAHMs:]
Marty Nemko said...
I rail against them because even if they're just 7% (and I think the percent is higher than that), they often take precious slots in colleges and graduate schools and abdicate the implicit responsibility to, in exchange, give back to society, to simply to what they promised they'd do in their admission essays.
Also, I have become convinced that stay-at home moms are, on average, worse for kids than are working moms: they are more often overprotective, are bad role models (all they do is be a mother), and are more likely to be a bad parent because being with a kid(s) 24/7 leads to intolerant parenting.
Environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the environment is overpopulation. I don't feel we need to excuse people from contributing to society because they decide to have children.
3 September 2008
The Parasite Syndrome
Most of the women and men I know are hardworking. For example, my wife, Dr. Barbara Nemko, Napa County Superintendent of Schools, works 60 hours a week while being a good wife and mother.
However, over my 23 years and 2,900 clients in my career counseling practice, in my out-of-work conversations, and in reading trend pieces in the media, I've observed a dramatic increase in the number of people, capable people, afflicted with what I call the Parasite Syndrome.
Here's how the Parasite Syndrome prototypically plays out:
[[i]I corrected his numeration of points. He had duplicated No. 7.—K-Man[/i]]
1. After graduating from a brand-name college, the parasites in-training go abroad, for example to India or France, to "find themselves." They return a month or year later, no clearer, although perhaps more desirous of a pleasant and fulfilling life.
2. They take a pleasant and/or fulfilling but low-paying job. (Most pleasant and fulfilling jobs pay poorly--supply and demand.) But because of a desire to live a middle-class lifestyle, the person mooches off parents or romantic partner.
3. At this point, many of the female parasites-in-training think guys who don't make good money are losers. Most males don't think that way of educated low-income women, and so are more willing to marry them. And so, many more female than male would-be-parasites find a host.
4. Sometimes, the income-generating spouse prefers that his spouse not work, but that's uncommon except among the wealthy. More often, the income generator (or his or her parent) asks the spouse to try harder to land a professional-level job so she can contribute to the family income she's good at spending.
So, the non-earner makes a half-hearted failed effort after which she or he rails, for example, "You don't understand how tough the job market is, especially for a woman, and especially with a liberal arts degree."
Few husbands or parents have the guts to tell the non-earner, "Then why did you major in art history?! (or French literature, sociology, women's studies, etc.)" They fear the onslaught of fury, tears, or retaliatory accusations likely to follow.
5. Soon after, if a woman, she gets pregnant. Sometimes, the husband subtly or not subtly asks her if she wants to have an abortion, for example, "Do you think we're ready?" Because he can't force her to have an abortion, the baby comes, even if he doesn't want to be a father nor financially support it, let alone become the sole source of income so she can be a stay-at-home mother.
Men, unless you are ready to be a father or have absolute trust that your partner, without fail, uses reliable birth control, you must wear a condom every time or, if you're sure you never want children, have a vasectomy. Why? Because if she gets pregnant, you have no power: No matter how fervently you plead that you don't want a baby, if she decides she wants it, you're stuck with at least 18 years of enormous commitment of time, energy, and money.
Ah, relationships: They can be so rewarding yet so fraught.
6. She (or occasionally, her husband) insists it's important for her to stay home at least until the child is five, although, as I've documented in earlier posts, the research does not support the validity of that assertion. See, for example, the review of the literature I present in the third-from-the-last comment on this post.
7. When the baby reaches school-age, the brand-name-U-grad mother knows it's unseemly to remain a stay-at-home mother, so she gets pregnant again or goes to graduate school.
8. After taking a long time to finish graduate school and after another desultory job search, she fails to find more than an easy, ill-paying, part-time job, claiming, for example, that the job market is tough for stay-at-home moms.
9. The stay-at-home woman or man creates make-work to seem busy, taking longer to do things than necessary: for example, cooking unnecessarily time-consuming meals ("I had to stop at the Indian market for this spice,") searching for the perfect bathroom accessories, and getting overinvolved/overprotective with the kids, often inhibiting the child's self-confidence and self-efficacy.
Here's a less obvious example. After booking a teenager onto my show to talk about the book he wrote, his stay-at-home mother sent me a dozen emails filled with more information about him than I could use in five shows. Despite my saying, "I have more than I need," she kept sending more stuff. That enables her to tell her husband and friends that it takes a lot of time to support her son's efforts to promote his book.
10. If our reluctant worker lands a job, he or she doesn't work hard at it. She or he invokes excuses she's heard from her friends, pop psych or women'smagazines, or therapist, such as "I'm so afraid of failure that I don't try." or "I'm a perfectionist, which is painful, so I avoid tasks."
11. So this person continues as a mediocre worker, or quits, complaining that the boss is a jerk, work is too stressful, that corporate America (or government, or nonprofit employment) sucks, and/or that the workplace isn't family-friendly, or that "It really would be better if I stayed home with our child."
12. Women live much longer than men, in part because of the stress of an out-of-home job, so it is likely that women non-earners will bury a beast-of-burden husband or two and go to her grave having taken far more from family and society than she has given. She has been a parasite.
The saddest part is that these people--both the women and men--who are afflicted with the Parasite Syndrome are so capable; they could so abet society.
Alas, they choose to have hurt the society they could have helped. They take up slots at prestigious colleges having written application essays asserting that they want to do important things to improve society. (I've never known of a successful application essay to Brand-Name U whose admission essay said, "I aspire to be a stay-at-home parent.") They then freeload off parents and spouse, and later, often squander yet more societal resources by going back for another degree without ever making much use of it. They certainly never come close to living up to their potential. You don't need a brand-name degree or two to be a good stay-at-home parent, let alone a stay-at-home childless wife, which, as reported in a recent study, is a growing group.
If you know someone, male or female, who is afflicted with the Parasite Syndrome, consider emailing or showing the person this article. True, their first reaction will likely be defensiveness at being called a parasite, but if their behavior, in fact, fits the syndrome and they are reasonably well-adjusted, their desire to not be thought of as a parasite is more likely to motivate them to change than would a tactful request to put more effort into their career. Why? Because a tactful request rarely disturbs complacency, let alone a parasite.
12 September 2008
Family Is Overrated
Politicians, clerics, and just plain folks extol family as our most important institution.
I believe family is overrated. So many people suffer inordinately from family. Of course, there are the obvious examples:
• Child abuse
• Spousal abuse
• Incest
• Psychological abuse
But much more often, there’s less dramatic but still painful family-induced misery:
• Other than pleasantries, your adult child refuses to speak with you.
• Your spouse has fallen out of love with you, yet fear, inertia, and shared history preclude a dissolution. So you trudge along in your lackluster life.
• Your parent is still trying to control or demean you even though you’re already an adult.
• Your nine-year-old regularly screams, “I hate you, mommy!”
• Your adult child is back on your sofa still trying to “find himself” (with the assistance of drugs or alcohol.)
• You're not capable enough to compete with a sibling or parent, which dispirits you.
• You make major efforts to care for your aging parent, motivated mainly by guilt. Privately, you resent how much time, energy, and money it takes.
• Your spouse doesn’t earn enough income or do enough around the house.
• You suffer the effects of an alcoholic or drug-abusing family member.
Millions of people don't even speak with a family member. Millions more spend years and fortunes on therapists, trying to undo the ills that family perpetrated on them.
All this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, unlike with friends, we are placed in our family of origin at random, with no say in the matter. We do choose our spouse, but hormones seem to preclude our doing a very good job of it—witness the 50% divorce rate.
While it’s unseemly to discuss, money is part of the equation as we evaluate whether family is overrated. It costs a fortune to support kids, let alone a stay-at-home spouse. To pay for it, many people choose lucrative careers that are far less pleasurable than those they’d otherwise choose. Do you think that, if it weren’t for the need to support a family, as many people would choose to sell insurance, be pest control workers, sewer repairers, or bond traders? Wouldn’t many of them choose a career, for example, in the creative arts, in a nonprofit, or as a computer game maker?
Of course, I can envision some readers thinking:
What? Are you advocating a society without children? Encouraging my readers to think more carefully before having children is hardly going to lead to a world without children. I am merely asking people to be more circumspect, not reflexively fulfilling society's expectation. Besides, environmentalists argue that overpopulation is the greatest threat to the environment. A few less children wouldn’t hurt the world and its nearly seven billion people.
Life is even more difficult to live without the support of family. I’m not saying that people don’t need support. I’m arguing against the automatic assumption that you have greater obligation to support family members than others. For example, when your ne’er-do-well sibling asks you for money because he or she is unemployed, rather than succumb to the reflexive guilt that society imposes because “he’s family,” you'd be wise to view the issue in fuller dimension: in terms of the net effects on you, him, your family, and, yes, society. For example, does giving Sammy the Slug the money yield a greater net good than, for example, investing in a startup developing a drug to prevent sudden heart attack, the leading killer?
My main message is to resist automatically succumbing to convention, and instead, to make your choices consciously, based on what will ultimately yield the greatest good en toto: for you, your family, and society.
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Re: Great blog posts from a kindred spirit (Marty Nemko); LONG but worth it September 29, 2008 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 2,301 |
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Re: Great blog posts from a kindred spirit (Marty Nemko); LONG but worth it September 29, 2008 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 12,447 |
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Re: Great blog posts from a kindred spirit (Marty Nemko); LONG but worth it September 29, 2008 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 2,301 |
Templar
Re: Great blog posts from a kindred spirit (Marty Nemko); LONG but worth it September 29, 2008 |
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Re: Great blog posts from a kindred spirit (Marty Nemko); LONG but worth it September 29, 2008 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 2,301 |
Yes, it was.
The post on the Domestic Abuse is interesting and informative as well.
This bill is unfair by eliminating men as victims. Women can be, are are, abusers. Trust me, I am living proof. I have been hit, kicked, hit with a portable phone and computer mouse, koncked down, punched, had hot food right from the stove dumped on me...I got away from this bitch as soon as I could...but trust me, there ARE abusive women out there! Men should be able to prosecute, too.
The post on the Domestic Abuse is interesting and informative as well.
This bill is unfair by eliminating men as victims. Women can be, are are, abusers. Trust me, I am living proof. I have been hit, kicked, hit with a portable phone and computer mouse, koncked down, punched, had hot food right from the stove dumped on me...I got away from this bitch as soon as I could...but trust me, there ARE abusive women out there! Men should be able to prosecute, too.
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