Inside Higher Ed reports that last year's NY Times article about women in ivy league schools opting-out is largely, well, bullshit.

A new study suggests that the article also overstated the number of women who hope to leave the workforce long-term. Yale University’s Women’s Center released a survey last week finding that just 4.1 percent of Yale women plan to stop work entirely after having children, compared to 0.7 percent of men. A vast majority of women — 71.8 percent — reported they would take less than one year off work after their children were born.

...Victoria Brescoll, now a postdoctoral research fellow at Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, who conducted the survey in the 2005-6 academic year as a graduate student in social psychology, said the survey results suggest that men and women equally value career and family, contradicting the implication of Louise Story’s September 2005 article, “Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood.�

“What does ‘many’ mean? Personally, I don’t think 4 percent equals many, � Brescoll said.

No joke. There's a whole bunch of interesting info comparing the study to the article, inlcuding stats on women planning on working part-time and the barriers women see in their family-planning futures--so check out the whole piece.

3 Comments

October 5, 2006 12:24 PM

[0+]  Sylke said:

This might be a dumb question, but I wonder if they included in their study women who didn't want to have children at all. I meet more and more women these days who want nothing to do with parenthood, and can say without doubt that I won't miss one day of work due to child rearing.

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October 5, 2006 3:44 PM

[0+]  carlagirl said:

You know they didn't. I attended the Ivy League, don't have or want children, but I'd love to stop working. They shoulda talked to me and my kind.

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October 5, 2006 8:08 PM

[0+]  donna darko said:

Men and value equally value careers, but women see more barriers including issues of day care and being able to financially support a child. It finds that a higher percentage of men than women plan to become parents, perhaps suggesting both that men find it more socially acceptable to say they want children and, more negatively, that women are more likely to understand the barriers facing child-rearing.

This is true of many of my classmates fifteen years after graduation. Many had children and found barriers at work. WTF is wrong with our culture and government?

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