Word: basham
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...have to and the answer will overwhelmingly come back ‘No!’,” she writes. Despite the fact that this statement is a near truism (wouldn’t the majority of people cut back on work if their monetary circumstances permitted?), Basham proceeds to cite additional surveys proving that, while working women strongly desire to drift back into domesticity, men want to remain in the workplace, even in the absence of a financial imperative to do so. What better solution, Basham reasons, than to abide by these apparently biological urges and allow...
...Basham’s findings: namely, that the majority of high-achieving males would prefer to stay at home if money allowed and that most mothers married to men with annual earnings of over $120,000 remain in the workforce, in spite of their financial freedom. More damagingly, Basham confuses the distinction between correlation and causation: women’s stated desire to revert to the home may have stronger grounding in the cultural myth of the happy homemaker and in the pervasive prejudices against women in high-powered jobs, rather than in a genuine lust for the kitchen...
...Beyond her absolute reliance on dubious data, Basham’s argument obfuscates the socioeconomic structures that render her step by step plan unfeasible for the bulk of American families. When Basham alludes to a “group of mothers,” she would be more truthful to reference a “group of white upper middle class mothers with equally well-to-do husbands.” Indeed, the women that Basham upholds as paradigms of her “career partner” include the wife of the founder of Amazon.com and the wife...
...June 2006 digest further concluded that changes in household structure—namely, the increase in female-headed families—were largely to blame for the rise in domestic poverty rates since the 1980s. Due to the myths perpetuated by “pro-family” Basham-types—that women need not cultivate their own careers, but should merely nurture those of their husbands—the removal of the man from the family, whether due to death or divorce, can impoverish its remaining members...
...addition to her erasure of socioeconomic diversity, Basham neglects to comprehend that her solution may perpetuate the alleged distaste of women for work that initially motivates her argument. The inflexible culture which drives many women away from the professional world is only exacerbated when men have full time “career partners” at home, streamlining their activities so that they can clock even more hours at the office. If Basham believes so strongly in her own hypothesis, perhaps she should stop writing books that encourage women to find security in renouncing their ability to support themselves...