Daily Archives: 17 May 2015

“Poor Little Rich Women”

I always enjoy reading the reaction of supposedly hyper-tolerant, non-judgemental, cultural-relativist progressives when they encounter traditionalism, high-investment parenting, and the success that seems to go with it.

Listen to her squirm with disapproval before finally abandoning the veneer of tolerance for full fledged condescension and ridicule:

—“. . . mostly 30-somethings with advanced degrees from prestigious universities and business schools. They were married to rich, powerful men, many of whom ran hedge or private equity funds; they often had three or four children under the age of 10; they lived west of Lexington Avenue, north of 63rd Street and south of 94th Street; and they did not work outside the home. . . .

“It’s easier and more fun,” the women insisted when I asked about the sex segregation that defined their lives.

“We prefer it,” the men told me at a dinner party where husbands and wives sat at entirely different tables in entirely different rooms.

Sex segregation, I was told, was a “choice.” But like “choosing” not to work, or a Dogon woman in Mali’s “choosing” to go into a menstrual hut, it struck me as a state of affairs possibly giving clue to some deeper, meaningful reality. . . .

The wives of the masters of the universe, I learned, are a lot like mistresses — dependent and comparatively disempowered. Just sensing the disequilibrium, the abyss that separates her version of power from her man’s, might keep a thinking woman up at night.”—

mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinion/sunday/poor-little-rich-women.html?referrer&_r=0