Thursday, July 21, 2011

Educated Gen X women in no man's land

Buried amongst the stories in the Daily Mail is a very significant report on the fate of university educated Generation X women. These women were born between 1965 and 1978, so they are between 33 and 46 years old.

The report begins by noting that few of these women have succeeded in making it into the boardroom. The reason commonly given for this is that women opt out to have children and so lose motivation.

But it turns out that this is not entirely true. An incredible 43% of these women are childless. That's a depressing statistic. Given that the youngest of these women is 33, it means that the most educated of English women are failing miserably when it comes to reproducing and bringing a new generation of children into the world.

So if these 43% are not taking a detour to have children, why haven't they risen through the corporate ranks? According to the newspaper article, many of them eventually grow tired of the long hours and work pressures of the corporate world and so leave for more flexible positions, such as working as consultants:

'Anecdotally we’re seeing them moving into more flexible roles,’ says Dr Angela Carter, a research fellow at the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield. ‘They’re setting out on their own or moving into consultancy roles.

‘There has been a popular conception that flexible working appeals to women because they want children, but that’s not the whole story. Generation X women have been brought up with the expectation of “having it all” — and when they’ve found the corporate world is, in fact, often very restrictive and won’t allow this, they’ve gone looking for that freedom elsewhere.'

That ought to be kept in mind when complaints are made that women only make up 15% of company boards. If far fewer women are willing to make the sacrifices, then surely we should expect a preponderance of men on company boards.

Anyway, here is the Helen McNallen story:

Helen McNallen
Helen McNallen, 44, was formerly a high-powered trader for Goldman Sachs until her mid-30s...

‘When I left university it was the tail end of the “yuppie era”, with City traders swilling champagne and frequenting nightclubs,’ she says. ‘I was thrilled to be accepted into this testosterone-fuelled world. At the time, I became the only female trader in my department and felt that I had to work and play like one of the boys.

‘We worked crazy hours and then be out partying with colleagues or clients well into the early hours.

‘I was on a six-figure salary and had a house in the City and a renovated barn in Hampshire. But I was so exhausted I spent nearly all of the weekend in bed. I felt tremendously pressurised, and couldn’t think about having children.’

By her mid-30s, Helen was suffering from severe stress, which she refused to deal with properly for a long time on the grounds that it might make her appear weak.

‘I eventually realised I couldn’t cope any longer,’ she says. ‘The pressure of being a woman in a man’s world was just too much.’

She says she feels cheated by being sold the myth of the female businesswoman who can work like a man. And she adds: ‘I am both too old and too set in my ways to start a family, even if it was physically possible.'

I feel cheated too. Was this really the best use society had for Helen McNallen? She worked so hard that family was impossible, for a lifestyle she was too tired to enjoy and then she quit it all anyway just at the point that her childbearing years were ending. It just doesn't seem to be a rational life course for society to pitch to women. There is loss all round.

26 comments:

  1. I'm a Gen X male who went through that in the blue collar world. Why would women want that for themselves? Trust me when I say looking back now the payoff isn't worth it nor would I repeat it. The sacrifice is just too great. At least she got weekends off whereas for a few years there I was working 7 days a week. So I can relate to her being tired.

    What's even worse now is if I ran across the rare woman that is actually worth a damn, is the incentive there to go back into working like a dog to support a family? Especially now that the opportunity is there to finally take it easy and pursue my passions?

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  2. Take it from other side. Some people are still breeding in great numbers!
    This reminds me news from yesterday. There was a couple with 10 kids. They are prosecuted for mis-nurturing their children (at least those not removed from them yet - others nurtured on state money now). Social workers have found out that their 5y old daughter cannot walk and speak - just shrieks. The mother is pregnant again on purpose to receive slighter sentence. And, well, they are not so bright.
    But they have managed to replace 4 of those college educated women when keeping "sustainable" reproduction rate.

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  3. Anon, your example woman also managed to employ 3-4 Child welfare specialists, some child development and bahavior psychologists and a few government bureaucrats, all of whome were likely women and who were paid for with taxes collected from those career women earning 6 figure incomes. The circle is complete.

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  4. But it turns out that this is not entirely true. An incredible 43% of these women are childless. That's a depressing statistic. Given that the youngest of these women is 33, it means that the most educated of English women are failing miserably when it comes to reproducing and bringing a new generation of children into the world.

    On a way this is negative but on the other hand this is positive. If there is such a thing as a traditional conservative gene or leaning in genetics then this signifies that since liberal and libertarian women are not reproducing there is less of these genetic replications occuring for future generations. With genetics out of the window the focus becomes more on social and cultural factors since the gene problem has been dealt with.

    We worked crazy hours and then be out partying with colleagues or clients well into the early hours.

    Just socializing and partying or a metaphor for her interest in "alpha males"?

    In the end Helen McNallen seemed like a nice lady. Instead of the true believer type she was taken in into the wrong crowds and that is truly a tragedy for millions of women.

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  5. I blame their mothers. Older women far from being a good example are often the biggest feminists with a huge chip on their shoulders.

    When I was a new wife I used to be a member of a ladies' church club, well one of those older "ladies" kept asking me why I chose to stay home all the while informing me about her unmarried daughter's great career. She harassed me so badly that my husband wanted to have a couple of words with her. She was actually quite proud that her daughter was a 30+ spinster with a career. Another "lady" told me that cooking was oppressive for women and how much she hated cooking and how unfair it was that her husband was having fun at his work while she slaved away.

    I finally left the club and that church and we found something more traditional, but I heard similar stories from other women. I have seen a story in a newspaper which claims that about 50% of all women in my country work because their mothers agree to babysit. Some of those older women are positively wicked.

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  6. It's a huge disaster; the dysgenic effect for IQ alone will be/is disastrous, even without mass immigration from low IQ populations.

    This post hit a particular nerve with me.

    Wife, 40: Just took voluntary redundancy from her public sector job to become a consultant. 1 child at 36, complications make more unlikely.

    Sister, 36: Lecturer at a German University. Low pay, single, 0 children.

    I just hope my son can find a good woman who wants lots of children. I'm certainly telling him that that's the most important thing in life. If she's not University educated, fine.

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  7. Add Blythe Masters, Janet Tavakoli, and Nomi Prins to the high IQ white women that have pursued a career on Wall Street rather than have any children. Very, very sad. For all of us.

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  8. Very good article. My thinking is that nobody (probably), either male or female, could maintain these kind of work efforts consistently without having a "wife" to go home to. So I would have thought that there would be an increase in women hooking up with more "stay at home" partner types in this group.

    In relation to men, if the domestic sphere is a scene of additional stress, which is often the case, then you can start to see why marriages would quickly fail. I wouldn't mind seeing the divorce rates for corporate gen xers.

    How do these types, both men and women, deal with stress? They don't go to church, they often don't have stable relationships, and partying all the time I imagine would just exhaust you to a degree? You can see why there are often floods of applicants for less demanding government work.

    As a consequence of the promotion of competition between the sexes, the necessary support mechanisms needed to maintain high work levels may have been seriously undermined. One result being not only to effect people’s personal lives but also our broader society, as the overall quality of work done will in the longer term go south. We see broadly weak levels of resilience in our societies members and also the adoption of risk adverse behaviors, eg left wing group think. These trends must be a consequence in part of the greater difficulties people have in their personal lives.

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  9. Simon in London...don't give up on having more children.

    I am convinced that doctors are lying to women to discourage babies.

    My mom had a child late, so keep trying. Just don't take any medicine.

    You got a good 4 years of natural trying left! Keep at it!!!

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  10. In a way this is negative but on the other hand this is positive. If there is such a thing as a traditional conservative gene or leaning in genetics then this signifies that since liberal and libertarian women are not reproducing there is less of these genetic replications occuring for future generations.

    There is no liberal gene. That is a silly Dawkins-esque explanation. People reflect the values of their parents and the wider culture.

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  11. Those dumb bitches don't DESERVE to reproduce! They did humanity a favor by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool...

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  12. I finally left the club and that church and we found something more traditional, but I heard similar stories from other women. I have seen a story in a newspaper which claims that about 50% of all women in my country work because their mothers agree to babysit. Some of those older women are positively wicked.

    Classical liberal and libertarian infection of the Church is truly a sad event to behold.

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  13. There is no liberal gene. That is a silly Dawkins-esque explanation. People reflect the values of their parents and the wider culture.

    Of course there is no such thing as a "liberal gene" but I wouldn't be surprised if certain genes have natural leanings towards liberal ideals. Social and cultural factors are quite important I agree.

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  14. ""on the other hand this is positive. If there is such a thing as a traditional conservative gene or leaning in genetics""

    Sorry Liz, while Tabula Rasa is false environment does play a part.

    You can be the most conservative leaning person in the world, but if you get brought up by lefty parents, go to public or progressive schools, then go through a humanities course at the local university there is a VERY high chance you will be a lefty, if not a committed one.

    IMHO most people are inherently traditionalist, if that was enough we would not be in this mess.

    It can sometimes take 20 years of education and social pressure to make someone completely reject reality for nice sounding words.

    But it happens everyday.

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  15. I work with women who have chosen a 'career' over children. What an empty pursuit. What a world of pain.

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  16. You can be the most conservative leaning person in the world, but if you get brought up by lefty parents, go to public or progressive schools, then go through a humanities course at the local university there is a VERY high chance you will be a lefty, if not a committed one.

    This is one of the reasons I will only stay 2 years in college and then good riddance.

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  17. Just a message off the topic.

    This is an interesting topic that I found, which researched thoroughly and identified the ethnicity/cultural background of the 31-year-old pedophile who claimed his action of having sex with 11-year-old is deemed normal in his culture.

    http://theslittyeye.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/the-justification-from-my-ethnic-minority-culture/

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  18. Criminal insanity is the defining mark of modernity. This destruction of the family is essential for the imposition of a world communist dictatorship. It was one of Marx's original goals listed in the Communist Manifesto. Behind Marx of course were the the secret societies. The secret societies got rid of the European monarchies & destroyed the influence of the Church by means of a combination of anti-clerical laws & infiltration which resulted in the disastrous Second Vatican Council, & which is also very probably responsible for a great many of the recent scandals. All the while Mazzini's dictum of "we corrupt in order to rule" was carried out quite thoroughly. What a pity that the greater part of the people enthusiastically went along, gleefully adopting the new doctrines of filthy modern "psychology" &c. so that they could live lives of unrestrained wickedness, fornicating, snorting dope up their nose, murdering their own children so they wouldn't have to bother with them. What used to be the best civilization that has ever arisen on the face of the earth has become the very worst. It went from a civilization that brought forth Chopin, Handel, Moussorgsky & many others, to one which brings forth vile blaspheming filth like "gaga"(I won't call such human rubbish a lady). It went from a Christian civilization that accorded the greatest value to human life, as man is made in the image of God & possesses an immortal soul, to an utterly worthless neo-pagan "civilization" which slaughters its own children in the womb by the tens of millions, not as sacrifice to an idol to obtain victory in war, or rain for crops after having suffered a long drought as the Carthaginians & Aztecs did, but rather so that some vicious young harlot won't have to be inconvenienced, & can pursue her "career" & continue living an evil life. The coming economic collapse & the many natural disasters already taking place are part of God's punishment on this diabolical modern world, this world which can best be compared to a rotting carcass alive with maggots & emitting a stench which would make even the strongest retch & vomit until his stomach is empty. The prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima is now beginning to come to pass. May we all by the mercy of God live to see the end of the modern world, may its memory be blotted out forever.

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  19. Where'd the "Norway terror attack" post go? I thought I saw it here earlier.

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  20. It would appear that you are all missing the lying Feminist Wet-dream point, who promoted that "Women Can Have It ALL" and most actually fell for it and now we have an endless line of women complaining that they were lied to. Gee, couldn't see that coming with your inflated ego!!

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  21. Erik, some more information came to light, so I rethought the original post.

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  22. These women can only collapse the society.

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  23. I am a 37 year old Generation X woman who is a college professor and a business owner. There is no way I am childless, that insinuates I would want kids; I AM CHILD-FREE! I LOVE MY LIFE!! My handsome, incredible, Italian husband and I have been married almost 10 years, have traveled to 29 countries, contribute to charities, run a successful real estate business, volunteer for several causes, have changed local laws, run on-line rescues, lovingly care for my adorable elderly parents, and save hundreds of abandoned pets finding them new homes. We live a happy, full life, we love each other like I've only seen in the movies, and I believe there would be no way we could have it all like we do if we had kids.

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    Replies
    1. So, you're biologically and culturally a complete failure.
      (I'm a man with a STEM M.S. and four children.)

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  24. I am a GenX female and I disagree with this article. I am living a very happy life with a billoionare and with 4 kids. So its proven totally wrong!!

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  25. I'm a gen X woman in a civil partnership with my partner lola. I play rugby and I own a delivery company but I don't wish to have kids. This article is wrong.

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