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The Revolution That Wasn’t

Jill

Surprise, surprise: The opt-out revolution is bunk.

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.

Four percent does not a revolution make. via Feministing.

7 thoughts on The Revolution That Wasn’t

  2. At the risk of being labeled a concern troll, I’d like to see a followup—how many women actually keep working after giving birth, as opposed to how many say they will.

    I say this because of my own, anecdotal experience. I’ve known of close to a dozen women who swore they would keep their jobs after the bundle of joy arrives, only to change their minds after they find that it ain’t so easy.

  4. In response to #2: I thought the point of the so-called “opt-out revolution” was that a bunch of college-aged women were saying outright that they planned to stop working once they had kids. And the first article I remember seeing on it had murky data. Given that context, I think actual surveys like this are reasonable refutation.

  5. Safe to say, I know very few women whose child care plan actually worked out – in both directions -exactly like they thought it would. However, I am starting to see a few more men in the same boat. They juggled shifts or started new careers when their kids needed more of their time. Where’s the study on that? When EVERYONE has some responsibility for addressing their family’s child care situation, instead of it becoming the woman’s burden to figure out and accomodate, it will be a lot easier to force various professions to address the need of all parents to have the opportunity to parent, instead of continuing to insist that their employees pretend that they can be available from 8 to 8 and beyond all weekdays and weekends as needed.

  6. I thought the first study failed to differentiate between entirely not working and part-time work. Reading the alumni column of my college, alot of my classmates turned out to SAHMs unexpectedly and because they can afford it. It was surprising actually and many have 2 or more children.

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