Women in Media

[firstfrost]

This article is really bugging me:

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/06/02/the_write_time/

It's about women getting their PhDs while having children. Which is a fine thign to write about, and there are some interesting points in the article. The thing that is bugging me is that as far as I can tell, the article assumes that having children is *entirely* a woman thing.

I'm sure that women are still the ones doing the majority of the child-rearing. But I think that's a different statement than something like "Doctoral candidates are more likely to have babies these days for the simple reason that women make up a greater percentage of doctorate recipients than they did 30 years ago" which seems to take as a logical given the fact that having babies is something that women have to deal with and men do not.

In addition, I honestly cannot tell if the article is about three single mothers pursuing PhDs. There is absolutely no mention of a father, or any other partner, anywhere in the article, but neither is there a mention of a lack of one. I don't want to suggest that the idea of raising a child on one's own is what I object to, but I can't tell whether that's what they're doing, or if that's just what the article assumes that they're doing because the fathers couldn't possibly be relevant to the subject.

Comments

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

My perception was also three single women, because the descriptions of buying homes and how they manage childcare really seemed like they'd have included the husband/partner if there were one.

But also, it was about women raising kids while getting PhDs, and I can see thinking that the men aren't relevant to the article. not that it was a great or deeply thoughtful article anyway, but I can see that logic.